#another glorious straight moment from these two

[lovelydrusilla]

"she is fierce and first to defend me in my moment of trouble or need. her wit and laughter sustain me and never come at my expense. and when we part, there is no sadness because our bond is always there. she is not just my friend, she is a gift, both precious and rare." maura's poem about jane (yeah you read that correctly) (and their faces while it's being read) in 6x16

[fishareglorious]

If Z or Constantine become playable later down the line for some insane reason, I hope the former hits you with a go board and the latter a chessboard. Z’s attack is basically pocket sand but she takes a handful of go pieces from her pocket and flings it at the enemy’s face.

[koisuko]

Could you do one with MK1 Kuai Liang and female reader going skinny dipping together?

Tw: fem reader, mdni, nudity, somewhat established relationship, no use of y/n, only nudity nothing else really

Time and time again, dates with Kuai Liang consisted of more traditional ideas. Walks on the trails of the forest, watching the sunset above the horizon, or having tea in the floral gardens. It was all very sweet, but you desperately craved adventure - something often overlooked by a traditional man such as him. You thought about the idea of a hike, or maybe a horse ride, but even those sounded too bland. Then the idea of skinny dipping came to your mind. It was perfect, you thought, both out of your comfort zone and intimate. You remember seeing hot springs on one of your strolls through the woods, perfect this time of year.

Was it a good idea? Sure, in your mind it was, the problem was getting Kuai on board with it. “Can he even swim?” You muttered, your hands busying themselves with bags of oolong tea. Your plan was to soothe his mood with the hot beverage, then bring up the date one way or another. The worst that could happen is a no, in which there’s always other things to bring up, yet you still felt nervous about his potential reaction.

Right on cue, Kuai glides through the doorway of the temple’s kitchen, his skin glistening with the sweat of training with new students. He makes his way straight to you, gingerly wrapping his arms around your waist from behind and resting his head on your shoulder. With a sigh, he nuzzles his head further into the crook of your neck. “I missed you today, my flame,” he whispered, his voice muffled by his lips on your skin. “Me too, love,” just as he released you, you turned around with the tray of tea, “I thought we could have some tea together.”

The steaming liquid seared your lips, hissing in response and giggling at your mistake. Kuai knows you, maybe too well. He knows when there is something on your mind. You seemed away, your eyes vacant and deep in thought. A hand on yours broke you away from your gaze with the tea cup, “is something troubling you?” Concern was written on his features, with a hint of curiosity in his eyes. It’s now or never, you thought. “I’m fine, I just..” you paused for a moment, contemplating how to word it the best way without completely embarrassing yourself. A blush began forming on your cheeks before you finally spoke, “would you like to um..go swimming tonight at the hot springs?” You may have left out the nude part, but that’s not a big detail..right? “Sounds relaxing, I would love to.”

It was beautiful, the moonlight bouncing off the ripples on the surface of the hot springs. A blanket of condensation settled just over the surrounding area, creating a warm atmosphere to contrast the chill of the night air. Crickets chirped, and distant owls sang their songs, a backdrop to a romantic night. The two of you settled on a nearby rock, overlooking the scene just as you both arrived. Kuai Liang seemed to busy himself with admiring the view of the stars above. With that, you took the opportunity to undress - completely, and slink into the warmth of the water. You tentatively reached out a hand towards him, praying he didn’t see the slight shiver of nervousness in your gesture.

To your surprise, he obliged rather quickly. Within a few minutes, he was beside you, his muscle relaxing under the heat. You had a clear view of his entire body beneath the water. It was a glorious sight, so much so you could see stars already. The droplets trickled down his perfectly sculpted arms, cascading down the contours of his biceps and broad shoulders. The pristine beads seemed to trace the carvings of his scars, and hug the lines of the tattoo you adore. Eventually, your eyes trailed up to meet his deep brown pools already looking at you. His gaze mirrored your own, admiring the way the water cupped your breasts, and watching the droplets with jealousy as they kiss places he wishes his lips were.

Beneath the canvas of stars, the two of you sat in silence for only moments, yet it felt like an eternity, taking in every detail of one another. Before finally, you two inch closer. He placed a gentle hand on your cheek, caressing the soft skin before dipping down to capture your lips in his. Passion in the beauty of nature, the time and place all but forgotten.

[thecampjuicebox]

Glorious Suffering

Pairing: Abdirak x Tav(f) x Astarion

Rating: 18+ NSFW, Minors DNI

POV: 2nd person

Warnings: SMUT, sadomasochism, use of objects for hitting, blood, bruising, biting, voyeurism/exhibitionism, orgasm denial, oral, fingering, p in v penetration, minor game spoilers

Trying out a new writing format to put better emphasis on dialogue. Let me know what you guys think!

The stench of blood and unwashed bodies lingers in the air like a thick blanket. It stings in your nostrils - singes the hairs with gut churning ferocity. Putrid. It makes your eyes water. Your stomach turns and bubbles as your breakfast threatens to make a second appearance. The once grand Selunite Outpost has since crumbled to near ruins, the occupation of goblins tainting its beauty and grace in a matter of days. Filthy pests, they are. You turn your head up, eyes watering from the scent as you climb the stone stairs toward a hallway of small rooms. Your group follows close behind reluctantly.

"This place is disgusting." Astarion whines, tip-toeing around small piles of bones and viscera.

Cautious eyes peek around corners. The first room is brightly lit with candles and lanterns, a young man strapped by the wrists and ankles to some sort of torture device. Two goblins swing maces and whips in his direction, shouting obscenities and asking for information. Information the man clearly doesn't seem to have.

"Pathetic. All of them." Shadowheart huffs, turning her nose up at the display with obvious disdain for what she's seen.

"They can't even properly swing a mace to cause actual damage. Lady Shar would be displeased."

Astarion grins at the sight. Excited fingers crawl against the stone brick wall to take hold of it as he leans into the doorway, his tongue flicking out to wet his bottom lip and trace the sharp points of his fangs.

"Let's stay and watch." The spawn's flirtatious nature can be so insufferable sometimes.

"Astarion, come. We have other business to attend to." Your voice is sharp and stern, seemingly the only way the elf will listen to you.

"You're such a bore." He groans, pulling away from the wall and hooking his index finger into the back of your leathers, giving them a playful tug toward him as he presses close to your behind and mumbles into your pointed ear.

"Doesn't that device look like such fun? We should give it a try once the little green ones have no more use for it."

Your cheeks burn crimson and a disengaging elbow flies out from behind you, connecting with Astarion's abdomen hard enough to force him to let go of your leathers.

"Not now, you tease." With a cough, he puts some distance between the two of you - an insidious grin lingers on his lips.

The second room draws closer and the quiet mumble of a man inside makes your ears perk up. His voice is strained, the occasional sounds of mace to skin ringing through the hall. He cries out, and every hair on your body stands on end. Astarion rounds the corner first, stumbling upon a man with medium build, knelt down in front of one of the rear walls of the room. He stands and turns to your group slowly, eyes falling on you first. His gaze is almost.. Comforting. Silver eyes pierce through you like the sharpest dagger. It nearly knocks the breath straight from your lungs. His chest and abdomen are alarmingly bloodied and bruised, little cuts and scratch marks speckling his skin. Astarion clears his throat once he notices your eyes locked on one another and the human offers a kind smile.

"Greetings, child. I've met few aside from Goblins here. Are you also here to assist with the prisoner?" He questions, motioning toward the room just next door.

You shake your head slowly, averting your gaze to the floor for a moment. Warmth swirls in your belly. He's incredibly handsome, the salt tones in his blonde hair showing his age. His voice is low and raspy and it sends shivers up and down your spine when he speaks - like sweet red wine to your ears. Delicious and intoxicating. His face contorts into a grimace as he crosses his arms over his chest and rests his weight on one foot.

"Hm. While I was thrilled to be invited here, I must confess I find the goblins and their methods.. Crude and primitive." He leans forward at his last word, eyes narrowing toward you. "Pain without purpose is a terrible thing. Wouldn't you agree?"

Your cheeks involuntarily flush that deep shade of crimson that clearly gives you away. He awakens something within you. You'd recognize his garb from miles away. A follower of Loviatar, the Maiden of Pain. The things this man has probably seen. The things he's done. It excites you in a way that's almost embarrassing. A familiar ache pings in your core and you can't help but cross your legs, squeezing your thighs together tightly to dull the desperation. The inherent need. The human before you certainly notices and takes a step closer, inhaling slowly before he speaks. He's toying with you now. He must be. Astarion can smell the growing eagerness in your blood, hear the way your pulse quickens, life force pumping into different parts of you now. He smirks and keeps quiet, but gods, is he painfully aware.

"Forgive me -" The man interjects, pointing directly at you now. You gulp. "but that look in your eyes. Something terrible has happened to you."

You cross your arms over your breasts, shifting your weight from one foot to the other. "Clever man. How did you know?"

"Because I see those same eyes when I look in the mirror.. Dear one." His hand reaches out to caress your soft cheek and goosebumps raise by the millions on your skin. "We've all suffered in these.. Dark times. It is little wonder you bear scars of pain and anguish. Please. Let me.. Alleviate this pain."

"What exactly would this entail?" Astarion's voice cuts through your thoughts and your eyes shift to him in disbelief.

"Well, the Maiden of Pain, Loviatar, teaches us that pain is a most powerful and sacred sensation. And, should our pain delight her, she will grant her most sacred of blessings." His hands clench into excited fists in front of him. "If you would permit it, I could show you first hand."

A knot forms in your stomach, twisting and tangling, his words sending jolts of arousal and excitement throughout your entire body like bolts of lightning. This experience would be new, however. The idea of such an act being performed in front of your newly acquired companions, and the man you'd started to have feelings for, makes your brain fuzzy. Gods, they'd for sure say no. Maybe even leave you to find a cure for the wriggling parasite behind your eyes by yourself.

"Sounds like a wonderful show. She accepts." Astarion beams, his eyes fixed on you, scanning up and down as your heartbeat quickens further. "As long as we can stay and watch."

"Surely Shadowheart has some reservations about watching, right?" You ask with an air of desperation that's almost laughable.

She grins and places her hands on her hips, quirking an eyebrow at you. "Lady Shar would frown upon me if I were to miss something as deliciously torturous as this. Go on."

"Oh, I have something exquisite in mind." He rubs his hands together, a devilish grin smeared across his lips. It makes your core ache even more. "Disrobe, face the wall, and we can begin. And by the way.. You may call me Abdirak."

Disrobe? Gods, this was not on your list of things to do today. Kill some goblins? Sure. Save a wildshaped druid from death? Easy. This? This may be the most difficult thing you've ever done. Astarion waves a hand toward you, motioning for you to obey the Servant of Loviatar. Your confidence wavers for a moment. Not only are you about to willingly endure what is essentially torture, now you must do it.. Naked. You gulp and set your backpack down at your feet. First goes your boots, next your leather harness, your head turning to look at Astarion who is enamored by the sight of you slowly undressing, his back pressed against the cold stone wall. Another gulp. How embarrassing.. Shadowheart snickers quietly at your obvious discomfort. Trembling fingers struggle with the laces of your tunic and in a bout of frustration, you quickly tug it over your head. The white linen falls to the floor at your feet, your perky breasts bouncing ever so slightly from the rushed movements. A quiet sigh emits from Abdirak and he quickly looks to his table of various weapons, hand hovering over the selection.

You finally tug your leathers down past your knees, kicking them to the side with reckless abandon just to get it over with. Your lack of underwear earns a barely audible groan from both Astarion and Abdirak alike. Naked and exposed, you shiver, hands resting at your sides.

"Well, go on, darling. Don't be shy."

Astarion's words give you the final push to step forward. You face the wall as instructed and chew at your bottom lip as the human lifts a mace into his hands, turning it over to inspect its condition. A quiet "Yes.. This will do nicely." stoking your fire as you wait. Abdirak approaches you from behind, reaching down to guide your hands toward the wall, foot kicking between your ankles to spread your legs apart. The cold metal of his mace traces along your spine and you shudder, teeth chattering at its frosty bite. You wait with baited breath. Brace for the imminent kiss of pain. Abdirak rears back and lands a blow to your back hard enough to knock an involuntary yelp from your throat. Astarion chews the tip of his thumb, his right hand lowering to the front of his leathers to palm at his growing erection. The half elf stood close beside him eyes him carefully, and then you, arms crossing over her chest now, completely unamused.

"The pain you suffer will cleanse you. Do not fight it."

A loud sob follows Abdirak's words as you process the pain, blood trickling from a new gash on your skin. You beg for mercy, plead for the pain to stop, your knees nearly buckling beneath you. But this is only the first blow, there is so much more to come. Somewhere deep down inside, you're enjoying this. Your companions watching as you stand there, completely vulnerable, bloodied and bruised. Open to the elements and whomever wanted a taste. The human licks his lips.

"Your voice sounds so sweet, dear one. Keep going."

"Don't wear her out entirely, priest. We may have use for her yet." Shadowheart grins, eyes narrowing on your trembling frame.

Her mocking tone and underlying breathiness strikes an interesting chord with you. Exciting. Stimulating. Blood pumps in your ears - a deafening drum beat that only you can hear. You sway your hips to the rhythm and Astarion chews at his bottom lip, ready to pounce. Hunger burns in his stomach. Emptiness. Even though he'd fed on you just hours before, his mouth salivates like he's positively starved. He intends to devour you in one way or another.

Your tormentor rears back to land another blow, this time to your ass, and it nearly knocks you forward into the wall. You grit your teeth and stifle a scream and Astarion groans at your strained noises. He's enjoying this almost as much as you are, you're just much better at hiding it. Arousal soaks your folds. Your walls flutter around nothing and you chew your bottom lip to stifle a moan as Abdirak lands a third blow against your thigh. Nails dig into the stone bricks, almost bloodying your fingers. Gods, you want more. Need more. Abdirak takes a step back to admire his work, rubbing the tip of the mace up your inner thigh, dangerously close to your cunt. You whimper and he quirks an eyebrow. In a sudden change of mind, he swaps the mace for a paddle, little circles cut from the wood to increase the sensations. A quick smack earns a loud cry from your lips.

"That's it, dear one! Let Loviatar hear you!"

"Not the worst technique, priest. Good wrist movement. Lots of.. Enthusiasm." Shadowheart interjects again plainly.

Astarion continues to palm at his cock as he watches, eyes fixed solely on you. The way your blood bubbles up and trickles over your flesh. The scent of your arousal. It's the sweetest perfume and he can hardly control himself.

"You're being so good for him, darling. Keep going."

The vampire spawn's voice is breathy and low. You moan just from his words and Abdirak lands another smack to your opposite ass cheek, a large red print immediately surfacing and swelling on your skin. "Fuck!" You cry loudly. Tears sting in the corners of your eyes. The human grins and sets the paddle down, moving behind you to trace his fingers over each bruise, cut, and mark he'd left. Little trophies of devotion. His goddess will be pleased. You shiver at the contact of his fingers.

"Sweet child.. You bore the pain like a true believer. I am proud to have served you this penance."

"Th-Thank you.." You muster quietly, bottom lip still trembling at the threat of tears. "I enjoyed myself."

Abdirak tilts his head back and sighs heavily, one hand reaching down to trace over your bruises once more. His cock throbs beneath his garb and he presses a free hand into it, groaning at the friction.

"As did I, dear one. Loviatar herself found your performance.. inspiring."

He grins and steps to your side, leaning close to your ear. His breath is warm and smells of a metal. More goosebumps speckle your skin as he presses his lips to your pointed ear and whispers quietly.

"And on a personal note.. Thank you. That was positively divine. This doesn't have to be the end, however. You've proven yourself perfectly capable of accepting such exquisite pleasure. I'd love to show you so much more."

"She'd love that. May I assist?" Astarion murmurs, approaching the two of you with confidence.

Normally you'd be incredibly irritated by the vampire spawn speaking for you, but now, Gods you couldn't be more grateful. A cold hand cups your cunt suddenly and you jolt at the sensation, back arching forward as Astarion's middle finger presses just barely into your folds and against your clit.

"Mm. She's so wet for us."

Sharp teeth just barely pierce your shoulder, a sensation you've become all too used to ever since you discovered the pale elf's affliction. You'd let him feed on you when it was needed, and sometimes purely because you enjoyed how he'd hold you close to him. How he'd savor your taste and lick your skin clean. His sweet words of encouragement as he'd bite into another place. And the way he'd talk you through the dizziness once he was finished. Your brain whirs with arousal as Astarion coos quietly against your skin and presses little kisses to the now bleeding spot. He drags his fangs over your flesh with torturous slowness, exhaling heavily at the salty taste of your sweat and blood combined. The finger pressed to your clit begins moving in circles and you nearly fall apart right there. Your legs tremble. Toes curl against the stone beneath your feet. Abdirak picks up the paddle once more and eyes Astarion. They exchange a glance of approval and the paddle makes fiery contact with your skin once more, over the same swollen spot it had assaulted before.

A mix of pain and pleasure courses through every vein in your body and your vision goes white. You could cum at any moment. Another smack. And another. And another. Astarion lowers his hand from your cunt, landing a smack of his own against your folds and your knees nearly give out at the force.

"Gods, please.." you whimper loudly, head falling between your shoulders.

"Yes, beg for it, dear one. You're doing so well for us."

"What a good girl you are, darling."

Their combined praises is enough to push you over the edge, but you hold on tightly. You can't cum. Not yet. Astarion's fingers circle around your slick soaked slit, playing with the clear sticky fluid for a moment. One digit slides inside first and you whine loudly, hips pushing back against him.

"M-more.." you beg.

A second finger slides inside and stretches your entrance ever so slightly, the cold digits pressing firmly into that spongey spot that could stop your heart.

"More!" You cry, and both men behind you grin at your desperation.

Abdirak slides his index finger into his mouth to soak it with his spit before lowering it between your thighs, forcing it inside of you atop Astarion's hooked fingers. The stretch burns in the most delicious of ways.

"Please.. Please more.."

A second finger of Abdirak's slides inside and finally you're sated, hips bucking back against their hands rhythmically. Astarion kneels down and sinks his teeth into your left ass cheek, blood trickling from the flesh and down his chin as he sups of your nectar, his eyes rolling back in his skull. He can taste your orgasm building. Your arousal and desperation. Your every need and want. His fingers pump in and out of you with bruising speed and Abdirak follows suit, his free hand reaching around the front of your waist to pinch your clit between his thumb and index. He rolls the sensitive, swollen bud between his fingers and presses sloppy, open mouthed kisses down your bloodied ass and thigh, savoring the metallic tang of your blood and the sweetness of your sweat. A delectable treat for all of his senses. Your moans grow louder and louder, jaw hung open and drool falling from your mouth in a steady stream. An eager hand reaches up to shove itself into your mouth and cover itself in your spit before moving back to your clit, spreading the wetness around.

The knot in your belly grows tighter and tighter, wound like a bow string, and you squeeze your eyes shut at the near painful overstimulation of your slit. Still the fingers work furiously against your walls.

"I'm gonna - I need to - Gods please!"

"Ah ah ah, use your words, darling. What do you need?"

