#artificial hair extensions

[rpvlix]

//you know, i just realized that of the siblings that have their hair up/braided/styled in some way (so, like, all of them except Fous and Kenny) I've never actually considered what their hair looks like unstyled. Except Kym, for some reason.

[cherienymphe]

A Caged Bird (Coriolanus Snow x Reader)

WARNINGS: NON-CON, blackmail, stalking, abuse of power, hints of dacryphilia, slightly spoiler-esque

summary: Birds are best kept in a cage where one can see them...and where you know where they are at all times.

~

You thought that it was over when you won.

That’s what winning The Hunger Games meant, right? The psychological torture, the grueling conditions, and the fear that wouldn’t leave you until you finally left the arena was supposed to be over. You made it out through blood, sweat, and tears, and so your reward was to go home and reunite with your family and try your best to put the memories behind you.

Try your best to put him behind you.

So, why were you still being tormented?

When you first locked eyes with Coriolanus Snow, your first thought was how strikingly blue his were. Almost as if they weren’t real and had been specially manufactured in The Capitol for him, somehow. His hair, too, was just so much blonder than anything you’d seen in District 12, and again, you noted how so much about him seemed…artificial.

…but then he spoke…and the effect his voice had on you was very real.

“You don’t seem like you’re supposed to be here,” you’d said to him after stepping off of that train.

His response was expected, a charming chuckle leaving his pink lips, blond curls the perfect addition to his features.

“I’m not,” he slowly admitted.

The intensity behind his gaze whenever he so much as glanced at you was enough to make any girl’s heart race, and despite what you wished, you weren’t immune. He was beautiful—gorgeous as some of the other tributes and mentors liked to call him—and despite the initial intimidation, there was something about him that made you want to let your guard down.

…but he was your mentor…and a capitol citizen…and you were nothing more than his ticket to notoriety.

“Don’t you know who his dad was?” another tribute, one from one of the better districts, had said to you in a tone like you were stupid.

That was all the confirmation you needed, really.

…but he’d hopped onto the truck with you and gotten into that cage with you and brought you and your district mate food. He gave you poison to use against the other tributes. He wanted you to appeal to the audience so he’d have the funds to send you supplies. It was hard to decipher what was purely for show and what was just because he wanted you—and him by extension—to win. Perhaps, they were one in the same though, and it was impossible to have one without the other. Maybe it didn’t matter his reasons behind his desire to have his tribute win.

Maybe all that mattered was that you’d win.

…but that was when you thought winning meant you’d be free.

Coriolanus Snow was your best chance at winning, and so when the rebels rigged the arena, you didn’t hesitate to stay behind and save him. It wasn’t even a question in your mind because mentor or not, he was hurt, and you had to believe that that one fluke was not your only fighting chance. You couldn’t allow yourself to believe that in saving him, you’d allowed freedom to pass you by.

“You saved me,” he told you, a gentle brush of his handkerchief under your eye to catch your tears. “You saved me, and I am going to get you out of here.”

You had no idea then that he meant out of the games…and to him.

It was that flickering moment of doubt where you wondered if you could actually win, and you recalled what you’d said to him earlier about believing you could, how much you needed him to actually believe it. Now, you were the one doubting, and he could see it, blue gaze flicking over your face and soaking in the fear and uncertainty, because if you couldn’t win…

You’d die.

A lingering gaze and a tense atmosphere, and you felt yourself pulling back, realization hitting you as to just what you were about to let happen. It was hard to decipher who overstepped first, but you couldn’t allow yourself to get wrapped up in something that was only ever meant to be strictly professional. Coriolanus was your mentor, and you were his tribute.

That was all.

You didn’t know then the full lengths he went to just to ensure your victory. How could you? You were too busy trying to survive, trying to fight off rabid tributes and teenagers driven mad with the sole desire to just live. It was all so unfair and angering, and you were sure that with less focus, you might’ve gone insane too. You didn’t have the luxury to worry about your eerily handsome mentor and whatever ulterior motives he might’ve had to see you beat this thing.

So, when you did win, all you could feel was relief. All you could focus on was your family and their faces when you’d ultimately reunite with them. All you could even entertain were thoughts of pushing this very real nightmare to the back of your mind for as long as you possibly could. Initially, you didn’t even notice that you weren’t immediately reunited with your mentor when they crowned you as the winner and got you out of there.

