#and then the three of them live together as ghosts but this post isn’t about that | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

rememberwren · 6 months ago

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Complicated Pleasures

OR: Home Videos. You (fem!reader) and Ghost have been married for years when your prodigal friend Johnny finds out that you make and post porn together. Feelings happen. 13k

About this: m/m, f/m, oral f and m receiving, anal sex, PIV, kink, pornography, sir kink, slight objectification, objectionable writing, soft!simon, very soft fic altogether, cum sharing.

((A video begins.

A bed in a tidy room. Identifying features have been hidden: pictures placed face down on the nightstands, blinds drawn tight until the room is cast in a cool glow. A woman sits amongst the nondescript bedspread and sheets, her legs tucked up against her chest and arms wrapped around her thighs, naked except for the mask that does little to truly obscure her face.

Once she knows the video has begun, it is like she blooms, arms and legs falling away to reveal the soft petals of her nakedness: the plains of her body, the angles and curves. She’s near perfect, Soap thinks, already fisting his hard cock.

She looks almost exactly like you.

Then a man walks around from the other side of the camera, and Soap’s heart leaves his body.))

“Johnny!” you say brightly, throwing open the front door. In streams the cold air and bright sunshine reflecting off the snow, and in steps Johnny with snowflakes in his hair and on the shoulders of his coat, gifts wrapped in bright shades of gold and silver tucked beneath one of his arms.

He stomps his feet, boots shedding packed snow on the doormat, and leans in to deposit the gifts a safe distance away so that he can open his arms and gather you up in them. Your fingers tangle in his jacket, holding him close. He is warm even after coming in from the snow, his scent like Christmas itself: woodsy pine and crackling fires. You feel Simon’s presence appear in the living room doorway and begin to pull away, trying not to hog his friend, even if you desperately want to.

“Lookit you, bonnie as ever,” Johnny says against your ear. He lets you go, bending down to unlace his boots and call a greeting to Simon: “I see you brooding over there, LT. Happy Christmas to yeh.”

“No titles at Christmas, Johnny.”

“Yessir.”

“You didn’t need to bring gifts,” you scold him.

“Of course I did—it’s fucking Christmas,” says Johnny with a grin as he straightens. He passes you the gifts, a small package and a larger one, each wrapped by a practiced hand that you sense must not have been Johnny’s own. You wonder if there isn’t a girl in his life now—except you and Simon had extended the invitation to one, if so. Why he wouldn’t have brought her, you couldn’t understand.

Maybe his mum wrapped the gifts.

Simon and Johnny clasp hands which turns into a hug. Watching them together makes the dust settle in some riotous part of your heart. The two of them—their friendship—just makes perfect sense in its improbability.

Simon mutters something under his breath and Johnny nods, burying his face deeper into Simon’s broad shoulder. You have the perfect vantage point of Johnny’s face: his eyes squeezed shut, long lashes resting on his cheeks.

A timer in the kitchen goes off—the roast you’ve been cooking since the early morning hours. Excusing yourself, you disappear into the kitchen, pausing just beyond the doorway to press your chilly hands to your flushed cheeks.

Wine. You needed wine.

“So,” you begin once the three of you have sat down for dinner. “Fill us in, Johnny. What have you been up to?”

The unsaid words linger between you all, What have you been up to during the three years you left? Johnny gives a wane smile, and you think that maybe the time spent apart didn’t serve him nearly as well as he’d hoped it would—however he’d hoped it would. Simon sits at the head of the table, his ankle tangled against your own beneath the oak. It’s a comforting reminder of his presence, considering he lets you and Johnny do most of the talking for now.

“Whole lot o’ nothing,” Johnny says, sipping at the wine in his glass between sentences. “Traveled abroad fer a while. Spent some time in America, some time in South Korea.”

“Sounds like a nice place to meet people,” you say, aiming for subtlety the way a sledgehammer might. “I notice you didn’t take us up on our invitation and bring a lass with you.”

“No lass to bring, hen,” he says smoothly.

Simon’s ankle stirs against your own, some silent attempt at communication. When you glance over toward him, his eyes are on his plate, face stoic, revealing nothing.

“Any lads?” you guess.

Simon’s fork squeaks against his plate. Johnny stops eating. For a moment they both stare at you in shocked silence. Then a grin spreads over Johnny’s handsome face, blooming straight into laughter. He shakes his head, like you have said something very silly.

“No, no lads,” he says.

Simon’s ankle shifts again.

You reach for your glass of wine, face hot—

—and you don’t stop drinking.

Afternoon turns into evening, and by the time night falls, the three of you have drunk your way through three bottles of wine and successfully caught each other up on your lives to date. Simon and Johnny have slipped out onto the porch twice to smoke, bringing back in the scent of tobacco and snow, one you don’t mind at all. The fire in the fireplace burns low, crackling and spitting as the log splits. The room is strewn with torn gift wrapping. Simon has already unboxed the knife Johnny had made for him, testing its weight in his palm, testing the sharpness of the blade against the pad of his thumb. (Add that to the list of things which shouldn’t arouse you about Simon but do.)

It reminds you of the idyllic Christmases that you had reached for all your life and only ever skimmed with your fingers. You should have known that the missing piece was Johnny all along.

Wine drunk, you have kicked your feet up on Johnny’s lap at one end of the couch and curled your upper half on Simon’s lap at the other end. It is easy to fall asleep to the warm lull of their voices, swapping stories from their time in the military together.

But all at once, the subject matter changes, and it drags you from the threshold of sleep into some misty gray area in between a dream and wakefulness. Eyes still closed, you listen.

“I found you both, you know.” Johnny’s voice is barely more than a whisper, difficult to hear over the crackling fire.

“Don’t know what you mean, Johnny. We’re right here.”

“I found your videos.”

Your hands tighten into fists where you are clutching Simon’s shirt, eyes cracking open as you put the pieces together in your mind. But he’s smoother than you are, always able to keep a cool head. He sounds a little bored, a little confused as he asks: “What videos?”

“Never known you to play dumb LT. You know the ones I mean. The porn.”

A lengthy silence as Simon weighs his options and likely decides that there’s no use in lying. “You did, did you?”

“Aye.”

A pause.

“So that’s why you finally came back. Three fucking years she begs you to at least come for Christmas—who knew all it would take was a little pornography to put a fire under your arse.”

“That’s not—didn’t even find it until a few days ago, after I’d already said yes—“ Johnny says, voice rising in his defense.

“Careful. We don’t want to wake her up, do we?” Simon’s hand pets against your hair, softer than a kiss from the wind. Though he must know you’re awake, you’re grateful that he lets you pretend, lets you hide away while he handles this. “If she knew that you’d seen those videos, she’d be embarrassed. That would make me upset. You understand?”

“Aye,” he says, lowering his voice a little. He rests his hand against your ankle in his lap and then decides it’s not appropriate, shifts his hand back to his own thigh. You miss his touch. You’ve always missed Johnny’s touch more than you should miss the touch of your husband’s best friend. “But if you didn’t want people to see them, I don’t understand what you were thinkin’ posting them online.”

“Three guesses. No, go on. Never known you to be shy. Guess.”

Johnny wets his lips. “You didn’t think you’d be recognized.”

“There’s one.”

“You…you like it.”

“There’s two. Give us a third.”

“She likes it.”

You groan a little in embarrassment, turning your face away from where Johnny can see its profile, burying it in Simon’s lap. He’s hard, a fact you only realize when his jean-clad cock rubs against your cheek. You go still, eyes widening as this knowledge goes straight to the warmth that’s been stoked between your legs more often than the fireplace has tonight.

Simon’s hand finds the nape of your neck and rests there, keeping you still and quiet. It reminds you of your last video, when he had taken you from behind and put his hand on the nape of your neck to urge your face into the bed, his hips snapping against your ass. Where had the camera been, then? You couldn’t remember. That was Simon’s one rule, besides the masks and never saying each other’s names: don’t look into the camera.

“So what do you plan to do with this knowledge, Johnny?” Simon asks. You hold your breath, still feigning sleep. “Who do you plan to tell? You know I don’t have anyone left who would give a fuck, but I’m sure you could find someone for her—someone who could shame her and make her feel bad for trying to feel good. Is that what you want?”

“Fuck no. I’d not tell a soul,” says Johnny fiercely. His hand comes to rest on your ankle again. This time he leaves it, thumb brushing the bone. “I swear it.”

“Then why bring it up at all?”

“I…I don’t know,” Johnny admits, head ducking. “I just had to. Spending time with yeh both, knowing what I knew—it felt dishonest.”

Simon hums. “You know what I’d like to know?”

“What’s that?”

“What our single friend was doing looking at couples porn.”

The night ends quickly after that. Simon carries you to bed—the bed where you film so much of the porn that Johnny has apparently seen—and helps you begin undressing while Johnny gets his boots on in the other room.

“I’m so embarrassed,” you breathe, quiet so that Johnny could not overhear if he happened to be standing right outside the door. Your head is spinning, and only partly from all the wine. Your face burns. Your heart is beating as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. Johnny has seen the videos, the ones you and Simon cheekily dub ‘home movies’! God, how you will ever face him again is beyond you.

“Give me the word and I’ll throw him out,” says Simon. “We’ll never see him again.”

That makes a sick feeling rise up in the back of your throat. You look up at Simon and take in the somber, angry-adjacent expression on his face, and you know that he is serious. Simon never says a word that he doesn’t mean. But you can hear what he didn’t say, the words unspoken: it would kill him to do it. All their years spent watching each other’s backs, it would be hard to stab Johnny’s and leave him in the cold. Especially after the bliss of just getting him back.

You don’t want that. Not for Simon, not for Johnny. Not even for you.

“I like Johnny,” you affirm. “I just don’t know how I’ll face him.”

“You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. He’s the pervert looking in through our window.”

“We’re the perverts fucking with the blinds wide open,” you remind him.

“I’ll see him out. Finish getting undressed,” he says, disappearing through the doorway. You hear the warm timber of his voice matched by Johnny’s and the sound of the front door opening. Two sets of boots crunch through snow, and now the voices are so far away that you can’t even make out their tone, much less their words.

Stripping the last of your clothes off, you roll onto your belly and bury your face in your pillow. Tonight had been going so well. It was hard to believe how far off course things had become. What was Johnny doing looking for couples porn anyhow?

You roll back over, staring into the darkness of the ceiling. The answer was simple: because it would get him off. It didn’t matter if it was tentacles to titjobs. He’d more than likely been looking up porn while he jerked off.

Had he realized right away that it was you and Simon and turned the video off in disgust? Or had it taken a moment for it to sink in? Had he cared at all?

Or had he jerked off instead? You realize you are rubbing your thighs together belatedly and force yourself into stillness.

The front door opens, Simon stomping inside and taking off his boots. When he joins you in bed, his cheeks are still cold, mouth minty from hastily brushing his teeth of tobacco and wine. You lean in and kiss him, looking for comfort. He kisses back, sweeping his tongue through your mouth, sucking on your lower lip.

“I’m not in the mood tonight,” you whisper when you both part, not necessarily out of truthfulness, but because you feel like you shouldn’t be in the mood.

“Wasn’t expecting anything.”

You lay your head on his chest, listening to the steady sound of his heart. Your embarrassment is a little lessened now, abated by the calm that Simon exudes from his pores. It’s hard to believe that anything in the world could go wrong that Simon couldn’t handle with a twist of his hand or a few choice words. After a while, you glance up to find him still awake, staring into the darkness of the room. He meets your eyes and gives you one of his rare, wane smiles.

“What are you thinking about?” you ask him.

After a moment of silence, he says: “Our next video.”

((AMATEUR COUPLE: WAKING UP MY WIFE WITH MORNING SEX. Soap knows that he shouldn’t click on the link. The first time was an honest mistake, but anything afterwards is intentional—and unforgivable. If Ghost were to find out…Soap doesn’t even want to think about it.

Except why would it be wrong for Soap to do it but right for a bunch of strangers?

He doesn’t need to look down to know his cock is hard. Against his better judgement—or any judgement at all, really—he clicks the link. The video starts with Ghost in the frame, completely naked. He’s seen LT naked often enough (it’s unavoidable in such close quarters as they have shared) but he’s never looked, not like this.

Time has barely changed him. He is still fitter than any man has the right to be, thick with muscles that are for functionality and not just for show—though the show is still impressive.

While he’d always known that Ghost would be a sight to behold, seeing it in this context cements a fact in his brain, one that had sent him running years prior: he’s attracted to his closest friend. All the bad flirting disguised as taking the piss back when they were in the 141—it wasn’t just taking the piss. Not for Soap, at least.

In the video, Ghost exits the frame and crosses to the other side of the bed. He’s not wearing a mask this time but the upper half of his face remains solidly out of frame until it is offscreen again. You are positioned closest to the camera, laying on your side facing the audience. Your face isn’t visible, but your breasts are once Ghost draws the blankets down, down, and then down far enough to reveal your closed thighs.

Fuck, Soap wants to see your cunt. He grips his cock tightly and squeezes, watching raptly as Ghost loops an arm over you and begins to softly tease your nipples. Soap slips a hand up his shirt and thumbs at a nipple of his own, wishing it was the other man’s touch. His cock leaks where it lies thickly against his belly as he watches his former lieutenant tease you, trace figures over your naked body, and at last slip a hand between your thighs, working one of your legs over back of his own. Now Soap can see just a trace of your slit, so soft. It makes his jaws ache, makes him want Ghost to hold your thighs apart so that he can lick and suck you into a frenzy.

He can tell the exact moment you wake. Your body stiffens, mouth falling open as Ghost sinks two of his fingers inside you. One of your hands reaches down to grip at your husband’s forearm as you scramble into wakefulness.

“Good morning,” Ghost says.))

The doorbell sounds, telling Simon that Johnny has arrived, but he lets his Sergeant wait out in the cold while the kettle finishes filling. A not-small part of him is still holding a grudge against Johnny for making you so embarrassed. It had taken time for you to come into your own. Courage. The videos had been your idea, whispered in the heat of the moment beneath the cover of darkness—but with time you’d been bold enough to talk about them over dinner. To read the comments with him and laugh. To watch the videos and end up in bed all over again.

Now he could see the hesitation in your eyes whenever he pulled out his phone.

Johnny’s expression is its typical one, open, friendly, when Simon opens the door. When he sees Simon, those blue eyes grow wide before he can curb the reaction. Johnny swallows, throat bobbing.

“Hey LT. Lookit you. Laswell really has yeh behind a desk now doesn’t she?” Johnny’s hand reached out like he’s going to touch the tie that still dangles from around Simon’s neck, but he thinks better of it.

Just another hunch of Simon’s proven right.

“What part of no field work confused you?” Simon asks, stepping aside to let Johnny in.

“No confusion. Just didn’t expect yeh to look so…” He trails off, eyes flittering over Simon from his combed hair to his dress shirt stretched tight across his chest to the dress slacks that cling to his thighs. “…fancy.”

“I don’t wear the tie for Laswell’s benefit. But you already knew that.”

Johnny flushes, as good an admission as any. Wisely, he says nothing, following Simon into the kitchen and taking an offered seat at the kitchen island. His eyes flicker around the room, similar to how they had on Christmas. Then, Simon had mistaken it for Johnny taking in the way things had changed—the wallpaper is new, as is the backsplash behind the oven and stove, there are new pictures on the refrigerator—but now Simon suspects that Johnny is remembering. Piecing together backdrops he has seen in their videos.

“The missus home?” Johnny asks, drumming his fingers on the granite.

“No. Work.”

Simon pours tea for two, even though Johnny hates tea, and slides it across the countertop to him. To his benefit, Johnny accepts it without complaint, warming his hands around the mug.

“I told her.”

Johnny doesn’t need to ask what or who—they’ve both been thinking about it since the moment he walked in. Simon watches as his face twists with naked regret. It tells Simon that Johnny really didn’t know that you were only feigning sleep on Christmas.

“Is she angry with me?”

“Embarrassed.”

Johnny looks outraged on your behalf. “She has no reason t’ be!”

Simon shrugs as if to say, This is what your curiosity bought her, Johnny. This is the price she’s paying. Johnny’s shoulders sag under the weight of his own guilt, elbows bracing themselves on the countertop so that he can put his face in his hands.

“Maybe,” says Simon, “it would make more of a difference if she heard it from you.”

Johnny looks up, brow furrowed. “Heard what from me? That I’ve seen her—like that?”

Simon’s eyes roll to the ceiling. “No. That she doesn’t have anything to be ashamed of.”

Johnny turns the idea over in his head. He’s clever, but too blinded by his own desire to see the manipulation for what it is. What does it matter if it’s Simon’s idea or his own? Johnny is dying to talk to you.

“You’d give me her number?”

Simon shrugs.

“Alright,” says Johnny at length, drawing the word out. “I can do that. If you think it will help.”

Simon says nothing, sipping at his tea to hide any smugness behind his cup.

((The video begins in a kitchen, one Johnny has been in many times. You are there, back mostly to the camera, pressed against the granite island countertop. Simon is on the other side of you, consuming all your attention. Steaming Jesus, he’s huge compared to you, huge compared to everyone. He’s dressed in his work attire: dress clothes, dark tie in place. The effect is jarring in contrast with the mask.

Simon reaches up and works his tie loose and off over his head. You tilt your head down a little and on it goes, easy as anything. When Simon turns you to face the camera, the tie dangles between your bare breasts. One hand on the nape of your neck, Simon bends you forward towards the granite and Soap can tell the exact moment his cock slips inside you based on the way your mouth falls open, your eyes squeezing shut behind your own mask.

Soap isn’t sure who he’s jealous of more—you or Simon.))

Simon told me that he told you what I found. I just wanted to message you myself and say how sorry I am if I embarrassed you.

You sigh reading over the text message. Flexing your fingers, you give a quick glance toward where Simon lays dozing with his head against the back of the couch, feet up on the coffee table (the knife he got for Christmas rests on his chest; he’d been toying with it absently for the last half hour) and answer: There’s no reason to apologize. It’s not your fault I’m embarrassed.

It is though, isn’t it? You don’t care that other people see. You just care that I did.

You pause and bite at your nails, thinking over his words and how to respond. He’s mostly right. There had been an aspect of embarrassment at first when you and Simon began posting the videos (and that embarrassment had gotten you off to a certain extent, though it didn’t usually). But eventually that heated shame had melted away into eagerness for the camera. You’d read the comments on the videos, countless human beings talking about the various ways they masturbate to your sex with Simon, talking about the things they wish they could do to you, with you, with Simon.

So why was it so much more embarrassing knowing that Johnny had seen? Because he knew you. Because he’d seen the parts of you that you had purposefully covered up for the camera. No one was meant to see both sides—no one was meant to have all of you. Except for Simon.

But if somebody was going to do it, a small part of you is glad it was Johnny.

You’re Simon’s friend, you message back, curious. Didn’t it feel strange to see us like that?

Honestly? He doesn’t wait for you to respond. Not as strange as I might have thought.

((AMATEUR COUPLE: WIFE PRACTICES HER BLOWJOB SKILLS, the video is aptly titled. You are on your knees, hands tied neatly at the base of your spine. Simon sits at the edge of the bed, camera positioned perpendicular to you both, with a downward angle.

You lean forward and let his hard, flushed cock disappear past your lips deeper, deeper, until you reach the limits of what you can take without preparation or practice. His hand comes down to rest softly against the back of your head as you make yourself gag and choke around the thickest part of his cock. There’s no need to hold you down; Simon doesn’t even bother.

Soap’s jaw aches, desperate for a chance to be on his knees for Ghost like that. He could take more than you—he knows he could. Not that it had to be a competition, not when you both could share a cock that size and barely notice the other was there. He strips his own cock thinking about it, eyes falling shut as he lets the background noise of the video—Simon’s gentle praises, your whines and chokes, the wet gurgles of a throat being fucked—carry him over the edge.))

New Year’s Eve.

The house is full of bodies and laughter. You feel near-delirious with your own joy, never made happier than by the happiness of the people around you. Alejandro and Rodolfo had flown in and were staying in the guest house through the New Year, arriving only yesterday with enough luggage for four between the two of them; Kyle and his girlfriend; John and his wife; Kate and her partner; even Farah and her brother had made a pit stop to spend the evening with you on their way back to Urzikstan from the Americas.

The party had been BYOB, and everyone had taken to the sentiment and more. Farrah is mixing drinks in the kitchen, strong concoctions that even John struggles to keep down. Gaz and Alejandro keep insisting on shots (which you politely decline just as often as you agree. Simon drinks nothing, his tumultuous past putting him off of hard alcohol for good).

People are well and truly drunk by the time Johnny arrives. The whoops and hollers that fill the house have you thinking that midnight has come early. A swarm of bodies surround him, and he is forced to make the rounds hugging each person and being taken to task by them for being gone for so goddamn long.

He arrives at you before Simon, and his face softens, smile going a little unsure around the edges as he opens his arms for you, the first time he’s seen you in person since Christmas. You could rebuff him, but you also can’t. It’s Johnny. Nearly tripping to toss yourself into his arms, he lifts you a few inches off the floor, nose buried in your hair.

“Bonnie as always,” he whispers into your ear after putting you back down. His hand tugs teasingly on the short hem of your dress, like he is trying to lengthen it, knuckles brushing your thighs. You swat his hand away, face flushing with warmth. It wasn’t that short.

“Johnny,” Simon calls. The two men embrace, hug lasting longer than any other. In the distance, you see Gaz elbow Price, jerking his head toward the two men.

You put a hand on Simon’s shoulder, anxious suddenly. Simon draws back, clapping Johnny on the shoulder. He orders: “Get yourself a drink.”

“Yessir.”

“None of that.”

“Games? I was told there would be games,” Gaz says, situating himself between you and Simon. He’s dressed smartly in a dress-shirt with the collar undone. Someone has put a party hat on him, cone-shaped, to celebrate the New Year. You had managed to wrestle Simon into one for thirty seconds before the first of the company arrived; the memory makes you smile.

“I have Cards Against Humanity,” you offer.

“Oh, I love that game,” Kyle’s girlfriend says to your delight.