The spawn drags his tongue over the globe of your ass to clean the remainder of blood from your skin. A quiet groan escapes his lips and he stands again, free hand taking hold of your hair to stand you fully upright.

"I need to cum.. I'm gonna -"

Just as you're about to topple over the edge, both sets of fingers are pulled from your cunt, a thick rope of slick still connecting you with the two men standing behind you. You keen at the emptiness. Your walls squeeze and contract around nothing. Abdirak lands a hot smack against your clit, and then another, and another, grinning as you sob loudly at the strikes. His pulls his hand away reluctantly, slipping his slick covered digits into his mouth to suck them clean. Astarion flashes him a toothy grin.

"N-no please.. Please!"

All you can muster are pathetic pleas and raspy whines, your feet stomping in frustration against the dirty stone beneath you. Astarion's fingers wrap themselves around your throat from behind and yank your back against his front, the threat of his angry erection rubbing back and forth against your bruised ass. You're fully exposed. Vulnerable. Writhing and crying for release. Such a beautiful sight to the vampire spawn and the servant of Loviatar. This is torture.

"Shadowheart, my dear. Are you sure you're not interested in some fun?"

"I'd much prefer to watch, thank you."

The half elf smirks and leans against the wall, eyes scanning over the scene just a few feet away. Her eyes narrow on you and you can feel her gaze burning holes into the back of your head. Does she approve? Do you even care? Skilled fingers work the front of Astarion's leathers open and his cock springs up and out, a soft slap against your ass startling you from the heavy daze filling your head. Your brain feels like cold snow slush. Your legs are weak, growing weaker by the second as Astarion rubs the tip of his weeping cock against your hungry slit. You nearly pull him right in and he hisses at the tightness. The invitation. Abdirak lowers himself to his knees in front of you, both hands finding purchase on your hips to keep himself steady. Gentle kisses pepper your abdomen, hip bones, and your stubbly mound, a shiver running up your your spine at the warmth of his breath against your sex. You wiggle your hips, both to tease the vampire spawn behind you, and to beckon the human's lips toward the spot you need him most.

Without warning, Astarion slips inside. His size surprises you. The delicious burn of the stretch, how he's nearly in your guts before bottoming out. Gods, he's huge. A careful push of the hips nestles him fully inside and he waits there for a moment.

"By the nine hells, you're tight.." He murmurs, lips pressed tightly to your ear now.

Abdirak's tongue flattens against your clit and he lifts his head to slide it up and over your mound, repeating this same movement to go back down. His strokes are slow and calculated. The combination of sensations makes your legs tremble like leaves in the winter air, and your hands fly down to tangle in the human's hair and guide his head. With a tut, Astarion reaches around to quickly grasp your wrists and yank them behind your back - you're pinned in place, forced to submit to his quickening thrusts and the skilled swirling of Abdirak's tongue. Your frame bends forward just slightly at the force of the spawn's thrusts, your legs spreading further apart instinctively. Again, that familiar knot twists and tightens in your belly and surely you'll cum at any moment. Astarion's free hand moves your hair away from the side of your neck to expose the still-healing bite marks from just the night before. He lines his fangs up perfectly re-open the wounds and you hiss at the sting. Like shards of ice in your veins. Overcome by pleasure and blood loss, your vision goes fuzzy. Drool drips from your lips and down your chin. Positively cock drunk.

Not even a soft moan is able to escape now. Only heavy exhales and gasps making your lungs burn and your throat raw. Abdirak's tongue works with surprising artistry against your clit still, lips sucking and tugging at the bundle of nerves to earn any sounds he possibly can from you. The loud slap of skin against skin rings throughout the stone room. Surely the rest of the outpost could hear you. You're surprised you don't have an audience gathered in the door way, watching the way you're being devoured and fucked into oblivion. The vampire spawns teeth leave your neck with a soft slurp sucking the last little drops of your blood through the puncture wounds, his tongue swirling around his lips and teeth to collect the remnants. Astarion's thrusts begin to lose their rhythm and you can't help but grin as his cock twitches erratically inside of you. Abdirak quickly releases your clit from his swollen lips, ducking his head further to use his tongue on Astarion now. The tip of the human's tongue traces the furry outline of the vampire spawns sack before sucking one ball into his warm mouth, massaging it in his jaw. The he switches, and the primal growl that escapes Astarion makes your heart flutter.

"Fuck, I'm cumming! Oh gods, I'm cumming!" He groans loudly, nails digging harshly into the plush meat of your hips as he quickly pulls himself from your constricting walls and spills his seed onto the small of your back.

Your end draws near, Abdirak's fingers finding their way into your cunt with impressive speed. They hook forward into that perfect spot and you cry out loud, finally able to make some sort of noise. The spawn behind you rubs his softening cock against your ass, keeping a tight grip on your arms behind your back still. Quiet squelches and slurps from the human between your thighs make you grin. Disgusting. Cold hands keep a careful grip on your trembling body. One restraining your hands, the other wrapped tightly around your throat now, playing with the pressure against your arteries. First a soft squeeze. Then it builds, and your hearing muffles. Black spots invade your vision. The spawn releases, and all of it comes rushing back. You gasp loudly for air, lungs on fire. Playfully, he repeats this again and again - bringing you to the brink of unconsciousness then quickly yanking you back. Soft coos and words of praise work you up to your climax.

"Such a good girl. So obedient. You like that, don't you? You like when I tell you how good you are?"

You nod in agreeance, unable to speak. Words feel foreign on your tongue. Your mouth is dry now, like you've filled it with linen. Still your end builds. Loud cries, sobs, and screams alert all of Faerun of your pleasure. You should be embarrassed. Ashamed, even. But you couldn't care less. Not now. You nearly topple over the precipice of pure ecstasy when suddenly.. The feeling disappears. Abdirak moves back from his original spot. Your cunt aches. Empty. A soft whimper escapes you and your head falls back against Astarion's broad shoulder.

"You thought we were going to let you cum? Little love.. How naïve."

His words sting like bees. Little Love. The degradation should upset you. Should ruin whatever arousal you have left. But it doesn't. If anything, it adds oil to the fire. You're more wet than ever. Heat rises in your ears and the tips turn a bright red, your fists balling up behind you in frustration as you try and wiggle out of his grasp. Through gritted teeth, you growl. A pathetic performance, on your part. Abdirak stands before you and circles his index finger over both of your nipples, smirking at you with half lidded eyes as each one perks up.

The half elf across the room giggles in amusement.

"Positively cruel."

"Patience, dear one.. You'll meet your end soon enough."

[blueishyellowish]

im sorry but as much as I love yall in the arcane fandom, the jayvik shippers kinda irk me, mostly because this show wasn’t about them from the beginning.

This show from s1 was a small story about the conflict of two sisters. And in s2 these same sisters were shoved to the side for a half-asses ending that was rushed due to jayce and viktor taking the spotlight. I don’t care if the shippers got their moment. It is once again another case of female characters being shoved aside for male characters in a show that somehow went from a simple political conflict to humanity vs god.

The scale of the story is too large and does not fit s1, nor give a satisfactory conclusion.

The small scale conflict with Jinx and Vi is what made the story so endearing, and as much as I enjoyed the Viktor and Jayce story I don’t think it should’ve overshadowed Jinx and Vi.

It sucks coming here on tumblr to just see only Jayvik and no discourse on the show at hand.

But, their scenes were cool I have to admit, I was just more distracted that Jinx and Vi were just pawns in the plot device of Viktor’s Glorious Evolution.

I think thats a big takeaway from this season is that everything “looked cool,” and thats pretty much it. And I think it was lost in translation what Viktor’s true goal was, I understood it sure but it was just muddled with fancy words and hoo-hah as he explained his motives.

There definitely had to have been at least another act or season because this show was rushed and overall missed the mark for a good follow up to s1. They feel like two entire different shows.

I think episode 7 was the best from this act and it gave me high hopes for the rest but I was disappointed.

Episode 7 was very reminiscent of how episodes were in s1 which is why I liked it so much. Straight up cinema, needed more Ekko.

The rest of the act lowkey sucked and the creators were hyping up that they spent so long coming up with the ending for Vi and Jinx and that is what they came up with. A “fall off the cliff sacrifice letting go of the hand?” oh c’mon, I was shaking my head at the screen, I am tired of “letting go to sacrifice themself” trope.

And Jinx survived I guess, but that type of ending is so unsatisfying as her and Vi never really talk about anything (ever like this entire season). (It was really cool at the end I haven’t heard anyone talk about how they played her music she hummed at the end, very happy I caught that.)

Don’t get me started on Vi either, so upset that she kinda just moved with the plot. I always saw her at the main character in the show, but she was in many scenes but never really did much. And I needed more CatVi, like much more then Jayvik which isnt even a canonical ship. Like what??

Ok I’m done ranting. Im just upset at this dark stain on the legacy of arcane. I think it’s not horrible but it could have been so much better.

[kayfabe-is-king]

The Eddie of It All

Random wrestling thought of the day #268 (and sorry in advance for all the run on sentences and parentheses): What if when Eddie Kingston finally comes back, he’s the one to take the belt off of Moxley?

Think about it - remember how him and Jon went through their divorce era when the BCC fully formed? Well this is that situation dialed to 11, so we all know Eddie’s going to be big mad about it.

Eddie hates hates hates Claudio with the passion of a thousand burning suns. And while him and Bryan definitely aren’t besties braiding each other’s hair, there seems to be a begrudging… well I won’t go so far as to say respect but something less hate filled between the two. Which means it’s doubtful Eddie’s happy about the plastic bag incidents. Especially since he's wanted to do it for a while now but TK kept vetoing it.

Now to add salt to the wound, Moxley Crüe is running around causing bodily, potentially career ending harm to people. Eddie is currently rehabbing and there were rumors that this injury would end his own career. The rumors may be hogwash but there had to have been a moment, maybe only briefly, where Eddie was worried. How do you think he reacted to seeing Moxley serve up Chuck Taylor to Claudio like that? Knowing someone Eddie has called his brother ordered a hit (simply because he knew this would hit Orange Cassidy hard) and possibly ended another wrestler’s in-ring career? What do you think that does to the psyche of a dude that's already known for being a hothead.

So this means that: his work husband has formed a hit squad with his arch nemesis and they have vowed to run through anyone who disagrees with them. Jon has already (literally) turned his back on Eddie once for Claudio. The above clip I edited from the AEW Timelines: Eddie Kingston vs Claudio Castagnoli video (highly recommend watching the full thing) illustrates exactly how far Jon went against Eddie for the sake of the BCC (and, by extension, for Claudio). This also means that if Eddie is against what Moxley is doing, it's very likely he will be the next target.

Except for PAC (and obviously Marina), Eddie has beaten every single member of Moxley Crüe. So while he doesn't have quite the perfect record as Orange, he's clearly up to the task of fending them off. And unlike OC, Eddie has gotten through to Jon in the past. If anyone can put that man's head on straight (besides Renee, who I am sure is permanently planted at HR demanding they do something because she is SO DONE with literally everyone), it's Eddie. That belt has become a symbol in all of this. If Eddie can successfully pry it out of that briefcase Marina wields like Mjölnir, it may start a domino effect.

At this stage, let's be honest, the rest of the locker room is not equipped to handle what Moxley Crüe is laying down. They couldn't even figure out that they should probably cover more than one arena entrance last week. Meanwhile, Jon is singularly focused on his scorched earth mission. He has a battle plan and a lethal army behind him. Do you really think The Scooby Gang (that is already fighting amongst themselves... mad props to Evil Uno for reminding everyone they should be united though) can effectively fight this natural disaster masquerading as a wrestling faction?

Jon has already wrought such glorious... sorry terrible violence against everyone in his way. He has to be stopped (although I personally will always gleefully watch Moxley Crüe wreak unholy havoc on everyone) and what better person than his brother from another mother? Who also happens to love violence just as much as Moxley?

If you thought Divorce Era 1 got ugly, you might want to avert your eyes from Divorce Era 2: Electric Boogaloo.

[pekoehoneyncream]

Gaz and Soap Learn to Cartwheel

Words: 1200~

TW: None (sfw)

Feat: Ghost, Gaz, & Soap

More prompt writing from randomly generated prompts. This time the prompt was 'Gymnastics'. Again written from a Ghost centric pov. I picture his internal monologue as being super sassy and I love writing all his acerbic little quips.

Ghost exited the rear base doors only to have his well-earned smoke break derailed by the sight of the impromptu circus auditions his teammates were apparently participating in. Gaz and Johnny had somehow been suckered into learning how to cartwheel by one of the base’s Privates. 

Taking another look at the cavalcade of failures that was happening on the base’s back lawn, Ghost reconsidered. Gaz and Johnny had somehow suckered a Private into teaching them how to cartwheel. 

There wasn’t much cartwheeling actually happening, other than when either of the two chuckle-fucks whinged and demanded that the Private showed them again. The Private, Ghost studied her hard for a moment, trying to dredge her name up from the mass of new recruits that were constantly revolving through the base. He was pretty sure it was Fallur, or something like that. It definitely started with a ‘Fal’... Or was it a Val, Vallur? Private Vallur? No, no, it was definitely Fallur. 

A particularly loud thump drew Ghost’s attention away from his thoughts. He focused up to see Johnny laying face down, making a noise that might have been a groan in another life. A life where Johnny hadn't just belly-flopped into the dirt and knocked all the air out of his lungs. Gaz was also having trouble breathing, bent double by the force of his laughter.

“I said to guide his feet, not try to push him through it.” Private Fallur’s voice was muffled by the hands she was rubbing over her face. 

Ghost took in the many grass stains and smears of dirt that covered his Sergeants’ clothes and deduced that they’d been attempting this for far longer than any sane adult would bother troubling themself with, especially for such a useless skill. If it had been just Johnny or just Gaz on their own, they probably would have called it quits by now, but both of his idiots were so goddamn competitive that they were just egging each other on. Both determined to be the first to do it right. 

“Once more, ah nearly have it noo, show us again woul’ ye, Falsvur?” Johnny had pulled himself to his feet, dusted himself off, and was now making his Puppydog eyes at the poor Private.

Falsvur! That was it! He’d been close, he knew it was ‘Fal’ something. 

Falsvur drew in a deep breath, letting it move her shoulders and expand her ribs, holding it for a long calming moment, then letting it out in a long resigned sigh. 

“Fine,” she agreed, “but only one more time, I’m not missing dinner.” She pointed a stern finger at the Sergeants, who were smiling and nodding at her like grateful bobbleheads. 

Falsvur straightened up, stared down the lawn for a moment, then took a quick step, threw her arms up, and tossed herself forward into a -from what Ghost could tell- impeccable cartwheel. Straight arms, straight legs, strong core, solid landing, no noodleish flopping or eating dirt. 

If Ghost was the judge he’d give her a ten. 

Gaz and Johnny had watched her maneuver like starving dogs, eyes intent, and faces serious. Ghost had seen them less solemn at funerals. 

Much nodding and ‘Okay’ing came from the 141’s corner of this impromptu cartwheel showdown. His Sergeants seemed determined to get it right this time. Ghost slid his phone from his pocket and started recording, feeling a bit mournful he hadn’t been around to watch what must have been some truly glorious first attempts. His want for a cigarette completely forgotten. 

After a brief scuffle and a furious round of paper-scissors-stone,  it was determined that Gaz would be going first. 

Gaz lined himself up, staring blankly ahead and shaking out his arms like he was going into a fight. After a long moment of nothing, Gaz ran a few steps then threw himself forward. His hands made contact, his feet left the ground, and Ghost watched him deliberately straighten out his spine as his feet passed over his head, but he must have overcorrected somehow.

Gaz’s focused look took on a panicked hue as his legs started tipping backwards and he fell out of his cartwheel, landing on his hands and feet in a sort of table or crab-esque pose. Gaz stayed there for a moment, then went limp, dropping into the dirt with a loud groan of disappointment, “Fuckin' COME ON!” he shouted at the sky, slapping at the ground to work through his frustration. 

“ooo, an’ ya nearly had it there too.” Johnny cooed with mock sympathy, a shit-stirring grin splitting his cheeks. 

Gaz’s head snapped around, his ire finding a new focus, “Go on then,” he goaded “you do it, since it's so easy.”

Johnny’s smile fell off his face and he drew himself up, “Mebbe ah will,” he retorted, walking over a few paces so he had a clear runway and wouldn’t hit anyone. 

Johnny did the same nothing stare-down, that Ghost was coming to understand was integral to cartwheeling, then lunged forward. Forgoing any runup in favour of just pitching himself headfirst into his attempt. His hands hit the dirt and he threw his legs up with a grunt, keeping his spine straight as his feet passed over his head, but neglecting -Ghost noted- to fully unbend his knees. Johnny’s feet started to come down on his other side, but he had too much momentum and couldn’t stick the landing. His legs folded under him and he ended in an awkward crouch, all his weight sat uncomfortably on his tangled feet. Trying to stand failed and Johnny fell out of his newly invented yoga pose to land on his ass with an upset grunt and an upsetter pout. 

Gaz’s snickering reached him through his sulk, and Johnny whipped around to fervently defend his honor, “Ah still did better than ye!”

Gaz gasped with what seemed to be genuine offense, “You did not! Your legs were bent the whole time!” Gaz shouted as he stood -having not bothered to before- to properly lord over Johnny’s failings.

“Bu’ ah didnae tip o’er half way noo did ah, ya pishin dafty!” came what Ghost could only assume was Johnny's rebuttal, as he too stood up. Immediately getting in Gaz’s face. 

“That doesn't mean you did any better! It just means your fail was longer!” Gaz bit out, then suddenly remembered that they weren’t alone and turned on Falsvur, “Tell him, Private!” 

Johnny also turned to face down the poor woman, “Aye! Tell the bampot all his eggs are double-yoakit, as he cannae see it himsel’,” he planted a hand on his hip and pointed an accusing finger in Gaz’s direction without even deigning to actually look over at him. 

“Uhm!” Private Falsvur squeaked, holding up her hands to ward off the highly trained special forces military men, who were demanding she rank their cartwheels, “Uh, you both did better than you did before. You’re definitely improving!” She gave them a grin and a shaky thumbs up. 

Gaz and Johnny were stopped from making any kind of reply as Ghost finally lost the stangle-hold he’d been struggling to maintain over his composure and went down in hysterics. 

The Sergeants gawped with open mouths and horrified eyes as their Lieutenant slowly sank down the wall behind him, hugging his belly and heaving with laughter. Phone still clutched in one hand. 

Ghost was sure that the last part of the video was going to be nigh-on unwatchable with how hard he’d been shaking with silent giggles, but it was so worth it. 

Ghost felt his eyes start to sting as his tears made his eye-black run and tried to calm down, taking deep breaths and blowing them out slowly. When only one breath in three ended with a giggle, Ghost slid his phone securely back into his pocket and opened his eyes to find his Sergeants standing over him, one sheepishly, one impatiently, and Private Falsvur nowhere to be seen. 

“Well? Wasnae mah cartwheel better?” 

Tada! Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed it! If you're wondering, the first thing Ghost did with that video is show it to Price.

If you have an idea or a prompt you want me to write, please tell me! My ask box is open.