At least, not until you came face to face with him in your own district.

“I thought they’d killed you. I didn’t know if my actions had come back on you too,” Coriolanus told you in a secluded corner, the loud music drowning out his words and the cover of darkness hiding your faces.

Those beautiful pale curls were gone, and any thought that so much of his beauty relied on his golden locks was gone too with one drink of him. He was still the same handsome boy that mentored you, the same one who’d garnered the nickname ‘gorgeous’ among the other tributes. Up on that stage, you’d been thrown to meet a familiar gaze, your harmonious tune pausing for half a second as he met your shocked stare with an expression of his own you couldn’t place, pink lips curved upwards ever so slightly.

Any question of how and why he was here had disappeared as you registered his words. Confusion filled you as you stared at him, a slight frown between your brows as you wracked your brain for how that could possibly make sense.

“Why would they kill me…?” you slowly asked him, and you and the shadows were all that was privy to his confession.

The water bottles, the handkerchief, and the snakes—even the poison. Coriolanus had cheated to secure your victory, broken rules that plucked him out of The Capitol and dropped him here in your very own district as a Peacekeeper. The shock you felt that your victory was far from a fair one warred with the confusion you felt as to why he’d risk everything just for you to win.

If you’d lost fair and square—as you probably should have—there was no doubt in your mind that he’d be safely tucked away in the lavishness of The Capitol instead of lingering about in some rundown excuse for a bar in lowly District 12. If he knew what awaited him should his treachery be discovered…then why chance it? Nothing about your brief tutelage with him could justify what he’d risked and ultimately lost.

You wanted to ask him why, but something in you was afraid of the answer.

That almost kiss—a kiss you hadn’t thought about in months—suddenly came to mind, and even though you didn’t ask him why, something in you knew why even if you wanted to deny it. It was there in the dim lighting and rowdy atmosphere of some rundown building that every minor interaction didn’t start to feel so minor.

Every brush of his hand against yours as he reached for you, the unsettling way he seemed to watch you in that short time that you’d simply written off as concern for his tribute, and the ruthless desire to see you out on the other side of the arena. The kiss that never was only seemed like a lapse in judgement to you then, but in this moment, you had suspicions that it was very much intentional.

You swallowed, realizing that in that brief internal introspection, Coriolanus hadn’t taken his eyes off of you once.

“Did they send you to District 12?” you finally asked him.

You didn’t know what gave you away. Perhaps your tone, maybe your face, or maybe your eyes weren’t as secretive as you’d like to believe. Either way, something about your visage and demeanor gave the blond man pause, head tilting just a tad as those baby blues glinted with something you didn’t recognize but you know you didn’t like. He studied your face before coming up with the answer he probably thought you wanted.

“Of course.”

You didn’t know if you believed him.

…and Coriolanus could tell.

You’d played enough cat and mouse games in the arena—you never thought you’d have to play them in your own home too.

Starving off the affections of some boy in your district wasn’t hard or uncharted territory. Even spurning the forbidden advances of a Peacekeeper or two wasn’t unheard of, but Coriolanus was different. He wasn’t some average Joe turned cop. He was born and raised in The Capitol with a powerful father, and even though the man had been taken before his time, your former mentor still had been brought up with the kind of influence and reach and mindset that surpassed the average Peacekeeper.

They were followers—controlled by The Capitol and tasked with maintaining order. Most were no more than dumb brutes, mindlessly following orders without question, simple enough to be bribed and swayed. If Coriolanus’ actions had shown you anything, it was that he was not a follower. He did what he wanted and played by his own rules, and it was how you found yourself hunted by a gaze you thought you’d left behind in the arena.

Since the discovery of your former mentor’s presence in your district, you never felt alone.

Every walk to trade for food felt shadowed, every footstep home was accompanied with an echo, and a sweep of your eye over the crowd as you played an instrument or sang a tune was rewarded with a familiar blue one that made your heart freeze. You were forced to ignore it no longer when a single rose was left for you on the doorstep, your ma’s gaze questioning as she held it out to you.

You didn’t know where or how he got it, but you only cared about giving it back.

“I can’t accept this,” you told him, gaze steady but fingers trembling as you held it out to him.

It was raining, and the cover over your heads sheltered you from the downpour, but it did little to drown out the sound of it. Coriolanus simply stared at the flower for what felt like too long, making no moves to take it from you, and you swallowed. His blue gaze zeroed in on the action before it lifted to your face.