“No—no—we aren’t in middle school here,” Johnny says. “And if we are, then I want to play truth or dare so my chances of getting kissed tonight rises exponentially.”

“Come over here and they will,” Gaz offers.

“Don’t make promises you’re not ready to keep, Garrick,” Johnny warns, grinning.

“Sounds like something a coward would say, all due respect—”

Then Johnny has a fistful of Kyle’s shirt, hauling him in for a bold though chaste kiss on the mouth. You are suddenly hyper aware of Simon beside you, standing tall and very still while everyone laughs and cheers at the men’s antics. You can’t deny it’s a pleasing sight, but a part of you feels irritated with the whole display.

“Jesus Christ,” John sighs, tipping his hat back on his head. “Soap’s right—if you’ve got a normal deck of cards, love, I know plenty of games for adults to play.”

“Not sure I want to play those kinds of games with you, John,” Kate says somberly to the laughs of everyone around her.

“We’ve got cards,” Simon mutters.

Farah calls to you from the kitchen, asking you to try her latest conglomeration of alcohol. Eager to be anywhere but there, you escape to the kitchen. You lift yourself up onto one of the stools at the island, taking the red plastic cup from her hand and sniffing it. Just the smell burns the hairs of your nose.

“Jesus, Farah, this could kill me,” you laugh.

“Pathetic,” she says with a grin to lighten her words. “I think I saw some apple juice in the refrigerator, would you like that instead?”

“Alright.”

“A warm glass of milk, perhaps?”

“You’ve made your point,” you say, eyes narrowing in good humor. Taking a deep breath to steel your nerves (and stomach), you take a generous swig of the cup. Fuck, it burns going down and it burns in your belly, like swallowing a lit flame. You cough a little, trying not to gag, and hold up your thumb to her. “It’s great—so good—“

Simon comes to sit beside you at the island. He takes the cup, smells it, and raises both brows.

“Can I tempt you, Lieutenant?” Farah asks.

“No.”

“Then I won’t try. Where’s John, he’s never afraid of a challenge.”

Unseen to her beneath the island, fingertips brush your stocking-covered thighs. Your knees clamp together on instinct as you fight not to look over at Simon. What is he doing?

He strikes up a conversation with Farah about her time spent in the Americas. When his hand doesn’t move, your thighs relax a little. He was just being intimate; often he liked to have a hand on your back or his foot resting against your own beneath the table. It wasn’t his fault you were on edge. Your head spins a little, thanks to the shots and Farah’s drink. Planting one elbow on the countertop, you try to focus on her stories when Simon’s hand moves again, slipping further between your legs. The hem of your dress has ridden up so high in your seated position that it doesn’t take much for his fingertips to graze against the heated seam between your legs.

You clamp your knees shut again. He pinches your thigh softly, just enough to get the message through to you. Staring at Farah, hearing nothing, you spread your shaking knees again and let him cup you between your legs. Fuck. You tilt your hips, making as if to adjust your position on the chair. It only serves to bring you in closer contact with Simon’s hand. A groan is born and dies in the back of your throat.

He keeps you there, holding your cunt, having a fluent conversation with Farah while your brain melts out your ears. At length, he stands. Leaning down, he says in your ear: “Outside, two minutes. Go out the back.”

Then he disappears amongst the sea of people

Three minutes later you are shivering out in the snow. Your coat only helps so much with your legs bare save for your stockings. You hadn’t even had time to lace up your boots. Shifting from one foot to the other in the spotlight of the floodlights to keep warm, you cast glances left and right wondering from which direction Simon will come, wondering what he wants that couldn’t have taken place in doors.

At last he appears, looking far warmer than you in his olive green jacket and jeans, hands stuffed deep into his pockets. You smile at the sight of him. He doesn’t smile back.

“Put your hands against the wall.”

“Simon?”

He sighs, running a hand over the curve of your waist, testing its fit in his palm. “Now I’ll have to edit that part out. Let’s try again. Put your hands on the wall.”

You see then the phone placed just-so in the breast pocket of his coat. The glossy camera lens stares back at you, no flashing red light, nothing nearly so 1999. But you knew it was filming. What was it seeing now? The house in the background, the cool blue siding and brick. You, face surprised, lips chapped from the cold weather lately, your sexy little golden dress nearly obscured beneath your coat.

“The time to back out is now,” Simon prods you.

But there’s no way you’re backing out, not after the kitchen. Not after the hazy arousal you’ve been walking around in all night just at the thought of seeing Johnny again. Turning around, you reach out with shaking hands and place them against the freezing cold siding. You can see your breath like a smoky plume with each of your frantic exhales as Simon’s hands grip your ass, slipping beneath the hem of your dress and finding your stockings to tug them down around your knees.

“Got to keep quiet for me,” he says. “Can you do that?”

“Yessir,” you whisper, wishing you were close enough to the house to rest your heated cheek against it.

Simon gives a heavy exhale at your words and you grin, unseen.

Your panties join your stockings stuck around your knees. It doesn’t give you much space to spread your legs, but Simon is so lengthy that he doesn’t need the extra room. He doesn’t press against your back, ever-conscious of the camera and its angles, but you hear the sound of his belt being undone and like a Pavlovian response, it has you drooling between the legs. His cock is burning warm when it brushes against your ass, and you find yourself arching your back, seeking to put that heat inside you.

He hums, hands spreading you wide as he can for the benefit of the camera, even if the lighting isn’t the best to see your entrance.

“Pretty fucking girl,” he mutters. The position can’t be comfortable for him, but he’s never seemed to care about that. He reaches down to grip the base of his cock and guides the head inside you. It is a tight fit without any preparation, but he keeps the penetration shallow, rocking you back and forth on just the head, sometimes letting his cock slip free to brush against your aching clit. Your teeth clamp together, desperate to keep your sounds in—usually during home videos, Simon encouraged you to be noisy (“for the audience”). Now you found yourself struggling not to give in to the old habit.

All of the sudden, his hand is in your hair, turning your head, guiding it to change directions until you are looking at your footsteps in the snow leading back the way you came—

Until you are looking squarely at Johnny, standing nearly frozen in the snow at the edge of the house. He’s wearing his coat and boots, hands jammed deep into his coat pockets. The darkness makes it hard to make out the subtlety of his features, but you can tell that his mouth is dropped open in an expression of near comical disbelief.

You barely manage to keep from choking out Simon’s name, your entire body going stiff—your cunt rippling around his cock. He laughs, a low rumbling chuckle that has you squeezing your eyes shut. A whine slips free from your throat and the wind must carry it straight to Johnny, because you hear his quiet, Steamin’ Jesus.

“He’s been waiting for this all night, I bet,” Simon mutters, his hips snapping against yours. Your hands scramble to find purchase against the siding, slip down a little to grip the bricks which offer you more resistance. “Watching you flit back and forth in this dress, knowing what you look like underneath it. He wishes it was him fucking you right now.”

“No,” you gasp, scandalized.

Simon just laughs again. The sound doesn’t embarrass you, just ratchets your own dizzying arousal higher. You can’t take your eyes off of Johnny, who has stumbled two or three steps closer in the snow and now has his hand against the house very similarly to you. His other hand is in a fist at his side. Closer like this, there’s no mistaking the heated expression in his eyes. Nor the bulge in his pants.

“Oh God,” you groan, squeezing your eyes shut again and turning away.

“Look at him—look at him. He wants to touch himself,” Simon says, borderline conversational as his dick makes the most heinous squelching noises inside your body. “But I don’t think he’s got the balls.”

One of your hands comes off the bricks and reaches down between your thighs—but Simon grabs it at the last moment and pins it back in its place, sending you nearly to tears.

“Cum on my cock or don’t cum at all,” he says, feeling cruel.

The both of you know that that likely means you won’t cum at all, not like this, and the knowledge threatens to undo you. He’s going to get you three-fourths of the way there and then leave you like this, edge you in front of all of your closest friends and not satisfy you until the very last one has left. Tears well in your eyes, beading up at the corners.

Behind you, his thrusts grow sloppy. You dare another glance towards Johnny and see his turned back, both his hands in his mohawk gripping at his hair like he is fighting with himself. Your eyes fall shut; you’re fighting a battle of your own, you can’t be concerned about his. Simon groans lowly, filling you with his seed. He pulls out in a wet rush of fluids, reaching down to stave off his dripping seed and save your leggings from destruction.

Gently, he fucks his cum back into you with his fingers. He wipes it across your swollen folds and in the soaked crotch of your panties before pulling them back up to rest safely on your hips. Bending down, he wipes his hands clean in the snow and then on his jacket before helping you pull your stockings up into place. The tears in your eyes have overflowed by now, dripping down your cheeks and off your chin. When you glance over, Johnny is gone.

“Okay?” Simon murmurs, fiddling with his phone. He stops the video.

“Yeah,” you sigh shakily. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

Moments to midnight and you are searching for Simon. His figure should be easy to spot, but his head isn’t visible above the sea of people, nor is his baritone voice audible amongst the cacophony of others.

Someone else is notably missing as well. An itch in the back of your brain swells, one you have to follow to scratch.

Countdowns begin. You peek out the window nearest to you but see no sign of either man outside in the snow smoking. Watching couples pair off, you pad on bare feet (having kicked off your heels ages ago) toward the master bedroom, slipping into the dim hallway that forks off to the bedroom, the guest bath, and the office. That hallway is where you find them, standing in the dark toe to toe. Simon has Johnny up against the wall, clutching fistfuls of Johnny’s shirt, nearly tearing it. In the dim lighting, you can barely make out their features.

For a moment, you think they are about to come to blows. You are ready to step between them, to take either of them by the ear like an old school matriarch and remind them that they are friends and they love each other and this is no way to act amongst family—but then the others cry out for midnight and they kiss.

Oh God, do they kiss. Johnny’s shirt strains in Simon’s hands as he lifts the other man the last few inches needed to slot their mouths together comfortably. There is no chaste peck, no soft exploration of tongues, it is a frenzied open-mouthed devouring of each other, jaws flexing as if to open up and swallow the other whole.

Claps and cheers ring out in the living room, jolting Simon and Johnny apart. Before you can even string together a sentence, Johnny has brushed by you, one hand pressing at his mouth. He grabs his coat and leaves out the front door without so much as a goodbye to anyone.

The party is over. The sun is rising. Alejandro and Rodolfo have retired out to the guest house leaving you and Simon behind to clean up the mess in more ways than one. Eyes tired but brain buzzing, you come into the living room with a half-filled trash bag in your arms to find Simon sitting on the sofa by the fireplace, his head in his hands.

You drop the trash bag and go to him, climbing into his lap. He sighs and lets his head rest against your breasts, breaths slow and deep, not betraying any of the turmoil that might be going on in his mind.

“He’ll be back,” you promise, stroking your fingers through his cropped hair. “He’ll come back, baby.”

You don’t know what you’ll do if he doesn’t.

“Have you two done that before?” you ask.

Simon shifts. He turns until his ear presses against your sternum, like he is listening to your heart for the answer. He says: “No. Once—almost, I think. But you know what he’s like. So fucking persistent. And bright. Like he’s got the bloody sun inside him.”

“You never told me.”

“Wasn’t anything to tell.” He looks up at you with dark eyes, decidedly grim despite his words: “We doing this?”

“Seems so,” you say, scratching his scalp lightly with your nails just to watch how his eyes get heavy. Simon so often denies himself simple pleasures, but he deserves them. The simple ones and the complicated ones.

“He belongs to me,” Simon says at length, slow, like he is working it out for himself. “Just like you do.”

“No baby,” you remind him, leaning down to press a kiss to his mouth. “He belongs to us.”

((It becomes a degenerate ritual.

Soap gets home from work and showers. As soon as the steam hits the bathroom mirror, he’s hard, but he doesn’t touch himself; refuses to. He showers and cleans himself perfunctorily, cock aching. It is just as familiar with this ritual as he is, just as hungry for it. It knows what is coming.

After he is clean and dry, he’ll go naked into his room and bring out his laptop. He always sits at his desk—hates having the laptop on his lap, wants it somewhere stable and safe so he can have both hands free to touch himself—and then he brings up your porn page with Simon. There are more than fifty videos he can choose from. Some he has only seen once, especially those early videos when you both were still getting a feel for the process and working out your nerves. There are others that are old favorites, ones that he knows every word to, one where he could mimic your every sigh and whine if he wanted to.

And sometimes, like on nights such as this, there’s a new video. His heart jumps to his throat.

AMATEUR COUPLE: ARGUMENT TURNS INTO SEX (NO AUDIO). Fuck, just the title has mind whirling. It was just for show, surely—he couldn’t imagine you both filming one of your actual arguments for the sake of good pornography—but he was intrigued nonetheless. Some of his favorite videos featured Ghost getting a little rougher with you, and you giving back as good as you got.

He clicks the link. The video begins in the bedroom, recognizable to him now as your own. The camera is in the corner facing the bed at an angle giving a wide vantage point, like a voyeur standing at attention. Like Soap himself has snuck in and is watching. Just the thought has him gripping the base of his cock, a soft groan passing his lips.

You’re sitting on the bed, mask in place. Your arms are crossed, mouth downturned into a frown as Simon enters the screen. The first minute or so truly looks like an argument, the occasional jerky hand gesture from you coupled with Simon’s clipped responses. Soap tries to read your lips, but he’s never been very good at it; he can’t make out a single word of what the two of you might be saying. Then the aura changes, the tense energy from the argument turning into something slicker, something sexual as Simon comes around the bed and puts his hand on the center of your naked chest, pressing you back, back until you are laying down.

You fight against him, batting his hand out of the way. He pins you down easily, so much larger and stronger than you. Soap grips his cock at the thought of being in your place, being pinned to the bed with Ghost’s massive figure over him. Ghost wouldn’t need to be gentle with him either, not the way he was with you. Soap wouldn’t mind. Soap would like it, the same way he liked it in the hallway at your house when Simon gripped him by the shirt and nearly jerked him right out of his boots.

Your head comes off the bed, mouth chasing Ghost’s—but he draws away. Soap can almost hear the laugh he clearly gives, the rumbling chuckle that would be tangible in his chest. You grit your teeth together, jaw tight. Now when Simon bends down to kiss you, you turn your head away, a childish game of cat and mouse. He grips your chin and turns it back toward him, heavy on the eye contact. When you two finally kiss, it is rough, two hungry people searching for dirty secrets behind each other's teeth.

Ghost kisses his way down your body, sucking bruises wherever he can. By the time he’s in between your legs, you are writhing, hands gripping his hair and trying to guide his mouth to the place that needs it most. He tugs your thighs over his shoulders, pins you to the bed with one massive forearm, and eats you out like a starving man. The angle for the camera isn’t the best here, but Soap can’t take his eyes off of you anyway: your body tight as a bowstring, breasts pressed together from the position of your arms, tendons of your neck straining as your head tilts backwards.

Soap begins to work his cock over faster, watching your pleasure. When Ghost stops, he leaves you on the edge if your tortured expression is anything to go by, but you let him maneuver you into the position he wants—hands and knees, an old favorite for LT it seems—but this time is special, because this time you are forced to face the camera dead on.

It’s like you’re looking Soap in the eye. The brief flash of guilt this gives him only serves to ratchet his desire higher, his cock dripping precum over his knuckles as he fists it. Ghost slips his cock inside you and sets a brutal pace that you are eager to meet, your hands twisting in the bedspread as you press yourself further back against his cock.

Ghost leans down and mutters something in your ear. More than ever, Soap misses the audio. Whatever he says has your eyes flashing to meet the camera lens, and you do so with near girlish shyness, like you are seeing it for the first time, like you have only just noticed it’s been there all these months. Your eyes can’t catch on it at first, flittering away every chance you get. Ghost’s thrusts slow to deep grinds. He wraps a hand around your throat and says more, lips moving against the nape of your neck. Fuck, what Johnny wouldn’t give to be able to read lips.

This time you look back at the camera and keep your eyes there. Ghost resumes his thrusts, each one making your breasts bounce softly, but your eyes never leave the lens, always quick to return even when they briefly fall shut.

Your pleasure waxes when you slip a hand between your thighs, and you begin murmuring something repeatedly, just a discrete little movement of your lips. But at Ghost’s prodding, you begin to cry it out louder and louder until Soap is damn near sure that you are screaming, your lips forming the same syllables over and over again if only Soap were able to make them out. Your eyes roll back as you cum, arms growing weak until you dip and rest your upper body against the bed giving the camera an excellent view of Simon fucking into you from behind, the arch of your body, the curve of your waist to the width of your hips.

Soap cums when Ghost does, Ghost’s head lolling to the side as his thrusts grow sloppy and forceful, making a mess of you no doubt.

It isn’t until later when he’s in bed that he recognizes the word you were chanting for what it is.

How it took him so long to recognize his own name he’ll never know.))

He comes back.

Simon has just returned from taking Alejandro and Rodolfo to the airport. Ever since New Year’s Eve, there has been a quietness about him which breaks prior records. Neither of you say it, but if Johnny leaves this time, it will take more out of him than it had before. It will take something out of you, too. You spend the days trying to keep busy, checking your phone too often for texts that don’t come.

You’ve just taken the kettle off the stove when the doorbell rings, and both of you know. Your eyes meet across the kitchen. Simon nods his head toward the door, and you rush to answer it, feeling your heart in your throat. Johnny stands there on the step looking sheepish and cold, his boots and the bottom quarter of his jeans wet, like he has walked here from a great distance.

“May I come in?” he asks.

Simon appears behind you. Johnny gives him a wavering smile. Without a word, you hold the door open, stepping aside to let him in.

“Didn’t think you’d be back,” Simon says coolly.

“Didn’t think I’d be back either,” Johnny admits. He wets his lips. “I…I need to come clean. It’s eatin’ me up inside. Can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t fucking think without it being about the two of you. I don’t know what to do with myself except put myself at your feet and ask fer your forgiveness.”

“Johnny, that’s not—”

“No,” says Simon, stilling the words on your tongue. “I think that’s a good place to start. Get on your knees, Johnny.”

Johnny blinks once, face the picture of innocent ignorance—but then he is dropping to his knees hard enough for you to hear them crack against the hardwood underneath. He obeys without thinking, because that is something that has always been easy for him to do: obey Simon. Think later.

Simon’s hand reaches out, slow enough to give Johnny a chance to flinch away, but he doesn’t. Instead Simon threads his fingers through Johnny’s mohawk, the sides which are growing out just a little too long. Johnny’s eyes fall shut at the touch, and the whole thing goes straight to your belly, arousal making your head light.

“You liked watching so much,” Simon says, voice low and quiet. “I think it’s time we put you to good use.”

“We have rules. Don’t look at the camera, don’t say each other’s names, and do as I say. Can you handle that?” Simon asks.

“Rules of engagement. Yessir.”

Simon snorts softly at Johnny’s eagerness. “Glad to see you still know to follow directions. But let’s see how well. Strip. Everything off. You won’t need it.”

Johnny’s hands find the neckline of his shirt and tug it off over his head, revealing a body that is all smooth muscle and tan skin. The dark hair on his chest thickens just below his navel, trailing down into his jeans which he unbuttons without ceremony, feet working to step out of his shoes at the same time. He keeps his balance well, already slipping into a focused, strangely familiar headspace. You make yourself as small as possible on the bed, arms looped around your legs, eyes watching him hungrily. It’s been so long that you’ve wanted to see Johnny like this; now that it’s on the verge of becoming true, you feel shy and unsure.

Johnny keeps his eyes on yours while he pushes his pants down his thighs and steps out of them. He smiles at you, soft and understanding, and only then do you let your eyes flicker down to take in his cock: he is hard, uncut, thick as Simon even if he can’t have him beaten in length. His dexterous fingers wrap around the shaft, stroking himself, the flushed head disappearing and reappearing in his fist.

“What do you think?” Simon asks you, voice a low rumble at your side. His eyes are watching you, concerned with you first and foremost. “Is he pretty enough?”

Johnny makes an offended sound.

“I’d say so,” you answer, aiming for unaffected and landing somewhere amongst breathless. Already you can feel the tension between your legs, a deep seated ache as your pussy drools onto the sheets below you.

“You want to suck his cock,” says Simon. It’s not a question, but your head bobs anyway. “Go on, then. Crawl to him.”

Shifting onto your hands and knees, you crawl to him, focusing on the mechanics of it instead of trying to feign sexiness. At the edge of the bed, you slip off and down to the floor amongst the pile of his clothes, laying your hands on his thighs and looking up at him from beneath his cock.

He lets out a shaky breath. “You’re gonna suck my dick?”

You nod.

Johnny looks to Simon with a helpless expression as if to ask, What do I do? When you glance back over your shoulder, you see that Simon is giving him nothing to work with, face a blank slate except for his raised brows. Phone in hand, aimed at the two of you. The sight of it seems to steel Johnny’s nerves. He’s never been one to be shy.

“Go at yer own pace, lass,” he says.

Leaning in, you trace your lips against the side of his shaft, feeling the velvety softness against your mouth. He smells like he showered before he came over, though you wouldn’t have minded if he hadn’t. Johnny always smells good—even on those days before he went away when he and Simon would go running together, pushing each other to their limits, returning sweaty and exhausted. Now after all this time you get to see if he tastes as good as he smells. You part your lips and leave open mouthed kisses along his length, looking up at him through your lashes when you feel his fingers sink into your hair. His mouth is parted as he watches you raptly, pupils blown wide.

Confidence mounting, you take the head past your lips and suckle, treating him just as soft and sweetly as you know Simon won’t. Above you, he groans, hips jerking until you take another inch or two past your lips. You let him, rising up on your knees to adjust the angle, sinking your way down until his head brushes the softness at the back of your throat. Taking a calming inhale, you swallow and press forward, letting him sink into your throat until your gag reflex can take no more and forces him out.

Johnny moans like he’s dying, his hands shaking as he fights not to thrust into your throat. Words stream from his mouth, filthy Scottish-tinted praises that have you wriggling in your place, desperate for a hand between your thighs.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Simon asks.

“Never seen no one like her,” Johnny gasps, one hand letting go of your hair so that he can wipe the drool from the side of your mouth. He gives a weak laugh. “And I—fuuck, fuck—I’ve looked.”