PekoeHoneynCream's Masterlist

[therepublicofletters]

Hi! I've just discovered your lovely blog and needed to ask: I recently watched "Medici" season 2 (yes, I went straight to that one cause Pinterest kept throwing at me beautiful pictures of Francesco de' Pazzi 😂) and was wondering: was Lorenzo truly that magnanimous? Up until his brother's murder he seems too good to be true. And the Pazzis seem to be too bad to be true, almost like a Marvel/Disney villain (except perhaps Francesco, they give him more character background); did they have "better" motives other than just pure hatred towards the Medici to conspire against them? Sorry, this is probably too long for a question 😂

Ohhh I love this question and am very happy to answer (and talk about the Medici/Pazzi whenever).

The short answer is: yes, Lorenzo was quite magnanimous—he is historically remembered (and referred to in modern scholarship) as "The Magnificent"—but he was also quite an ass. No, the Pazzi were not simply evil, and a lot of what we "know" about them now is drawn straight from Medici-sponsored propaganda that swelled in the immediate aftermath of the Conspiracy and has overwhelmed the narrative ever since.

The longer answers are: Lorenzo was raised to be a prince, and he filled the role perfectly. On one hand, he acted very graciously and generously. He was a patron both socially and artistically—ie. he did favours and created an expansive network that came to encompass all of Florence and even extended outside (continuing what his father and grandfather had begun in the decades before). However, he was not willing to face competition. Some scholars suggest that this is the inevitable end to decades and centuries of the Florentine patronage system: instead of multiple smaller networks with large families that did favours, it became one ginormous network at which Lorenzo was at the very top.

People found him attractive in many ways. He was a compelling figure, he was gripping, he had flare. Whenever I read about Lorenzo I'm reminded of the quote from The Talented Mr. Ripley where Marge describes that when Dickie Greenleaf pays attention to you, "it's like the sun shines on you, and it's glorious. And then he forgets you and it's very, very cold." Lorenzo could very quickly turn a cold shoulder, and if you got on his bad side, that was it. One time he gave the silent treatment to a Milanese (I think?) ambassador for over a week. He also absolutely prevented his brother from participating in public life. Make of that what you will. F.W. Kent's work on Lorenzo touches on a lot of this very well.

As for the Pazzi, I think that a lot of the "evil" stuff that gets cast against them came not from them themselves, but from the other conspirators, who were largely based in Rome. I do think the Pazzi became somewhat jealous of the Medici, but it wasn't so much that they were anti-Medici so much as that they had a different conception of what Florence should be, and the Medici did not fit with that. However, the two families had been very closely tied for some fifty years by 1478, which makes it quite sticky. Many of the Pazzi were not "good" people, just like many of the Medici weren't; but they did positive things, too too. Jacopo, for example, was very diligent in giving alms and doing public works. Guglielmo was a public servant through the 1510s, and his son Cosimo became Archbishop of Florence in 1508 and was famous for being incredibly pious and good spirited.

I don't think that we can say that Lorenzo or any of the Pazzi were "better" as people than one another. I tend to judge Lorenzo quite harshly and give the Pazzi the benefit of the doubt, in part because of what happened after the Conspiracy. They were all compelling characters, though, perhaps because of their grey moral compasses. I think that's part of what makes this moment in history so gripping.

[shu-box-puns]

Shell-Shocked

(Neteyam x Reader)

Previous Chapter <- Part 3 -> Epilogue

If you prefer to read on Ao3, you can find the fic here!

Summary: Eywa loves you, but not enough to save you. So good luck taking care of yourself.

Word Count: 6,934

Metkayina Reader uses they/them pronouns.

<”Someone is going to die.”>

Ronal simple statement nipped at your heels and quickened your steps. It made neteyam lighter in your arms, as adrenaline ran rampant through your bloodstream. Usually, you would have found it difficult to carry Neteyam for so long, but somehow, lying limp and injured in your arms, it was easy. As if Eywa had transformed your rage into additional strength. Your heart pounded like a thousand tsurak wings taking flight, headed straight for a dangerous but glorious battle. 

As you strode purposefully across the white sands of Awa’atlu island, Neteyam’s brother hurried to keep pace. The boy glanced periodically from your stony face, to the village that lay ahead. Its occupants beginning to prepare themselves for sleep. 

<”Stick close to me.”> You hissed quietly. 

<”They won’t let me in.”> The boy whispered, looking moments away from peeling away from your side and disappearing off into the darkness. Instinctively, your tail curled around his waist, not holding, just encouraging to keep in stride with you. You had seen his concern for his brother, had witnessed his reluctance to abandon him even after you had gotten there.

<”Hold onto me.”> You growled under your breath, <”no one will harm you.”> For Neteyam, you would fight tooth and nail for this weird boy, who looked at you with wonder and badly concealed mistrust. 

Hesitantly, he reached out and curled his ridiculously small hand around the end of your tail, his fingers squeezing slightly to still their shaking. The sensation did not bother you. As a toddler, Tsireya had tended to do the same thing to ensure she didn’t lose you whilst playing or when wandering aimlessly around the village.

At some point during the exchange, the course sands had given way to the familiar spring of the walkways as you entered the village. The boy stuck close to you as you passed the outer pods of the village. Predictably, your presence was detected rapidly, as several heads popped out of the walkways. Adults who had watched you grow from a child, appeared in the openings of their pods, and upon catching sight of you, immediately leapt into action.

<”GET THE TSAHIK!”> Someone’s father ordered, sending a flurry of boys to run full pelt down the walkways to the heart of the village.

And without you so much as having to open your mouth, the village came alive.

Hunters emerged from their pods, spears in hand, shouting orders to one another as some called for their tsuraks, whilst others followed the bloodied trail in your wake back to the island. Parents ushered their gawking children back into pods, whilst kids your age stood motionless on either side of the walkways, bug-eyed and motionless.

To think, not even an hour ago, your roles had been reversed. The mood had been amusing as Neteyam carried you out of the village for a much needed talk. Whereas now, the mood was heavy and suffocating. Neteyam lying limp in your arms with his head pressed heavily into your shoulder.

Two women approached to take Neteyam off your hands, but you found yourself holding him tighter, your lips peeling back to snarl at them. Their sympathetic looks made you feel sick. Neteyam groaned in your arms, his hand weakly clutching at you even as his strength failed him. You hushed him lightly, trying to soothe even as your own heart pounded painfully. 

The women did not try to take him again, and instead flanked you as you hurried to Ronal’s pod. One stood at your elbow, hands half raised in case you faltered, and barely spared the boy a second glance, whereas the other strode ahead to clear your path to the Tsahik’s hut.

The air was tense as you rounded the woven structure and pushed your way through the string curtains. 

Ronal was already laying down an assortment of herbs and shells beside a bed roll near the fire. Her expression faltered at your appearance, her hand half reaching out before she collapsed her fingers with a snap and allowed a professional calm to overtake her features. 

<”Set him down here.”> She instructed plainly, reaching up to steady Neteyam’s head as you knelt beside the mat and gently lowered him. You latched onto the authority in her tone, allowing it to guide your foggy mind. 

You felt numb. Or like you were holding your breath and simply drifting at the bottom of the open ocean. Any emotions you had had slipped away, leaving behind a cold fury that burned in the hollow of your chest.

Another set of hands appearing in your peripheral, weathered and large. Steady and comforting as they gently supported Neteyam’s back. Tonowari’s expression was grave as his eyes raked over the damage. 

Neteyam winced at the movement, his eyes fluttering behind their lids but not opening. It sickened you to see him so pale, his freckles barely illuminated in the dim pod. His back hit the mat, and the boy cried out, a hand flying to your forearm and holding on with painful tightness as he gritted his teeth. 

<”Tsireya!”> Ronal prompted, the rest of her instructions not reaching your ears as the pod exploded into a flurry of movement. 

The bitter bite of herbs stung your nose as Ronal gingerly lowered herself to Neteyam’s side, Tonowari supporting her arm as she tried to get comfortable around her pregnant belly. In the background, you could hear Tsireya scrambling for bandages, for ingredients and fresh water. Her tail thrashed anxiously, threatening to upend countless stacks of Ronal’s carefully organised stash.

<”What happened?”> Someone asked you, but you couldn’t pinpoint who. Neteyam was still clinging to your arm, barely hanging on. 

Someone called your name. A hand fell on your shoulder, but you were too overwhelmed to respond.

At some point, Neytiri and the rest of the Sully’s burst into the pod, only for Tonowari to intercept the kids and Jake. You heard Neytiri’s knees hit the mat beside Ronal before the teary eyed woman snapped for something to do. Anxiety rolled off of her like a miasma. 

<”What happened?!”> She yelled, with all the authority of a future Tsahik. Blarily, you blinked and glanced up.

Her eyes were wide with panic, whilst over her shoulder you could see Jake pacing and the kids greeting their demon brother. Kiri had the boy in an uncomfortably tight looking hug, her shoulders shaking with what could only be described as stomach churning sobs. The boy clung right back, his fingers digging into her back as if someone would rip him off of her at a moment's notice.

You did not know what to say or how to even begin explaining what had happened. Your throat was tight, your mind slow and sluggish. The world seemed to still be moving at its usual pace around you, but you felt stuck in time. Frozen and distant. A moment in time you were terrified of shattering. 

Your mouth opened with an audible crack of your jaw, but nothing came out. Neytiri glared back at you, looking at you as if you were something small. Something untrusted. 

<”What?”> She asked slowly, dangerously. <”Happened. To my SON!?”>

Your ears flattened at her increase in volume, but you did not cower. Not with Neteyam clinging tightly to your arm as Ronal applied salve and pressure to the wounds. 

<”They shot him.”> You finally said, your voice small and pathetic but audible. You swallowed, the world finally slowing down to your pace as you forcibly blinked the fog from your eyes. Neytiri did not demand that you specify who ‘they’ were, because you both knew who you were referring to.

<”They shot him, and I killed them.”> The words dripped off of your tongue. As fowl and forbidden as they were disturbing. You swallowed loudly, <”I killed all of them, any of them I could find.”> Their dried blood was tight and flaking around your chin, the copper still staining your tongue. 

Neytiri’s righteous rage faltered. She blinked, some of her fury subsiding as she looked at you in a new light. Probably taking in your exhausted, blood stained appearance, your own bullet wounds bleeding sluggishly. Absorbing the way Neteyam held onto you, despite her presence. Something seemed to click in her mind and she softened. 

<”All of them?”> She pressed. 

The numbness was subsiding now, leaving you feeling weak and shaky. Neteyam’s grasp on you was a grounding for you as it was no doubt for him. 

<”All of them.”> You promised. 

Tsireya broke the staring contest between you and Neytiri by handing over bandages to Ronal, who instructed you to help her move Neteyam into a sitting position. You complied, allowing Neytiri to help as you tucked Neteyam’s head into your shoulder and held his hand. Ronal shuffled closer and began meticulously covering up the bloody wound with soothing green.

The commotion of the clan beyond the pod and the Sully siblings anxious whispers were the only sounds as Ronal did the best she could. 

<”He will sleep.”> Ronal said simply after coaxing Neteyam into swallowing a sleeping draft. 

Tsireya took the statement as a dismissal and quickly exited the pod in the last direction Lo’ak’s stressed pacing had taken him.

Neytiri however, didn’t move as she sat unnervingly still. 

Ronal was gentle as she continued to speak. <”He will still be here if you look away.”> Ronal soothed with a steady hand to Neytiri’s shoulder. <”In the meantime, whilst he rests, you must check on your other children. They need you as well.”>

Neytiri looked torn but, at a soft sniffle from Tuk, managed to convince herself to pull away. On silent feet, she padded across the pod, ducked through the curtains and threw herself into her mate’s arms. Jake caught her automatically, with the arm he wasn’t using to hold Tuk, his expression grim as he simply held her. 

Ronal smiled sadly after her before pointedly turning her back to you, a silent offer of privacy.

You remained sat where you were, stuck to Neteyam’s side, simply holding him and regretting everything that had led up to this. If only you hadn’t been an idiot. If only you had fought harder against going to the island. If only you had ignored the shells or worked up the nerve to do something about them. If only you haven't told Aonung about anything. If only-

You cut the thought off and focused on carding your fingers through Neteyam’s braids. He grumbled weakly at the contact, his grasp on your forearm loosening a fraction as the sleeping draft began to take effect. 

<”You’re going to be okay.”> You promised quietly as he began to drift away. Little by little, his strength left him and he slumped deeper and deeper into your arms. <”Eywa made a mistake. The black shells were not meant for you.”> You were talking more to yourself than Neteyam at this point, but you had to speak the possibility into existence. <”Surely She would not be so cruel.”>

Neteyam did not respond as sleep finally claimed him. His grasp on you grew lax, so you gently laid him down. He looked as still as the dead, reclined on his back with blood seeping through the thick bandages, but not hardly as peaceful as someone who had already passed on. There was still fight in him, you knew. You could see it in the tense set of his jaw, the way he was still somehow clinging to that bloodied token. It’s soft pink shells, now a steaky seashell pink from his blood.

What had he been trying to tell you before everything happened? 

You squashed that thought too. It would only be cruel on yourself to entertain it.  

With a shaky breath, you backed away from Neteyam’s mat, something squirming and melancholic writhing deep in your chest. You felt your lower lip threaten to wobble, despite your best attempts to keep your expression neutral. With a wet breath, you bit your lower lip and stood. 

Across the fire, you caught sight of Aonung watching you, his expression grave. You hadn’t even noticed him slip into the pod. He looked at you with pity now, his demeanour screaming fear and vulnerability. If you had felt more stable, you might have gone over to soothe him. But right now, you knew you were one wrong look away from harming yourself or someone else, so you headed for the pod exit instead. 

The sun was beginning to emerge from behind the moon when you stepped out from the pod. Your gaze immediately went to the beach, to the hunters milling around in the white sand and ducking in and out of the trees for an enemy that was no doubt long gone. 

A short distance away, you could see the human in the embrace of a sobbing Kiri. She had swept him up in her arms so that his feet could not touch the floor, to which the boy clung back fiercely. 

Around you, the village was abuzz with organised chaos. Hunters carrying torches, combed the beaches, the island forest and the bay upon their skimwings. The fishermen sported extra weapons before venturing out of the reef for the morning catch. Even children lingered in the doorways of their homes, reluctant or unable to sleep with all the noise.

And amongst it all, you stood motionless outside the Olo’eyktan’s home, your fated potentially dying within. Regret sat bitterly on your tongue, it enhanced the stickiness of the blood on your skin, sharpened the sting of sand grinding into your thighs. Your muscles were beginning to ache harshly now, whilst your injuries smarted with every movement, and yet you felt nothing but fear for Neteyam.

>_<

A wall of shadows blocked out the morning sun some time later.

You were curled up and tucked out of sight of the main walkway, behind the Olo’eyktan’s hut, your knees drawn up to your chest and your tail curled around your feet. Mud and blood still obscured the ripple pattern of your stripes, but you couldn’t bring yourself to get into the water to clean any of it off. Irrationally, you were convinced that any time spent away from the pod, might be the last precious seconds of Neteyam’s life.

And although you were nothing to him, you still wanted to be close by. Even if all you ever would be was just friends that fell out over something dumb, even if he did not have the time to see you as more, you still wanted to be there. You wanted to be able to look back and know that you had stayed. That you had tried your best with what you had had at the time.

Tsireya stepped forward first, leaving Lo’ak and Aonung exchanging uncertain looks whilst Kiri and the human remained further away. 

<”How long have you been here?”> Your friend asked softly. She knelt before you, her expression pinched but kind. You didn’t dare meet her gaze and curled in tighter on yourself. How pathetic you must look. Couldn’t they leave you to grieve in peace? Surely they didn’t expect you to be a supportive pillar after the evening you’d barely survived through.

Aonung was the next to step uncertainly forward, but he did not speak. His movements were slow and obvious, as if he were approaching a cornered animal. With surprising gentleness, a hand fell to your shoulder and squeezed. 

It was like someone had brought down a knife hilt on a rock. Your expression split and the tears immediately began slipping down your cheeks. You felt yourself crumble, as your ears folded and you shoved your face into your knees to try and stop them from seeing.

Tsireya made a wounded noise before she was pressing into your side, her arms around you and squeezing tightly. You collapsed against her, no longer the seasoned killer, no longer a protector. Just a kid. A scared little kid that was in desperate need of some reassurance.

<”I, I tri-tried-”> you sobbed against her, fighting to keep your words steady only for your panicked sobs to fuck them up before they could leave your lips. <”I tri-ied so har-hard to, to, to pro-protec-t him-”> <”I know you did.”> Tsireya hushed you, as Aonung’s hand slid up to your head and began gently combing through your braids. Tsireya began to gently rock you. <”I know you did.”> She promised. <”I know you did everything you could.”> <”I’m-I’m so-rry-”> <”You don’t need to be sorry.”>

<”Sorry.”> You repeated anyway as your friends held you together. “<”So sorry. Sorry. Sorry-”> <”Just try and breath.”> Tsireya soothed, <”you did wonderfully. Spider is all right, and Neteyam is going to be just fine.”> You didn’t dare contradict her. Not with Lo’ak looking like he was on the verge of tears himself. But there was a very real possibility that Neteyam wouldn’t pull through. People died all the time. What made Neteyam any different from all the other hunters that were killed by those aliens?

<”Children, what are you-”> Tonowari suddenly spoke up, appearing around the corner of the hut, only for his voice to stop in its tracks when his eyes fell on you. <”Oh. Oh Y/n.”> He said softly, softly enough that you suspected he thought you would splinter apart if he spoke too loudly. <”Aonung. Tsireya. Bring them.”> 

His children obeyed easily, and you were too shattered to bother fighting it. Hands guided you to your feet, held you tenderly by the wrists and smoothed down your braids as you were guided away from the Olo’eyktan’s hut to your own just down the walkway. 

Absently, you noted that Lo’ak did not follow. Although his eyes tracked the three of you, his feet remained rooted in place beside the Olo’eyktan’s hut. Standing guard in your stead, you decided. It eased something in you to know that he would remain whilst you were shepherded away. 

Numbness dulled your senses as you were guided down onto a mat. Tsireya’s hands fell away from your body as the clinking of jars sounded from the shelves you kept your salves on. Across from you, Tonowari lowered himself down onto his knees with a grave expression, whereas Aonung hovered at your back, still standing with his hand ghosting against your shoulder, as if expecting you to topple over at a moment’s notice.

You were tired, you realised. Drained and more exhausted than you had ever felt following a training session. And boy, what a training session that adrenaline filled adventure had been. If you weren’t confident in your reflexes before, you were now fully assured that you could hold your own in a fight - given the right incentive.

With care, Tsireya deposited her findings down beside her father, before kneeling beside him in the typical position she would take up when assisting Ronal with her duties. 

<”I am capable of patching myself up, you know.”> You croaked, wincing at how tight your throat sounded. The statement sounded weak, even to your own ears. 

Tonowari nodded in that infuriatingly neutral way of his that both validated and debunked your claim. <”Perhaps.”> He agreed half-heartedly, taking the water filled sponge that Tsireya passed him with a thankful nod of his head, <”but I would feel better if you allowed us to help you.”> <”Do you even remember how to bandage a wound, Olo’eyktan?”> You challenged before you could stop yourself, startling a small smile onto his face.