“…and why not?”

“Because I think it means something different to you than it does to me.”

Your response was swift, and you watched him sigh, eventually reaching out to finger the flower like he did that day before he’d proceeded to put it behind your ear. He finally took it, and just like that day before the games, it found its way behind your ear once again. The only change this time was the shudder that traveled down your spine, and the apprehension you felt when his gaze met yours.

For the longest time, the only sound was that of the rain, a few stray drops making it’s way onto your face and clothes due to the wind. If the man before you still had the locks you’d met him with, they would’ve been rustling with the breeze, right now. Both of you were very still, or maybe it was just you—nervous and fearful of how he’d respond. He briefly looked past you, eyes glinting briefly before they hardened once again, his pink lips pressed together as he regarded you.

“…and if it does?”

He continued when you frowned.

“Mean something different to me than it does to you,” he elaborated, and you blinked.

Taking a deep breath, you tried to gather your thoughts.

“I know…that I’m only standing here, now, because of you,” you slowly started, watching him push his shoulders back. “I won because of you, I know that, but-.”

“Exactly,” he cut you off, making your lips part. “You won because of me…and everything I sacrificed was to make sure you won.”

“…but I didn’t ask you to do that!”

You felt…cornered, somehow, because on the one hand, yes. You did owe so much to the man before you, but at the same time, what did you owe specifically? Your attention? Your affection? Whatever he deemed an appropriate compensation? When you saved his life in the arena that day, and he vowed to save yours in return, you didn’t understand the full ramifications of the deal you were agreeing to.

“I saved your life, and you saved mine, and I’m sorry for the things you felt the need to risk, but that’s where it ends.”

The cold from the rain didn’t faze you nearly as much as the heat from his gaze boring into your back.

You wanted to believe that your lack of confrontation was what led you to the predicament you found yourself in. After all, things between you two had held too many ‘what ifs’ and lingering feelings and questions. You liked to hope that telling the man in no uncertain terms that your relationship should never and would never progress beyond anything professional would fix things.

You never would’ve guessed that your bout of confidence would only prove to make things worse.

“My ma doesn’t even know any rebels, and you know that.”

You’d whispered the words so quietly, throat too choked up to speak any louder as you tearfully stared Coriolanus down, your words only intended for the two of you. Your back was pressed to the doorway as he stood before you, a foot or two of space between you as other Peacekeepers did their duty to search your house as thoroughly as possible. The reason you’d been given was suspicion of treason—to the shock of your ma—but both you and the handsome man before you knew the truth.

“One can never be too sure. It’s always those you least expect.”

His cool response only made you look away, a few tears escaping.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. You won, you were free, so why did it still feel like you were in the game…except a much more dangerous one this time? You could feel his eyes on you as you watched man after man rifle through you and your ma’s things, your younger sister not home to witness this. Out of the corner of your eye, you could see him take a step towards you—just one, but one was enough to make you flinch.

You still didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking at him though.

“Unbearable,” he quietly said. “…not able to be endured…or tolerated.”

You swallowed.

“Not to be confused with hard—requiring a great deal of endurance or effort.”

Another step towards you.

“To find something unbearable means that you quite literally cannot stomach it any longer. It forces a change to come, forces something to…give,” he whispered.

Your gaze was still focused ahead, but his words made you blink, made your heart sink, and you swore that he knew that.

“I can make things incredibly unbearable for you…and your family.”

You straightened at that, finally looking at him with a venomous gaze and a heaving chest. Coriolanus reached up to pick at your shirt, removing a piece of grass from it, and you watched him inspect it before turning his blue eyes back onto you. They lingered on your own eyes before lowering to your lips, his own twitching so subtly you might’ve missed it if you were anyone else.

“Or I can make sure you’ll be taken care of, looked after as if you were my own…” his gaze met yours again. “It’s entirely your choice.”

You two stared at one another for an infuriating amount of time before he let out a sharp whistle, telling the other men that nothing seemed to be here and to move on. His wording was not lost on you, and you crossed your arms over your chest. Coriolanus was the last to walk out, and despite the feel of his heavy gaze, you didn’t look his way the entire time.