“She’ll suck you off until you tell her to stop. Doesn’t matter how long you leave her at it,” Simon says. Fabric rustles behind you, and you ache to be able to turn and see what he is doing. But you are more determined to prove your goodness to Johnny. “Sometimes when I work from home she keeps my cock warm at my desk.”

“Dunno how you get a goddamn thing done with her mouth around yeh.”

“Discipline.”

“I left mine in my other pants—fuck, I’m gonna cum. Are you one of those dirty girls that swallows?” he asks.

You nod. Simon is there suddenly, a warm presence at your shoulder as he passes Johnny the camera. Nearly wrecked, Johnny’s hands shake as he aims it down at you, looking at you through the lens. His balls draw up, cock lengthening that last little bit as he spills into your mouth.

“Don’t swallow,” Simon says at the last moment. You whine but obey. Simon pulls you up and nearly makes you dizzy with the way he kisses you, licks into your open mouth lapping Johnny’s seed from your tongue.

“Jesus, Mary, ‘n Joseph,” Johnny breathes, belatedly remembering to turn the camera onto you both. This will likely be the messiest video you’ve ever made transition wise, but you have a feeling that it will be your favorite.

When the kiss ends, you swallow and pull off to open your mouth, showing Johnny—and the audience—what they want: that you’ve swallowed your portion like a good girl.

“Fuck, I shouldn’t have cum,” Johnny laughs weakly. “We’ve barely started. I don’t want this to be over.”

“You’ll cum again,” Simon says. “But it’s time to give someone else a turn. Sitrep?”

Johnny is all grins. “All good here, sir.”

It makes you shiver to hear Johnny call him that. You’ve heard it countless times before, but never like this. The context turns the word into something foreign, something sexy. Not to mention, you know exactly what it does to Simon. Not for the first time, you wonder if his wires didn’t get a little crossed during his time enlisted, if he didn’t learn that particular kink from hearing Johnny chirp it at him every day.

“Good boy,” says Simon softly, reaching out to ruffle Johnny’s mohawk. Johnny bats his hand away, but it’s impossible to miss the way he flushes from the cheeks down his chest at those words. Simon sets the phone on the tripod in the corner, making minor adjustments, and then turns his eyes to you. “C’mere.”

He sets you up against the headboard, your back against his chest. He parts your thighs, reaching down to use his thumbs to spread your sex open for Johnny’s hungry gaze, for the camera’s lens. You hide your masked-face behind your hands, hips rising toward his touch, desperate for the stimulation.

“Pent up?” Simon asks, voice rough.

A sound slips past your lips, low and needy..

“This what you want?” His calloused fingers ghost over your swollen clit.

“Yes,” you mumble, voice muffled by your hands.

“Be a good girl and you’ll get it. You know how to be a good girl?”

“How?”

“Stay relaxed. Keep your thighs open. And don’t lie to me. Can you do that?”

You nod. Yes. Easy things. You fight to relax your body, loosening your muscles. Your hands fall to rest against Simon’s thighs, eyes cracking open to watch Johnny who has seated himself at the end of the bed out of the way of the camera’s view. When he sees you looking, he smiles, reassuring and warm. His cock, which had been soft moments ago, already looks noticeably more interested in the events taking place.

Simon drags his fingers over your clit. You tense all over, sucking in a breath before you remember his first rule and relax, going loose and soft again. He waits, patient. The next time he strokes you, you stay malleable, and he hums deep in his chest, pleased with the progress. His hand cups your whole sex, palm huge compared to you.

“When was the first time you ever wanted to fuck our boy over here?” Simon asks.

You know that he can’t use Johnny’s name, not on film, but neither you nor Johnny had expected the flashbang of this term of endearment. Johnny seems to melt, his eyes going heavy-lidded at the thought of being ‘your boy’. You can’t help but feel the incredible rightness of his words. They resonate deep in your chest like the ringing of a bell, tangible down to your fingertips and toes. Johnny is yours, and he is Simon’s.

“How long?” Simon asks again, more firmly.

“Since—since you brought him home.”

Simon slips two fingers past your entrance as a reward for your honesty. Their thickness has you gasping, fingers scrambling for purchase against his thighs. He hums something in your ear—probably a reminder about trying to relax—and you do try, but it is hard when you ache as badly as you do. You find yourself digging your heels into the bedspread, lifting your hips to try and work his fingers deeper inside of you. He feeds them to your cunt all the way to the last knuckle.

“How’s she feel, sir?” Johnny asks.

“Like the only heaven the likes of us will ever know.”

“I believe it,” Johnny sighs. “Give us a taste.”

Simon extends his fingers and Johnny takes them onto his tongue, licking and sucking the digits clean. You’re close enough to Simon to feel his inhale, to feel the way his cock jumps where it’s pressed against your lower back. He plays at being unaffected, but Simon isn’t immune to the powers of finger-sucking. He isn’t immune to Johnny.

Then he says: “Put that mouth to work, Johnny.”

Johnny drops to his belly between your thighs, breath fanning across your folds. Simon has to pin your legs apart, humming when your nails dig into the skin of his forearms. They are teaming up on you, against you, and you feel so small pinned between them.

“Dreamed of this,” Johnny sighs into your pussy. He nuzzles against you, nose brushing your slit before licking a thick stripe up your folds. He laps at the honey leaking from your entrance, broad strokes of his tongue as Simon’s fingers keep you spread open for his hungry mouth.

Sometimes Johnny’s tongue laps over Simon’s fingers, and when it does, you feel his cock twitch against your back. It only serves to remind you how empty you feel. Your hands grip Johnny’s hair, guiding his soft mouth to your clit where he sucks and laps contentedly, and you beg for his fingers.

He moans against you, voice vibrating through your pussy. His hips have started a slow grind against the bedspread, desperate for friction as his blue eyes find Simon’s dark ones, silently asking for permission.

Simon nods. Johnny slips his middle-most two fingers into you, hooking them softly, searching for that spongy, textured place just inside you. It’s everything you needed, the pleasure in your belly rising to a near painful crest. Your hand scrambles to find one of Simon’s, lacing your fingers together as you burst against Johnny’s tongue, squeezing his fingers, barely remembering to keep from calling his name.

Johnny lays his head against your inner thigh, panting. His eyes are foggy, pussy-drunk as he struggles to focus on you both, his fingers still tucked softly inside you.

“Break,” Simon whispers, kissing your neck. He shifts out from behind you, the only one of you still fully dressed. Going to the tripod in the corner, he pauses the camera and then leaves the room.

“Great abrupt bastard, isn’t he?” Johnny asks, slipping his fingers out from inside you. He goes to lick them clean, but you stop him, bringing his hand to your own mouth and cleaning your slick from his fingers, tongue searching for your taste all the way to the webbing between his knuckles. His laugh is breathy. “You like that? Like the taste of pussy?”

You nod, slipping your mask off briefly.

“Need a pretty girl to play with then, not the likes of me.”

Your hand latches around his wrist as he goes to pull away, lips turning down into a frown. “That’s not what we want. We don’t play with people. People aren’t toys to us. And we’ve never had sex with anyone else like this. You should know that from the videos.”

“Aye,” he says softly. “I didn’t mean to offend yeh, lass. I was only teasing.”

“Johnny…”

“Yes?”

“Why’d you go away?” you ask. You know it might ruin the moment, but the curiosity is too much, an old wound with the scab picked clean off until it aches all over again. “Things seemed so good when Simon and I first got together. You were coming around all the time. Then you just…left.”

Johnny can’t meet your eyes as he thinks back, as he remembers those days in the year after Simon first met you. When he speaks, his voice is steady. “I told yeh earlier. Couldn’t stop thinking about the two of you. Didn’t feel right to feel that way ‘bout my best mate and his best girl. And when he told me that he was gonna propose to yeh—I had two choices. Stay and watch, or run away. Maybe Simon’s right. Maybe I am a coward.”

“He told me that the two of you almost kissed once. Back during your SAS days.”

A ghost of a smile appears on Johnny’s mouth. “Outside the Barranquilla, Columbia safehouse. I remember. I thought he would break my teeth if I tried, but Jesus, how I wanted to.”

“I think your odds were 50/50,” you say, scooting back until you are seated in Simon’s old spot, reclining against the headboard. “It started back then for you, didn’t it?”

“Aye. I was a goner.”

“You love him.”

Johnny gives you a secretive smile. He presses his finger to his lips. Shh.

Simon enters the room with three water bottles and pauses, eyes flickering between you both. “The fuck were you two talking about?”

“Nothing,” you say. “Is that water? I’m so thirsty, thank you baby.”

“Her subtlety could use some work, LT,” Johnny says, watching as Simon goes and turns the camera back on. You hastily put your mask back in place.

“Not her forte,” Simon admits dryly. He cracks open one of the bottles of water after tossing the last one to Johnny and drinks half of it in just a few gulps, despite having done very little so far in the scheme of things. You figured that was about to change, watching him shrug out of his shirt.

Simon didn’t undress the way Johnny did. There wasn’t any fanfare or confidence; it was simple and efficient. You knew that Simon’s relationship with his body was a complex one. It had served him well, and he did his best to keep it healthy, but contemplating the aesthetics of it was too offensive to his palate. The scars were intense: thick punctures along his sides, the depressed, pale pucker of bullet wounds, the hard clean lines of a knife here and there. You had never minded, and judging by the way Johnny’s throat clicks when he swallows, Johnny didn’t mind either.

“I want to fuck you,” he says.

“Yes,” you agree. Fingers had been excellent, but nothing could compare to Simon’s cock.

He shakes his head. “Not you. Him.”

You turn your gaze on Johnny whose eyes are avidly watching Simon unfasten his jeans. He pushes them down over his thick thighs and reveals he’s not wearing any underwear beneath, his cock half-hard and rosy. He wraps his fist around it, jerking himself to full stiffness with a perfunctory touch, not at all interested in the show he is putting on for you both.

“Can you take him, Johnny?” you tease.

“I’ll die trying, thanks very much.”

“I hope not,” is all Simon says, going to the bench at the end of the bed and retrieving the lube. He asks: “Condom?”

“Not necessary,” Johnny says, breaths coming faster now. You put your hand on his ankle, remembering the way he had touched you there on Christmas, stroking the bone softly. He glances to you and grins, and you see that what you mistook for nerves is actually excitement. He puts his hand over your own, squeezing. “Are you going to feel left out, lass?”

“Terribly.”

“If you last the whole time,” says Simon, holding the lube up to the light to see how empty it is. “I’ll let you fuck her when I’m finished with you.”

“Jesus,” Johnny laughs weakly. “Can’t argue with that. Throw me that and I’ll get myself ready.”

“I can do it,” says Simon, seating himself on the edge of the bed. Johnny shifts into a better position, feet flat on the bed, knees toward the ceiling. For a long time, Simon just looks at him: his silly hair, the odd scar here and there, his half hard cock. Deftly, he opens the cap on the lube and slicks two fingers while you come to kneel on the other side of Johnny, eager for a show.

“Camera, love,” Simon reminds you, fingers searching between Johnny’s legs. Judging by the way Johnny’s jaw goes tight, he’s found what he’s looking for. You shift, glancing over your shoulder to make sure you are out of the camera’s point of view. Reaching down, you trail your fingertips gently over Johnny’s cock. Simon says: “Been a while?”

“You could say that,” Johnny says, mouth falling open in a silent moan as Simon works him open. You’ve been on the receiving end of Simon’s ministrations; you know his patience can be near painful. Johnny learns it the hard way when Simon pauses twice to lube his fingers, until even the soft thrusts he gives into Johnny’s ass fill the room with the sound of sex.

You play with his cock absently, enjoying being the tormentor instead of the tormented for once. Johnny’s silent breaths turn to heavy pants and then needy groans, foreskin pulling back to reveal the sensitive head as he grows in your palm thanks to Simon’s fingers playing inside him. His heels slip against the bedspread as he searches for the angles that suit him best, and he chokes when he finds them.

“Please, I’m ready,” Johnny says, fingers wrapping around Simon’s wrist. Simon lets him pull his fingers free and reaches for the lube again, this time to slick his cock.

“Any preference for how I take you?” he asks mildly, like one might ask, How do you take your tea? One sugar please and thank you.

“None, so long as your cock’s inside me,” Johnny grits out.

“This’ll do,” says Simon, bullying his way between Johnny’s spread thighs. It takes a few pillows beneath his hips before he’s at the right height for Simon’s cock to notch against his entrance, and then you watch with rapt attention as Johnny’s body seems to blossom to welcome in Simon’s cock, a surplus of lubricant easing the way.

Johnny flinches.

“Easy,” says Simon, stilling. “Relax.”

You curl up at Johnny’s side, slipping beneath one of his arms and cuddling against him. Your nervous fingers find one of his nipples and toy with it softly, kissing at his shoulder while you murmur words of encouragement to him.

Johnny laughs weakly. “Don’t need all that, lass, but thank yeh.”

“Wish I had someone cheering me on the first time I took Simon’s cock,” you admit.

Simon frowns. “I was cheering you on.”

“Less talking please, more fucking,” Johnny says, lips upturned. His body relaxes and Simon sinks the rest of the way inside him, all the way to the fucking hilt, deeper than you can ever take him in your cunt. It thrills you and makes you envious all at once. You pinch Johnny’s nipple, forcing a quiet gasp out of his throat.

Simon looks good—strong. Unaffected. But you know him better. His brow is lower than ever, eyes closed as he centers himself. His breaths come so evenly that you know he must be counting them—four seconds in, four seconds out. His fingertips have sunk into the meat of Johnny’s thighs, gripping him tightly, as if to keep him from squirming away, or to keep him from squirming at all.

“You solid?” Simon asks him.

“Affirm,” Johnny breathes. “Go slow.”

Famous last words—Simon withdraws with painstaking care, until just his head lingers inside Johnny’s body. He sinks back in at the most leisurely pace you’ve ever seen, thrusts smooth and deep as his thighs brush against Johnny’s ass. It takes no time at all for Johnny to regret those words, one of his hands laced with yours and the other twisting in the bedsheets as he begs Simon to move faster.

And Simon can only take so much teasing himself, really. He’s human too.

His hips snap into the open cradle of Johnny’s thighs. Johnny cries out, cock jerking where it lays hard and leaking against his belly. You lean up onto one elbow so that you can watch his pretty face contort: brow furrowing, mouth falling open.

“Not going to cum, right?” you ask him slyly.

He shakes his head.

You glance down at his cock doubtfully. Simon, overhearing your words, takes that as a personal challenge, drilling into Johnny with a single-mindedness that is admirable to see and terrible to be on the receiving end of all in one.

Suddenly tears overflow from Johnny’s eyes, dripping down toward his temples. You sit up in alarm as he lifts his hands but he just palms at his eyes, laughing. Simon slows, stops. He reaches down to pry Johnny’s hands away and then kisses him, something soft and sweet. Johnny’s hands shake as he reaches up to thread his fingers through Simon’s hair, tugging him closer.

Your heart feels liable to burst. You remember Johnny’s finger pressed to his lips, that universal sign. Shh.

“He’s alright,” Simon says, not unkindly. “Aren’t you?”

Johnny croaks an affirmative.

After that, it is less fucking and more making love; there’s nothing else to call in. Simon pins Johnny’s wrists to the bed just to feel like he’s still in control, but his thrusts are syrupy slow, not fully withdrawing, seeking to remain as close to Johnny as he can for as long as possible. You stroke one of Johnny’s palms and Simon lets it free so that you can hold it, your fingers lacing together in a way that is foreign yes, but comfortable.

“You’ve been a good boy for me, Johnny,” Simon says.

“Don’t say that,” Johnny groans, turning his head away, flushed pink.

“It’s true. Know how to be an even better boy?”

Johnny is intrigued. Being a good boy is suddenly beneath him; now he wants to be the best boy. Looking at Simon through his lashes, he asks: “How’s that?”

“Cum on my cock.”

“Don’t do it Johnny,” you whine. “It’s a trap.”

Simon laughs. He kneels back onto his haunches, dragging Johnny’s body along with him, and reaches for the other man’s cock, working it over in his fist. Johnny nearly howls, kept on the edge so long that to see the bottom of the cliffside is to know the promise of pain. He doesn’t know whether to grind his hips deeper against Simon’s cock or to chase the heat of his hand.

“Close,” he groans.

“Go on. Pretty abs like this—make a mess on ‘em.”

Johnny does, pearlescent seed dripping from between Simon’s fingers as he milks Johnny for every last drop. Only then does he begin thrusting again, fast and hard, searching for his own end. Not a handful of thrusts later and he goes sloppy, breath punched from his lungs as he spills inside Johnny.

“You promised me a cock to ride,” you say.

“Couldn’t be helped, lass,” Johnny says with a dopey, lovesick smile. You hum.

“We’ll just have to get you hard again, won’t we?” you ask, wrapping your fingers around his softening cock.

That night, the bed is full. Johnny and you are entwined, legs and arms wrapped around each other creating an endless feedback of heat that Simon was careful not to be swept away in, too focused on his mission to allow for any mistakes. He makes no sound as he slips out of bed. He stops by the tripod in the corner and takes his phone out into the living room, turning the sound down so low that he has to hold the speaker close to his ear to hear it, lest he wake Johnny.

He listens to you and Johnny talk while he was gone, when you believed the camera to be off. He plays it again, watching just the video. By the time he’s returned in the video, Simon’s chest feels full of pressure, like something is inside him trying to crawl its way out. Love. What does Simon Riley know about love?

Well, he knows one thing.

Except maybe now he knows two.

He deletes the video and goes back to bed.

#ghoap x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #john soap mactavish x reader #complicated pleasures #simon riley x reader

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cosmics-beings · 7 months ago

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I *need* to read that ES!StarOp, there is potential in that lovely premise. I love and can see how protective Starscream would be. I'm curious how everyone would react to them being together~

You’ve opened a can of worms now because I must tell you about my AU. But first, yes…I am all for protective Starscream. Especially with post war OP. In my Prime and IDW Aus, Optimus is just not happy with his life and kind of wants to go off and live on his own but people won’t let him. For Optimus, he is a character that everyone, and I mean everyone who knows/has a relationship with him feels entitled too. Starscream is one of the few people who is an outside perspective, so he is able to understand Optimus’ pain and the need to keep up a façade.

In my earthspark Aus, things are different. Optimus actually frees Starscream after talking to him for a few years while he’s imprisoned, and he gets a different side of Starscream. Starscream is still, well, Starscream so he is still evil. But Starscream falls in love with the bot he can speak to across the bars, and he learns things about Optimus that he has told no one. Optimus understands that with Starscream, he doesn’t have to keep up his walls or attempt to be this leader everyone wants him to be, he can rest. He can be vulnerable around Starscream. And in general, no one cares about Optimus. He is always protecting and watching over others, so coming to the lower levels of Ghost and talking to Starscream…he starts to open up.

Eventually, the two fall deeply in love and Optimus does free Starscream – and Starscream convinces Optimus to free his sisters as well (Nova and Skywarp). Surprisingly, the three aren’t terrible and for the most part just live by themselves in an abandoned Decepticon base, attempting to build a bridge back to Cybertron. In secret, Optimus visits Starscream and the two grow a stronger relationship. I toggle with this part of the AU, but they do have two sparklings together, that are raised by Starscream, Skywarp, Nova and Optimus. Per Starscream’s request, Optimus doesn’t tell anyone about their children. However, Optimus loves them both. They are a boy and a girl.

Things end terribly when GHOST finds out, and not only recaptures the Seekers but erases everyone’s mind. So Starscream forgets, so does Optimus. They forget about their children, their happiness, etc. As do Nova and Skywarp.

In my AU, it isn’t until S2 of ES, do things start coming back to them. Their children are kinda just off. Their daughter was captured and almost used as a weapon by GHOST but she escaped and finds her younger brother.

Now I’ve gone off on a tangent XD. But how does everyone react? Well for the first years of the relationship, absolutely no one knows. And they don’t even know they were in a relationship until much later. TBH, especially with Starscream being evil, I don’t think a lot of people would be happy. And some might think he manipulated/seduced Optimus in the past so that he could get free, which he did not. But when they get their memories back, the love resumes. TBH, it was always there so when G.H.O.S.Ts mind tricks wore off and they remembered it was easy to come back to each other. Starscream is still evil, and he is still kinda possessive of his big strong, but also sad mech and he can fight soo….I think Hashtag knows. And hashtag is also friends with their children? Dot also knows, I hc that despite everything , Dot and Starscream are friends.

#their children in my main au end up uniting decepticons and autobots #starscream NEVER becomes an autobot and he never becomes a good guy #but you know he is nicer for optimus #he is the true decepticon in his family #starscream #optimus prime #starop #transformers earthspark #tf earthspark

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hauntedhowlett-writes · 8 months ago

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✧*̥˚ my muses, acquired like bruises *̥˚✧

a collection of my fics inspired by taylor swift songs/lyrics, in honor of the release of THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT

JOEL MILLER

cruel summer | au | explicit | chapters: 6/6

Joel takes a contracting job renovating a master bedroom and bathroom while the homeowners are away for the summer on a cruise. He wasn’t expecting their twenty-three year old daughter and the thoughts he’d have about her.

crimson red paint on my lips | post-outbreak | explicit | connected work

Joel Miller is an asshole. You should have known better than to show up at his door with your lips painted red. Connected to me and the devil and marked me like a bloodstain

↳AO3 | Tumblr

marked me like a bloodstain | post-outbreak | explicit | connected work

You save Joel’s life when the two of you are attacked on a smuggling run. He has an interesting way of saying thank you. Connected to crimson red paint on my lips and me and the devil

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karma is my boyfriend’s dad | au | explicit | connected work

Your boyfriend, Sean Miller, is an asshole. The one redeeming thing about him? His dad, Joel Miller. And he's just invited you along on the family vacation to Panama City Beach, Florida.

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in a feud with her neighbor | au | explicit | connected work

Five times you think Joel Miller is the worst neighbor ever, and the one time he isn’t.

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bonus scenes: in a feud with her neighbor | au | PG-13 | connected work

Fluffy bonus scenes for "in a feud with her neighbor" as suggested by anon!