<”It’s Tonowari to you.”> Tonowari repeated for the hundredth time, he paused in the conversation to shuffle closer, carefully taking your chin in one hand whilst the other began wiping away the blood stains clinging to your chin. <”And with children like you,”> he continued, <”I have never fallen out of practice.”>

As if summoned by the rustle of leaf bandages, Ronal chose then to slip into the hut. Her eyes cut rapidly across the scene before her, a nod of approval following her quick assessment as she stepped in further. <”I see you have begun without me.”> 

<”You were busy, my Pearl.”> Tonowari returned easily, focusing now on taking your hands in his and getting at the blood drying between your fingers and under your nails. 

His mate clicked her tongue, but offered no further comment as she took a slow circle around your back; assessing the damage. <”There are exit wounds.”> She noted aloud, eyes raking over the peppering of bullet holes shot into your legs and torso, <”but due to Eywa’s design they have already begun to clot.”> 

Something in you eased at her soft reassurance. Thank the Great Mother for her foresight. Without the thick layer of fat tucked beneath your thick skin, usually intended to insulate you against the freezing temperatures of the deep sea, there was no doubt you would also be in the Olo’eyktan’s hut clinging to life.

The healing session that followed was comforting and familiar. Tonowari finished cleaning off the worst of the blood and mud before beginning to patch you up with Tsireya’s assistance, whilst Ronal rested her swollen feet by reclining back on your hammock, offering pointers if Tsireya forgot a step. Meanwhile, Aonung continued to hover, a ball of anxiety, watching intently as your wounds were treated and covered by layer after layer of soothing green leaves. 

<”And you’re all set.”> Tonowari narrated with a proud smile as he secured the last bandage. <”Now, I recommend a full night of rest and plenty of food, and with any luck you’ll be back to being a nuisance in three short weeks.”> With a roll of your eyes and a huff, you staggered to your feet, much to Tonowari’s annoyance. <”Yep, sounds nice.”> You said dismissively, having already decided you didn’t have time for ‘three short weeks’. 

<”Um.”> Tonowari joked good naturedly as you hobbled past. <”What did I just tell you?”> He made no move to stop you. <”I’m going to rest.”> You assured him, <”I’m just going to do it out here.”> <”Y/n.”> Tsireya whined softly, sounding close to tears. <”Your body is tired. It needs rest.”> <”I’ll rest once he’s awake.”>

<”Don’t be so stupid.”> Aonung jumped in, his hand once again taking hold of your elbow. With a growl, you shrugged him off. The younger boy flashed his fangs in response, but refused to back down. <”You’re no use to anyone if you drop dead from exhaustion.”> <”I’ll literally be sitting-”>

<”Y/n.”> Ronal cut in, her tone enough for your current sentence to die on your tongue.

<”Tsahik?”> <”In your vision, who held the black shell?”> Her tone was uncomfortably calm, a start contrast to the tense way she held herself. Slowly, you turned back to her, finding the calculated gaze of the Tsahik fixed on you.

<”Neteyam.”> You said with a swallow.

She hummed thoughtfully. <”Perhaps, but earlier, the new Sully boy told me he saw Neteyam pluck the black shell from your hair. Is that true?”> Expression scrunched in confusion, you nodded. Ronal sat up with too much speed for someone as pregnant as her. <”You stupid child! You did not tell me you were the one in possession of the shell in your vision.”>

<”I never actually held it. Neteyam was giving it to me.”> The explanation did little to calm her. 

<”How could you leave out something so crucial? It was meant for you. This was supposed to be YOUR dying day, not Neteyam’s!”> She was on her feet now, looking moments away from panic. Your throat went dry again. <”Well shit.”> You breathed before glancing out of the pod towards the sky. <”Well, eclipse isn’t long over. There’s still time.”> Aonung’s expression twisted as he lightly pushed at your shoulder. <”Do not joke about that!”>

<”Sorry, sorry.”> You waved him off before continuing out of the hut. 

This time, none of them tried to stop you. Ronal’s muffled voice began speaking as you turned the corner, Tonowari was quick to jump in. You blocked them out, unwilling to hear anything else. You’d survived. Neteyam would hopefully pull through. What else was there to discuss?

Stiffly, you hobbled back to the Olo’eyktan’s hut, as the sun slipped fully out from behind the moon, bathing the village in the full force of its light. As you passed the hut, you peered in through the beaded curtain to find Neteyam laid out on his rug, pale and bandaged, his jewellery removed and Neytiri softly combing back his braids. In the weak light, you could make out his laboured breathing, could see the sweat beading on his brow.

Alive; for now. You reassured yourself, before stepping away. 

>_<

As eclipse stole all light from the sky, you prayed that the glow of Neteyam’s freckles would not extinguish with the end of the day.

You hadn’t moved in hours. Your muscles were stiff from disuse and your bandages in need of changing. But no one asked you to move. 

It wasn’t until the bioluminescence had turned on, that Tonowari found you again. This time, he did not try to coax you away from the hut, and instead sat down beside you. He leant back on his hands, head tipped back to look at the stars as you sat together in companionable silence.

It was quiet enough that between the rhythmic laps of the waves, you could hear hushed voices from within the Olo’eyktan’s hut if you really strained your ears.

<”I can’t sleep yet.”> You said, before he could tell you to rest.

Tonowari laughed softly. <”I was not deluding myself into believing I could convince you.”> He admitted lightly, <”although, it is getting chilly. Would you not feel more comfortable sitting inside, where you can see him? Keep an eye on him.”>

Wordlessly, you shook your head.

Tonowari did not push, his arm slid around your shoulder and gently pulled you into him, allowing some of his warmth to transfer into your cold limbs. <”I understand this is hard for you.”> He soothed, <”but you are handling it remarkably well.”> The gentle praise was almost enough to reduce you to tears again. <”There is no comfort I can offer you, for a pain this deep and personal.”> <”I don’t need comfort.”> You stubbornly denied, hating the way your voice threatened to shake. <”I just need him to wake up.”>

>_<

Neteyam woke up around noon the next day. 

You were passed out against Tonowari’s shoulder after spending a restless night watching the water, when Lo’ak came charging out of the Olo’eyktan’s hut yelling, <”HE’S AWAKE! GUYS HE’S AWAKE!”> 

In a scramble of limbs, the other Sully kids - who had also been lingering outside the hut since the end of eclipse - tripped over themselves to get through the doorway. Energised by their eagerness, you followed suit. 

Chuckling lightly to himself, Tonowari helped you up, pushing at your lower back when your knees faltered in the doorway. <”Go on.”> He encouraged lightly, pushing again until you finally stepped out of the sunlight and into the low light of his home.

Neteyam was still laid out on a mat, expression pinched as Neytiri kissed his forehead and stroked his braids. <”Mother, I’m fine.”> He kept insisting, unable to keep the laugh out of his voice. She refused to relent. 

<”Never, scare me like that again!”> Neytiri threatened between kisses, pulling back to hold her son’s head in her hands, her gaze piercing. 

<”I won’t.”> Her eldest promised, and judging by the narrowing of her eyes, she didn’t believe him. She relented regardless, allowing Jake to crowd in close, alongside the rest of the family. 

There were lots of tears. With little Tuk crowding in close for a cuddle, whereas Lo’ak tearfully offered jabs about Neteyam being more careful next time. His brother rolled his eyes, calling Lo’ak a skxawg, which just made Lo’ak’s watery grin grow. Kiri watched from the sidelines, her hand in Neteyam’s but otherwise offering no words. After checking his son over, Jake rocked back on his knees, content to hold Neytiri. 

<”Wait, where’s Spider?”> Neteyam asked suddenly, to which the boy from before was quick to shuffle forward. Amongst so many blue bodies, he had almost melted entirely into the background during the reunion.

<”I’m glad you’re okay.”> Spider offered with a tight smile. 

<”Yeah, me too.”> Neteyam sighed, before another thought struck him. <”Your mask-”> <”We’ve switched it out.”> Jake jumped in, quick to soothe the sudden anxiety out of Neteyam’s tense body. <”Bob and I took it far away and dropped it in a current. With any luck, the rest of those fuckers are merrily sailing the archipelago.”> <”That is good.”> Neteyam offered.

<”It will give you a chance to heal up, and for us to move on.”> Your breath caught painfully in your throat at the same time as several other na’vi in the room. Neteyam and Lo’ak both looked panicked, whereas Kiri looked appalled at having to uproot her life again. Tuk was still cuddled into Neteyam’s side, oblivious to what her father had just implied.

<”Dad,”> Lo’ak spoke up, <“you can’t be serious.”>

<”It isn’t safe for us to stay here.”> Jake pressed. <”We’re putting this clan at risk if we remain. Best to slip away now before more recoms come.”>

<”But we have lives here.”> Lo’ak pressed. <”We have friends.”> He glanced at Tsireya who looked moments away from breaking down in tears. Her ears were lowering as realisation dawned. Lo’ak’s tail began whipping to and fro as he turned back to his parents. <”And you’re just expecting us to uproot all that again.”> <”Lo’ak-”> Neytiri tried to sooth, but the boy was already on his feet.

<”No. I’m tired of running.”> Lo’ak snapped, and he looked it. They all did. <”They’re never going to stop. Quaritch isn’t going to leave us alone just because we disappeared again. We need to fight back. We need-”>

<”Lo’ak!”> Jake repeated more firmly, cutting his son off mid rant. There was no anger in him this time, no spare energy left to scold him for speaking out of turn. <”As your father, I need to keep you safe. All of you. And I’m sorry, but this is the only way.”> Jake continued, his voice stern and as unmoving as a cliff face. <”As soon as Neteyam is strong enough to mount his ikran and stay on it, we’re going. And that is final.”>

Lo’ak glared right back at him, his tail raised high in silent challenge. But he didn’t bite back this time. Instead, he squeezed Neteyam’s shoulder in far well before turning on his heel and storming from the hut, Tsireya falling into step beside him.

Jake sighed tiredly, deflating a bit. His expression was pinched as he looked from the entrance of the pod, to his remaining children. You could practically see the decision weighing down on his shoulders, how the guilt had sapped his energy as much as his anxiety had. 

<”Rest, Jake-Sully.”> Tonowari suddenly spoke up, making himself known for the first time. Amidst all the commotion, he had slipped into the background just like you, a silent observer to the scene. <”You too Neytiri, today has been stressful.”> <”But-”> Neytiri began only for Tonowari to put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

<”Do not worry, Y/n and myself will be around should Neteyam require anything.”> Uncertain, Neytiri glanced from the Olo’eyktan to you. Your eyes met, to which you nodded once. Neytiri must have seen something she trusted in the gesture, because she relented. 

<”Thank you, Olo’eyktan.”>

With that, he coaxed the pair outside, leaving Neteyam with Tuk still cuddled under his arm and Spider and Kiri fussing over him. You watched them for a moment, your heart suddenly aching with the slowly dawning realisation that this sight now had a time limit. For however long it took Neteyam to heal, there would be an imposing countdown in the background, ticking closer and closer to their departure. 

You swallowed with a dry click of your throat. To think, a day or so ago, you’d almost figured it out. There might have been a chance at salvaging your relationship with Neteyam, but now? Was there even a point?

<”Um, Y/n?”> Kiri said aloud, startling you out of your thoughts. <”Oh good, I thought you’d fallen asleep with your eyes open or something.”> Despite yourself, a small smile tugged at the corner of your lips. 

Pulling yourself off of the wall, you shifted further into the room, feeling out of place in an environment you often frequented. <”Do you need me to get you anything?”> You asked carefully, eyes finally meeting Neteyam’s and finding him looking back. The expression he wore startled you into silence.

There was pain there, hidden deep in those golden depths. But also a relief. A pride. Strangely, you saw no fear, despite everything he’d watched you do. Despite how he’d watch you tear apart na’vi twice your size and enjoy it.

<”Get over here.”> Neteyam ordered, wincing as he waved you closer. You hesitated, glancing from his bandaged injury to his pleading look. 

<”I don’t want to hurt you.”> <”Don’t care. I want to hold you. Now, get down here.”> <”Why?”> You asked stupidly, hyper aware of the other three glancing between the two of you uncertainly. 

Neteyam frowned, looking at you now as if you were being stupid on purpose. <”Because you scared me half to death tackling trained soldiers, got shot several times, and then carried me across half a beach like I weighed nothing. The least I can do, is give you a hug in thanks.”>

At Neteyam’s nonchalant confession, Kiri glanced at you with newfound respect clear in her expression. 

You ignored her, <”you don’t need to thank me for that.”> You said truthfully, to which Neteyam nodded. And deep down, you knew he understood what you meant. That he knew you would have played far dirtier, would have fought harder if it would have saved him. 

<”Maybe not.”> He agreed, <”but I would like to.”> Again, he extended his arm, inviting you to fall into it. With every heartbeat that passed, you were finding it harder and harder to resist. Your expression must have crumbled, because Kiri finally lost her patience and gave you a firm shove. Once you were moving, you couldn’t stop. With your own bandaged wounds pulling from the sudden movement, you dropped down on your knees at Neteyam’s side, before carefully enveloping him in a tight hug. The arm not cuddling Tuk curled tightly around your shoulders, pressing you impossibly tight to him. He was a warm, solid weight within your arms, and that in itself was more reassuring than periodic glances through the gap in the curtains. 

Neteyam’s arm was a steady pressure across your back, firm and comforting, even more so when his hand shifted to gently cup the back of your neck, applying lovely pressure. For the first time since the guns had gone off, you found yourself breathing easier. 

<”There you go.”> Neteyam coaxed softly as you melted further into his side, most of your body lying beside him on the mat instead of on top. 

Someone chuckled quietly, before getting elbowed. <”The hell was that for Kiri!”> Spider whisper shouted, earning himself another hard knock.

<”Do not ruin this.”> Kiri whispered back, barely quieter than her brother. <”You have no <i>idea</i> how painful the last few weeks have been because of these two.”>

<”I just thought the purring was a cute touch!”> Spider hissed back, to which you abruptly realised you had in fact begun to purr now that you were finally in Neteyam’s arms. Strangely, it was a struggle to muffle it with how relaxed your body had become.

<”Look what you did!”> Kiri growled.

<”You know we can hear you,”> Neteyam cut in smoothly, <”right?”> 

Neither of them replied. 

Neteyam continued to periodically squeeze you, applying alternating pressures until you calmed, falling limp and compliant again. Perhaps later you would regret acting so openly affectionate, but for now, held securely in your fated’s arms, you couldn’t care less.

Surprisingly, it was Kiri who cracked first. <”Well, whilst you two are doing, um, that I’m going to go and speak with Dad.”> There was some rustling, which you assumed was her getting up. <”I’m going to try and talk him out of moving.”> Neteyam grimaced. <”Good luck with that. He seemed pretty set.”> She chuckled dryly. <”Well, we’ve all got to try. You just stall getting better to get me enough time to work on him.”> The way she said it implied that Jake was vulnerable to her charm. <”Tuk, I need your puppy eyes.”> <”Aye aye captain.”> Tuk grinned, giving Neteyam one last parting squeeze before hopping up. In her absence, Neteyam wound his other arm around your back, letting out a soft sigh. 

<”Do you think they’ll manage it?”> Spider asked as the two ducked out of the Olo’eyktan’s hut. 

<”We can only hope.”> Neteyam said sadly, <”best keep an eye on them.”> 

Taking the hint, Spider hid a little knowing smile before getting up and following. 

It was quiet in the hut without the three of them, almost peaceful with the rhythmic lul of the waves and the distant chatter of the clan all around. 

<”Thank you.”> Neteyam repeated again, a soft purr starting up in the back of his throat. <”You don’t need to thank me-”> <”No, listen. Please?”> He insisted, tail thumping lightly against the mat. You went still, giving him a large enough opening to say his piece. He took it. <”You didn’t have to protect Spider, he was my responsibility, but you did. You protected both of us, even though you were mad at me, and you didn’t have any reason to put yourself in that kind of danger on my behalf. So thank you, you’re incredible.”>

Something large and uncomfortable blocked your airways as the full force of his words hit you. How there was nothing but gratitude in his tone. A soft sort of awe that left you reeling. <”Thank you for waking up.”> You said stupidly, for lack of anything better to offer. <”Now we’re even.”> <”Almost.”> Neteyam agreed, his arms slackening slightly. <”Could you pass me my jewellery please? The whole bundle?”> He lifted one of his hands off your back to motion to the pile in question. 

Nose scrunched in confusion you complied. With care, you scooted off of him to retrieve the bundle and offer it to him. Neteyam took it out of your hands with a soft hum, his fingers carefully carding through the pieces until he unearthed the token from before. 

The soft pink of the shells looked gorgeous in this light, despite the flecks of blood that had dirtied them. Neteyam made a face at the sight of the mess, to which you wordlessly retrieved a bowl of water from beside the rest of Ronal’s healing supplies. 

<”Thank you.”> He said again as if he hadn’t already thanked you at least three times in the last few minutes. With care, he took a moment to lightly dip the necklace into the water, before gently rubbing the blood out of the woven knots. The angle was a bit hard on his shoulder, but he worked well enough with one hand.

<”What I was trying to say before,”> Neteyam said, <”before everything went sideways, was that I want to be more than friends. I want to get to know you with the intention of fulfilling what these shells suggest.”>

<”I see.”>

<”And,”> Neteyam continued, <”that if you hadn’t overheard Lo’ak and gotten the wrong idea, that I would have gladly accepted your courting gift if you had presented it to me.”> <”You would?”> 

<”Of course I would have.”> He promised, glancing away from his task to smile warmly at you. 

It was only because you had already been looking at him that you’d noticed a shell caught in one of his braids, previously obscured by his head. Thankfully, this one was not black, or grey, it was not blue or green. It wasn’t even white.

It was small. Clearly a suggestion by the Great Mother. There was hardly any pigment to it, and in the wrong light, you would have certainly mistaken it for white. You didn’t need Ronal to tell you to know that it represented new love, or at least some form of blossoming adoration. It was no longer a sign for the fated, but a symbol of what Eywa predicted would one day come to pass. 

The thought unclenched something in you, allowing you to return to the present quickly enough to accept Neteyam’s courting gift as he handed it to you. <”Thank you.”> You offered, carefully lifting the gorgeously woven piece to your neck and securing it in place. 

Neteyam smiled. <”It looks good on you.”>

Previous Chapter <- Part 3 -> Epilogue

[lonesome-witching]

Seven Minutes

It has taken me a while to get back into my prompts because I have been sick and had quite some school work. But I am back and I do hope to finish a few more prompts over the following days. No promises though. For today I have Robin and Nancy playing party games, specifically seven minutes in heaven, for you. It isn't smut but it gets a little tiny bit heated at the end. Thanks to the anonymous prompter for sending this in.

You can read my previous prompts or send me some new ones.

She could have been laying on her couch watching The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. She could have been laying on her bed reading Dante’s Inferno. She could have been sitting at her kitchen counter, working her way through a large pizza. But no. Instead, she was sitting in a circle of the most annoying of her peers.