Your ma commented on the strangeness of the whole ordeal, but nothing about it was strange to you. It was all very calculating and sinister actually, and while you grew up hearing countless talk of running away and living off the grid, you were never more tempted than in this moment…but you were not alone. Your ma was sickly, and your sister was too young.

…and if you left, you could only guess what you’d be leaving your family susceptible to.

Your future seemed inevitable no matter how much you tried to find a way out of the path set for you.

The first night you slept with Coriolanus Snow, it was storming just like that day you’d attempted to give him back his flower. You’d cried for a good three hours before, feeling helpless in the aftermath of another so-called inspection from Peacekeepers—this one much more destructive. The only light that night came from the brief flashes of lightning, and the sound of the rain drowned out the reluctant gasps to leave your lips.

Hands much softer than you ever expected trailed down your frame, curving over your hips and dipping underneath your thighs. The blond man’s lips rarely left your skin, kissing whatever part of you that came to mind, nose gently grazing you as he did and pulling shudders from your frame. It was a foreign feeling to be so heated and afraid at the same time.

Under the cover of darkness, his fingers intertwined with your own and his hips were flush with yours. The feel of him inside of you was much more jarring than you thought it would be, choked deep breaths leaving your parted lips as he pressed his face into the crook of your neck. His thrusts were slow, the complete opposite of what you expected, and you didn’t know if you liked that better or worse.

Every kiss felt wrong, like you were betraying yourself, but in the same manner, they also reminded you of that first day you met. You thought about when you stepped off of that train, and that smooth voice escaped those pink lips, and your stomach flipped no matter how much you pretended it didn’t. The person you were that day wanted to throw your head back and welcome the little nips he left along your skin.

The person you were, now, wanted to crawl inside of your skin.

This man had stalked you to the highest degree, following you all the way from The Capitol just to collect on the young woman whose survival he ensured. The things he’d risked and ultimately lost, he placed the weight of on your shoulders as if you were responsible to compensate for that somehow. As if it was your duty to make his sacrifices worth it.

When he pulled you into his lap, resting on him with arms circled around your waist, it was your turn to press your face into the area where his neck and shoulder met. His fingers dancing along your skin made you shudder, and that just made the tears collect more because you didn’t want to enjoy this, but your body and your brain didn’t seem to be in alignment.

When you were forced to come around him, you saw stars, and you were positive your nails left marks on his back.

You didn’t really think that no more trouble from Peacekeepers was worth the figurative collar around your neck. The abundance of food and supplies might have been, if only to just see the smiles on your ma and sister’s faces, but even then, when you found your back pressed to Coriolanus’ chest as he drove his cock up into you, you wondered if it was actually worth it.

Your ma would say no, that you knew for sure, but you supposed it wasn’t her call to make.

After all, the alternative was psychological torment and worst-case scenarios you didn’t even want to entertain.

“Would you have had her arrested?” you quietly wondered one night.

The sheet was clutched to your chest, and you were facing the wall, still unable to look him in the eye directly afterwards. You’d never been able to, feeling used and low and indefensible. You tried not to dwell on the feel of his fingertips tracing patterns into your shoulder, his cool breath hitting your skin as he exhaled.

“I mean…would you have…framed her somehow? Found some justification for it?”

You didn’t know why you were asking, certain you wouldn’t like the answer, and as you predicted, you felt your throat tighten the longer the silence stretched. Against your will—like many things you’d been doing as of late—a few tears escaped, and even before he answered, you knew what you were going to hear.

“Yes,” he confessed, just as quietly.

You squeezed your eyes shut, subtly wiping your face.

“I sacrificed so much for you to win, and not just because your win was my win…but because I wanted to see you win,” he murmured, placing a kiss to your back. “…because I wanted you.”

You knew that, but having it confirmed so plainly was disturbing.

“…and when I eventually make my way back to The Capitol, as we both know I will, I’ll still want you.”

Your stomach sank at that, and for the first time, you turned to look at him while still trembling in the aftermath of what had quickly become a nightly occurrence. His gaze was still focused on where your back had been, and when his eyes flitted up to connect with yours, you didn’t have the words to convey how you felt about what he was insinuating.

“In The Capitol, you’ll have access to things you could never even imagine…and you could send those same things back to your family,” he told you, reaching up to touch your face.