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toyin’ with them older guys | au | explicit | one-shot

Joel Miller is the grumpy bartender and owner of your favorite bar near campus, where you attend trivia every Tuesday night. Thinking there’s no way Joel could return your feelings, your friend suggests trying out Tinder. But when you bring them to the bar for a date, they keep leaving mid date with no explanation. Maybe there’s something Joel isn’t telling you after all.

↳AO3 | Tumblr

help me hold onto you | post-outbreak | explicit | one-shot

Joel always tries his best to keep his mind from wandering to its darkest corners, but occasionally, the frayed threads holding him together with sloppy stitches start to unravel. Sometimes you need to give him something to hold onto.

↳AO3 | Tumblr

seven | post-outbreak | explicit | one-shot

Joel Miller has spent twenty years pushing the grief and guilt surrounding the death of his daughter, Sarah, to the darkest recesses of his brain in favor of survival. Living a more quiet life in Jackson means the ghosts of his past have returned to haunt him. He finds his solace in you, the town librarian.

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the last great american dynasty | au | explicit | one-shot

Joel Miller has loved the historic Victorian home in his neighborhood since the first time he laid eyes on it. When the elderly owner passes, he thinks he might get his chance to finally buy it and fix it up. He doesn’t expect to find you, the granddaughter of the previous owner and trustee of her estate, standing in the way of his dream.

↳Tumblr | AO3

TOMMY MILLER

wrong place, right time | pre-outbreak | explicit | one-shot

What if Joel didn’t answer Tommy’s call from jail? And what if the waitress he’d been defending that night bailed him out instead?

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JAVIER PEÑA

i can see you (javier peña's version) | au | explicit | one-shot

When Javier Peña takes credit for your lead, you take revenge. Good thing you know Javier can't resist a girl in red lipstick.

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FRANKIE MORALES

my tears and my beers and my candles | au | explicit | one-shot

It’s been a bad week and you just need to have a good cry. You didn’t expect Frankie Morales, best friend and unrequited crush, to crash your pity party. He’s got some interesting ways of making you feel better. Maybe it’s not so unrequited after all.

↳AO3 | Tumblr

invisible string | au | explicit | one-shot

After fifteen years, the invisible string that ties you to Frankie Morales pulls you back together

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MIGUEL O'HARA

i can see you (miguel o'hara's version) | au | explicit | one-shot

As Dr. Miguel O’Hara’s graduate teaching and research assistant, you’ve spent years pushing down the inappropriate thoughts you’ve had about the brilliant, gorgeous man. But what happens when a late night at the lab and a scientific breakthrough leads to a breakthrough of a different kind?

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EDDIE MUNSON

the mark you saw on my collarbone | vampire au | explicit | connected work

A snippet of life with your human and your monster. A oneshot in the bat out of hell series

↳AO3

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ruestheday · 2 months ago

Note

Please expand on your Steph AUs??? I want to know everything????? From reading just those excerpts on that one post I already love your writing and I don’t even know anything about supernatural (we’re in this together Steph, Idk who Dean Winchester either) but I WILL read a crossover fic you write about it

i would love to!!!

this will be the death of me ( crime lord au )

this one was based off of a conversation i had with a friend about the various other ways steph could’ve stopped her dad instead of becoming a vigilante. i thought it was the most interesting.

in this au, steph is a little more morally gray. well, morally gray enough to decide to become a crime lord just to make her dad look stupid. basically one of those “you’ve been trying to be a batman rogue for years and it took me three months to do better”, and then it snowballs out from there. it gets to the point where she’s no longer looking at it as a way to get back at her dad, and an actual way of living.

it’s a crack treated seriously fic, because a lot of it you need to suspend your disbelief. it also has timsteph, because i think the idea of tim dating the girl who’s criminal empire he is trying to topple is funny.

she girl bosses so hard while committing several felonies.

also because she doesn’t have to worry about her secret identity she dyes her hair purple (also to symbolize her spoiler costume in another world). by the end of the fic she will have tried every purple hair dye i can find on google.

imagine being a goon and your boss is some sixteen-year-old girl also concerned about her english essay because she may be a crime lord but she’s a crime lord with an education!!!!

i see dead people ( clairvoyant au )

this one’s more serious but i can’t write just angst to save my life so it still gets silly.

stephanie has been able to see the dead for as long as she can remember, and she’s been helping them since she’d been able to. normally it was small things, like a ghost wanting to make sure her poor Mr. Fluffy was being well taken care of, until she meets the spirit of the once-was robin.

all jason wants is his dad to stop being so violent, but steph isn’t going to walk up to big man batman and tell him Hey, you’re upsetting the spirit of ur dead Robin, stop it, so instead she decides to just take his mind off of it.

they become besties. they hang out constantly. she teaches jason everything she knows about being a ghost. best six months of her life.

until he disappears!!!!

now, the fun thing about ghosts is they’re like little spies. they see everything and they can move faster and further than humans, so they see even more.

the ghosts tell her that jason isn’t just missing, he’s alive. and he’s been taken out of the country.

now normal people might’ve ran straight to the bat, but not steph, she’s got the power of ghost spies and spite, she’s hunting her undead bff down herself. with the help of a freaky little brainiac kid (aka tim drake).

and then she accidentally discovers the league of assassins … oops

the devil knows my name ( prophet au / supernatural crossover )

in supernatural, there are prophets of the lord. they all (seem, we have met two.. well.. it gets complicated) to have different purposes in being prophet. the first one, chuck, writes the "gospel of winchester" which is just the future of the main characters lives. the second prophet, kevin, is the person who translates the word of god.

there can only be one prophet at a time, which would suck for my au, but! but! in a fun plot twist (spoiler warning) chuck actually ends up being god in disguise.

so in the version, steph is the actual prophet that chuck replaced. chuck is still there because he is important, there's just two prophets because god committed identity theft.

this means the au takes place in season four of supernatural, which (spoiler warning) has dean winchester returning from the dead/hell because the biblical apocalypse is about to go down on earth. yeah, i'm throwing batman into the actual biblical apocalypse, where angels and demons are both the bad guys trying to have a grudge match that'll level the earth.

i'm so hyped for it.

#batman #dc #dcu #robin #dc comics #tim drake #jason todd #stephanie brown #batman au #batman fanfic #spoiler

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lecl3rcw · 1 year ago

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𝒜𝓁𝓌𝒶𝓎𝓈 𝒷𝑒𝑒𝓃 𝓎𝑜𝓊 | Prologue

Authors note: Hi guys! This is a mini series and my first one at that so I’m a lil scared😀 but I really hope you like this story because I’ve been planning it out for a while now😭 but yes this story will contain angst, and like a lot of fluff:) but yeah I hope everyone will like it💕

This is a prologue!!! A lil chapter on the sister’s dynamic and the exposition!!

____________________________________________

The Parisian sky roared as gentle raindrops started to fall against her apartment window. The girl was in her painting studio, where she spends most of her time anyways. Her headphones blasting her favorite song as her shaky hand outlined the last of her painting. As she was about to finish, the ringing of the bell startled her, she groaned as she took her headphones off and went to open the door. When she did tho, she was met with her two older sisters, one carrying the bags of groceries and the other carrying a toddler.

“Oh sorry guys, how long were you out here” she says feeling a little bad. “Don’t worry Y/N, not for long” Her oldest sister Adriana says placing the toddler on the ground as she gives her sister a soft smile, to which she reciprocates.

“What were you doing anyway?” Her middle sister, Julianna asks, “I was just finishing up the last of my painting before my flight tomorrow” she says as she bends down to the toddler’s level, squeezing her in a tight hug as her heart warms at the giggle her niece lets out.

“How are you feeling? I mean leaving so abruptly” Adriana asks putting last of the groceries away, “I feel good, I just need a change of scenery, I don’t think I can live here after everything that has happened” Y/N replies, standing up and going back into her studio. An uncomfortable silence fell upon the two older siblings.

“Julie, I’m really worried about her, she’s not processing anything correctly, she’s refusing to go the therapist, and now she’s moving to a whole new country, where she knows no one, I really don’t think we should let her go” Adriana mumbles anxiously.

“Ada listen, I don’t want her to go either but she’s not a baby anymore, she’s 19 and she’s very responsible, and it’s not like she’s going on vacation, she’s going to study and holding her back from her passion isn’t helping, plus i can go visit her when the Spanish grandprix happens, we have to trust her, she wants to move on with the whole situation with mom and we have to respect that” Julie says rubbing her sister’s shoulder.

The three girls had lost their father at a pretty young age, however the loss of their mother was still very recent. Almost like the ghost of her still haunts them three, everything about her, they miss it all. They stood there silently, uneasy and clenching their heavy hearts.

Once Y/N finished her painting, a genuine smile came across her face. Painting was a passion that she picked up from her mother, that’s how Y/N wanted to keep her memory alive.

y/n.hirose

liked by julie_hirose, adriann.a, alexandrasaintmleux and 48,000 others

y/n.hirose a recent painting dump 🫶🏻

Comments

julie_hirose Si talentueux💕 (so talented)

^y/n.hirose 😚💕

elainejohansen ugh my best friend is too perfect😔

^y/n.hirose I miss you Lainey🥲💕

alexandrasaintmleux je l'aime tellement😍 (i love it so much)

^y/n.hirose merci mon amour😘 (Thankyou my love)

julieslefttoe her hiatus has ended y’all🤭

charlessssluvrrrr her and Alexandra interacting is genuinely my favorite thing ever🥰

y/nhiroseswardrobe Y/N please post more pics with your incredible outfits🥹

adrianstoofine she’s such a W

Scrolling through her Instagram comments made her feel a litttle happy, with Julianna being so famous, it wasn’t odd to see all her fans being so nice to her. Her peace got interrupted by Julie calling her name.

“You called my name?” Y/N says stepping out of the room, “Well, since you’re leaving, we’d thought that maybe we could make something together and just watch a movie” Adriana speaks, a smile adorning her face, “Princess and the Pauper!!” Adriana’s toddler, Suzette speaks up excitedly clapping her hands, “Well if Suzu wants to watch Barbie, then Barbie it is” Julianna says lifting the little girl up causing her to let out a squeal.

adriann.a posted a story

seen by charles_leclerc, y.n.hirose, julie_hirose , and 70,000 others

The rest of the night was spent well, jokes were traded, all the food Y/N had made was conquered. Adriana had gone to sleep as Suzu had started to get cranky, leaving just Julie and Y/N. As the two girls were tyding up, Julie said what had been on her mind.

“Y/N listen, I just wanted to say that I’m so proud of the person that you have become you’re so grown and independent and I could never be more proud to call you my younger sister. I just want to say that no matter where you are in the world, me or Adriana? I’m only one call away and don’t be afraid because this is a big step in your life and we’re here to support you through it no matter how much it hurts us and I know that it’s gonna be hard but mom would’ve been so proud of you. We all are.” Julie says cleaning the kitchen counter.

“Julie!? Did my food poisoning you? because why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden” Y/N says dramatically checking Julie’s temperatire warning her a shove. “ this is the last time I’m being supportive of you that one time I decide to be nice and you take advantage of that, so is the last time so live in the moment” she says rolling her eyes, “Thankyou Julie, I love you” Y/N says hugging the taller girl tightly, “I love you too sis, now you have a flight at the crack of dawn tomorrow, so don’t worry about cleaning I got it, just go get some sleep alright?” Julie says pushing Y/N into her room, “Goodnight Julie” she mutters, earning her response.

Once she was done with her skincare, she slipped on her silk pajama as she laid in bed overthinking her decision, is this the right decision, am I doing the right thing, what is this is a mistake?

She groans into her pillow as sleep overtakes her body, with many things she wasn’t sure about, there was one thing she was sure about and that was “Madrid, here I come” she says before sleep finally overtakes her body.

#jude bellingham #jude bellingham x reader #real madrid #jude bellingham fluff #jude bellingham angst #jude bellingham imagine

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onpointedfeetandbrokendreams · 6 months ago

Text

Day 4 - DBDA Week

Day 4 of Dead Boy Detectives Appreciation Week: 10th-16th June by @dbdcentral

Prompt: Reunion

Relationships: Edwin Payne&Charles Rowland&Crystal Palace&Niko Sasaki

Tags: Post-canon, Paranormal Activities

TW: None

“Crystal, we have to tell you something,” Charles started one day out of the blue.

He looked giddy, mischievous, the expression you would find on a kid about to confess that they stole one of your freshly-baked biscuits. And while that in itself wouldn’t be such an unexpected image, what made the entire thing almost unreal - assuming a world like ‘real’ could even be applied to a psychic, living with ghosts, solving supernatural crimes - was that behind him, Edwin was wearing a matching grin.

Crystal raised a questioning brow as a form of reply, she had no idea where the conversation could possibly be going.

“Ok, so, you know we are ghosts, right?” Charles rambled.

Luckily, before Crystal could make a sarcastic remark, or curse at him, Edwin had mercy on them both and took the lead of the conversation:

“We have this little tradition. Every Halloween we go to a Haunted House in the countryside, where people pretend to be detectives of the occult, with useless equipment, and we… Well, there’s no other way to say it, we tease them a little.”

“You- what?” Crystal was having trouble reconciling the image she had of the other two with this new information. It probably struck her for the first time since she met them, that they were just two kids, trying their best in this cruel world they had been ripped out from too soon. Her gaze softened. “Why didn’t I know anything about this?”

“It’s your first Halloween with us, isn’t it?” Charles said, sounding a lot more like his usual, confident self.

“We used to have quite the nice reviews on the newspapers,” Edwin continued. “Then, they stopped writing those, but people still visit the house and they have a lot of fun when something actually happens.”

Crystal fished her phone out of her jacket’s pocket and looked at Maps for a while, searching for ‘haunted houses’ until she found it.

“Is this the place?” She asked, turning the phone to Edwin so he could watch the screen.

“Yes, it is!” He said. Crystal had never seen him this excited before.

“Wow, this has so many reviews, I wonder why I had never heard about it. They love it.”

Charles preened. “Of course they do, we are professionals.”

Taking the phone back to read some more comments, Crystal had to laugh. It was probably the only self-indulgent thing they had allowed themselves all those years. One well-deserved night of fun without witches, or demons, or Death. She just felt a bit sad that she couldn’t join them.

As if reading her mind, Charles said:

“We were thinking that you could dress up as one of those ‘detectives’, so you could come with us, if you’d like?”

–

The outfit the three of them had put together was absolutely ridiculous. Crystal had a big yellow jacket with a stylized ghost on one arm, thermal goggles perched on top of her head, and a backpack with something similar to a vacuum cleaner attached to its side.

“Am I supposed to, like, capture the ghosts?” She said, while looking at herself in the mirror.

Edwin snickered. Full-on snickers. “Of course you know that it would be impossible, right?”

“But they like to think they can. You will blend in perfectly,” Charles finished for him. They were still doing that thing where they looked like they shared two halves of the same brain, but in that moment it was less like the usual dead married couple on acid, and more like two twelve-year-olds trying to pull a prank on their parents.

“Ok, I’m ready then,” Crystal nodded, unable to hide the fond smile in time before they could see it.

Crystal found out there was an actual tour bus taking people to the Haunted House and she managed to secure herself a ticket. It was painted in black and decorated with neon green and splashes of fake blood, and it was filled with similarly dressed people, carrying all sorts of weird equipment on them. Some people had laptops, others had devices that looked like small radios, and others that didn’t look like anything she had seen before.

Absolutely none of them had any drop of actual arcane energy.

When the bus started its way up the hill where the house stood, everyone went silent, anxiety and anticipation both equally filled the air. It required an extreme amount of self-control for Crystal not to burst out laughing, knowing that the very ghosts who supposedly haunted the house were riding on that same bus, elbowing one another and giggling, while making a list of what to do this time to scare-but-not-too-much the visitors.

It was a very run-of-the-mill paranormal experience, when compared to the much weirder and scarier things Crystal had already seen in her life. But Charles and Edwin were right, people absolutely loved it. Everyone took their time to set up their equipment and the ghosts patiently waited before starting to open some windows, slam doors, make pieces of paper fly. Crystal would lie if she didn’t admit that it was fun.

Until a second bus arrived, and time stopped. She couldn’t focus on anything else, other than the buzzing sound in her mind, her gaze fixed intently on the people entering the house. Or, more accurately, on the person.

“Niko,” she breathed out, running towards the white-haired girl like her life depended on it.

“Crystal! You’re really here!” Niko said, with tears forming in her eyes as she returned the hug and squeezed Crystal tight.

A few seconds later, she felt four other arms wrap around the two of them, followed by a lot of loud complaints from the people that came with the second bus that the haunting had stopped too soon and they wanted a refund.

When they separated, all four of them had matching glistening eyes.

“I came back to the mortal plane thanks to my sprites,” Niko explained. “I didn’t know how to find you, but then I remembered Edwin mentioning this Halloween tradition. So I thought it was my best chance. I am really glad you are actually here.”

“And she forced us to wear these ridiculous outfits too, which, for the record, should be a crime,” someone said from behind her.

“You tell them, Litty.”

Crystal looked closely, and she recognized the faces of the two people, except in her memory they were a lot smaller.

“I don’t know what happened to them,” said Niko with a shrug, ignoring the former-sprites comments.

“We’ll start researching The Case Of The Grown Sprites first thing tomorrow,” interjected Edwin, taking Niko’s hand and motioning for the door. “For now, let’s go home, tell us everything.”

#deadboydetectivesappreciationweek #dbdcentral #renewdeadboydetectives #dbda #edwin payne #charles rowland #crystal palace #niko sasaki

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maliciouslove · 2 years ago

Text

𝕌𝕟𝕤𝕖𝕖𝕟

NSFW, aged up characters (21+)

pairing // ghost!Baji Keisuke x medium!reader x Chifuyu Matsuno

summary // after his death Baji finds himself stuck in the realm of the living. he’s firmly decided to cockblock his best friend Chifuyu, that is until he decides to seek the help of a medium to figure out what the heck is happening.

alternatively: a threesome with a ghost????

word count // 7k

tags // supernatural, inaccurate representation of a medium, light swearing, angst?, questionably happy ending?, threesome, oral (both m! and f! receiving), spitroasting, anal, double penetration, squirting, overstimulation, multiple orgasms, unprotected sex, creampie, cum eating, spit, praise, multiple pet names (princess, kitten, good girl, pretty girl, etc.), not choking but gentle throat holding (idk), throat fucking, there is some baji x fuyu action, feelings

AN // hello people of the internet, I'm finally reposting my fics! hence why, if this fic seems familiar—do not be alarmed, it was first posted on my old blog :] posting this one first because it is the first one that I was actually really proud of, and because I'm still feral for baji. you can also find it here on ao3. cute mdni banner by @/cafekitsune

What’s a spirit stuck in the realm of the living to do with all their free time?

Take care of their friends, obviously.

Baji Keisuke left the world of the living far too young. He wasn’t ready to leave, nor was he ready for the realization that he never really left. One moment there was darkness, and the next… he could see his own body, pale and bloodied, cradled by a crying Chifuyu.

Dying was painful, but seeing this hurt more.

Baji’s never been one to dwell too long on things; he kind of just accepted his new reality—he was a ghost. Stuck with his appearance as a 19 year old, he existed outside of everybody’s field of perception. Outside of anyone’s knowledge.

So the best that he could do was to at least stay close to the ones he loved. To watch them from afar despite the fact that he was sitting right next to them.

He’d watch over his mom: observe as she always left his favorite food by the altar each night. Watch as she flipped through old albums, smiling at his baby pictures. He’d listen to her talk to herself, sometimes even to him. He always found that rather funny, that she’d just randomly start talking to him, telling him all about her day, and finish off with a little “you’re not even here, are you?” as she smiles fondly at another old picture.

He wished he could tell her, let her know. Hey mom, I’m right here! He’s tried many times, and each attempt ended with failure as his hands simply passed through her.

Aside from keeping an eye out for his mother, he also took the time to check in on his friends. While his mother was more active during the day, his friends were more lively at night. He always felt relieved that, while a lot of things changed after his death, at least they didn’t spiral out of control. At least nobody left. At least nobody else got hurt.

The two people he’d check on the most were Mikey, the leader of Toman and his childhood friend, and Chifuyu, his ex vice-captain and best friend.

He followed Mikey around for a year, concerned about his mental state and the people he surrounded himself with, but luckily the rest of the gang were still there to take care of it. It was kind of nice to see Mikey finally admit he needs help, to admit he isn’t as invincible as everybody believed he was. So on that end, Baji was satisfied—he no longer felt the need to follow his every move. Mikey was in safe hands. And so were the rest of the gang—they’d all stick together through thick and thin and he loved that about them.

But then there was the issue of Chifuyu. While his mental state was a tad more stable than Mikey’s (even though he did cry his eyes out for three months straight) and his physical strength and fighting ability were reassuring, Fuyu was always a little… lost.

Having never been able to read people well, except for maybe Baji, Chifuyu was sometimes taken advantage of. While he may act tough, Baji knew he was kind and helpful, always giving too much of himself to others.

It was about 2 years after Baji’s death that Fuyu got into dating again, if you could even call it that. The green eyed boy was no longer blonde—instead his hair was now black (like Baji’s) and slicked back. He was a little taller, a little more muscle than before. He looked like a child no more, yet he still acted like a child sometimes, so how could Keisuke not worry about him?

The first girl Chifuyu ever decided to go out with was bad news, and Baji knew it at first glance. A stuck up, shallow, arrogant little girl that lived off of daddy’s money. Baji never wrapped his head around why she was interested in Fuyu, nor why he gave her the time of day, but the fact of the matter was that Baji didn’t like it.

Oh, he hated her with a burning passion. Every time Chifuyu's phone would light up with her name on the caller ID, Baji would get so pissed that the room temperature would drop by five degrees. Every time she wraps her hands around Chifuyu’s neck Baji would glare at her so hard it would make the lights in the room flicker.

His dissatisfaction with this girl grew more and more over time, and with each passing day he could notice the little things his anger caused. So he experimented with it, he focused his anger on objects, rather than dispersing it all around him, and it worked! He could move objects, little by little, and he could fuck with the lights and heating if he wanted to.