It wasn’t her idea of a fun Friday night. But it was Steve’s and somehow, he had convinced her this was a good idea. It probably had something to do with the girl sitting across from her with a similarly irritated expression that Robin sported herself.

Nancy Wheeler.

It was stupid that Robin was so hung up on the girl. Especially because she was Steve’s ex. And straight. And so out of Robin’s league.

But the reality of the matter was that Robin could barely think of anything but the girl in front of her. So, when Steve subtly mentioned that Nancy would be here tonight, Robin jumped on the opportunity. Not that she didn’t regret it the second she stepped into this place.

“Okay, the rules are simple. You spin the bottle and whoever it lands on joins you in that closet for seven glorious minutes in heaven.” Robin was already sick of Tommy Hagan’s face. “I’ll start,” he added.

He ended up in the closet with Carol Perkins and Robin wondered if he had somehow rigged the game. She wasn’t sure how he would have done it, or if he was smart enough to think of rigging the game in the first place, but it was a funny coincidence.

Next up were Chrissy Cunningham and Jason Carver, followed with Billy Hargrove and Heather Holloway. And then it was up to Nancy.

Her long, slender fingers grabbed the bottle hesitantly. Robin watched as Nancy’s eyes scanned the circle. Maybe looking for who she wanted it to land on. Or looking for who she didn’t want it to land on. Their gazes crossed for a moment and then Nancy twisted the bottle.

It turned and turned and turned. Kept spinning around the circle. For a second Robin thought it was going to land on Steve, but then it kept turning a little bit more and landed on…

“Robin!” Steve exclaimed.

“No, that won’t work. That’s two girls.” Tommy looked disgusted. “Nancy, spin again.”

“I thought the rules were simple. I spin the bottle and whoever it lands on joins me in the closet for seven glorious minutes. It landed on Robin,” Nancy said.

Robin could feel her heartbeat speed up. Her hands were getting sweaty. Did Nancy want to be locked up with Robin? She needed a drink.

“But—”

“Rules are rules!” Steve interrupted.

Tommy looked around the circle, but most of the teens were too wasted or high to understand what was going on. Nancy got up from her spot, walking towards the closet.

“C’mon, Rob,” Steve whispered.

Robin nearly crawled out of the circle, stumbling to her feet and rushing into the closet. The door fell shut behind her.

“Hi,” Robin greeted, waving her hand in the small place between them.

“Hi,” Nancy responded.

“So, do you want to talk or anything. I mean seven minutes is a while to do nothing. But we can do nothing if you prefer. I mean, I’m not even sure why you wanted to get in here with me anyway. I totally would have understood if you spun again. Most of the guys in there have a crush on you anyway.”

Nancy ducked her head down, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “I thought it would be easier. I don’t want to have a guy push his tongue down my throat and then expect we’re dating. I am not drunk enough for that yet.”

“Oh, yeah.” Robin cleared her throat. “That makes sense.”

“Was there another reason for us to go in here together?” It was too dark to be sure, but Robin thought Nancy was looking up at her. She wondered if Nancy could see the blush on her cheeks.

“Okay.” Nancy took a step closer.

“Okay.” Robin stretched out the word as if it would fill the space around them and push out the tension.

“I am glad it was you, though,” Nancy spoke up again.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, if I have to be stuck with someone, I’m glad it’s you.”

“Why? I’m nothing special really. I just— I ramble a lot and I’m a bit of a dork. You can ask Steve. I mean, my favorite pastime is watching old movies and reading old books and learning languages—”

“What languages?”

“Oh um, French, Spanish and Italian for the moment. I’d like to learn more, but first I want to perfect these ones. I’m trying to read Dante in Italian for the moment. The English translation was good but— I don’t know, it felt like something was missing.”

“You are reading Dante in Italian?”

Robin nodded, pressing her lips together to keep herself from starting another ramble.

“That is… kinda hot.”

“I— um, it’s— hot? What?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I am a little drunk. But yeah, I think it’s attractive. Say something in Italian?” Nancy reached out to slide her pinky finger over Robin’s hand. Maybe Robin had stayed home, maybe she had fallen asleep and was having a wonderful dream.

“Is there— what— is there something you want me to say?”

“How about,” Nancy started, tapping her finger on her chin, “I wish you would kiss me before time runs out.”

“Vorrei che mi baciassi prima che il tempo finisca.”

“Okay,” Nancy said. She leaned in closer and closer, waiting an inch from Robin’s lips to give the girl an out. But Robin didn’t want an out. She closed the distance, locking her lips with Nancy’s.

She kept her hands at her sides, unsure of what to do. Nancy didn’t seem to have that problem. She pushed one of her hands in Robin’s hair while the other grabbed Robin’s shirt at her waist.

“Maybe,” Nancy said in between kisses. “Maybe I had ulterior motives.”

“Thank God,” Robin replied, pulling Nancy back in.

“Robin, Robin, touch me.”

Robin wasn’t sure where she was meant to put her hands. She wanted to touch Nancy all over. She wanted to put her hands on Nancy’s waist, on her shoulders, in her hair. She also wanted to slide her hands under Nancy’s shirt, wanted to feel Nancy’s skin under her fingertips, wanted to—

Nancy grabbed Robin’s hands, placing them on her waist. “Touch me, Robin.”

“How? Where?”

“Wherever you want.”

Robin pulled away. “I don’t think you would want that.” She could see the shape of her hands on Nancy’s waist. She could almost feel the heath radiating through Nancy’s shirt.

“Where do you want to touch me?”

Robin shook her head. Her fingers were twitching.

“Where do you want to touch me, Robin?”

“Nance.”

Nancy grabbed Robin’s left hand and slid it under her shirt. “Here?”

Robin swallowed.

Nancy kept sliding the hand up until Robin’s fingers reached her breast. “Or here?”

Robin nodded her head. She couldn’t help it.

Nancy grabbed Robin’s other hand, slowly sliding it under the waistband of her skirt. “Or here?”

“Yes,” Robin replied, her fingers touched the cotton of Nancy’s underwear.

A loud bang disturbed them. “Time’s up, ladies!” Tommy shouted.

Robin pulled her hands back quickly. Nancy stepped back. “Sorry, I don’t know what came over me,” Nancy said, pulling at her shirt.

“Nothing to apologize for. I liked it.” She probably shouldn’t have said that. But Nancy smiled as she opened the door, the fluorescent lighting surrounding her. “Me too,” Nancy replied before walking away

[inneedofsupervision]

I didn't ask, did I? (Chapter 7)

Happy begrudgingly steps aside and walks after Tony into the diner. The billionaire skillfully ignores the gasps of surprise and the poor attempt to take pictures of him secretly as he strides straight up to the counter. "Two cheeseburgers and a large fry. To go." "Please get in line and wait for your turn, Sir." "Excuse me?" Tony slowly pulls his sunglasses down and glances at the skinny teen behind the register. "Bad hearing comes with age, huh?" mutters the teen under his breath. Happy makes a choking sound behind him. ___________________ Or, how Tony Stark gets sassed by some high schooler working part-time and makes it his mission to figure out what he did to make this kid he'd never seen hate him. If that means annoying the hell out of said high schooler, that's not his problem.

Chapter: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10

Chapter Summary: Rhodey and Tony finally leave, and Peter is left alone with his thoughts.

(Read on Ao3)

Peter's forehead leans against the door. Only after the engine of Mr. Stark's car howled and the tires started to roll did the teen dare push his fingers between the blinds and pull them aside to peek out of the window.

They are finally gone.

With a deep sigh, Peter raises a hand, ready to run it through his hair, only to stop when he realizes that it's still covered in paint.

If Aunt May knew about what he did, he would get sentenced to a week's worth of house chores. Including a deep clean of the bathroom.

"Not my most glorious moment."

After several minutes, with the help of half a bottle of dish liquid, an old sponge, and lots of hot water, Peters's hands were reddened but free of paint and smelled, according to the dishwashing label, of gentle citrus dreams, whatever that meant.

While drying his hand, the teen couldn't help thinking about his act of revenge. It was petty.

Peter feels ashamed to use his abilities for something so childish and silly. He is Spider-Man. He should be the one keeping people from vandalizing, and what did he do? Smearing one of the most important buildings in NYC, just because he let Mr. Stark provoke him.

"If I simply hadn't said anything. Why can't I keep my big mouth shut?"

The guilty conscience grew while he worked on a persistent sauce stain on one of the tables with his rag.

Mr. Stark mentioned his action costing Stark Industries millions. At the same time, Peter felt like the man didn't care about the money but rather about his image, and the flippancy with which the man talked about losing money sparks Peter's anger anew.

It's already dark outside by the time the teenager closes the shop. With his hoodie deep in his face and his head ducked, he quickly walks down the street. May won't be back until tomorrow morning, and if he hurried, he might manage to patrol for two hours before going to bed.

On his way through the city, he walks past a construction site. He halts, and his eyes wander along the scaffold that takes up the whole facade.

"A truck hit the front at full speed a few weeks ago."

Peter turns away from the destroyed building. A man leans against one of the street lights. He has his, several times patched coat tightly wrapped around his body, a bottle sitting comfortably in his hand. He tosses his head, taking a hearty sip before pointing at the building.

"One of the best shelters in the whole of New York. Never mind how busy you got treated like you meant something. They even let your furred friend in there if you had one. Now, we can only hope they rebuild it. To our luck, they put another cafe here."

"I heard about the incident," manages Peter to get out, voice hoarse.

"You're okay, boy?"

The homeless man squints his eyes at him, and something in Peter's stomach coils as the guilty conscience hits full force at the thought of a man without a roof over his head worrying about a random teenager.

A man who didn't have a roof over his head because Spider-Man hadn't been here.

"Yes, I mean, not really," stammers Peter before taking a deep breath, attempting to collect himself. The man eyes him with worry, partly curiosity, and takes another sip while waiting for the teen to finish his sentence.

"It's just that I knew someone. Someone who came here often."

Peter feels ashamed when he catches the man's eyes widening with realization. The man shortened the distance between them, stepping closer, and despite the strong sense of alcohol prickling in his nose, he knew he wasn't in any danger. A heavy hand lays on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry about that, boy."

It's embarrassing how his eyes start burning. Peter had to look away from the empathy-filled, bearded face.

"I don't know who you knew from the bunch, but I know many people hanging around here, and most are decent. I'm sure whoever it was, he would appreciate a fine young man like you to remember him. Many people in this city don't recognize us as humans, but you are alright, boy."

The hand on his shoulder gives another tight but comforting squeeze while Peter uses the back of his hand to wipe over his eyes. He manages to whisper a small thank you.

The man didn't look happy with a crying teenager in front of him.

"You want some?"

Peter eyes the bottle with a high percentage of alcohol before his eyes fall back onto the worried eyes of the man. A small smile blooms on his face, and he has to chuckle at the ridiculousness of the situation. He sniffles and wipes at his other eye.

"No, thank you. But there's something else."

The man pulls the bottle back with a grin.

"I'm listening, boy. Spit it out."

Peter manages to give him a grateful smile.

"Would you tell me your name?"

The homeless man raises an eyebrow in disbelief before grinning.

"The name's Jason."

Jason holds out his hand. Without batting a lid, Peter takes the hand, including the filthy fingerless glove, shaking it tightly.

"I'm Peter."

[eyeofhurakana]

Title: “Unlike Fiction” Chapter: 1/1? Pairing: Sampo x Reader, Gepard x Reader Reader: Gender Neutral / Illegal Underworlder living in Overworld Relationship Level: Sampo - Ex-Beau / Gepard - Current Beau   Trust: Sampo - Low / Gepard - Moderate Summary: You decide to show up for Gepard’s celebration for becoming Captain of the Silvermane guard at Serval’s request. However, things don’t go as expected… Warning!: Cursing, Thoughts of Self-Harm (No harm though!)

Glimmering glass chandeliers, bubbling champagne, and a cast of incredibly wealthy persons that all seem to know one another only skin deep… 

This scenery is straight out of any romance novel conveying star-crossed lovers of opposing social classes. Though you had to admit, the authors really nailed it. You always thought that at least some of it had to be a little embellished. Yet just as they say, even the ceiling of this immense manor is painted with glorious recounts of Belobog’s long history with awe-inspiring detail. 

Your fingers squeeze around the stem of your champagne glass.  

The nobles that have gathered are all dressed to the nines. Some even go so far as to wear flowers that are worth at least six years of your own pay. You gulp when you catch sight of a few of the noble ladies standing off to the side in a huddled corner with handheld fans up, covering the lower part of their faces. Quickly, you avert your gaze.  

You already know they’re talking about you. Not that it matters. Gossip is a game for the small-minded and weak-willed. 

Though you can’t help a certain thought that keeps besieging your mind. 

Should you really be here?

“There you are!” Serval calls excitedly with no bother to maintain the rules of decorum as she hurries over to you.

Thank Qlipoth… 

Her outfit fits the atmosphere but you feel a sense of pride to see that she never took out her punk rock highlights. It gives you a sense of solidarity as there were a few things in your own look that you refused to change just for a single event. 

She definitely gets a few irksome looks, for the mere sin of existing. But like the magnificent storm queen that she is, she doesn’t even care. Immediately, you feel like you’ve found refuge the second she hooks her arm around yours. 

“Ugh, thank goodness that you’re here. I was about to lose my head just a moment ago,” she huffs lightly before leaning into you with a relieved smile, “Seriously. I’m really glad you came. I know this isn’t what you’re used to… but if I know Geppie, he’s going to love it that you're here.”

“You really think so?” you ask, still feeling a bit apprehensive. 

“Of course! Oh god. You should see how he lights up whenever he mentions you. I swear, you’re like his favorite subject to talk about these days. He barely mentions work anymore. Thank you, by the way. That subject was getting a bit tiresome, but I never really knew how to break it to him, you know? I’m just still sore after the whole… Well… You know.” 

Her cerulean eyes drift downwards. 

Serval’s sudden termination from the Architects was definitely a huge blow. It was still fresh in her mind despite it happening over a few months ago. Even so, you could still see the cracks it left in her. 

It was a miracle that she didn’t give up hope on everything entirely… 

You squeeze her arm a little to bring her back to the present before she can drown herself in the past. 

“Hey, let’s just enjoy ourselves then. We’ve been through hell. It’s the least we can do, right? We can even see this as, I dunno, reparations for stupid bullshit?” 

“Reparations for Stupid Bullshit. RSB. I like it,” Serval laughs with a delighted nod, gladly going with the flow, “Yeah. Let’s do that.” 

She squeezes you back. An appreciative thank you. 

The two of you end up tearing up the tables filled with fancy cocktails and hors d'oeuvres while chatting about everything and nothing. By the time the great big announcement comes around, both you and Serval are incredibly - and happily - drunk. Restraint isn’t exactly a strong suit for either of you. It’s probably why you get along so well.

When Gepard is announced as the next Captain of the Guard, you both end up hooting and hollering like fools. You get a few glances from those surrounding you and even Gepard breaches the usual protocol to peek. 

But he doesn’t smile when he sees you. 

Instead, his eyes widen, brows flying up. Then he turns to face front and center like the soldier he’s trained to be. 

“...” 

A sudden sick, sinking feel forms in your chest. 

What was that? 

It doesn’t help that you’re intoxicated. The wall that usually keeps the worst thoughts out suddenly isn’t there anymore. Worries flood you without hindrance. 

The dam of reason isn’t there to protect you. 

“The hell was that?” Serval says, only escalating your worries, “He saw us, right?” 

You purse your lips tightly, unable to reply. 

Gepard receives praise from both of his parents as well as a few renowned dignitaries. It takes everything you have to keep Serval from breaking into tears at the sight of Cocolia. Serval ends up holding your hand with such a tight grip that her fingernails dig into your skin. But you let it happen. You know how deep those emotional wounds have cut… 

She’s barely holding herself together. 

“Serval…” 

“Don’t tell me we should go. I-I deserve to be here too,” she insists shakily which is remarkably perceptive for own so heavily inebriated, “If anything… she’s the one that doesn’t belong here… This is my home. My home.”  

The pain in her voice pulls at every heartstring inside of you. But you have to be the least drunk between you. …Since sobriety is long, long gone. 

“I… need to use the bathroom,” you say. 

It’s not a lie entirely. Besides, she won’t question it. You don’t know your way around this place like she does. 

“Oh shit. Sorry. Yeah, of course. Come on. I’ll take you… woah. Um… Let me hang onto you.” 

It takes a little while to find a washroom. It seems Serval’s mind keeps getting muddled from having seen Cocolia. But you keep your patience. It’s what you’d want from your friend if this ever happened to you… 

By the time you get to a nearby empty washroom, you barely shut the door when you hear Serval breaking into tears. Your heart becomes heavier than you’re used to. Maybe because you’re pretty sure that you’re bound for one more heartbreak today. 

Gepard’s face the moment he saw you in the crowd has yet to leave your mind. 

As much as you’d like to hope… you feel that you already know.

He didn’t tell them… 

You sit there on the closed toilet for barely a moment before breaking out into silent tears. 

This… always… happens. 

You try to keep quiet as best you can. You don’t like expressing your pain to others. Your upbringing discouraged showing weakness of any kind. To those around you at that time… you were an incessant inconvenience. 

Even still, you hear a soft knock on the door. 

Serval sniffles just behind it. 

“Are you crying?” she asks with a genuine sweetness behind it, despite her own anguish, that just makes something inside of you crumble to dust.

A sob escapes despite your damnedest attempts to keep it in. 

You don’t want to be a burden. 

Yet before you know it, she’s already come in and hugs you tightly without reservation. You don’t remember how long the two of you bawl your eyes out, but it’s enough that Serval has to reapply both her and your makeup. 

 Every noble wears makeup and she’ll be damned if she lets one of her few closest friends walk around shabby.  

“Hey, hey. I know you’re worried…” she says while gently applying another coat of foundation on your cheeks, “But I’m telling you, my brother would never ever do that to you. Ugh… He’s nothing like that con man. Ugh… I’m so sorry that I even introduced you to that jerk. He just… He didn’t seem like that, you know?” 

She popped her foundation away back into her hidden dress pocket before pulling out some eyeliner to fix the mess under your eyes. 

“Geppie is different. I swear. I’ve never heard him tell a lie in his whole life.” Her motions slow as she remembers the look he gave both of you during the celebration of his promotion. “I… I’m sure he had his reasons for reacting so weird. Maybe he was just really surprised?” 

You smile weakly despite not believing that. 

“You’re probably right,” you fib. 

Damn. You were already exhibiting bad habits from said someone… 

“Don’t worry. We’ll talk to him soon.” 

And just like that, the two of you return to the party though it’s mostly over and done with. Only a few of the major boozehounds stay for the free alcohol while others try some last minute attempts to schmooze with those of higher standing. 

Eventually, Serval learns where Gepard retreated off to in search of some solace. 

“This’ll be great. I’m sure of it,” she says as she pulls you along. 

But with every step, you feel like you’re nearing an execution. The type that can tear the very soul in half while keeping the physical body intact. 

“Stay here,” she whispers to you, leaving you just outside the doors before dramatically shoving them open, “Little bro!” 