So at some point, Baji became obsessed with chasing off girls he didn’t approve of. Under the pretense that his friend deserves better of course. He later dropped that pretense and faced the hard cold truth—if I can’t get my dick wet, neither can Fuyu.

He’d scare off girl after girl by making objects rattle every time his best friend has his arm draped around a girl’s shoulder, swinging doors open left and right if they’re about to kiss, turning the lights on and off whenever things get spicier. It was all fun and games for the bored ghost boy, but Chifuyu was getting desperate.

It’d been too long since he’d had a nice warm cunt wrapped around his cock. Too fucking long. And what the fuck was up with his house? He’d never been one to believe in ghosts or anything supernatural, but the weird shit was starting to get to him.

So, incredibly desperate now, Chifuyu decided to seek help. What kind of help he wasn’t really sure, but he was angrily typing away at his laptop, trying to find exorcists or mediums or anyone who could fucking explain what the hell was happening under his roof.

The first two he had invited over were complete fakes: telling him they sensed a presence of some sort, chanting shit in a different language that Chifuyu could only presume to be Latin. They both said his house was “cleansed” now, but alas not even a week later when he had another girl ever in his apartment, the exact same things happened.

He was losing hope until he got a ping on his phone, a reply from someone under one of his posts asking for help.

“Hey, I saw your post online that you’re experiencing some... Supernatural occurrences at home. I was wondering if I could maybe take a look myself? Free of charge if I find nothing and am unable to help you, of course.”

He stared at his phone long and hard. Most people who answered his plea for help online started their conversation with their payment rate first, explicitly saying “no refunds,” but this person was offering help free of charge provided they are unable to help? That was new. Refreshing. Plus the idea of not paying was very appealing to him so he had nothing to lose—he immediately typed up a response, making an appointment with this medium and giving them his home address.

And without a doubt, the following day at 6pm there’s a timid knock on his front door. He saunters over and opens the door to be greeted by the most blinding smile he’s ever laid eyes upon.

“Hi, I’m Y/N, we spoke over text about your problem with possible supernatural activity in your home.”

You extend your hand to him, and, nervously, he slots his hand in yours, shaking it lightly while introducing himself. He invites you in and awkwardly offers to take your coat. He wasn’t expecting a cute girl around his age, but he wasn’t complaining.

Leading you down the hall into the living room, Chifuyu rambles on and on about the weird stuff that’s been happening, explaining how he’s already called multiple maintenance people to examine his pipes, heating, electrical wiring and so on and found absolutely nothing.

Continuing his little rant, the green-eyed man didn't even notice that you had stopped by the door frame, staring right at the empty space on his couch. Well, to Chifuyu it looked empty, to you… it looked occupied by a slightly younger yet taller man with long dark hair and golden eyes that seemed to pierce through you.

Without a doubt, there were all the telltale signs that he was, in fact, an apparition. He looked pale, almost translucent in the afternoon light flowing through the window behind him, a faint glow to him that made him look like a fallen angel. You could feel his aura all around you, too—the same skin prickling feeling you always had when in contact with a spirit.

The long-haired man lazily yawns and scratches his butt, looking particularly bored as if this happens on a daily basis. He shifts on the couch, folding his hands in front of his chest and looking you up and down, as if evaluating you and deciding what course of action to take.

“Hey, are you okay?” the Chifuyu’s voice brings you back to reality, and you tear your gaze away from the apparition across from you.

“Um, hey, so… did you know anyone with, um, long, dark hair and bright yellow eyes? Kinda mean looking?”

At this, Baji makes a face, half surprised she described him so well, half offended at the last part of her statement.

Chifuyu’s eyes turn comically large.

“How... How did you..?”

He can’t even fully form the sentence, quickly glancing around the room to see if there are any pictures of his dead friend laying around. She can’t know about him, she’s a stranger, and he’s been gone for a few years now. So how?

“Well, uh, he’s kind of chilling on your couch right now? Right, okay, I know this is weird, and you probably don’t believe me, I don’t blame you, most people don’t.” Your voice goes a little quieter at the end, a kind of sadness looming over you, but you shake it off quickly. “I’ve been able to see spirits since I was a child, I know, bonkers, I can’t explain how or why, but I do, and this guy is currently looking as surprised as you are.”

Chifuyu looks at the couch again, eyes glistening and full of longing, hands balled into fists at his side. But he couldn’t, so then why is he so intent on believing? Why is he so hopeful?

You don’t miss the little glint of wistfulness in his eyes, the desperation clinging onto his lips as he struggles to choose his next words.

“Can you… talk to spirits?”

“Yeah.. I can, provided they want to talk to me too.”

You look at the man across from you again and smile weakly. You can’t always know if they’re malicious spirits or not; sometimes they could get real bad, but this one, despite looking feral, didn’t give off the impression he was malicious.

“S’what, ya can see me? Hear me?” Baji spoke and the gruffness in his voice almost made you forget how to breathe.

You don’t meet good-looking spirits often. You meet the ghosts of elderly men and women who want to look after their children and grandchildren a little longer, you meet young, fragile kids, still confused and not understanding what happened to them. But never before had you met a handsome young ghost that smirked at you as if he knew all your secrets.

“Yea, I can see and hear you.” You smile at him, big and bright, and he feels blinded by it. Yet also so drawn to it, like some sort of heavenly light, a beacon calling him home. “Can I ask you for your name?”

“Why? Does my name give you, like, powers over me? Are ya gonna exorcise me or some shit?”

He grins and stalks forward, closing the distance between you by simply walking through whatever objects stand in his way. Unconsciously you take a step back, not even noticing the bewildered look on Chifuyu’s face.

“I can’t exorcise you, I’m not ordained. I can just… perceive you and talk to you.”

You gulp and your visible nervousness makes something in Baji shift. He grins down at you, his larger frame towering over your much smaller one, and you feel so exposed under his gaze. Chifuyu’s voice is what drags you back down to Earth again.

“Wait, are you for real right now? What is happening?” He’s confused and concerned and so, so hopeful. You look at him and smile reassuringly.

“Yeah, he just got a little closer than I expected, but I can hear and see him, hasn’t told me his name yet though. Kinda rude.”

You arch a brow in the direction of the pale ghost again, and he fucking laughs. A whole-hearted, loud roar of a laugh, as if this is the most amusing thing that has happened to him in years. It probably is.

“Baji Keisuke, what’s yer name sweetheart?”

You repeat his name slowly, liking the way it rolls off your tongue and you give him your name. Meanwhile, Chifuyu is going crazy next to you, barely containing himself.

“Baji? Did you say… Baji? Oh God, please tell me you’re not fucking with me, I swear to God..”

You cut him off by placing a hand on his shoulder. You ask him to close his eyes, take a deep breath, and he obeys. He looks shaken: arms stiffly sitting by his sides. There’s a visible tremble in his hands, and you notice he’s not even daring to take a breath.

The sight of him like this tugs at your heart, and your chest feels impossibly tight. Your fingers itch to touch him, to hold him close and soothe him, but the rational side of you tells you otherwise. Whatever his relationship to the other man is, he really, really misses him. The least you could do is try and give him a little glimpse. As tiring as it may be to maintain.

You take a firm hold of his hand which feels icy compared to yours and you give him a light squeeze as you tell him to open his eyes again. And when he does… tears brim at the corner of his eyes at the sigh of his best friend.

“Baji…”

It’s a half whisper, half sob, and you have to hold his hand tighter so he doesn’t leap forward in an attempt to hug the spirit.

“Can he… see me?” The spirit looks equally as hopeful as his friend, and you nod in confirmation, reveling in the fact that you were able to bring this small happiness to them.

“He should be able to hear you too.”

And before you know it, they’re both crying. Sadness, relief, bewilderment or pure nostalgia—you don’t know, but you’re determined to give them all the time you can to catch up.

They talk happily for hours, Baji goes on and on about how he just can’t seem to leave. Chifuyu just apologizes over and over about being too weak and unable to save him. The long-haired man just shrugs it off and offers a big fanged smile in return. They talk about so many things, and finally Chifuyu asks the question that actually led to this situation unfurling.

“So… all the lights flickering and the noises were all… from you? Why?”

“Ah.. heh, okay don’t be mad.”

Baji speaks in between little chuckles, amused with himself and happy that as a ghost he can’t be touched. His eyes crinkle into little crescent moons as he chirps away his clumsy explanation, elaborating that at some point he just got pissy and decided that if he can’t fuck, his friend can’t eiether.

“You’re… joking right?”

Chifuyu looks like he’s about to rampage and yell, but he notices your head wobbling, eyes lidded and tired. You looked exhausted and pale so he shook you a little, worry painted on his face.

“Hey? Are you okay?”

“Yeah it’s just.. A little tiring. It’s fine though, please continue!”

Baji shakes his head and speaks before Chifuyu can. “Ya need to rest, dollface. Breaks m’heart seeing you like this. It’ll be fine, I got to talk to my friend today, maybe this is what helps me cross over to the other side or whatever.”

His smile is reassuring, but a part of you wants to give them more time. Unfortunately, your body disagrees with your heart, and you start feeling very faint.

“Hey, why don’t you lay down for a bit, I don’t want to send you off like this. It’s fine, just rest your head a little until you feel better.”

Chifuyu had let go of your hand, losing the ability to see his friend, and gently nudged you down on the couch, placing a soft pillow under your head. You shouldn’t be falling asleep like this at a stranger’s house, but your body gives out before you could argue with yourself.

You stir and slowly blink the tiredness from your eyes. Rising a little, you take in the room and in pieces it all comes back to you. The job, the green-eyed cutie, his hot ghost friend: the entire ordeal.

“Finally awake, princess?”

Baji’s voice comes right behind you, and you almost fall off the couch in surprise. In absolute reflex Baji reaches over to grab you by the waist and prevent you from toppling over and it takes him a minute to realize.

He is, in fact, holding you right now. He squeezes at your waist a little, and you look equally as dumbfounded.

“Am I?”

“You are.”

“Holy shit.” Chifuyu’s voice gets you both out of your daze as he stares wide-eyed at the both of you. Suddenly, he can see. Without even having to hold your hand.

After some thinking, you explain to them that this has never happened before, but it’s most likely some sort of side effect for keeping them able to see and talk to each other for so long, combined with the intensity of the feelings they all shared. You have no idea how long this will last, but you’re willing to stay over for the entire duration of it.

It’s been established that Baji can touch you and you can feel him, the question is does the same apply to his friend? They both look nervous as they approach each other, holding out a single finger and they gasp when they feel the pads of their fingers collide.

Before you know it, Chifuyu is being hurled into a tight bear hug and nearly spun around in the room. It’s cute to see how much they still care for each other. You spend the rest of the evening asking about their friendship, learning how they became friends, how they were both in a gang, how close they used to be. How devastating it was to lose each other.

All the while you notice you’re not getting tired at all. Which is an unusual yet welcomed change. You really like these two, you like that they’re probably some of the first people to genuinely believe you when you say you can see ghosts and not just kick you to the curb because of it. You like how cheerful they are. You enjoy their refreshing energy, and you better not be lying to yourself by saying you don’t enjoy the little pet names Baji seems so intent on giving you.

When two o’clock rolls around, the effect is still in full force, but Chifuyu feels awful for making you stay, so he offers to drive you home instead. You try to argue that you can drive yourself, but he insists. Quite frankly, he’s just hoping you have a reason to come by again, even if it’s just to pick up your car. But you exchange numbers and promise to talk again and hang out soon.

“Hopefully Baji won’t chase me away like all the other girls.”

“Mm, don’t ya worry about it angel, I’ve taken quite the liking to you.”

He smiles from the back seat of the car, and you all laugh.

As you lay in bed that night, you really hope you could spend more time with them.

As if your prayers have been heard, you do get to spend more time with them. Surprisingly and with no explanation at all, the side effects are still in full force, and you’re both still able to see and touch the handsome spirit.

The longer the effects are in place, the closer the three of you seem to get. Seductive jokes are thrown around, and Chifuyu picks up his friend's habit of referring to you with cute little names. He’s particularly fond of kitten, and you’re particularly fond of the butterflies the title gives you.

With all this flirting and teasing, it’s no surprise really when you end up on Chifuyu’s lap with your back pressed to his chest, Baji towering over you, his voice a few octaves lower than it usually is when he speaks to you.

“Aw, are we makin’ ya flustered, princess?”

His index finger traces your jaw as his eyes are practically glued to your lips and the idea alone makes your thighs press together. Chifuyu’s hands boldly roam your lower half, one hand sliding on the inner side of your thigh.

“You know, all you have to do is say stop and we will.”

Chifuyu’s breath ghosts over the side of your neck and honestly, you don’t want them to stop. You’d be lying if you said you hadn’t thought about this, imagined how their hands would feel on your skin while laying in bed late at night. Burying your fingers in your pussy until your thighs are shaking, wishing it was their cocks instead.

So, when you feel Chifuyu’s hands softly squeeze your breasts and glide up to gently wrap around your throat, not squeezing but just holding you there, you can’t help the little whimper that escapes.

All Baji can manage in response is a feral growl, and he’s sinking to his knees between your legs spread over his best friend’s. Chifuyu’s hand never leaves your throat, but his other free hand takes your chin ever so gently, turning you to face him. He’s looking at you with those big green eyes, silently asking permission to kiss you, but you’re impatient. You crash your lips onto his in a messy kiss, nipping at his bottom lip when he doesn’t give you access to his mouth fast enough. Eventually, though, he obliges, tongue meeting yours in a battle for dominance that you’re currently winning. That is, until you feel Baji lifting your skirt and pressing two fingers to your clothed slit, and you lose all your composure, moaning into Chifuyu’s mouth.

Baji is holding your legs open, his icy hands gripping your plush thighs as he feasts at the sight of your panties dampening from his ministrations. All the while Chifuyu is holding your arms in place, kissing you like you’re all the oxygen he needs, like you’re life-saving water to a man lost in an endless desert. Stuck between these two men, any other thoughts have long since left you. All you know is you want more.

Your neediness seeps out in the form of moans and your hips wiggling against Baji’s every touch, so he happily obliges and gives you exactly what you want. Hooking a finger over your panties, he rips them off of you in one swift motion, reveling in the beauty of the little squeal you give him in response. And your pussy is as pretty as he imagined it, all puffy and pink, so wet and needy for his touch. He licks his lips and gives you another look, waiting for permission to have his way with you and all you can manage is a weak nod.

Wasting no more time he delves in, mouth latching on your sensitive clit, tongue flicking over it in a well practiced motion. Every lick sends a shiver down your spine and coaxes wanton moans out of you. Chifiyu doesn’t stay behind either, his much warmed hands sliding under your shirt and groping at your breasts, toying with the supple flesh, tweaking and tugging on your pert nipples. His mouth was now busy sucking purple bruises into the soft skin on your neck, and every little motion from the boys was driving you mad.

The dedication and effort they give you, the affectionate praises they shower you in, combined with the pleasure they’re giving you it drives you closer and closer to your high. And they know. The way your body tenses, the uneven heave of your breasts, and your wimpers getting louder and louder: you’re so close.

One of Chifuyu’s hands is wrapped around your throat, gently applying the tiniest of pressure, while his other hand slides down your stomach to rub thigh circles over your clit while Baji finally replaces his tongue with two thick fingers. He pushes them past your entrance, and your eyes roll to the back of your skull in ecstasy as he pumps them in and out of your cunt. Building faster and faster, your orgasm takes you by surprise when it finally comes. It washes over you in tidal waves, drowning you in pleasure and the two men in complete madness. In the need to have you.

You don’t have time to come down from your high as you’re being placed on all fours, Chifuyu taking his place behind you, and Baji to your front tangling his hands in your hair. There’s no need for him to tell you what he wants; you’re already running your shaky hands over his hard length, gently squeezing through the fabric. You briefly struggle with the buttons on his pants, but finally you manage to pull the jeans down and free his cock. God, his dick is gorgeous. Thick and veiny, his tip now angry red from neglect with pearly beads of precum sliding down the shaft.

Behind you Chifuyu is sliding his cock up and down your slit, taking his sweet time before slotting himself where you really need him. His cock is not as thick, but it’s long and slightly curved, pretty pink and eager to feel your walls clenching around it. Baji’s grip on your hair thightens when he notices you’re paying attention only to his friend. A little jealous and possessive, he taps the head of his cock against your plump lips.

“Don’t forget m’here too angel, or I’ll assume the effects wore off, and I can’t have that now that I’ve had a taste of you.”

You look up at him, begging him to stuff your mouth full with your eyes alone. You stick out your tongue for him, as if to show you haven’t forgotten about him at all. Simultaneously, Chifuyu finally sheathes his cock in you—all the way to the hilt, hips flush against your ass—and you moan, eyes crossing from the pleasure. You look obscene, and Baji takes the opportunity to fill your pretty mouth with his cock.

Oh, and you can’t take all of him in, he’s so thick and heavy against your tongue. You moan around his length, and drool dribbles down your chin. They take you like that, Chifuyu thrusting his hips into your heat, marveling at the warmth and tightness of your cunt, praise dripping from his lips like honey. So good for me baby, just like that. God you take me so well, fuck.

Baji lets you pick your pace on his length, and you make a mental note of the way his cock twitches every time you take him in deeper, the head of his cock bumping the back of your throat. You enjoy the way he looks like he’s about to crumble under the pleasure, so you do it again and again, taking him down your throat, the walls constricting around his length. Baji’s head falls back, eyes shut in pleasure as you coax him to the edge.

“Fuck, princess you better fucking swallow, don’t let a drop fall out of your pretty lips, ‘kay?”

He looks down at you almost lovingly: his pale near-translucent skin slightly flushed, cheeks dusted with pink, his pretty golden eyes now darkened by the lust clouding his mind. You want to confirm you understand him, but his large hands cup the back of your head and you’re no longer in control of the pace. Now he’s fucking into your pliant mouth, every thrust making you gag a little around his girth, tears brimming at the corner of your eyes. It hurts, but it also feels so fucking good—the pleasant sting causing pleasure to course through your veins like a drug. And you’re addicted to the feeling.

Then you feel him twitch against your tongue, his eyes closing and muscles going rigid as he finally reaches his climax. Thick ropes of sticky sweet cum slide down your throat and you do your best to swallow it all. You don’t even bother thinking about how this is possible considering he’s a ghost, you don’t question it, you just greedily take everything he has to give you. His hand caresses your cheek and he whispers a quiet that’s my good girl before slumping down on the couch in front of you, simply observing as his friend rams his cock into you.

Chifuyu had gone a little slower while Baji was fucking your throat but now that you mouth was free, he was hoping to hear your pretty little moans again. Now his hands cradle through your hair, and he pulls you up, angling you impossibly close to him, pistoning his hips just the right way so his long cock hits that spot that makes you see white.

His pace picks up and the praise is replaced with curses. He’s so lost in the feeling of you he almost doesn't notice Baji closing the distance between them and slotting his lips against his. His hips falter for a second, his brain processing what’s happening but his lips respond before his brain can. One hand is holding your hip, as his hips slow down their movement, his other hand cupping his friend's cheek as he kisses him back with so much love, so many unsaid words finally making their way to Baji.

You can’t see them, but you can hear Chifuyu moan into the taller man’s mouth. It’s shaky, and breathy, almost as if he’s tearing up. Baji’s name is like a mantra on his lips, a plea, a promise. You crave to turn your head and catch even just a glimpse, but you decide against it, not wanting to intrude on the raw and intimate moment between them.

“Baji...”

“I know. Me too.”

That’s all the response Keisuke gives as he steals another kiss from his friend and gently nudges his hips in a hint to keep fucking you. So he does, hips gaining back their speed in no time, and you mewl under him, completely dazed from the pleasure. Warm hands sneak down your sides, and his deft fingers find your clit to once more rub tight circles against the sensitive nub, sending waves of pleasure over you.

“Fuck I can’t move if you clamp around my dick like that, kitten, f-fuck… are you gonna cream all over my cock?”

He’s bent forward, whispering in your ear each word punctuated with a grunt or a pant. He’s also close but he needs to make you cum first. He needs to feel you cream on him even if it’s the last thing he does. So he staves off his own orgasm in favor of yours, nibbling on your earlobe and whispering filth into your ear, practically begging you to let him feel you come undone for him.

It doesn’t take long for the coil in your stomach to finally snap, a second orgasm crashing over you and bringing you to high heaven. He doesn’t stop moving, fucking you through your high and the sheer tightness of your cunt as your walls spasm around him is what pushed him over the finish line. With a loud groan his hips lose their rhythm and he paints your insides white with his hot seed, staying sheathed deep inside you in order to keep all of his cum in you.

Fuck, you feel like you’re on cloud nine, basking in the glory of your orgasm but not for long. As soon as Chifuyu pulls out of you, Baji’s mouth is on your pussy again, lapping away at your folds. You squirm but he holds you tightly in place, dragging the cum from your pussy to your ass, tongue teasingly circling around your puckered hole.

“B-Baji, no.. you can’t, not the—”

You’re cut off by Chifuyu crouching down next to the couch and kissing you again. You don’t have time to protest, honestly maybe you don’t even want to protest because Baji’s tongue feels sinfully good against your ass. The green-eyed man barely gives you time to breathe, lips moving hungrily against yours. It’s sloppy, a mess of teeth clashing and tongues moving against each other. He swallows every sweet moan you have to offer while his fingers tweak and twist your nipples. Baji on the other hand is slowly working your ass open, first only with his tongue, the slick muscle pushing past the thigh hole, coating you with spit and cum mixed together.

His tongue is now replaced by two thick fingers slowly pumping in and out of your ass, making your toes curl and your head spin. You can barely remember how to breathe but you manage to beg for more. To beg for him to go faster, to add more fingers. And he is fascinated by how wicked you are, how pliant and needy, how can he refuse you? He gives you more until you’re sufficiently prepped.

With a slap to your ass Baji announces his work is done, and they once again switch with the other man. Chifuyu pulls you onto his lap, your back flush against his chest, and his cock, once again hard and ready for you, is prodding at your ass. Baji runs a finger through your folds, gathering your slick and cum and using it to lube Fuyu’s cock, stroking his length slowly, teasingly. Suddenly he spits into your cunt, and the obscenity of it all makes you clench around nothing. You want them, you want them so bad.

His spit dribbles down your ass, and Fuyu spreads it against your tighter hole, slowly pushing past the muscle. All the prep you received wasn’t enough though, the stretch is burning and bringing tears to your eyes but you know it’ll feel good, you know they’ll make you feel so good, so you bear with it. Baji takes pity on you and bends down to give soft kitten licks to your puffy clit, teasing you and coaxing you to relax, and you do.

Soon Chifuyu is fully sheathed inside your ass, his fingers leaving bruises on your hips from the tight grip he has on you. Now it was Baji’s turn and you already feel so full you have no idea how you’re going to fit Baji’s thick cock inside you too. As if he can read your mind, he speaks to you softly.

“Don’t you worry pretty girl, you can take us both, I know you can.”

He kisses you so fucking gently as his thick cockhead pushes past your entrance, you could just cry. His soft kisses distract you from the burn of the stretch, Chifuyu’s gentle voice in your ear reminding you how good you’re doing, how well you’re taking them.

Finally, finally they’re both inside you and you feel complete. They give you a little time to properly adjust before they both move in and out of you, somehow completely synchronized and in rhythm. God, it feels so fucking good. Your whole body is on fire and you can’t stop the loud moans coming from you, mixing in with theirs. Every time they move inside of you they can feel their cocks rub against each other between your fluttering walls.

You’re spread open and speared down on both their cocks, now moving fast and hard out of you, and you feel like you’ll explode. Your orgasm approaches, but it feels different, more powerful. You barely have time to warn them, but they keep drilling their hips inside you, battering your insides and hitting all those good spots that make you forget your own name. It builds so fast inside you, the feeling consuming you, and you don’t remember how to breathe.

Then it hits you. You cum so hard, spasming around their hard cocks and there’s liquid squirting out of your pretty cunt. They’re both stunned, the sight rendering them speechless and motionless. When the initial shock is over it turns them fucking feral. Both are now brutally fucking you, Baji’s practically fucking into your cervix, narrowing down on that spot that makes your eyes roll back, and Chifuyu is biting and marking you again, cock sliding in and out of your ass with no resistance.

They both know what they want, they want to make you come undone like that one more fucking time. You’re so fucked out; if they weren’t holding you so tightly you would topple over them. You babble incoherently against their skin, begging without knowing what for, but they don’t disappoint, they give you everything.

The two men kiss once again, hips not faltering once as they bring you to yet another Earth-shattering orgasm, and you squirt again.

They both know you’re at your limit, so they chase their own orgasms, both cumming almost simultaneously and filling your holes with their seeds. When they pull out, a copious amount of cum leaks out of your abused holes. Their eyes rake over your body, as if memorizing every curve and dip of your body, the way their cum is leaking down your thighs and soiling the cushions on the couch.

You’re so spent and tired, you don’t even realize they’ve picked you up and brought you to the bathroom. You vaguely hear water running and assume they’re running a warm bath for you. You’re still in a daze when they wash you, gentle hands caressing your skin and massaging the sore muscles. You just let them take care of you, it’s not like you have the strength to protest anyway.

They wrap you in blankets and kiss you every chance they get, on your cheeks, nose, lips, temples, everywhere. Someone’s hands are on you at all times, even as they struggle to get you dressed in some warm soft clothes, clumsily pulling the oversized sweater over your head. Then you’re carried back to the bed, where you find yourself between the two of them, tightly wrapped in a warm embrace and you finally allow yourself to really sleep as they quietly watch over you.

3:33AM

You stir in your sleep and feel a hand stroking your cheek. You blink slowly at Baji, who is slightly hunched over you, smiling lovingly.

“Hey, what’s up? Where are you going?” you whisper.

“I think I’m ready…”

The sentence knocks the air out of your lungs and suddenly you feel cold. You look up at him, pleading even though you know you don’t have the right to.

“But, Ba-”

“Keisuke. Call me Keisuke. Plus, I already said my goodbye to him.” He looks over at Chifuyu’s sleeping frame and smiles, but there is a tinge of sadness behind his smile. “Take good care of him for me, yea? I trust you.”

You’re graced by another one of his fanged smiles, but that doesn’t stop the tears from streaming down your face. His gentle voice doesn’t help with the feeling that’s piercing your chest, sitting in your heart like broken glass.

“I can’t say goodbye to him again. So, I’m burdening you to tell him. Tell him I’ll be thinking of him wherever I end up. I’ll be thinking of you, too.”

Another peck to your lips. Another tear rolling down your cheeks.

You should be happy for him, that he’s able to go on. That he doesn’t have to be stuck here anymore, being nothing more than an observer as life passes by and his friends grow old.

“Don’t cry sweetheart… You gave me such a precious gift, allowing me to say goodbye, to hug him one more time. To feel you, taste you. I’m the luckiest man alive... Or, wait. Luckiest ghost stuck in this plane of existence?”

His little joke makes you give a watery laugh. You don’t dare speak because your voice will give out.

“Don’t cry angel, no point in spilling tears over the dead.”

As he speaks you notice he’s starting to fade away. You reach up to him, but you can’t touch him anymore, and the realization brings even more tears to your eyes. Your lips tremble, but no words come out as he reaches for you.

All your life you’ve been in contact with lost spirits, and each time they passed through you it would feel devastatingly cold. But now it feels warm.

The last thing you see is his smile.

Your crying is enough to wake Chifuyu. His arms quickly wrap around you and pull you close. You can hear the worry in his voice as he asks what happened, but you can’t reply.

You can’t speak the words.

But he knows. He sighs deeply and kisses your temple, reassuring you that it’s okay. That he knew this was coming.

“He loves you.”

“I know.”

He holds you close, fingers intertwined with yours. You listen to his heartbeat. He pets your hair and places butterfly kisses down your shoulder.

“I’m glad I met you. I hope you’ll stay.”

Every ending is a new beginning.

𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐑! I do not own any of the characters or people mentioned in my work. these are works of pure fiction that do not reflect the views, opinions, or actions of any person, real or fictional. Furthermore, all characters I write for [thirsts, drabbles, fics, etc.] are aged up to 21 or older – they are adults with adult characteristics presented and written in adult contexts.

all rights reserved © by maliciouslove. my work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. all fanfics belong to me, please do not copy, translate nor repost the fics or files seen above as this is strictly prohibited.

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draw-you-coward · 1 year ago

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Laranthir decides to pay the ex-Marshal and Commander a visit. Just as his friends. Set post-game/out of game.

(this won't make much sense if you're not familiar with my roza series' canon but you're still welcome to read! :)

ao3

He hadn’t really been expecting the house to be so… nice.

Of course, he feels bad about thinking so a second after he does, and his guilt slips through in a reflexive wince. Even if it had been less than nice, it isn’t Trahearne and Roza’s fault that they’ve never really had a moment in their lives to reflect on the finer points of interior décor. Laranthir has been to many an ex-soldier’s abode in his time, and they tend to look rather… barren. Or when they are decorated, it’s the partner’s work, the one who stands in doorways on the precipice of being seen and watches them interact with uncertain eyes. He doesn’t know which of his friends in this pair is the one with the haunted memories—by all accounts, it should be both. And yet…

He steps past the threshold of the ‘Ghost House,’ as it has been dubbed, and finds it rather cozy, of all things. The kitchen at the entrance is tidy, if not completely free of clutter. There are pots and pans that look well looked-after hanging on hooks. There is a homely little painting of a flower on the wall. There’s even a rug.

Past the kitchen is the living room, and that is where Laranthir halts. From the corner of his eye, he catches a grey blob peeking out at him before retreating behind the stairs. The furniture doesn’t quite match, but there is furniture, and the siege weapon-turned-dining room table Roza had once told him about has been replaced by an actual table, complete with actual chairs. What truly catches his eye, however, is the large painting hanging proudly on the far wall, in full view of everyone who enters.

“I apologize for Harley. She doesn’t like strangers.” Trahearne speaks up, scratching the back of his neck. “Not that—you’re not a stranger, of course! But, ah… to her you practically are. Sorry.”

“That’s fine,” Laranthir says absently. He is still staring at the painting.

Roza, on his opposite side, puffs up his chest. “That is Cadwaladr. We liberated him.”

Laranthir slowly turns his head, keeping an eye on the giant erotic portrait of a naked sylvari looking coquettishly up at the viewer that is absolutely impossible not to notice. “‘Liberated?’”

“He is free now,” Trahearne supplies helpfully.

“Right,” Laranthir says. “That… explains nothing.”

Roza sighs and hoists himself up on the back of the sofa, apparently already tired of how long it is taking Laranthir to put things together by himself without so much of a crumb of an explanation to go by. “There was an auction some time ago to bid off the last remaining pieces of the late Confessor Caudecus’s estate. We stole Cadwaladr under cover of night, freeing him from the greedy hands of the human nobles and giving him shelter and a name to call his own. He knows he is safe here.”

“He’s a painting,” says Laranthir.

Roza slides down the sofa until only his shins hang off the back. “Then don’t go upstairs,” he says, his voice muffled. “Gods.”

Laranthir decides he doesn’t want to know what he means by that. Thankfully, Trahearne draws his attention by stepping back into the kitchen.

“Do you want tea?” he asks.

Laranthir takes a moment to reflect on how absurd it is that the first of the Firstborn is offering him of all people tea. And how additionally absurd it is that he can reply, “I would like some, but only the real stuff. None of this ‘book tea’ I’ve heard about.”

“Roza truly has been filling people’s minds with fancies,” the oldest sylvari in all of life and death’s existence complains, and pouts.

Laranthir shakes his head. It is difficult to orient himself in such an overwhelmingly domestic environment. The image—the very notion of the three of them together—invokes battle, strategies, a war map spread across the table. Roza’s face set grimly in Commander mode, an acceptance of death in his eyes and wrapped around his very soul in a way that Laranthir will never truly empathize with. Trahearne, with much the same look moments before their airship had crashed. That… had been why Laranthir had left, in a sense. Roza is right. His soul is made of too soft a stuff to be willing to grapple with such a violent life on a daily basis.

“Not chamomile, then?” Trahearne murmurs. His eyes are sharp for a moment, ancient, and he looks into Laranthir as if despite his lack of a Dream connection, he knows all that he is feeling and more.

“Um.” Laranthir blinks, kicking away the pebbles of wartime from his mind. “Do you have rooibos?”

“From… a recent trip to Elona…” Trahearne searches in a tall cabinet, arching on his feet. “Yes, we do.”

Laranthir remembers a stolen sip of mulled wine in a dark office, the clink of glass tumblers held between two fingers. He sweeps the fleeting memory with its cobwebs away, and goes to join Roza on the couch.

Roza coils into him like a cat. “Say you’ll take the house,” he purrs, continuing a conversation they’ve been having on and off these past few weeks. “Not from me, but at least with me. You are the one who forced me to buy it, and thus it is the least you can do. You can think of it as a vacation home. A winter getaway. What say you?”

Laranthir wonders if he likes being pet as well as held, and then remembers that one time he’d caught him with a collar on and quickly stops wondering. “Yes, alright,” he agrees.

Roza’s eyes shine with hope. “Really? You will?”

“Darling, do you want tea?” Trahearne calls from the kitchen. “I’m making a pot.”

“Yes, please. Thank you, love.” Roza arches his neck, looking over Laranthir’s shoulder. For a second he watches the two of them interact, cradling the care that goes into but a few simple words. Darling. Love. Of course. Whatever you need. It’s a far cry from what they were in the Pact, from Do you think he even likes me? and I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I want to bite into my heart and rip it out.

Laranthir feels a fierce pang of something—longing, perhaps, or grief, if they’re not both the same—and rides it out. Roza catches his gaze and smiles, just a little, which is something he would have never done ten years ago without threatening to hurl himself off the roof just to counterbalance it.

Roza touches his forearm. “Are you alright?” he asks. Even that is something he would never have done, leaning forwards just enough to be genuine. The feeling is grief, then.

“I’m just thinking about how we met,” Laranthir replies.

“Oh.” Roza pauses. “Naught… to do with the house? I haven’t alarmed you with my demands?”

“Asking me to take partial ownership of a luxury mountain lodge with no caveat is hardly a demand.” Laranthir leans back, throwing an arm around the back of the couch.

“Perhaps… in the way I speak, then.” Roza looks at him almost cautiously, though without any serious wariness. “Shall I rephrase myself to be more… humble?”

That makes Laranthir laugh. “It wouldn’t be like you at all,” he chuckles. “I don’t mind your manner, Roza. It has its charm.”

Roza looks off to the side, and Laranthir remembers a conversation they’d had not too long ago, when he had come to his house in the Grove with a piece of paper and trepidatious eyes, and had slowly read off to him what can be summarized as, Hello. I love you, but sometimes I feel like you speak to me as if you don’t love me. I am afraid to lose you. And that is a moment worth reflecting on, one Laranthir still thinks about often. He thinks he needs to, for both their sakes’. Roza isn’t the only person in the worlds who needs to be humbled from time to time.

He touches the hand that had touched him. “You haven’t upset me,” he reassures. “Don’t worry overmuch about your wording.”

Roza eyes him. “And are those all of your thoughts?” he asks.

“Mostly,” Laranthir replies. The question isn’t a dig—he apparently keeps a little more to himself, especially when in conversation with his former protégé, than he perhaps should. He tries not to anymore, not since he had discovered that Roza can catch himself on even invisible barbs.

Roza’s large eyes are beseeching. Laranthir is almost amused—he has truly perfected how to put on that look when he wants something. “It’s just you and Trahearne,” he elaborates. “You never had this when you were young. I think you should have.”

Roza nods. “You gave me a lot,” he offers, a suggestion in his eyes.

Laranthir takes it with a gentle smile. “I did the most I could. But what you really needed was security.”

Roza combs his hair behind his ear with his hand. Trahearne comes in with the tea, wedging the extra cup to his chest in a way that is just mundane enough to make it tragic to think about what he sacrificed his existence to. He smiles in a way that makes it even more tragic, full of ease and warmth.

“You like just a hint of sweetness, right? No milk,” he asks Laranthir.

He takes the cup. “That’s right. You’re very observant.”

“I made a note of it once. My memory nowadays is exceptional.”

“Once,” Laranthir muses. “Pale Mother, when did we ever even have the time for tea?”

Trahearne sits back in his armchair, crossing his legs. “We stole a few cups… in between meetings, wasn’t it? And during breaks? Not in the mornings—breakfast was too short.”

“And too early,” Roza pipes up. “I still don’t know how anyone made it down on a regular basis.”

“Coming from the dawn bloom?” Trahearne raises an eyebrow in a manner that is more teasing than provocative.

Roza waves his hand dismissively. “Come off with the bullshit, darling. You know, the only reason I ever came down was because it was the only guaranteed chance I had to gossip with you two cretins. You never let me say anything fun on the clock.”

“And yet you still said many ‘fun’ things,” Trahearne recalls. He sips at his tea, staring up at the ceiling. “Strange, that.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been called a cretin before,” Laranthir reflects.

“You are both very welcome.” Roza tosses his hair. “You would have been miserable without me.”

It’s probably a little true. Laranthir knows he was miserable by himself in the Pact without the two of them, but that came after knowing them. Without knowing Roza at all? There would have only been one hole in his heart instead of two. But then there would also not be this.

Trahearne has wrapped both his hands around his mug. “Thank you both,” he says quietly, “for being my friends back then. There were few who were truly willing.”

Laranthir makes a noise in his throat. “People liked you,” he assures.

“Yes, but liking and befriending your boss are two very different things.” Trahearne’s mouth twists in a sly smile. “If not for your unique view on interpersonal relationships, Laranthir, you would have done much the same as your fellow soldiers. I greatly appreciate that you chose not to.”

His ‘unique view?’ Laranthir blinks at him, trying to decipher what that means. On his right, Roza hides a smile in a sip.

Trahearne catches his expression and offers up one that suggests he has caught himself in his own net. “You, ah… were never truly one for formalities.”

“I have them where it counts,” Laranthir says cautiously.

“In the Vigil, perhaps. But I don’t think you were ever keen on that sort of thing. You were always quite chatty when you were in a good mood, you know. Freely offering your opinion without asking for permission, and telling me about this and that. It was when you quieted down into the ‘Yes sir,’s that I knew something was off. It was very helpful in gauging your mood, actually. Roza, for one, gave me practically nothing to go by.”

“Damn straight,” Roza mutters.

Laranthir opens and closes his mouth. “I…” Was he truly like that?

Trahearne smiles at him reassuringly. “I welcomed it, even if I never said so. Thank you.”

That eases him a little, although the soreness of embarrassment is still warm. Then Roza pipes up, “You were even worse with me.”

“What?” Laranthir squeaks.

“You always spoke to me as if we weren’t working, even in front of Trahearne! He would send me off to investigate a cursed swamp or something and then you’d go, ‘Don’t forget to bring an extra change of clothes.’ Like I was a child! Honestly.” Roza huffs.

“I didn’t always do that. I sometimes did it, and it was because you needed the reminder! You were a year old, Roza.”

“If we are thinking of the same swamp,” Trahearne murmurs, “You actually did forget to bring spare clothes, darling. Apologies.”

Roza scoffs. “W—I am being ganged up on. This isn’t fair,” he declares. He crosses his legs dramatically, spilling tea over his lap and making a small noise when it hits him.

Trahearne looks at him in some concern. “Did you hu—”

“Nope,” Roza says in the tight manner of someone who just spilled a scalding hot beverage over himself.

Trahearne sets his mug down on the coffee table, getting up and reaching for Roza’s. “Let me see. Come.”

Roza hands it to him with miserable eyes. Trahearne kneels down in front of him, hissing through his teeth in sympathy when he sees the size of the spill.

“Laranthir, do you mind going upstairs and fetching a spare pair of lounge pants?” he asks. “They should be in the third drawer of the large dresser.”

“Of course.” Laranthir puts his tea down and rises. “Do you have ointment?”

“It’s in the kitchen—we’ll grab it.”

“Don’t mind the wall art,” Roza says, peering over Trahearne’s head. “And, ah—Laranthir. I really did appreciate it, back then. The way you checked in on me. Thank you.”

Laranthir smiles at him and heads for the stairs. Beady eyes watch him as he nears, before Harley mewls and patters off towards her keepers. Decorating the stairway wall are… ah. Cadwaladr’s friends, it looks like, in equal states of propriety (or lack thereof).

The bedroom is warm, lived-in, and feels overwhelmingly private. Laranthir moves with haste, half because he feels as if he is intruding, and half because there is another portrait on the wall, one that they must have commissioned this time, because its subject is currently downstairs suffering from a mild burn. It’s at least tasteful, cutting off at his hips, but while Laranthir loves Roza dearly, he absolutely doesn’t need to see him with that expression. He hurriedly locates the drawer, grabs a handful of soft grey fabric, and leaves the room before he takes in any additional details, such as what may or may not be lying on the nightstand.

He pauses on the stair landing. Harley is licking Roza’s thigh, and he is giggling at her while Trahearne is trying to gently pull her away. Laranthir feels something in him soften at the scene, and he shares a look of accord with a nearby painting of a sylvari running naked in a field before he continues down the stairs.

#roza #laranthir #trahearne #gw2 #writing #drabble #i hope people think about this little canon sometimes and smile :)#i still remember that ask i got about trahearne and his ghost house with his ghost cats... treasure it

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jumpedthenfell-13 · 30 days ago

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Thinking about Nancy in my au where Robin dies post-s4 and oughhhhh

It’s around a month or so after she breaks up with Jonathan that Nancy realizes she’s in love with Robin. So, naturally, the next step is to subtly flirt with her, right?

Except that Robin doesn’t get it right away. So Nancy pulls her aside one day and, very firmly, tells her that she’s wanted to kiss her for a long time. Robin is flustered but eventually admits that she reciprocates the feelings, and they get together.

And things are good. Nancy hasn’t been this happy in a long time. They’re doing it all in secret, of course — not even Steve knows yet, which has been a struggle for Robin since the start of their relationship. But the two of them love each other, and they kiss behind closed doors and hold hands under the table and smile softly at each other when the others aren’t looking.

Things are good. They’re happy.

Until Nancy goes on patrol with Steve, Robin, Mike, Dustin, and Joyce. Until they split up into pairs; Nancy with Mike, Joyce with Dustin, and of course, Steve with Robin.

Two out of three pairs head to their meeting spot after they all take a look around. Steve and Robin are missing.

They go looking, and they hear sobbing. Mike sees the body of a demogorgon, and nearby Nancy can see Steve sitting on the ground. She approaches, and—

And Robin lies lifeless in his arms.

So, okay, cool, her secret girlfriend is suddenly just dead. Awesome. That’s definitely what she needed.

She tells Steve, eventually, that she loved Robin. Not that they dated. Not that Robin was anxious about telling him. Just that she loved her. She tries not to laugh a little when he says that Robin loved her, too; she knows that.

She can’t bear to be the one to tell Max, when she eventually wakes up. But she feels guilty when the group leaves Steve to do it — although not guilty enough to do it herself.

Max tells her, eventually, that she saw Robin. A few times, actually. That she was a ghost, sometimes. But eventually she just sighs and admits that she’s pretty sure she was just dreaming.

Three years pass, each one as agonizingly slow as the last. Nancy and Steve and Dustin spend the anniversaries of Robin’s death together. They grieve, and they grow, and they fight, and by November 5th, 1989, they have their plan fully formed.

Nancy sees Steve sneak off to Robin’s memorial space that night. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t follow him, doesn’t try to stop him. But she sees him.

They kill Vecna the next day. It all ends on November 6th, 1989. Nancy thinks it’s ironic.

Finally, she leaves Hawkins. She ends up with an apartment somewhere else, most likely a big city where she can be a reporter. Of course, she still calls everyone and visits Hawkins and lets them visit her. And she still meets up with Steve and Dustin every year, on the anniversary of Robin’s death, the way the whole group gets together for the birthdays she never got to see.