You can hear the shifting of his armor along with his footsteps as he turns to face his older sister. 

“Serval…” 

Gepard's voice sounds heavy. No matter how much you rewind it in your head, there’s no mirth in it. 

“Surprised?” she asks as she hugs him suddenly, “Didn’t think I’d miss your big day, did you?”

“...” 

“Gepard?” she asks before leaning back to eye him better.

“You shouldn’t have brought them…” he murmurs but it’s not low enough that you can’t catch it. 

The ground beneath you becomes like thin ice over a frigid lake. Each word he says produces a fresh crack, branching out to assure your inevitable destruction. 

“What? What do you mean? Aren’t you glad to see them? Gepard, you two are dating. Of course, I’d-” Serval then suddenly stops.

You drop your head as you feel an uncomfortable heat rising along your neck and ears. 

Mortification. 

She takes a step back. 

“You didn’t tell them?” she asks but she’s not really asking.

Her tone sounds utterly appalled.  

“I-I was working on it!” 

“Gepard! You said-!”

“I know what I said!” 

You can’t take anymore. 

Removing your shoes, your footfalls become nearly silent as you make a desperate retreat for the nearest open balcony. The freezing air greets you the moment you step out. With a shudder, you make it to the nearest portable heater, switching it on. With time, it glows a gentle orange that reminds you of the Geomarrow where you’re really from… 

The place that you should feel ashamed of… 

A tear escapes you but you quickly wipe it away, refusing to cry any longer. 

Then… in just that moment…

A crazy thought invades your mind.

This is very high up. 

…Anything could happen.

A despairing croak escapes you as you grip onto yourself tightly. 

No, no, no. Not these thoughts. 

Anything but these thoughts!!

It’s like fighting against the blinding cold winds of the Great Freeze. There’s no escape and before you know it, you’re completely lost within its windchill. 

If only you hadn’t left… Being alone and disturbed with far too much alcohol always makes for a tragedy waiting to happen… 

Please… Someone…  I don’t… I don’t want…

And then the improbable happens.

A light flickering in the distance. 

At first, it seems random until you realize it remarkably seems like the code that-

No bloody way. 

‘Hey there, friend.’ 

That’s what it says. 

Your eyes widen. 

No way, no way, no way. 

Quickly, you pull out the pocket mirror Serval had lent you. Well, given you, but it was way too expensive to keep on your person. You would sneak it back into the untouched mounds within her workshop later. 

For now, you pop it open and use the mirror to reflect the light to message back. 

‘Friend or foe?’

You wait with great anticipation for the next reply. At first, you think it might not come, but it does.

‘Friend?’

A desperate laugh escapes you as you can tell right away who this is. 

‘Idiot.’

He doesn’t miss a beat. 

‘Your idiot.’ 

You frown. 

‘Not mine.’ You correct firmly. 

Then nothing. A part of you gets tense. 

Did you ruin it? If so, then was it for the best? 

But those thoughts vanish when you finally see the light flash again. 

‘Are you okay?’  

Now it was your turn to give pause. Were you okay? 

Your hands trembled around the mirrors as fresh tears fell. This was a pivotal moment. You could feel it. 

The air felt like it had been sealed in an invisible vacuum. Static silently building within…  

You look toward where you came from.

Neither Landau has come for you… 

Too busy bickering, no doubt. 

You lightly bite down on your tongue to try and stop the tears but it’s futile. 

‘Not okay.’

The next response is so quick that you nearly miss it.

‘SOS?’

You tense. 

Your next response will be huge for what happens next… 

‘SOS?’ He asks again. “...” 

No. The pain is too much. You want out. 

‘SOS.’ 

You wait a few minutes there for a response or anything… but there’s nothing. Your shoulders drop with regret at showing even a hint of your vulnerability to an ex of all people. He probably just found your pain entertaining. Maybe he was taking pictures on his phone right now.

Well, might as well give him the best shot. 

You weep quietly from where you lean against the railing… only to feel a sudden rumble from the west side of the manor. It… felt like the kind of shockwaves a bomb gives. 

Did he just-?! 

The clanking of metallic armor stomping down the halls fills your ears as commands are shouted at length. You debate leaving the balcony but now you’re scared. What if you’ve been lured into a trap? What if you’ll be made the scapegoat? What if-

“Hey there.” 

You turn to see the dual dagger-wielding rogue lifting himself with ease over the railing. You were at least three stories high… Had he really just scaled all of that on his own? 

Those enchanting green eyes capture you in an instant as they seem equally mesmerized to see you again. A relieved smile spreads across his face as he tilts his head. 

“Heard you wanted a swift exit?” 

AN: *sipping on Bicardi* Wow. I did not expect to write this… Thank you magic bat. 

For those of you that made it this far, thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! 

This could continue but we'll see. Love Triangles are pretty fun though, eh?

[heresthestorymorningglory]

Alone in the Dark

As previously mentioned; inspired by the glorious works of @ken-dom (she's gonna get sick of me tagging her in shit...then maybe she shouldn't write so good) Seriously though...go read her shit...it's good.

This one's Driver x Reader....and as always, like everything I do, this one is 18+ so if it ain't you, don't read it.

You chew your bottom lip, watching him intently from your place in the passenger seat. His eyes are fixed on the dark road ahead, gloved hands gripping the steering wheel tightly, you were certain under the leather his knuckles were white as paper. A sharp breath through his nose is all the indication you need, his concentration is wavering; imploding further and further with every passing second. 

Neither of you speaks, the light of the dash illuminating your faces, the only source of light on the deserted stretch of blacktop in front of you, save for the car’s headlights. 

Your hand between his thighs squeezes just a little harder, the length of his shaft slick with precum leaking from the tip. Your own arousal, though less evident to the naked eye, soaking through the thin fabric of your underwear, your short skirt sitting high on your thigh, bare legs crossed in front of you at your ankles.

You had already found your release once tonight, the throb between your legs a welcome reminder as the scene replayed itself in your mind. 

He had picked you up, late, as agreed; and almost as soon as you stepped out your front door, you found yourself on the hood of his car, legs spread wide as he sank to his knees, pulling you to the hood’s edge, blanketed in darkness, but still exposed; that was part of the thrill. You leaned back, splayed out on the glossy paint, knees bent over his broad shoulders as he kissed his way up your inner thigh, making your whole body shiver with want. You reach between your legs, finding fistfulls of that gorgeous hair pulling him closer, needing him closer, needing more. 

You feel him huff a laugh against your core from under your skirt, face hidden between your thighs; you let out a small whimper, legs tightening around his head on instinct. 

Without a word, his hands, gloves on, ease your knees apart, his mouth enveloping your clit, his tongue attacking that tiny bundle of nerves. You take in a sharp breath, back arching up off the hood of the car, only for a second before you bite the back of your hand to keep yourself from waking the neighbours. 

“Holy..F-Ffuck” You gasp, taking in as much air as your lungs will let you as he hums appreciatively at a job well done, the vibrations sending another jolt of arousal through your nervous system. 

His hand sliding up under your silk shirt, to tease your bare chest; his tongue never stopping, causing you to jerk with every skilled maneuver It takes him no time at all to bring you to the brink, his massive hands yanking you closer to his face, keeping you trapped with ease as you squirm against the slick surface of the car’s hood, your orgasm imminent.

“Son of a bitch” you moan as he tongue fucks you through your orgasm, your quite certain your voice finding a new octave as you writhe under the moonlight, he lapping up every last drop you have to give.  

And now mere moments later, you sat in the passenger seat of that very same car, his throbbing cock pulsing in your hand, coated in his arousal. This had become a bit of a routine for the two of you; there was just something about a dark road and fast car…

This road in particular was one of his favourites, and yours too, many nights after he’d kissed you goodnight, popping a toothpick between his teeth as he stood on your porch, making sure you were inside safely; after you had climbed into bed alone, your hands would wander between your own thighs, the lightest touch of your fingers, triggering that delicious dull ache and you would be instantly transported back to that dark stretch of smooth straight asphalt, the speedometre easily creeping into the triple digits. 

Tonight was no exception, you moved your hand from between his thighs only long enough to unbuckle and shimmy yourself out of your underwear, they were an inconvenience, but all part of this dangerous little game. 

The car, his, the road, always the same, tonight  the moon has dipped behind the clouds, making it pitch black, his outfit, his scorpion jacket with a pair of black jeans and a simple black t-shirt….your outfit…one of his personal favourites…even before these recurring late night rendezvous. The tight little black skirt that was a respectable length, until you scooted into the passenger seat, showing a little more thigh than necessary, the white silk top with the deep v and spaghetti straps, you had worn it to the bar that first night, for a coworkers birthday…no bra…of course. The underwear, also one of his favourite pairs, a black lacy thong that would be left “forgotten” on the floor at your feet, until he would return them in a couple of days and you found yourselves here again in the near future. 

He rolled down the window on the driver’s side, flicking the used toothpick into the darkness; lifting his arm only long enough for you to climb over the console and into his lap; his foot never once letting up on the gas pedal. 

The slightest hint of a moan escaping his lips as you came to rest with his cock twitching between your thighs in anticipation. Trapped between his arms on either side briefly before he adjusted, shifting you slightly to keep eyes on the road. 

Dangerous? Without a doubt. Thrilling? Absolutely. Did you trust him wholly and completely to keep you safe? With his life. 

A gloved hand finds its way to your hip as you ease your aching cunt down slowly onto his slick cock. Your hips roll into his as you settle with ease, burying your nose in the nape of his neck; moaning with a need only he can satisfy. Both of your hands firmly on his shoulders as your rock back and forth in the tight space, one knee digging into the hard plastic of the centre console, if you hadn’t been so focused on finding your bliss you would realize how painful it is. The other wedged tightly between his thigh and the door. The car picks up more speed, his breathing heavy next to your ear. 

It takes no time before you’ve started coming unraveled in his lap; breaths coming in short quick gasps as your hair falls around your face with the movement, your teeth sinking into the sweat slicked flesh of his neck; a loud groan and a lurch between your thighs as your own thrusts start to waiver. 

“I’m….ungh” is all you breathlessly manage against the shell of his ear before you feel the hand on your hip grip tighter, fingers sinking into the soft flesh as he slams on the brake, his free hand throwing the car in park, the other keeping you from flying backwards through the windshield.

In one motion your hand reaches down, flicking the lever on the side of the seat; the weight of your bodies sending it back as far as it will go. Your hands flat on his chest, your hips keeping a rhythm as a leather clad hand finds its way around your throat, squeezing gently before making its way to the back of your neck, pulling you closer to devour your mouth; his hips now thrusting upward to meet yours.

You gasp in pain as his teeth pull on your bottom lip, the hand in your hair pulling roughly. He knows you like it even before your eyes slip closed, your mouth hanging open as he releases your lip, watching you, a moan escaping from the back of your throat. 

A sharp cool breeze blows in through the still open window, your unprotected nipples hardening against the silk of your shirt and despite the cool air, you can tell there’s still a thin sheen of sweat coating his face and neck. His focus is completely on you. 

“Be a good girl and let go for me” 

You throw your head back with a moan, narrowly missing the ceiling of the car, both hands bunching the fabric of his t-shirt in your fists; you cry out as his large hands guide your hips, completely taking the control and you relinquish it willingly, letting the entire weight of your body collapse on top of him, moaning unapologetically and as loud as your strained vocal chords will allow as you involuntarily clench your walls around his hard shaft 

“UGHhhh fuck!” spills from between his lips and it’s like music to your ears as you feel his release spill from inside you, down the inside of your thigh. 

You sit up, breathlessly, pushing your hair back off your face, swallowing hard before you flop yourself back into the passenger seat, your long legs draping momentarily over his lap as he adjusts his seat. His favourite feature of yours “Legs for days” he commented to you once, 

As if reading your thoughts, his hand sliding up your smooth skin, silent, he’s a man of few words you’ve learned, before you righted yourself and he put the car back in drive, turning around and heading back the way you came….until next time. 

[tallerthantale]

What Does Aziraphale Actually Believe, Part 7: Armageddidn’t Begins

This is a series of my takes on what Aziraphale believes through the timeline of the show. It is all my personal interpretation, and I am happy to hear others. You don’t need to read them all in order, but know that I am coming from a perspective on Aziraphale’s machinations that can be difficult for people without a psychology background to follow without the first two as a primer. The quick version is that Aziraphale has a set of beliefs that exist in some form or another within his mind. However, at any given moment, only some of them exist ‘with awareness’ or as I am putting it here, conscious!Aziraphale only has access to the beliefs that the rest of his mind, veil!Aziraphale, allows him to know about. The context of the moment will determine what lives on the surface and what stays buried behind the veil, whatever arrangement best prevents a threat to Aziraphale’s sense of self and makes whatever he is inclined to do feel right.

This post covers modern Season 1 up to the end of the Bandstand, with the bulk of it on that fight. Its too long. I can't stop myself. I apologise profusely. About 3.3k words.

The Modern Era

We come into the modern era with an Aziraphale who knows he is in love with a demon, knows heaven is run by morally bankrupt stooges, is willing to accept he is represented by shades of light grey, but will still say with a straight face that Armageddon will be heaven’s glorious triumph over evil and it will all be rather lovely.

Crowley doesn’t believe Azriraphale really believes that, and after getting drunk Aziraphale admits he doesn’t like it either. He was trying to convince himself, and it worked for a short time, like some of his temporary beliefs at Uz. Just like he can’t maintain the idea that he is suited to a life in hell, he can’t maintain the idea that Armageddon is good. He still has conflicting feelings about working with Crowley. “Get thee behind me foul fiend” is a joke. “We’re hereditary enemies” isn’t.

Aziraphale agrees to go along with raising the antichrist towards good as long as he can frame it as thwarting evil, and present it to his supervisors as part of his official duties. Once that rationalisation is in place he is practically beaming about the idea of stopping Armageddon by getting to be a positive influence godfather. I think at this point he has convinced himself that the ineffable plan is to prevent the great plan. He is so invested that he is surprised and frustrated that the other angels consider his work doomed to failure.

Doomsweek

The kid's grown up, and Aziraphale and Crowley are workshopping a backup plan. Crowley wants Aziraphale to kill the antichrist. He makes a greater good argument because he knows Aziraphale responds to those sometimes. Aziraphale still insists that he has never killed anything before. The executioner doesn't count. The meat doesn't count. There's no blood on his hands literally, there's no blood on his hands figuratively. Aziraphale doesn't disagree that it would be for the greater good, but he still isn't willing to do it. Neither is Crowley.

On the way to the ex-nunnery Aziraphale gives a whole ass speech about evil containing the seeds of its own destruction. It is very self righteous, and the speech does ingroup Crowley into that evil. He is the one who botched the baby switch over. It's a way for Aziraphale to not worry about the prospect of hell winning the war, as he is trying to accept the inevitability of the great plan. At the same time, I think it was an attempt from Aziraphale to argue that to the extent Crowley was involved in things going wrong, the blame was with the role he was playing as an employee of hell, for which he is not responsible. As in, it wasn't that you were a low quality employee of hell, hell's plans are inherently doomed to failure. I think from Crowley’s perspective it reads as ‘demons will inevitably fuck everything up, it’s what you do.’ Not that different to Aziraphale’s ”you’re a demon, that's [lying] what you do,” from the previous night. 

Paintball

I could pretend like we are going to talk about guns giving weight to a moral argument, but honestly their positions here are more for exposition of the way Aziraphale and Crowley’s paired traits often subvert expectations. Aziraphale the angel is more willing to consider violence or the threat of violence worthwhile than Crowley the demon is. The actual merits and disadvantages of absolutist pacifism aren't really something they are hashing out. We’re here for the saucy bits.

While I did enjoy reading the theory that Aziraphale had Crowley time miracle the coat so that it never had the paint in it in the first place, whilst also eliminating Aziraphale’s memory of the paint, I don’t buy it. There was no reason Aziraphale couldn’t just miracle the paint away himself. He still remembers that the paint was there and that Crowley miracled it away. When he rambles about “but I would always know it was there… “ He is spouting nonsense. The pivotal part of the communication is not his flimsy words, it’s him slowly hopping his shoulder towards Crowley’s face while making puppy eyes. ‘But would Aziraphale really just make up obvious lies to Crowley like that?’ you ask. “Is that a travel sweet?” I retort. See this gif breakdown of the paint miracle scene.

Why the act? Because as much as Aziraphale knows he is in love with a demon, he wants Crowley to do all the romancing bits. It’s mirroring the Bastille nonsense, baiting Crowley to come to the rescue. Before he was still lying to himself about his motivations, now he knows them, but can’t speak them. Here there are enough clues for Crowley to figure out what Aziraphale wants him to do, but not necessarily why he wants it, and Aziraphale isn’t ready to have that conversation.  See the spicy meta.

Aziraphale continues to regard Crowley to be a nice and good person, who is living in the transient condition of being existentially evil due to his current demonic status. This is pretty out of step with how Crowley views himself, which is its own complicated mess, and it’s something he is touchy about. Enough to make him angry and 'slam' Aziraphale into a wall. Not that Aziraphale regrets any of it for a second. Maybe he regrets getting interrupted. 

We get another glimpse at Aziraphale’s conceptualisation of angels and demons. Crowley refers to them both together as occult forces. Entities that are basically the same thing. Aziraphale takes offence to being described as occult, and insists that as an angel he is ethereal. I think these descriptions follow their metaphysical properties, not their professional role. Crowley might call himself a former demon after getting fired, Michael might call Aziraphale a former angel after Aziraphale is sacked, but Crowley is still occult, and Aziraphale is still ethereal. Aziraphale’s concept of abstract existential alignment with good and evil goes to the occult / ethereal distinction, not the professional one. 

Aziraphale doesn't tell Crowley he has found the antichrist. In my opinion, this is 100% because he knows Crowley will respond by telling him to kill the antichrist, and Aziraphale already knows he isn't willing to do that. He wants to have his own alternative plan before he tells Crowley. Unfortunately, he's often not very good at the coming up with his own plan part, so the strategy doesn't really work out for him.

Crowley Gives Mixed Messages Too

I think it has been and continues to be Aziraphale’s hope to bring Crowley back to angelic status. And I think there are reasons why he believes Crowley wants that too.

Crowley and Aziraphale are often speaking not quite the same language. They’ve got different exactlys. The Bandstand scene starts right off the bat with a small example.

“Have you found the missing antichrist’s name, address, and shoe size yet?”

“His shoe size, why would I have his shoe size?”

If Crowley spoke Aziraphale’s language a bit better he might have noticed Aziraphale just admitted to knowing the antichrist’s name and address. If he hadn't found any of the facts, he would have just said no. Crowley takes it as sass because that's what it would have been if he had said it himself. This will be the theme of the Bandstand, they each interpret what has been said to them as if it meant what they would have meant if they had personally said it. 

Crowley gets shouty about the Great blasted Plan. When Aziraphale responds, “May you be forgiven,” it isn’t just about shaming Crowley for lashing out, Aziraphale is starting to be resigned to the idea that Armageddon will happen, he believes heaven will win, and he doesn’t want Crowley destroyed. Aziraphale is saying 'may you be spared from the destruction of the great plan.'