She grows, and she lives, and she loves. But nothing, none of the people she meets, none of the experiences she has, will ever compare to the one she never got to keep.

It’s in her apartment one night, watching some bad TV show and eating fast food, that Nancy feels a presence. It’s familiar, in a way. It feels like Robin — it feels like home.

But Robin is dead. So obviously it isn’t her.

But later that night, she finds an old photo of her and Robin. It’s not where she left it, much more out in the open. But, again, Robin is dead and gone and buried. So it isn’t her.

(But if Nancy is wrong about that, she’ll never know. If Max seeing Robin was real and not just a series of dreams, she’ll never know. If none of them have been alone this whole time, they’ll never know.

And if Robin watches over her now with a fond smile, forever eighteen and warmer than she ever thought she would be, Nancy will never know.)

#did i make this post already? yes #BUT. i switched up what happens lmfao #this felt more angsty #stranger things #robin buckley #nancy wheeler #ronance <3 #dead!robin #ao3 #fanfic #stranger things au #stranger things fic

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adolin · 2 years ago

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the locked tomb holiday exchange rec list (part 2)

Some favourites from a first partial skim of works posted for @tlt-holiday-exchange. Find the entire collection HERE. Find my first rec list HERE.

art fills

Do you know, Ninth, I've always wanted to challenge you? “aka a little sketch of a sweaty mid-practice moment:” Gorgeous, fierce Coronabeth.

hold their lives from a string. “God and his two dead kids.” John, Ulysses & Titania. Haunting and gorgeous.

John is actually cybersmith, send tweet. Or: memes. For the prompt: “ John trying to tell Gideon the specifics of a ten thousand year old internet drama that he thinks people on twitter had incorrect opinions on” :D

oh, to be proud of one's handiwork! Harrow/Ianthe, art of Ianthe’s makeover of Harrow in HtN.

The Birthday Supper. Nona is at the beach. it's her birthday. The composition looks suspiciously reminiscent on da Vinci's The Last Supper. Varun is there.

fic fills

Bar the Doors (Let the Games Begin). Corona/Ianthe, pre-canon, codependent incest ft. vaginal fisting.

bluebells. Modern AU, Mercy/Cytherea. “There is Cristabel, and then there isn't. Mercymorn is in therapy about it when she meets a woman named Cytherea who likes to garden.” Beautifully written, 10/10 will murder you.

Both halves sword and shield. Camilla/Palamedes role reversal; backstory fic up to GtN with necro!Camilla and cavalier Pal.

Can it really hurt you if you’re already dead? HtN canon compliant for the Canaan House river bubble. While Harrow is away, Magnus and the other ghosts have begun to realize what's happened to them. While Harrow is away, the silent specter of her true cavalier drifts through the halls.

composed of shadows, surrenders, offered love. Pre-NtN, Camilla and Palamedes navigate bodysharing and looking after an amnesiac body on a refugee planet. Cam/Pal (bodysharing masturbation ftw).

Elision. Immediately after NtN, Corona/Ianthe. Codependent incesty twins + smutty angst.

i will stay here when she goes. Anastasia/Alecto, set on the Ninth before it was the Ninth and before there was a tomb. Really beautifully written, this is going to stay with me for a while.

i’m almost me again (she’s almost you). The story behind Ianthe and Kiriona’s friendship bracelets. Ft. Gideon/Harrow feelings, pining, tentative friendship of convenience between two deeply messed up women, casual slut shaming of God. I absolutely adored this one!

Incident Report. Judith/Coronabeth, written as a mission report from Judith’s POV of that time Corona seduced her. This is HILARIOUS, in the best possible way.

John 69:420. Look at those numbers. Look at them. This fic is pure delicious crack and Tazmuir would be proud

lay all your love on me. Nona/Camilla, Nona/Palamedes, sort of Camilla/Palamedes. “Palamedes and Camilla exchange more kisses with Nona’s help. The kisses turn into something more.” Set pre NtN, absolutely lovely.

rest your head for just five minutes. Camilla and Palamedes through the years, three first nights spent in new lodgings together. Bittersweet and fluffy, canon compliant.

some assembly required. Paul/Dulcie, Paul and Dulcinea build IKEA furniture in the River. Smut, flesh magic, lots of feelings.

Technically a boner. Gideon/Harrow. “Camilla and Palamedes make an attempt to make Gideon and Harrow be less stupid about their feelings resulting in Harrow making a big dick skeleton to absolutely rail Gideon.” (YES it’s exactly what you’d expect from the summary :D)

ubi tu gaius. John/Alecto, or: a love story to end the universe. “You wrenched out my heart, put out every flame between our joined fingertips. With newly made eyes I raised my gaze to meet you, and I thought—here you are.” Gorgeous writing and wonderful Alecto POV.

you haven’t changed a bit. Jarpedon crack treated seriously, I haven’t laughed this hard at a fic in months. Also it was my gift for the exchange, give it love <3

your churning, wracking wheel. “ Lord Magus John Gaius has some with his entourage come to Rhamnous House because they have miracles, but need money, and the people at Rhamnous House have money, but need a miracle.” John and the Lyctors as a creepy Victorian cult, ft. inhuman Alecto. Temporary death, love as destruction, gorgeous, haunting prose

[recs part one] [exchange wrap post]

#fic recs #tlt fic #long post #fic exchange #tlt holiday ex 2022 #the locked tomb #tlt

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roosterbruiser · 1 year ago

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this post is for Landslide baddies and Landslide baddies ONLY 🫵🤨

remember when I talked about writing a bunch of alternate versions of Landslide? and one of them was what if her and Jake met first?

while that will never be written (I love Landslide so much and I don't want to change anything about it sorry love you) mother has decided to feed her children a few crumbs....

here were the tentative plans for the story where her and Jake end up together (and they're largely unfinished, literally just crumbs!!!):

-starts on December 2016, so only a few months after Maggie's death

-her and Jake meet on NYE so she’s like three/four weeks pregnant but has no clue obvi

-they meet outside The Hard Deck. she isn't going in--she's just kind of standing around the entrance. she's not super fucked up yet, but she's high. he gets to talking to her, obvi thinks she's gorgeous and a conquest. but then cut to the chase bc she's like come back to my house and who is he to disagree?

-and then when they get back there, instead of having sex right away, maybe he notices that her air conditioner in the living room isn’t working. and he fixes it while she kind of just stands there. and then maybe he’s even like looking around her house a little bit while she goes into the bathroom and takes some more pills and he sees all the pictures on the walls and then realizes that he’s with Clover Ledger—whose sister is dead as of recently. like, super recently.

-so then maybe when he goes into the bedroom, she’s waiting for him, naked. and she’s kind of like not really there. he doesn’t want to take advantage of her and feels quite sick about this whole situation. and she’s high so she’s not much help. so maybe he just covers her up and she is able to whisper, could you just stay? and he does stay. he just holds her.

-and the next morning, maybe he orders in some breakfast and sits in the living room while he waits for her to wake up. so then he starts playing a record and it happens to be Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. she wakes up to her sisters song playing in the living room. at first, maybe she thinks it’s a ghost or something because she can’t see him. but he walks up the stairs holding pancakes and eggs and hash browns. then they eat breakfast together.

-he can tell that she’s deeply sad, deeply wounded. she's very obviously self-destructing.

-they should have one scene where she’s slightly sober. and maybe it’s the first time she’s laughed in a long time—he’s made her coffee and they’re just chatting about the academy and school and where they grew up and stuff. breakfast accidentally spans out across the entire day. they don’t even kiss, barely even touch. it’s just a pure interaction. she gives him her number and he promises to call.

-I think he is enamored with her already and he doesn't even have the best version of her yet.

-they end up hanging out maybe once or twice more. maybe they even have a random meeting at the grocery store or something. it’s kind of a weird fated thing.

-but then she kind of falls off the map after that. so like he calls her and texts her and she doesn’t answer. and then he finally swings by her house, not trying to be creepy. he is genuinely worried something happened to her.

-finally Bob answers her phone in like late March and there’s a misunderstanding because Bob thinks Jake is just another guy that’s taken advantage of her but Jake has to tell him that they were friends and blah blah blah. so Bob says the next time he sees Faye, he is going to ask about Jake and then maybe he will let Jake know what the next move is. Bob slays.

-so he waits about another week or two and then gets a phone call from Faye’s phone—it’s Bob on the other end of the line. he tells Jake that Faye said if he really wanted to come see her, he could come during visiting hours. he tells Jake that she is in an in-patient treatment facility in Arizona. then he tells Jake to call if he has any questions.

-Jake can’t stop thinking about Faye. she really touched him deeply. so he does it one weekend—he goes and visits her. se hops on a plane and goes to the treatment facility and sees her. she looks better physically—she really does. she doesn’t look as dead as she did before. she’s awkward and embarrassed and broken and he’s just happy to see her—he doesn’t care that it’s in a rehab facility. she tells him almost as soon as she sees him that she’s pregnant—and then he can actually see it. when he visits her in late May, she’s about 14 weeks pregnant.

-he is randomly all in. he calls her when he can and they have long conversations on the phone. he visits her whenever he can, too—somehow always missing Bob. he is unspokenly there for her for her pregnancy, too. he wants to be there for everything she’s going through.

-she leaves rehab when she is about 20 weeks pregnant. she goes home. he helps out around her house. and then they start spending like a lot of time with each other. like they’re kind of just best friends. he doesn’t really know a lot of people in San Diego and she doesn’t have her sister or Bob at the moment. or her family. so they just start doing everything with each other. he helps with things like her air conditioning and just stuff around the house.

-she’s starting to prepare for the baby. she doesn’t want to force anything on him, but he insists that he wants to help her. so he starts going with her to pick out baby clothes and nursery items and all that good stuff. and then eventually he starts going to her appointments with her whenever he can. he will go out and buy her pickles in the middle of the night. he is the one who tells her that she should start going to childbirth classes. and he shows up for her there, acts as her partner.

-as it progresses, he’s still just there. he’s falling in love with her for sure, but more than anything wants to just support her. he cares about her a lot. she always jokes that he should go out and find a girl and sleep around and go crazy but no—he just wants to be there with her, feeling the baby kick, doing whatever she wants to do.

-a point of contention is that he is in love with her but she needs him as a friend so desperately. like she doesn’t want to believe that he is only there to fuck her. and he does love being her friend but is truly also in love with her.

-when she goes into labor, she’s a little bit early. I’m thinking she goes into labor on August 1st, just after midnight. and she drives herself to the hospital and is there for a few hours before Jake figures out what’s going on. and he only figures out because she tells Bob and Bob is scrambling because he was supposed to be flying in in a few weeks instead of August 1st. so he calls Jake to be his placeholder.

-he's there through everything--even the emergency c-section. he strokes her hair and even manages to get her to laugh a few times. he gets to see her face the first time she hears her son cry. they are both overwhelmed with emotion, crying and laughing, totally shocked and in awe.

-he is very little because he was early, but he's healthy. Jake is actually the first person who gets to hold him (partly because Faye is numb and strapped down and partly because all of the staff thinks he's dad and neither him or Faye is correcting it). he watches her kiss him and love him and oh, boy. he's in real trouble now. all of this feels too good, too weirdly good. too natural.

-she names the little boy Bowie Palmer Ledger.

-she keeps expecting Jake to hit the road. but he never does. he leaves for a half hour to go home and grab a bag and then sets up camp at her bedside. he's totally obsessed.

-the last night in the hospital, in the afterglow of it all, they admit their feelings for each other. but Faye says that she's a mother now and she can't be getting involved with anyone just yet. plus Jake is the best friend she's had since Bob and she doesn't want to lose that. Jake agrees with her. they both decide it's best to be friends for a the time being. but they do share one tiny little kiss.

-but the biggest issue is: Jake is absolutely in love with her. like more than he's ever loved anyone ever before. he has no desire to leave whatsoever. he wants to stay with her and raise this fucking baby—and he knows that’s crazy.

feel free to send me any thoughts on this....maybe we could expand on some things together....

#landslide #rumours universe #jake hangman seresin #hangman seresin #jake seresin #q

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millylotus · 2 years ago

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Story Index

I’m going to be posting a bunch of stories right about now, and I want to have it all lined up so people can find them easier. Hope ya like ‘em.

Master Posts

POLL FIC MASTER POST [specifically this poll]

DeadLights [Duke Thomas x Danny Fenton | DP x DC]

Fic Prompt Master Posts *TO BE MADE*

Poems

Sol Born of a Wish

The Nebula

The Coven in the Woods

The Rabbits are not what it seems to be

The Desperate Broken Prince

The Demon Heart [Talia Al Ghul]

The Sunspot Prince [I’ve always liked bringing up the fact that Duke Thomas is probably a minor god]

In Madness

I call for a sacrifice to be my savior: my he be swift and kind (We worked on Tanka poems in class today :D)

In Madness (Dionysus invites Ariadne into his world)

Princess Most Holy (Ariadne’s life in one poem)

Little Brother (Ariadne mourns the Minotaur)

A Ring Lost In A Decade Is Still Lost (Ariadne misplaces the engagement Ring Dionysus gave her)

Parking Lots, Angry Birds, Forgotten Gods (A mortal approaches Ariadne at midnight in a Target parking lot)

Sherlock & Killer

Sherlock : Francesca “Frankie” Linly Bonet (Frankie’s back story and the songs I used to make her)

Ghost Zone Lore

How Ghost Are Born/Spawned

How to care for Young Ghosts [Lair]

Danielle’s Rebirth

Valerie Spots them

Ghost Classification

The GS Batfamily AUs

I have a google spreadsheet document that I keep all my AUs in for the batfamily.

BASE AU

Bat-Family Ages

Inheritance In The Bat-Family

Cullen Row / Mockingbird

New Baby Jitters

The Malones

Miscellaneous AUs

Madrigal Batfamily

Circus Robins

Birds Migrating East

This is a Justice League and Harry Potter, world mash crossover fic. Where every bat has some form of magic or another. And Tim, Steph, Duke, and Damien are sent to protect Harry in his fifth year. While Zatanna joins the Order. And Constantine infiltrates the Death Eaters.

Lore

Chapter I [May]

Chapter II [Four weeks later/July]

Chapter III [That Night/July]

Chapter IV [Three weeks later/June]

Chapter XI [Couple Minutes Before the Arrival of the Birds, and Batdad]

Chapter XII [In Number 12 Grimmauld Place]

Chapter XIII [Right when Dumbledore walked in]

Short Stories

Prompt: Five passengers are riding a train when something happens (It’s a zombie apocalypse and someone’s water broke)

The 8th and 9th wonders (Don’t really know how to explain this one)

Cassandra Sanvanterules (DnD character I was thinking about using)

Saint Lucifer (I remember writing a lot of this down on paper but I don’t feel like pulling out all my old journals)

Ender Bunn (One of the stories I finished for a Minecraft OC… I’ve changed them if your wondering)

Liminal Sanctuaire (A little story of puppy love that I had to make for school)

what a way to go. (A captive escapes their hell, but in the vast emptiness of space, they find no one) WARNINGS: TW SU!CIDE, TW SELF MUTILATION, TW SELF HARM, TW SELF CANNIBALISM

Chills (Just two love bros playfighting, and drinking beer)

But Never Enough (Abandoned Story Idea)

Boy Isn’t Right

Hello Lovely

But Never Enough

Unfinished Stories/Fanfiction

Moon Goddesses (Creation Myth)

A Kingdom Old and Forgotten (Was supposed to be a DSMP fanfic set in the modern world thousands of year after the DSMP fell, but then I got bored)

Jordan Needs to Move (In an apartment complex AU where all the MCYT families live together. Jordan moves away from his wife after divorce to Dream Family Apartments. (Not actually owned by Dream, but by his dad)) [Fanfiction]

I’m Not Gonna Be the Side-Character Anymore (A stereotypical Manhwa Harem goes wrong when one of the Harem boys defects and leaves)

The Animals Feed (Noble families are comprised of the Chinese zodiacs. And they all choose their heir, by making the twelve children (all of different zodiacs) fight to the death in different ways)

The Time of Fea (A story of two sisters who run away into the Fea populated woods)

OCs from a long ass time ago. That I honestly forgot existed.

Spirit of Bleak Winter & Knight of Shadows [DC x DP, Ship: Bruce/Danny - Frostbat] (Just a one-shot for a prompt I saw and loved)

Absolutely Smitten [Rottmnt x Into the Spiderverse Ship: Mikey/Miles - MarbledSpider]

Secret Son John Constantine [DpxDc John Constantine is the Everlasting Trio's magical baby child]

Super Villain Summer Internships [DpxDc Everlasting Trio go to Gotham & run amuck]

#hub post #master post #fanfiction #unfinished fanfictions #original story #unfinished stories #millywrites

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apatheticlexicographer · 2 years ago

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BYLER FIC REC WEEK 2023 DAY 6: CANON DIVERGENCE recs

without heart by aceoflanterns my beloved @aceoflanterns

will-centric; plot. a “will gets vecnaed” fic of a fashion. it’s from june, so it diverges from canon after V1. if u like fics that lean into will’s connection to the upside down, this is for u!!! the way this captivated me like honestly. i don’t wanna say too much because honestly the joy is in how cryptic it is. multichapter, complete

Crescent by disaster_energy

will-centric; plot. more post-V1 will gets vecnaed / will’s connection to the upside down!!! this one is a bit more centered around the vecnafication aspect. twoshot, complete

them’s the breaks by emelinelou

mike-centric; plot. will develops the ability to shift in and out of the upside down and sculpt it. he’s insanely closed off about literally everything that happens to him and mike only manages to force himself into the picture by sheer stubbornness. some of the best characterizations i’ve ever seen of them. explores will’s more self-sacrificial tendencies and mike’s unrelenting loyalty. multichapter, hasn’t updated in a while but still ongoing

Time After Time by SuzieBurself

mike-centric; plot. vecna sends mike back in time to the night will went missing, making him an impostor in his own life. angst!!! mike is cursed by the knowledge of what is to come and also the demon man in his head. multichapter, hasn’t updated for a while but not officially discontinued

i know, i know, i know by aude_sapere

will-centric; plot. yet another will gets vecnaed / will’s connection to the upside down fic, but this one is long as hell /pos. set after V1. will gets to go a little apeshit with his powers, and there’s some good wonder twins content. longshot, complete

hold your breath (and fall) by venusperia

mike-centric (mostly); plot. the party never encounters el and will is never rescued from the upside down. his friends and family have been grieving his supposed death for years. what they don’t know is that will, el and barb have been living together as found family in the upside down the whole time. el and barb manage to escape when the gates start opening, but will isn’t so lucky. i’ve seen several “will spent years in the upside down” fics, but this is the only one i’ve seen where he isn’t alone there. the codependent dynamic between the three is unique and the plot is captivating. multichapter, ongoing

bloody hands and soft lips by joyfullyrissa

will-centric; plot. THEE will byers timeloop fic. he’s stuck repeating the first day of mike’s visit over, and over, and over. across the loops mike slowly opens up to him —not that he’ll remember it the next day. there’s a lot of focus on mental health issues, and it’s not just timeloop-related. it slays okay idk what to tell u. multichapter, complete

bury me in your heart by Cherop

mike-centric; maybe plot? in a world with no upside down, when will goes missing he really does die. the day after they fish his body out of the quarry, mike stumbles across his ghost on the roadside. obvious MCD warning, although will isn't gone-gone (yet??? idk what direction the story will take for him). cute miwi, with the constant undertone misery at knowing will is dead and only mike can see him. multichapter, ongoing

growing up (but not old) by veraity

will-centric; plot. timetravel back to miwi era fic but this time it's will going back to just before s2!!! my poor boy is going THROUGH it and i cannot wait to see how it spirals. multichapter, ongoing

#byler #bylerficrecweek #bylerficrecweek2023

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garden-bug · 1 year ago

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Let's fix Star Wars!!

(I said at the start of the summer and wrote nearly 100k.) (It needed a lot of fixing ok.)

Here is a fix-it fanfic but it's for three series and the entire sequel trilogy. I will be posting about this more because I am determined to finish it soon (and then redraft it wooo!).

Description:

Somehow, Darth Maul returns. (As a force ghost.) (Somewhere Ahsoka thinks is probably the living Force.)

This changes everything.

In other words: The Mandalorian S3 but make it Din/Luke; the Ahsoka series but make it EZRA AND THRAWN SPACE ADVENTURES; and ‘somehow Palpatine returns’ is ripped to shreds because I connect plot points and add new characters.

Chapter excerpts below!

Chapter 1 excerpt:

“Not as far as I remember. Oh, wait! I wanted to rule the galaxy… shame.” He rolls his shoulders again. “Can’t do much about that now. Being dead is quite demotivating.” “I’m sorry for your lack of motivation.” “Don’t make fun, Lady Tano. Have sympathy for this poor, dead, ex-Sith.” “I guess 'dead' is your only personality trait now.” “You preferred me before?” Ahsoka grimaces. She can’t argue with that. “No, sorry." “I will be honest,” Maul says, “I haven’t felt this peaceful since before I lost the lower half of my body.” Ahsoka fixes him with a reproving look. "You were Palpatine's apprentice then." “Yes.” Maul sighs wistfully, chin sinking into his hand. Ahsoka rubs her eyes. Maul has already given her a headache and they've only been talking for a minute. There is still nothing but darkness and flickering light, and Maul’s steady, yellow eyes. “Do you know where you are?” Ahsoka asks. “Why should I help you figure this out? You didn’t help me once. Also, in case I haven’t made it abundantly clear, I’m dead, so I don’t care what happens to you or anyone else who is still alive. Some of us aren’t so lucky, you know?” "If we figure this out, maybe I'll get peace. I really don't want you as a voice in my head." Maul grimaces. “B’ahor,” he mutters. “In the Al'har system?” "There is a dark power on that planet… I sense evil, but also… something else." His eyes burn. "Perhaps you will go there and die. That would solve this problem quickly."

Chapter 2 excerpt:

“What was that?” Mayan asks as they hurry towards the mountain. “That feeling… the…” “The Force,” says Ahsoka. “The Force exists all around us. It is created by all living things, it moves through them, and it binds the whole galaxy together.” “How do you know about it?” “I was trained as a Jedi.” Ahsoka is surprised when her face remains impassive. There is no flicker of recognition, no spark of awe in her eyes. She just nods. “In my village, people like that are called world breakers.” “There are more of you?” “There were.” Mayan looks away. “The legends say that world breakers can take a planet in their hand and shatter it.” “That's... impossible,” Ahsoka says. She wonders why she had never considered that remote planets may have different legends about the Force. “According to the stories, we are children of the Great Universe. If we follow its will, it will guide us... That's how it used to be.” Ahsoka means to ask if there is more to these legends, but Mayan comes to a halt suddenly and points to the rock face in front of them. “This is where the curse is,” says the girl. “Yes.” Ahsoka can sense it too. This is where the Force has been leading them. It reeks of Sith and of evil. Something terrible must have happened here.

Chapter 4 excerpt:

Fleeing vehicles kick up a cloud of dust, and Luke jumps up onto the roof of the adjacent building, crouching close in preparation to drop down. Sweat licks the back of his neck. For a stupid moment he thinks how this is the complete wrong time of day to be out, when both suns are high in the sky. Then he leaps. There isn’t even time to be annoyed as the roller-wheeler careers around the corner. “Peli, I told you to keep him inside!” “He wanted to see his dad!” Peli screams. Luke sends Grogu a withering look. The little guy sticks his tongue out from where he is held securely in the Mandalorian’s arms. “I am so sorry,” says the Mandalorian. Luke doesn’t even know where to start. “It’s alright, can you hang on to him?” The roller-wheeler jolts suddenly, and Grogu squeals in what’s probably excitement. “Yeah, but you can’t get through their shield with your lightsaber. I tried with mine.” “Ok.” Luke tugs the vehicle slightly to adjust its course. “We’re gonna have to talk about why you have a lightsaber later.” He senses annoyance from the helmet. “Did you kill a Jedi?” “Won it from Moff Gideon.” “You defeated Moff Gideon?” “Watch it.” The Mandalorian blasts a Pyke who was aiming for Luke from the top of a building. “Good shot.” The Mandalorian nods. Next thing they know, a Pyke has taken out the droid, and Luke somersaults off the roller-wheeler before it flips. He plants his feet in the ground and catches the vehicles momentum that everyone lands relatively unscathed. The Mandalorian caught Grogu immediately, so Luke draws them towards him, until his hand meets bescar. “Nice catch,” says the Mandalorian. Luke grins. “Is Grogu ok?” Grogu pops up over the Mandalorian’s shoulder. He’s a little shaken, but a smile breaks across his face when he sees Luke. Peli spits out a tooth from where she’s lying.

Chapter 5 excerpt:

“We’re even,” Boba decides. He makes a hand gesture for the blue liquor, which Fennec tosses to him with a roll of her eyes. Boba places his helmet beside him on the seat and takes a swing, acid-scarred face regarding him cooly. Luke bows respectfully. “Thanks a bunch.” Boba waves an arm dismissively. “Go see the little green guy.” He turns to leave, but Boba isn’t done. He comments, offhandedly, “I thought you would’ve gotten a few more scars since the last time I saw you.” Luke turns, puzzled. “Why?” “Haven’t you been Jedi-ing?” “Jedi-ing...” “Saving the galaxy.” “We... I did that.” “What about Tatooine?” Luke’s smile falters. “Tch. ∂ι’кυтℓα נєтιιѕє.” “What's that s'posed to mean?” “It means I don’t like you.” “He called the Jedi useless,” says Ahsoka. Luke meets her eyes, trying to stifle the burn in his skin. Ahsoka clears her throat. “We’ve been gone a long time.” “That’s why I want to rebuild what was lost.” Ahsoka looks at him for a long moment. “I know.”

Chapter 6 excerpt:

“σяιтѕιя!” Koska yells. “Bo-Katan Kryze!” Bo-Katan’s eyes widen, she drops her gaze and breathes softly. “Stop yelling.” “You… you…” Koska clenches her fists. “иιвяαℓ! αяυєт!” She kicks the metal desk, exclaiming incoherencies. Bo-Katan shakes her head. “What do you want me to do?” She sits back, hands out. “I don’t have any way to unite our people, and Mandalore is inhabited by a clan of psychos.” Koska’s lip trembles, but she bites it down. “We were going to follow you. We were going to get our home back,” her voice cracks. “Don’t tell me it’s all over now. After everything we’ve been through to get here.” “Mandalore, and my legacy, is dead,” Bo-Katan seethes. “Even with the darksaber, would we be able to subdue, or, live alongside that… Clan куяαу¢, knowing what they did to Mandalore?” “Just get the darksaber from him!” Koska says. “If you get it our clan will stop kriffing falling apart and we can take them down.” Bo-Katan slumps into her hand. “This is why we fell apart in the first place. We fought each other instead of the Empire. It’s not a path I am willing to go down.” “The others are,” Koska states. Bo-Katan looks up. “And they will,” Koska continues, eyes hard. “That’s why you need to decide what to do now before they decide for you, and we end up going down a path of self-destruction. While they’ll still listen to you, choose.”

Chapter 8 excerpt:

Ahsoka clenches her jaw. “Maul,” she grits out, “what did you do?” “Em, an… indoctrination ceremony? It was mostly just for fun,” he assures her. “Ezra thought it would be fun.” “You indoctrinated him into your clan?” “That’s…” Maul blinks. “Yes. He could be considered a son of Dathomir.” “And that’s why the night sister magic took him to Dathomir.” Ahsoka groans. “Well, this was a complete waste of time! Now I have to deal with Thrawn and get out of here somehow.” Maul nods, as though that had been his plan all along. “How long has it been since they returned from the unknown regions?” he asks. “I don’t know.” “Find out,” insists Maul. “Spending too long on Dathomir with the spirits of the night sisters… would not be advisable.” Ahsoka narrows her eyes. “How so?” “They will attempt to resurrect, using whatever means they can get their hands on. I wouldn’t be surprised if they sacrifice his mortal body to gain strength to cross back over into the physical world.” “Are they immortal?” “They are… like Force ghosts that can absorb energy. With enough energy, they can reconstruct themselves, piece by piece, until all they are lacking is a physical body. They will need many sacrifices to resurrect fully.” “Hold on… could you resurrect?” “I would prefer not to,” Maul says simply. Ahsoka’s eyes widen. “Okay… why?” “Haven’t you asked enough personal questions?” he snaps. “Leave. I’m busy trying to wallow in misery.” “Sure, okay.” Ahsoka shrugs. “But if you want to talk about it—” “I said go,” Maul hisses.

Chapter 9 excerpt:

The smaller tunnel winds further down, deeper into the centre of the planet. There’s the slightest movement in the air, vibration, and Luke recognises the energy of life forces and stops walking suddenly. “There are… people down here,” he says. Din casts him a dubious helmet tilt, and they continue until it is unmistakable. Voices echo through the tunnels, many, it seems, perhaps a covert worth. “Do you wanna go say hello?” Luke asks. “Perhaps they can help us find the living waters.” The tunnel breaks off into several other small passageways. This close, Luke can pick out the soft glow of light, and he gestures for Din to switch his torch off. When he does, they are plunged into darkness, but gradually, Luke’s eyes adjust to the light, and he leads Din by the arm towards the light and the voices. The voices hush suddenly. Luke pauses, he wonders if they should stop, go back, maybe confront these people somewhere they have more of an advantage. But Din steps past him, leaving Grogu in Luke’s arms. “тισи’¢υу?” “иι αℓιιт мαи∂σ.” “иυ тισи’αℓιιт ѕσℓυѕ?” “иαу¢… αѕн’α∂.” “к’σℓαя.” Din steps into the room. Luke follows after him. Inside the large cave, is a group of Mandalorians. One of them stands abruptly, blaster raised. “тισи’ѕσℓєт?” he barks. “єни,” Din responds. “тισи’ναιι?” Din reaches for Grogu, and takes him into his arms. “иєя ιк’αα∂. иι куя'тαуℓ gαι ѕα’α∂,” he says. The Mandalorian stares at them for a moment, then sighs raggedly, and sinks back onto the rock. The others in his group relax, but keep their eyes fixed on the newcomers. Their armour is in a state of disrepair, some of it clearly salvaged from the ruins. Some wear their helmets while others do not. The faces that Luke can see are pale and gaunt, as though they haven’t seen the sunlight in a long time and their torn clothes hang off their body in a way that makes Luke think of skeletons. “Do you speak basic?” Din asks. “We haven’t,” the Mandalorian says harshly, “since a long time.” His eyes are dark, hooded, his hair matted and entirely grey. “We are looking for the living waters,” Din explains. “Do you know how to get there?”

Chapter 10 excerpt:

Mayan has gotten better at interpreting binary speech, but she’s not quite there yet. It takes her a moment to figure out what the little beeps mean as she stuffs some out-of-date rations into a makeshift pack. “Um… we’re going to rescue Ahsoka.” R2 spins excitedly. Then he stops and says, “…. --- .--?" “I don’t know how.” Mayan ties her boots. “By now, the blue man will think we’ve gone, so we can surprise him, right?” R2 whistles uncertainly. “Well… there’s no other choice.” Mayan grips the lightsaber in her hand. “You said Luke can’t come… so…” R2 bumps into her as she walks towards the ladder. “Ow, that was my toe.” Mayan groans. “What is it?” “-.. .- -. --. . .-. --- ..- …!” “I know it’s dangerous. You didn’t want Luke to come because he’s an important Jedi, right?” Mayan squeezes past him. “If the blue man finds him it’d be bad, so it’s better if I rescue her.” R2 whistles a sad note again. Mayan clambers up the ladder one-armed, her other arm tucked into a sling under her cloak. It’s completely useless. She doesn’t know how bad the break was, but since it happened, the skin has gone from red to purple — the edges faintly green. If she tries to use it, a sharp pain stabs through her. The town is quiet this early — even the fruit vendors haven’t opened their stalls yet. Mayan sneaks around the side of the blown-up house, pulling her cloak over her feathered hair. She gestures for R2 to follow. She thinks if she can get to the mountain again, she can… well, she doesn’t really know. Mayan has always been good at getting out of dangerous situations, not getting into them. Maybe R2 can come up with a plan. “This is hopeless,” Mayan decides. They sit within viewing distance of the tall mountain base, hidden in a valley of rocks. “--. --- ……. -… .- -.-. -.-?” R2 suggests. Mayan rubs the wrinkly skin of her fingers. “I don’t want to give up, but I don’t know how to get in, or where she is. I’ve never even seen a prison before.” She pulls her knees up to her chest. “I don’t know why Ahsoka even believes in me at all.” “… -.- -.-- ……. .. … ……. .- -- .- --.. .. -. —.!” Mayan smiles a little. 'Sky is amazing,' R2 said. It’s nice that he gave her a nickname after she said she wanted one like Ahsoka had as a padawan.

Chapter 11 excerpt:

Their arrival must have caused a minor uproar. A dozen Mandalorians watch from every hallway Luke glances down. They are all blue, presumably Bo-Katan’s people, and they don’t seem happy. They are brought into a large hall, where spear-shaped windows bite into the ceiling, and white crystal casts a steady light over the room. A long carpet leads to a throne that resembles a hardened splash of lava, and on it, sits Bo-Katan. She’s really got the throne thing down, maybe even as much as Boba Fett. Luke would not mess with either of them unless absolutely necessary purely based on their throne demeanour. “What the kirff are you doing,” Bo-Katan says. She doesn’t yell, just sounds exasperated, maybe even exhausted. “I’m taking you up on the offer to join you.” Bo-Katan looks at him. Her amber eyes narrow, and she gets up, and makes her way towards them. “You’re too late now,” she says. Her expression touches on cold rage. “I’m barely holding this together as it is. With the arrival of your covert, things have only gotten worse.” “Mandalore is habitable,” Din says. “There are other Mandalorians already living there.” “The clans on Mandalore are belligerent and mad,” Bo-Katan snaps. “And the Empire has eyes on the planet. With the numbers we have, staging anything with only attract attention and get us all killed.”

Chapter 12 excerpt:

“You have redeemed yourself?” asks the Armourer. “I have,” says Din. The intense blue of the forge reflects off both of their helmets and the heat dusts Luke’s cheeks with warmth. “And you have acquired another foundling…” The Armourer’s tone shifts to something decidedly less serious and more akin to amusement. “What is the name of this child?” “Kymir,” Din says. “Kymir, do you wish to join our covert?” the Armourer asks the boy. Kymir looks from Din to the Armourer, brows furrowing. “He doesn’t speak basic,” Din says. “Kymir, тιαи’¢σρααиιя тσ αℓιιт?” he translates. Kymir bites his lip. “иαу¢,” he says. Luke infers that his answer is no. Din looks at the Armourer. “He has had a bad experience with his covert. He will not trust easily.” “Without a covert, he will have no protection.” “I will watch over him.” “At this time, you are also in need of protection,” says the Armourer, lightly. “You were almost killed this morning.”

Chapter 13 excerpt:

“Ahsoka? Ahsoka!” Mayan shakes Ahsoka’s shoulders, but her master doesn’t stir. She holds her face and tries to somehow will her awake with the force, but nothing seems to work. Her eyes remain closed, eyelids twitching minutely every few seconds. “Is she alright?” Leia asks, crouching by the broken tree Ahsoka rests against. “I think so… she goes into deep sleeps sometimes. I don’t really know what…” Mayan hugs her arms. “Um, is the Falcon okay?” “Ships fine,” Han says, an edge of annoyance in his tone, as he walks over to them. “But Ahsoka better wake up soon so I can ask her what in the hell just happened.” “We went through a portal,” Mayan says. Han squints. “How d’you know that?” “I’m a Jedi padawan…” Han throws his hands in the air. “Not another one! Come on, Chewy,” he says, “let’s go help Sabine get the engine started like normal people. Damn Jedi…force portals…” he mutters. R2 beeps in a pattern that Mayan recognises as a laugh as Han stalks off. “I hope Ahsoka wakes up soon…” Mayan says, mostly to herself, though Leia is still beside her. “Yes, well,” Leia starts, “we need to get back home. This was meant to be a drop-off, not another adventure.”

Chapter 16 excerpt:

“Come with me to Mandalore,” Din says. “But I don’t think I’m supposed to do that.” “Do you want to?” “Yes.” Luke glances at him from over his shoulder. “But I can’t,” he says. “I’m a Jedi, I have to follow the will of the force.” Din is silent for a long time, and Luke wonders if the conversation is over. But finally, he speaks. “I understand.” Luke huffs dubiously. “Really?” “Yes,” Din says. “I know what it’s like to be told that something that feels right is somehow wrong.” Luke’s stomach twists. Nothing feels right. Nothing. He let the force guide him here and now the force is telling him it’s time to leave. What if Din and Grogu still need him? He’s almost certain they do. But the galaxy needs him too. Perhaps his responsibilities lie elsewhere, maybe he got caught up in his emotions and mistook this for being the right thing. The problem is, Luke doesn’t know. The uncertainty makes him afraid. (Jedi should not be afraid.) He remembers his vision in the mythosaur lair and his throat tightens until he can barely speak. (Fear clouds one’s judgement.) “I can’t choose you,” Luke whispers, and a laugh catches in his through. “I can never choose you. Can you really tell me you understand that?” Din brings a hand up to his helmet. “I don’t know.” Luke stands up and catches his wrist. “Don’t,” he says. “I can’t let you give up your creed for me when I wouldn’t do the same for you.” Din’s hand falls. Luke stares into the dark visor, feeling further from his eyes than ever. The words of Obi-Wan’s Force-ghost echo in his head. “Had she said the word, I would have left the Jedi Order to be by her side.” “I’m sorry,” Luke says and lets go of his wrist. He steps back, gaze falling to the floor. If he wasn’t among the last Jedi… if the fate of the galaxy didn’t rest on his shoulders… But the Jedi are gone. Palpatine and Vader made sure of that. And now Luke has to spend his life paying for his father’s mistakes.

Chapter 18 excerpt:

“Leia, I don’t like this.” Luke tries not to squirm in his seat. If he had no appetite for the fancy Coruscant food before he certainly doesn’t now. “A Moff, after a force-sensitive child, working with a cloner? What the kriff were they doing?” “He might just have been after him because he was force sensitive and you know how the Empire felt about the Jedi.” “I wish I’d asked Din about this! I’m such an idiot.” “Who’s Din?” “Never mind. Okay, I’ve got to find out what Pershing was doing for Moff Gideon. I have a seriously bad feeling —” “Okay,” Leia says. “I trust your judgement. Are you finished? Let’s go speak to them.” Luke’s stomach swoops. “What?” “Sorry, farm-boy. Sneaking around isn’t how we learn things on Coruscant. You’ve got to play the game.” “What game?” “Politics, Luke.” “Oh great.”

Chapter 19 excerpt

“Good. I’m going down. Kymir and I can reach them fastest. Once we know where the creature lives we can go with a small group and rescue Ragnar.” Bo-Katan narrows her eyes, searching his visor for something to reassure herself. Din’s stomach drops when he realises that she’s desperately searching for his eyes. He touches her shoulder instead. “Keep them together,” he says, nodding in the direction of the others who are still reeling from the shock of the attack, some badly wounded. Bo-Katan sighs. “That’s what I’ve been doing for years, Din.” She shakes her head. “Let me wrap your arm. Take some more painkillers or you won’t be able to think when you’re down there. You might still lose the arm the way it is now.” Din stares at her. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Okay?” Bo-Katan squints, winding the bandage around his arm which is thoroughly smothered in bacta. “I think you mean fuck.” “Fuck,” Din says. “It’s fine. I still have another arm.”

“∂ιи ∂נαяιи נσя иєя’вυιя נιι.” Din Djarin is… my… Din grabs a wall to steady himself. The words bounce around his helmet and his ears ache. He shuts his eyes, tries to focus on the words through the pain. They’re the important thing. “σяι’νσ∂ вυяк’у¢. ναιι’уαιм ∂яαgσи?” My friend is in danger. Where is the dragon’s home? “куяαмℓα.” He’s dead. “иυ ∂яααя!” Not never! “кумιя, уαιм’σℓ.” Kymir, come home. Din steps out to stand beside him. He tries to stand straight. He pulls out the darksaber with his good hand. “gαα’тαуℓιя,” he says, and ignites the blade. Help me. For a moment, nobody moves. Then, somebody asks, “ιвι¢… иι ¢єтα?” Will this… redeem us? Din looks at Kymir. Understanding wells in his eyes. "Do you forgive them?" “иααѕα∂ мι’ѕυя’нααι,” says Kymir. Not in my eyes. Din nods. Good. “мєн’gαα’тαуℓιя, нιвιяαя gαя иι ¢єтα.” If you help us, you may learn to forgive yourselves.

Grogu frowns in concentration. He peers out of the window, ignoring the computer completely, but his hand shifts on the stick and suddenly his eyes widen and he presses the button down. It hits the dragon and the creature screeches in agony, twisting up into the sky to escape from the onslaught. “Mu?” Grogu turns to Din. “Uh, lucky shot,” Din says. “I wouldn’t shoot without aiming first, kid. Wait, actually… can you use your Jedi stuff to aim? Is that what you’re doing?” Okay. What would Luke say? Something like… “In that case, just focus, and… listen to the — is it called the Force? Yeah, listen to the Force.” Grogu snorts. “What? Wouldn’t I make a good Jedi?” Din smiles, but Grogu can’t see it.

The guns bombard the remaining dragons with enough firepower to essentially obliterate them, and litter their scaly corpses across the ground. Boba-Fett lands his ship with a whoosh of hot air. Din stares as he lowers the landing ramp and marches towards him, Fennec following closely. “Thought you could use a hand,” says the gruff voice. Din tries to speak but his legs decide to give out. “Woah, there.” Boba keeps him upright with a firm hand on his shoulder. “Let’s get you inside, Manda’lor,” he says. “Someone oughta throw you in a bacta tank,” says Fennec. “We don’t have a bacta tank.” Bo-Katan scowls from the cave entrance. “What are you doing here, Fett?” “I heard there was a get-together on Mandalore. Someone must’ve missed my invitation.”

Chapter 20 excerpt:

The magic tethering her to Dathomir tugs sharply on her wrist as she falls again into the familiar darkness. And then stops. Ahsoka can hear her breaths this time, sharp and cutting, and she scrambles to her feet, searching for — “You…” “Get away from him,” Ahsoka snarls. Leia’s lightsaber ignites with a burst of blue. Palpatine, or whatever’s left of him, has found them. His dark cloak drowns his physical form, making him almost impossible to discern from the flickering darkness, if it wasn’t for the ghastly, misshapen white of his face. Yellow eyes melt through the darkness, and grey lips stretch in a triumphant gleam. “He is of no more importance,” Palpatine snarls. Maul’s body twitches in the air, hands grasping desperately at his throat. “Let him go,” Ahsoka says. “S-sever our dyad,” Maul gasps. “Don’t let… don’t let him…” Ahsoka rips her arm free of the green string. “No!” Maul cries. Now there is no going back. “I will not leave you with him.”

“Grand Admiral, Sir, permission to speak freely?” “Permission granted, commodore Faro. You know I always value your input.” “Well, Sir, we’re kriffed.”

Chapter 25 excerpt:

“Thrawn,” Eli starts, looking into his red eyes, “y’know I—” The security feed beeps. Eli’s eyes widen when he sees Ezra waving up at the camera from the supply room. Eli clicks the comms. “Um, Ezra, wha’d’ya think you’re doing there? Actually, how’d you even get on board?” “Space portals!” “Right. I see.” Eli rubs his forehead. This is going to be a long day. “You need anythin’?” “You won’t believe what happened down there,” Ezra practically yells. “Anyway, I need the key now because we’re locking Dathomir so this doesn’t ever happen again, then we’re all jumping through a space portal to you guys. Is that alright?” “Sure. See ya in a bit.” “Excellent,” says Thrawn. He turns to Eli. “What were you going to say?” Eli sighs. “Moment’s gone. Alright, let’s get this data ready for Ezra-kid to look at.”

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