Crowley responds, “I won’t be forgiven. Not ever. Part of a demon’s job description. Unforgivable, that’s what I am.” Crowley is making a philosophical incision. Aziraphale’s phrasing called to mind forgiveness from an authority outside himself, presumably God. Crowley is commenting that were God to grant that forgiveness, it would create a paradox. When God made Crowley a demon, She declared him unforgivable. God is infallible, so She can’t forgive him without being wrong, and She can’t be wrong. It isn’t meant as a representation of Crowley’s actual opinion, he isn't being self deprecating, it's a statement presented for the sake of argument, to make a dig at something Aziraphale said.

The dig doesn’t land though, because Aziraphale doesn’t parse God with formal logic, She’s motherfucking ineffable. Who said demons are unforgivable? Did they say it with words? Even if it was God Herself, Aziraphale has long understood that God plays messed up games, he just believes there is a greater good at the end. He could believe that God chose to cast Crowley out, proclaim that means he is forever unforgivable, and then later go, 'just kidding, welcome back lol.' It could be a lesson for the other angels, a lesson for the other demons, it could be about putting Crowley in the right place at the right time, it doesn't matter. God is ineffable, and that means Aziraphale can't be told what God thinks by anyone, including God. "That's ridiculous, you're ridiculous, I don't even know why I'm still talking to you." 

As he is wont to do, Aziraphale is very quick to take Crowley’s facetious statements at face value if it gets him somewhere he wants to go. Recall, “Oh, you’re an angel, I don’t think you can do the wrong thing.” Now we have Crowley bitterly, resentfully, describing himself as unforgivable specifically because he is a demon. If taken at face value out of context it isn’t that much of a stretch to read it as Crowley essentialising himself as evil, resenting being unforgiven, and thinking being a demon is the evidence that he is unforgivable. Right after Crowley states “unforgivable, that’s what I am,” Aziraphale brings up that he used to be an angel. Crowley brushes it off as having been a long time ago, but never specifies that he wouldn’t want to be one again. 

Aziraphale can see as much as the audience can that Crowley likes being able to have the opportunity to do kind things for people but is curtailed by the expectations of his position as a demon. What Aziraphale doesn't see is that the good deeds Aziraphale does for heaven are probably not what Crowley likes doing either.

One of the points that comes up in The Bastille is that Aziraphale gets in trouble for doing too many frivolous miracles. While I don't think that's the real reason he won't miracle himself free, I do believe that the strongly worded note happened. We see modern Aziraphale doing miracles as favours for humans pretty often, fairly recklessly, and I wouldn't be surprised if Aziraphale regularly got in trouble for doing unsanctioned good deeds. We also don’t see him have the same enthusiasm for his tedious assignments that he is given from heaven that he has for spontaneous favours.

If they actually talked it through I think Aziraphale could understand that what Crowley wants is more about the freedom to do specifically the good and mischievous deeds that he wants to do, rather than being forced to follow management's checklists. If they talked through it, Aziraphale might be able to realise that's also what he wants for himself.

Holierly Than Thou

At the Bandstand fight Crowley again raises the option to kill the antichrist. Aziraphale argues Crowley is the more appropriate choice for executioner, that way "heaven won’t have blood on its hands." He means his own angelic hands, that he still believes are mostly aligned with his intuition of God’s will. While he knows it is often God’s will for things to die, he doesn’t tend to believe it’s God’s will for him to kill someone or something directly. Aziraphale knows God and heaven have the blood of billions on their hands, though he is very good at avoiding paying attention to that fact. He also is still trying to maintain the appearance of being on team heaven, and by starting to think that the great plan is going to happen, he's feeling the need to lean into that more.

Crowley responds, “That's a bit holier than thou, isn't it?”

Aziraphale answers, “I am. A good deal holier than thou, that's the whole point.” 

He means that when he says it. This is not a joke, it is not said flippantly. Aziraphale is ethereal and Crowley is occult. He cannot let go of the idea that angels are inherently 'good' in comparison to demons even if it's mostly reduced to an abstract quality that is unrelated to an entity's character or actions. It is still what he believes, it’s still connected to his sense of his role in the universe. It’s not what he sees himself believing when he’s staring at Crowley’s lips, but just because the belief isn’t always visible to conscious!Aziraphale doesn’t mean it’s gone. 

When Crowley says 'holier than thou' he means it figuratively. He is accusing Aziraphale of being pretentious. It is a fair accusation, but not quite what Aziraphale is trying to mean. When Aziraphale responds that he is 'holier' he is referring to his ethereal status, not his personality. He can view Crowley as being the better person, and still consider himself more holy. Aziraphale reads the accusation from Crowley literally. To him Crowley might as well have said, 'what, do you think you're some kind of angel?' What can he say to that but '...Yes?'

Crowley’s response is my inner philosopher’s favourite line in the whole show, “You should kill the boy yourself, holierly.” If Aziraphale is good and holy by definition, and everything he does is a good and holy thing by definition because he is an angel, wouldn’t him murdering an 11 year old boy whilst being an angel be definitionally good and holy?

Aziraphale can’t go that far and Crowley knows it. That’s why Aziraphale is refusing to do the killing in such a pretentious way. Which ought to mean that Aziraphale understands the moral goodness or badness of his actions are not defined by his angelic status. Crowley is trying to get Aziraphale to put that together and admit it. However, Aziraphale did not reason himself into his position, and that means Crowley can’t reason him out of it.

The main driving force for Aziraphale here is he knows it would feel wrong to kill the child, and therefore he won't do it. It gets him defensive because there is a clear and obvious moral greater good argument for killing the kid, and he's been rationalising various atrocities of God with greater good arguments for a long time. He ought to be persuaded by the greater good, but he can feel that he isn't. That friction is making him get bitchy. Aziraphale is the one more ok with guns. Aziraphale is the one who disparages himself for being soft. Aziraphale is ok with the ends justifying the means. I don't think he sees his personal unwillingness to kill the kid as moral superiority, he might even see it as a moral failing. His comments on holiness are about angel esthetics, not morals.

Killing the antichrist wouldn’t feel right to Aziraphale, therefore it isn’t God’s will for him to do that, and there must be another solution. Through no fault of his own, Aziraphale is correct. Unfortunately for Crowley, this exchange comes across as Aziraphale insisting he is too morally superior to Crowley to be expected to be personally involved in preventing Armageddon. Aziraphale doesn’t actually want Crowley to kill the antichrist instead, he is mostly pointing out that there is some hypocrisy to Crowley being deeply invested in the kill the antichrist plan whilst being unwilling to personally do it. Aziraphale isn’t willing to do it either, but he isn’t the one pushing the plan. It’s been Crowley’s plan every time.

The Bandstand argument is also where Aziraphale says “We’re not friends, we’re an angel and a demon. We have nothing whatsoever in common. I don’t even like you.” This is tonally distinct from his other problematic statements, and mostly rubbish. Crowley responds to Aziraphale’s assertions with the level of dignity they deserve: “You dooooooo.” But there are traces of authenticity to Aziraphale still struggling to conceptualise them as being properly friends as long as they are designated an angel and a demon. It’s been an issue this whole time. However, there is one major sign of the issue finally lifting, in the least expected place.

“Even if I did know something I wouldn’t tell you, we’re on opposite sides!” 

“We’re on our own side.” 

“Not anymore. It’s over.”

Not anymore.

We have never seen Aziraphale acknowledge that he and Crowley are on each other’s side. He once asked if Crowley saw it that way, but he didn’t agree to seeing it that way himself. He never lets himself say it as a statement, I don’t think he has let himself believe it or think it. Veil!Aziraphale cannot allow conscious!Aziraphale to perceive himself as being currently on the same side as a demon, working together against God, that is too terrifying to consider. But when he convinces himself that they aren’t working together anymore, he can let himself see that they were on the same side together in the past. It’s less threatening that way. I think in Aziraphale’s mind, they were on the same side insofar as Crowley was helping him bring the universe towards his idea of God’s ineffable plan, and not that he was deviating from God’s ineffable plan. He didn’t see himself as leaving God for Crowley, he imagined Crowley had joined him in being aligned with God intuitively, even if Crowley would disagree with that description.

This exchange is remarkably honest from Aziraphale, but spoken in a language Crowley doesn’t quite understand. Aziraphale has effectively said he does know where the antichrist is, but is unwilling to tell Crowley, because while he had started to consider himself and Crowley on their own side together, he doesn’t any more, because Aziraphale won’t accept either running away or child murder as solutions.

I think Crowley mostly just hears “Fuck you.” And to be honest, that's valid.

Post 7/10

[autumnrainwrites]

A Blade Discarded

Durrest, 896 VAE/VC, Late August, Night

She moved carefully even now, stepping cautiously through the copse of trees as her ears caught the distant staccato of gunfire and the occasional burst of spell or rocket overhead. The crescent moon left only a bare trace of light to see by, augmented with the occasional burst from those loathsome rockets, yet she stepped surely and with purpose. Her prey was close, and her mechanical body and mind knew what was required. 

Her partisan’s steel head was their only warning. It caught her first target in the torso, parting maille links and cleaving porcelain and sinking into the machinery of the core below. The poor thing never knew what hit it.

Three against one became two against one. Still risky, but Nettles had surprise on her side. The doll with a caliver in their hands fired at where she had been half a second earlier, letting panic overcome purpose just enough to matter. Nettles already had her harpe in hand, drawing the sickle-sword from its sheath with a flourish even as she lunged for the halberdier doll. Up close, the short blade had the advantage, yet her strike met only the hard wood of the haft. 

Silently, Nettles stepped in, grabbing ahold of the other doll’s coat with porcelain fingers, turning to keep her between Nettles and the reloading gun-doll. The scuffle didn’t last long. Where a halberd is too unwieldy, a knife can be of service. When the bodies parted, Nettles came away with a crippled left arm. The other doll didn’t rise again.

There was no time to bask in success. The last of the enemies raised their firearm just in time for Nettles to bat it aside with her blade and step in for the kill. In all, three dolls of Vistria fell slain by one of Beldavia in a quarter of a minute.

Another rocket lit the sky for a glorious incandescent moment, and Nettles took stock. Her left arm hung limp and useless, the ball joint at her shoulder cracked bad. She wouldn’t be able to use her partisan, even if she could get it unstuck from the first of the dead dolls’s body using just one hand. With no other choice, the harpe she held would have to suffice.

She left the trees, moving even slower now. There were others about, friend and foe, dolls and men. In the open, alone, down here at the bottom of the escarpment, she would be easy prey. 

The day had started off… not well, but as expected. An enemy army atop the slope leading to the pass, an allied army in the town at the base. And naturally, Queen Greta had insisted upon where to commit her regiments. It was a defile, a shallower slope cutting the escarpment. An easier climb than the one facing the rest of the left wing, but the host arrayed in that narrow way were not humans or their kin like the rest of the battle line. No, Queen Greta IV, the Grasping, the Witch of Tyranny, self-proclaimed Queen of All Witches, meant to reclaim her country’s rebellious lost toys. 

It was a simple plan, and relentless. Successive waves, alternating between her mortal battalions and combat doll companies, would hammer the little band of free dolls at the top of the slope. When the mortals grew tired, the dolls would swoop in to cover the retreat and inflict the real damage. Human meat was only meant to dull the blade.

Nettles had been in the second wave, one of sixty-eight combat dolls rushing to the relief of the Glenrood Militia who bore the honor of first assault. A tricky maneuver, charging into battle in loose formation straight through a battered force of tired and frightened men with their axes and harpe swords and long stabbing spears, and at the end she crossed steel with hostile dolls for the first time, all under the cover of magic and missiles from both sides.

A friend, a doll she had shared tea with, took an iron bolt from some kind of field artillery right through the core.

A stranger in a black uniform that matched her own reeled back against her, its arm shattered to nothing just a few inches below the shoulder. 

An enemy, a pretty thing in their navy blue uniform, rolled screaming on the ground as green flames consumed it, hurled by the Royal Kinswoman commanding this wave. 

The enemy had magic of their own. A witch-doll peeked out from behind a low stone wall, raising a blue crystal stave in hand, and smote the Royal Kinswoman to the earth in a crack of lightning. But she did not die from that. She rose again, cackling, her body scorched and ward runes forming around her as she conjured phantom snakes that bit dolls on both sides with a poison of the soul even they could feel. Again and again the witch-doll hammered the Kinswoman with lightning and fire and wind, eroding her defenses just enough for an archer-doll to sink a rowan shaft into the witch’s royal throat.

And then the Padureni Highlanders hit the line, wild men with falxes flying, and Nettles and sixty-one other dolls fell back under witch-fog and cannonade.

Three more times, she made the ascent. It was not the same mortal brigades each time. And there was fighting elsewhere. All along the escarpment, from the steep north where the defile lay down to the shallower southern slopes, men of the armies died. In the south, the flames of a burning orchard lept so high that they could be seen from across the battlefield, as the maddened witch Duchess Chirmoneptas gyrated in hellfire above and her kin of sundered lines of a proud Imperial house butchered each other amid scorched roots below. 

Greta gave orders that attacks would continue through the night. They never got the chance. At sundown, when all battle ceased save for in the defile and the orchard, the dolls of Vistria charged after their fleeing foes.

Nettles had not been supporting that wave, and felt glad for it. As dusk settled over the slopes, the men of Stremt and Harlen fell back as planned, yet even as the covering screen of dolls maneuvered through their ranks the somber silhouettes atop the crest surged down upon them. At the sudden onset, the mortal men broke, fleeing down the defile in blind panic. The relief company, caught in the onslaught, fell back in disarray, and the battle moved from the slope to the camps below.

Now, night lay heavy over the town of Durrest and the woods and fields at the foot of the pass. Chirmoneptas burnt herself out shortly after sunset, and the pyre of the southern orchards slowly dwindled. Shadows hunted shadows: dolls and witches and men grappling in the darkness. 

After the Vistrian charge, others followed, units of light infantry from the mortal contingents of the defenders, lightly armored men kept in reserve throughout the day to act as raiders or as rearguard as the situation demanded. It was a small band of these that Nettles came upon next in her own hunt. Five of them, a couple lightly injured, with bows and hatchets and short spears. Unguided by purpose and with inferior night sight, they would be easy prey for the combat doll.

And sure enough, they were.

As she cleaned her harpe of the men’s blood, a strange dark light fell across her crouched form, illuminating the blood on cloth, steel, and porcelain in a horrid greenish glow. 

Nettles looked up sharply, searching for the source, and almost gasped. In the night above, she saw an angel.

The winged woman wore a cruel smile and a long dark gown, and in her hands she held a bow whose string glowed purple in the night. That same unsettling violet shade formed a halo behind her head, its intricate designs entwined in runes of bondage and sorcery. Slowly, the angel’s eyes scanned the field, until finding what she sought. Then, with a casual perfection born of purpose, she drew back a bolt of that same strange black light and shot into the distance. 

Nettles felt the angel’s eyes upon her, and could only hope that her black uniform and sickle-sword stood out enough from the navy blue and broadswords of the enemy dolls. That must have been enough, for the angel’s attention turned elsewhere.

She was about to start the search for her harpe’s next victim, when the night lit up like a fiery day.

The dark angel fell from the sky, entangled with an angel whose leathern wings burned golden, whose arcane halo hung over draconic horns. The toys of warring goddesses tumbled down to the rocks, the crash rolling over the field, drowning out the sound of rockets and cannons and spells. 

And darkness returned.

An hour later, Nettles neared a trio of men crouched over a body. Red cloaks, black bows, harpes through their belts. 

“Rangers,” she said, voice soft. “What word?”

They turned to her sharply, hands reaching for hilt or arrow, but relaxed as she stepped openly into the moonlight. The nearest nods to her and said, “The queen lives, as of half an hour past. We came from her with orders to find General Clementine and, if practicable, eliminate her. Have you word of the general?”

“Not this one, no. This one has been hunting the raiding parties up and down the slope and through these fields, in accordance with its witch’s last order.” 

The man grunted and shrugged. “Very well. Carry on then. May the hearth goddess see us all home.”

Nettles nodded in response and faded back into the shadows. 

Hours passed. She could feel her springs winding down. She’d been tended to shortly before the sunset assault, but a night of heavy combat left her in need of another rewinding. So, as grey twilight heralded the end of the long night, she made her way across the stony fields in the direction of the Beldavian camp, and her attention slipped just enough.

The arrow’s steel head was her only warning. Only a lucky turn of her body as she stepped over a corpse saved her, the arrow catching the maille rings of her battle uniform at an angle and lodging itself there.

Nettles turned, harpe raised just in time to parry the sabre of a Vistrian doll, its face impassive and its hair scorched and burnt. Winding low and with her left arm crippled, and fighting two against one, it took no time at all for her to know that she wasn’t getting out of this. But she could at least take the sword-doll with her-

Another doll appears from the side. How did she not see them? They were already in motion, halberd swinging on a wide arc. 

The heavy blade took Nettles in the midriff, shattering porcelain through maille and padding, smashing the delicate machinery below. She toppled back, little chain links falling away as she landed hard upon her back. Her core screamed, her mind blank of all except white hot agony. Then she could see again, through the pain, as the halberdier doll loomed above, point raised to finish the job they started… and then something crossed their face, something Nettles could not identify, and her would-be-killer disappeared from view.

She could not stand. She could not move anything but her head and right arm. And her mainspring was almost spent. There was nothing to do but lie still and wait.

Figures shuffled through the growing light, battered survivors of the night assault. Dolls with missing limbs, men carrying each other as they stumble from the bloodloss, trained wolves whose mistresses lay dead somewhere on the field…

As the red-gold sun rose over the mountains, Nettles saw two delegations approaching under white banners.

The larger of the two delegations came from her own side. Elite combat dolls, members of the Cotillion of the House, flanked the party. Within stood witches, and a handful of bureaucrats, an armored knight, a frightened comfort doll, and the queen herself: Greta IV.

Opposite them came just three dolls, each in a blue jacket with silver decorations and swords at their hips.

Two stepped forwards: the queen and General Clementine. 

And Queen Greta bowed as low as her stiff back would allow.

“The field is yours, general. You… have the best of us this day.” The queen’s voice is hard, choking back rage. Nettles wondered if she had even been so humbled, but set the thought away as improper. “And by our count, eighty-three of my own Royal Kinswomen lay dead upon the field. I have come before you to… to beg for leave to retrieve our dead and our wounded and return home.”

A few seconds only of silence, and General Clementine smiled. “Very well, Queen Greta. The battle is over, and we must both tend to the fallen.”

The general turned to leave, but the queen stood there a moment longer, seething in anger. Then, she turned back to her party and took hold of the comfort doll. The poor thing merely whimpered as its mistress forced it to its knees and pushed down upon its faceplate until the porcelain cracked and its polished eyes popped out, but the general flinched and gave one last look back. 

Nettles herself could not bear to watch.

Morning sun shone down upon the fields and the defile, where so many lost their lives. Nettles had barely anything left to give. She conserved the last useable energy of her mainspring for when the salvage teams reached her. It would not be long now.

At last, a team reached where she lay, a handful of support dolls and a common witch leading. She raised a hand to wave, and the witch approached.

“Designation and status?”

“Nettles. Under Miss Sylvain until she died in the second wave, then Miss Tessa until she died just after moonrise. This one is… damaged to the left arm and the core. Can’t move its lower body at all.”

The witch pondered for a moment, then shrugged and said to her crew. “Leave it. Not even worth salvaging. It’ll take me so long to repair, I might as well start from scratch.

Nettles wanted to protest, wanted to beg for another chance, but her energy was wholly spent now and the crew was already moving away. Time began to distort around her as her mainspring finally ran out, time passing by faster and faster. Sounds became a low constant drone to her ears. The last thing she saw before her sight became a mere blur of colors was a face smiling down at her, blue sky behind it.

And then, from that terrible entropy of slow panic, the world returned to Nettles in the form of a rocking wagon.

She was nude now, her undecorated and badly damaged body exposed. Someone behind her turned the key winding up her spring once more. She could move again… at least her head and right arm. The rest of her was still just as useless. Even if her limbs were replaced, she could feel the crack in her gyroscope. Until that was repaired, she knew she’ll barely be able to walk without falling over.

“Almost done,” a soft voice said, and that bright face reappeared, peeking out from behind her. It was another doll, smiling at her. Wavy blonde hair framing gentle porcelain features, set with polished hazel eyes, and her accent was strange. With a start, Nettles realized that this doll is of Vistria.

“I- You’ve made a mistake. This one-” 

“That one is quite alright,” the foreign doll said, finishing the final turn and gently pulling the key from Nettles’s back. “You were abandoned on the field, but this one saw that you were not dead.”

Glancing away a moment, she added, “Actually, I was told that you were there, by one of the soldiers. They weren’t willing to just let you die for no reason, and this one… and I agreed to check. I got there just as your salvage teams were leaving.”

Nettles said nothing, rattled by the news. It sat there, still and thoughtful, gathering what was left of itself together. Finally, she asked, “Is this one a prisoner then?”

“Yes, for now. But once you can move again, you’ll be free to leave. We… we don’t keep dolls who want to leave, not unless they’ve done something wrong.”

“This one fought… killed…”

The foreign doll raised a finger to Nettles’s lips, silencing it. “This was war. But if you feel so guilty, a magistrate can hear your case when you are well.”

They rode in silence a bit longer, in a wagon piled high with weapons, supplies, empty vessels of the slain. Finally, the other doll spoke again. “This one is named Marjoram. I’m a civilian assistant to the magistrate overseeing the army. What are you called?”

A pause, then, “Nettles. This one’s name is Nettles.”

“Nettles? What a pretty name.” 

Nettles never thought her name was pretty, but if Marjoram said so, she was going to trust that. She said nothing else then, but sat in stillness, leaning slightly on Marjoram’s shoulder. The other doll didn’t seem to mind.

Cast:

Nettles (She/Her, It/Its): A combat doll from Beldavia.

Queen Greta IV (She/Her): A cruel witch and ruler of Beldavia.

General Clementine (She/Her, They/Them): A doll general from Vistria.

Marjoram (She/Her): A doll acting as assistant to a magistrate of Vistria.

Various dolls, witches, rangers, and soldiers.

Author's Note:

Another dollfic, but this one is not tagged Empty Spaces because it takes place within a broader fantasy setting this one has been working on, called the Patchwork Lands. It is maybe not the most original of names for a fantasy world, but this one is rather fond of it. It hopes to write more in this setting soon. Meanwhile, it will also continue to post other dollfics, as well as some things it wrote about things other than dolls.

[strawwritesfic]

Kyoya Ootori x Female!Reader: Soul

Summary: It was supposed to be the best day of your life.

Rating/Tags: All (The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry; older sister!Reader; Reader & Original Character; Kyoya & the Host Club; established Kyoya/Reader; Ouran High School Student!Reader; breakup; no honorifics; Kyoya/Reader/Original Character)

Challenge: “160 Collective Drabbles” challenge by BobaPop on Lunaescence Archives.

Tag List: @imaginesfire​​

Soul

It was supposed to be the best day of your entire life. Admittedly, that wasn't saying all that much, since you were only in high school, but you still awoke with a flurry of excitement the moment your mother's maid slipped into your bedroom to pull the curtains back. From that moment on, everything went just as it should have: your favorite tea delivered before you could think of getting out of bed, the sun shining bright in a cloudless blue sky straight into your bedroom, and bird song drifting inside with the flower-scented breeze. You had nowhere to be and nothing to do until that evening, and spent a delightful day watching the world prepare for you to take center stage.

Two hours before that happy time, you finally slipped into your bathroom to get yourself ready for that night.

"I don't see why they're making all this fuss about you," your younger sister observed sullenly from her perch on the (obviously closed) toilet.

Normally you did not allow Kita in to watch your makeup routine, but after her fifth fight with your mother that day, you'd practically been assigned babysitting duty. This was not an ideal situation for the best day of your life. A glance in your mirror showed you Kita's usually dour expression directed toward you. Well, it was your day, not hers. She was understandably jealous. You decided to be magnanimous, rather than let something like her attitude ruin your mood.

"It's a celebration," you answered, without remarking upon how her expression would prematurely wrinkle her features. After all, you were the one that would need to remain "dewy and youthful" for as long as possible.

So far, judging by your reflection, you were managing just fine, though your hair could use some work. For once, you were out of your gaudy Ouran Academy uniform, and you wanted to radiate beauty from every angle--something all the easier to achieve when your only competition was Kita's scowl.

She did not answer, which you counted as a point in your favor. If she was done pouting, perhaps you could get some work done. You pulled open a drawer to reveal a painstakingly organized rainbow of makeup products inside. The decision of what foundation to start with was just forming in your mind when Kita decided to interrupt again:

"Yeah, but what are we supposed to be celebrating?"

Your eyes shut as you gave in to temptation and let out a sigh. Then you turned, hands on your hips, to explain to her what she ought to already have known: "We're celebrating," you answered in tones of forced patience, "because my new makeup line has outsold all of Father's since it was released."

This only caused her to draw her knees to her chest and glare at the floor. She looked like some disgusting, puffed-up bird that made its home in toilets, and somehow she didn't care. You would never understand your little sister.

"Still don't see what that has to do with you," she muttered.

Another sigh escaped you, this one not so well hidden. "I designed it."

"So? I could do that. I have done that. Not that anyone around here cares what I do."

You shook your head and returned to the mirror to apply your selected foundation. Kita's argument was not one you wanted to have again, not that day.

Your family business was makeup--high-end makeup, though you hoped to change that soon. As the eldest child, you would inherit the company upon your parents' deaths, while Kita got…well, money enough to get by, you supposed.

It wasn't a situation you could change, nor would you if you could have. You liked putting things together, liked figuring out solutions to problems, liked figuring out the best lighting to show off a model's cheekbones. There was no use listening to your sister whine about it all night. Hopefully she'd get over it before the guests arrived.

"Besides," Kita went on, so quietly that someone that didn't know her well might have thought you weren't supposed to hear, "your success has nothing to do with you. I could sell a ton of mascara, too, if I had your boyfriend."

You gaped at her reflection. "Kita, how can you say that? I've worked so hard to--"

"You have not. It's all Ootori's doing. Everyone knows it. You couldn't even get Mom to try your stuff before you got him to do your work for you."

Now it would be impossible to apply your blush properly, your body was making so much of its own. "Just because you're jealous-"

"Jealous? Of what?" Kita demanded, hot-faced herself. "You not being able to do anything without hanging off Ootori?"

"That isn't true, Kita!"

"Yes, it is! I don't even see what he sees in you, you're so useless!"

Tears threatened to undo what work you had done on your face. Up until recently, you and your sister had got along well. Then she had started at Ouran and, like all the girls there--including yourself, you couldn't forget--had fallen head over heels for the Host Club. A particular member of the Host Club. Your member of the Host Club.

Ever since she'd met Kyoya, Kita had done a complete one-eighty. Now she refused to help you with figures or advertisements, barely talked to you at family events, and had even started following your boyfriend around whenever he visited. Your parents told you that she was young and that you shouldn't take it so personally, but it was hard to be understanding when she talked like this.

"Get out of my room," you said.

Kita scrambled to her feet only to get right in your face. "I won't! I'm tired of giving up everything just because you're older!"

"If you don't get out of here, I'll tell Mom."

"Go ahead! You're the favorite, aren't you? You got your boyfriend to make sure that Mom and Dad love you most!"

"Kita--"

But it seemed now was the time she had chosen to say everything that had been on her mind since the day she stopped talking to you except to make snide remarks about the state of your clothes. "Mom and Dad love you. The teachers love you. Ootori loves you. You think you're so great. Well, I could do everything you do if someone gave me the chance. You get everything, and I get nothing!"

Now Kita was crying in earnest, her tear-streaked face as blotchy as yours felt. Despite everything--her constant hogging of Kyoya's time whenever she visited the Host Club, her attempts to embarrass you in front of your friends, even her constant asides about your average grades--you felt for her. Before you could attempt to say anything to patch things up, however, someone outside the bathroom cleared their throat.

Both you and your sister looked wildly around. There, standing in your bedroom a few feet away from the open bathroom door, stood Kyoya Ootori, the love of both your lives. He looked particularly dapper that afternoon in the suit he'd put on for the party. Of course, Kyoya always looked dapper.

Kita froze, but you remembered your manners.

"Kyoya!" you said brightly.

"[Name]," he said, then nodded at the mortified girl at your side. "[L Name]."

Kita made a very short, high-pitched sound in response. You suspected that she, like you, was wondering how much of your argument he had overheard. Fortunately, Kyoya was a gentleman. He said nothing as he extended one hand toward you.

"Would you join me for a walk?" he asked.

As usual, Kyoya's attention to you caused butterflies to explode into being inside your stomach. "I'm-I'm not quite ready," you said, torn between embarrassment at Kyoya seeing your natural features exposed like this, and your desire to follow him anywhere--even to the ends of the earth, so long as your sister didn't follow.

"I'll go," she said eagerly.

Kyoya did not spare her a glance, his gaze steady upon you. "I'll only keep you for a few minutes," he promised. "I'll have you back in time for the party."

"O-Okay,” you said.

You stepped away from the mirror and into your bedroom to take Kyoya's hand. With your arm in his, the two of you left Kita behind. Her glower followed you all the way out the door. What, did she expect you to let her occupy your boyfriend all night? He was far too mature to deal with a first year dragging him around for hours.

Kita and her bad manners were behind you now. Once Kyoya had led you out into the nearly-finished garden, you took a deep breath. The heady scent of hundreds of flowers made your head swim pleasantly. A walk with your boyfriend was just what the doctor ordered. You were happy enough to bob along at his side until it struck you how quiet he was being.

"Kyo? Is something wrong?" You leaned forward a little to frown up at him.

His dark eyes slid away from one of the chefs setting up a plate of otoro and onto you. "Why should anything be wrong?" he asked, and followed his question with one his rare smiles.

You could still remember the first time he had graced you with one of those smiles. Not a hoard of fellow students requesting his time at the Host Club. Not at some public event where your two families had to make nice. No, he had stopped you after arithmetic one day outside of class. Far at the end of the hall, you could see the heads of all six of his friends poking around the corner, the twins grinning as usual while the rest attempted to hide. You hadn't thought anything of their presence until Kyoya said:

"What would you say to getting dinner with me this weekend?"

You had laughed. “You mean for some Host Club event?"

“I don't see why I should ask by myself if I meant to bring them along. They'll likely show up anyway, but I intended the invitation to be for you alone.”

The blood ran from your face, then flooded back into it. You stole a glance toward the other hosts to see Hikaru (or was it Kaoru?) snickering openly. "Very funny, Ootori.”

"Well, if you aren't interested…" He turned to leave, but your curiosity got the best of you.

"Wait!" You had almost had the audacity to grab his shoulder. Luckily, Kyoya turned around first, a politely disinterested look upon his face. "Why me?"

"False modesty does not become you." You opened your mouth to protest that there was nothing false about it, but Kyoya went on, "Your family business has potential that I am interested in. You always request me during your visits to the Host Club. If it benefits both of us, why not spend more time together outside of school?"

You had not been able to speak. The Ootori family's system of companies was much bigger than the one your family owned, and yet Kyoya saw potential in it. He saw potential in you. After a moment, you nodded.

"Good. I'll pick you up at seven this Saturday. Here's my number, in case you need to cancel."

Wordlessly, your fingers wrapped around the scrap of paper he held out. Your heart beat like the wings of your pet canary. He offered you a shallow, chivalrous bow, then headed off to his friends, all of whom hastily ducked out of sight when they saw him coming.

You had not truthfully expected Kyoya to show up that Saturday, so you had not told your family to expect company. He was not the kind of boy to play heartless jokes on young women (especially regular patrons of the Host Club), but he could easily change his mind about being seen in public with one such as you. Show up he had, though, and since then, you had been in a whirlwind of dinner dates, weekend trips, and late nights of working on one company project or another.

Once such late night, you had awoken to find your head in his lap, his fingers gently fiddling with your hair while he frowned at some scrap of business. Kyoya was not the most openly affection of boyfriends, but you were over the moon. Outside of Kita's open jealousy and your having to share your boyfriend with every girl in school during Host Club hours, you couldn't have been happier.

"[Name]?" his voice came from afar.

"Hmmm?" you said dreamily as you returned to the present. It didn't take long for you to remember that you were supposed to be worried about him. "S-sorry. Did you say something?"

Kyoya didn't miss a beat. "I was saying that your sister was very accommodating this afternoon."

"Accommodating?" You threw him a look.

Kyoya's eyes remained on the garden path. "Yes. She offered to keep me company while I waited for you, then graciously allowed me to steal you away from her."

Now you looked behind yourself, half-expecting to see Kita lurking somewhere inside the house with her face pressed to the glass to watch your walk.

"She can be very accommodating," you said with forced civility, "when she has the incentive." That incentive being to steal your boyfriend, which wasn't something she would be able to manage anyway.

"It was quite kind of her, and she's very civil when she requests my time at the Host Club."

You were sure she was. Seeing as you could not buy up all of Kyoya's time with your allowance, you spent most of your own in the Host Club reading--or rather, pretending to read while watching all the girls swoon over what was rightfully yours. Kita especially made sure you were watching whenever she fawned over him. Knowing his job was to be polite and charming was the only thing that got you through. You'd never have expected him to notice those other girls, especially not your baby sister.

"I don't want to talk about Kita," you announced, tugging him closer. "It's not her day. It's mine."

"Speaking of your sister's admirable qualities does not diminish your own."

You eyed him suspiciously. That line was one you'd heard him use on dozens of girls throughout the years, but never on you. "Let's talk about something more interesting. Like the announcement that we're making tonight in front of my parents and everyone."

The emphasis on we're did seem to get Kyoya's attention. He loved business propositions, after all. This time, you noticed, his reaction was not the same as usual. Rather than launch into his plan to make sure the announcement went off without a hitch, he stopped right there in the middle of the path. Before you could ask again what was wrong, he finally looked at you.

"I won't be making any announcements tonight," he said.

For a moment, all you could was stare at him. Then you giggled, and stepped in front of him to take his hands. "What are you talking about? It was all your idea! They're sure to take the idea of selling makeup to peasants well if you bring it up."

"You'll have to tell them yourself."

"Why?"

He fell silent for a while before he slowly looked away from you again. It seemed as though whatever he had to tell you was very difficult for him--and you had never seen Kyoya have difficulty with anything before, except in dealing Tamaki's flightier ideas.

"I will not be involved with [L Name] Cosmetics anymore. Not officially." Though you did not understand why, your heart beat tremendously in your chest. His eyes flashed behind his glasses even as his hands sat limp in yours. "For the past eight months, I have done my best to see your company grow. Now I realize that all that has been a waste of time. It will never grow to its full potential with you at the head."

Your eyes burned with the effort of holding back tears. Wildly, you shook your head in the hopes he wouldn't notice how close you were to breaking. Had he heard Kita's accusations from earlier? Did he believe them?

"That's not true! It has grown. That's what tonight is all about! And I know it will continue to grow if you're still here to help me," you said.

His voice was flat, void of all emotion, when he replied, "The head of a business should be able to run her own company."

You were upset, that much was clear. Nevertheless, you weren't quite crying yet. Kyoya wouldn't say these things to you and mean them. He loved you. He'd told you so. You refused to believe that he really thought you were that stupid because of something Kita had said in the heat of anger.

"Why are you telling me this?" you demanded, voice shaking.

"Because it is true," he answered, but as he did, he continued to look away.

That caused you to snap. You let go of his hands and rushed over to shove yourself right in front of his eyes.

"If you think that I somehow tricked you into this because of what Kita was shouting earlier today, that's ridiculous! You asked me out. I—I admit that I still have a lot to learn, but I can learn when you're with me. Please don't do this.” Not that Kyoya had come to the point of breaking up with you, but no matter what certain individuals thought of your intelligence, you could see what was coming a mile away.

His eyes remained staring at something beyond your shoulder for a long time. Then they met yours, and he answered coldly, "this was only ever a business arrangement. I was under the impression that you understood that from the beginning. There will be no future for [L Name] Cosmetics underneath you, so I am no longer interested in you."

You gasped. A parade of images flooded your mind: Kyoya smiling at you over the heads of a gaggle of Host Club girls; Kyoya taking your hand to move a pencil inside it across the page; Kyoya kissing you on the lips for the first time the night he met your parents. He could be cold. He could be distant. But he was never cruel. You felt as though he'd slipped a dagger into your very soul.

"Tell me the truth!" you shouted, hands balled at your sides. Your temper did not faze him.

"Believe what you want." He pushed his glasses up his nose and turned back toward the house. "Your company's future is no longer of any concern to me, and I suppose it was foolish to think it ever was." He fell silent again, this time staring at his feet. Then he spoke again, his voice quiet, "It has been suggested that your sister would be a more prudent match for a third son such as myself.”

Your mouth fell open as your stomach dropped. "Who-"

Just like that, his manner changed again. "I happen to agree. I don't think I will have much trouble convincing her to date me in your stead, do you? After all, she was so accommodating this afternoon."

Kita? You gazed at Kyoya's back with an expression of absolute horror. This couldn't be happening. Any day of the week, you wouldn't have believed him capable of breaking up with you in such a manner, but on the best day of your life? Moreover, so that he could date foul-mannered, ill-tempered, conceited Kita of all people?

"You can't!" you said, running after him. This time, you did grab his shoulder.

"I can and I will." His blank features faded somewhat as he looked back at your stricken form. "Goodbye, [Name]. I suppose I'll be seeing you again shortly."

He bowed once more before he left. You stared after him, aghast. Kita, your sister, your rival, would find nothing wrong in accepting your ex as a suitor. She'd see it as some sort of karmic payback for you stealing her spotlight. If she could not have your company, she would at the very least have the man you loved.

From behind you came the swelling of the orchestra signaling the start of your party, but it was not to your bathroom to finish getting ready that you ran. No, you sped away to hide yourself deep in the most distant topiary to cry. Kita had said you had everything and she had nothing, but just then you would have given up everything promised to you just to have Kyoya back.

It was supposed to be the best day of your life.