When you moved to sit up, he stopped you, a firm grip on your arm. Coryo—as he liked for you to call him—fixed you with a look that you knew all too well. It was the look he gave you when you tried to come up with any excuse as to why you couldn’t meet with him. It was the look you received when you briefly forgot the power dynamics here, turning away from him and attempting to push him away.

It was a look that told you not to fight the inevitable.

“I want you there with me.”

His tone left no room for argument, and there was so much conviction in his voice that the thought of arguing seemed legitimately draining. You simply stared at him, eyes glassy, and he stared back, waiting for verbal confirmation of what you both knew was going to happen, anyway. You had no choice in the matter, you never did, and for a brief horrifying moment, you almost wished you were a lone orphan who didn’t have to look out for anybody but yourself.

That thought did make tears spill over.

It was a horrible thing to think, but your loved ones were being used against you, and you knew that your ma—and your sister if she were old enough to comprehend these things—would never want this for you. Coryo sat up with you, a hand resting on your cheek as he gazed at you, a thumb brushing the tears away. It wasn’t meant to be comforting.

Nothing he did was ever meant to be comforting.

“I want you there with me,” he repeated.

You wondered what someone like you would possibly do in The Capitol.

“I don’t belong there,” you whispered, a poor attempt to get him to change his mind.

His response was swift and clipped.

“You belong with me.”

When he pressed his lips to yours, it was expected that you would kiss him back. His thumb brushed along your skin as you did, a low hum sounding in the back of his throat that quickly escalated into a groan. His free arm snaked around you, and your last attempt at resisting proved futile, so you let him lay you down.

Sex with Coriolanus was a maddening experience.

You didn’t want it, and your brain didn’t want it, but it was as if your body was its own separate entity running on hormones and animal instinct.

When he rested his full weight on top of you, you shuddered for a multitude of reasons—one of which you didn’t want to acknowledge. When he slid his hand between your breasts and down to your stomach, your back arched, chest pressing up and into his. When he pushed into you all torturously slow as he always did, you involuntarily held your breath, shaking at the feel of his hips connecting with yours, the length of him fully sheathed in your warmth.

You were terrified of him, so that was why you opened up for him like those budding roses he used to carry around, but in doing so, you made yourself vulnerable beneath him. You made yourself more susceptible to his kisses and his touch and that maddening voice that knew just how to get its way. He wasn’t a very talkative man when he was inside of you, much more content with letting his actions speak for themselves, but tonight was different.

“Look at me,” he whispered, curving his hips into yours. “Look right at me.”

You did, and while you didn’t know the specifics of the psychology behind this, you knew that looking into the eyes of your tormentor while in the act couldn’t be good.

“Keep your eyes on me,” he breathlessly told you, nose brushing against yours with every thrust.

You could hear that it was starting to rain again, and you pressed your hands into the small of his back, trying to ground yourself in some way—trying to have control over something, anything. Tears kissed your eyes, and you swore—you swore—that something in those blues of his twinkled. It sparked something in his gaze, and in his psyche, his thrusts becoming more powerful and making you gasp, nails pressing into his skin.

He only looked especially satisfied when the tears spilled over.

When he came inside of you, and you around him, you swore you saw stars.

You even thought you saw snow.

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: A Departure.

Commissioned by the very lovely @ohsotearful.

Pairing: Yandere!Scaramouche x Reader (Genshin).

Word Count: 1.3k.

TW: Spoilers For Sumeru's Story Quest, Unhealthy Relationships, Mentions of Physical/Psychological Abuse, Themes of Forced Codependence, and Maladaptive Coping Mechanisms.

You arrived at the door of his shrine with no less than a dozen guards in tow – an even mix of Fatui soldiers and Akademiya matra. The most brazen among them attempted to follow you inside, but you dismissed them with a quick shake of your head, a pointed look to the more senior members of the mismatched legion. This was a well-trodden routine, by now, although one you never dared to come with the same entourage more than once. Your husband’s recent distance had not softened his jealous edge, and although you weren’t fond of those most complicit in the newest stage of your captivity, no mortal crime could be worthy of the wrath of such a violent god.

Your footsteps echoed – clipped and solitary – against the bare walls of the stone chamber. The architects of his divinity have already been sent away for the night, leaving you alone with the half-finished mess of wires and metal that was your husband’s fixation. The Shouki no Kami, you could remember the Doctor calling it during his first visits to your estate. A ridiculous name for a ridiculous machine that would only serve the ego of a ridiculous man. Bile rose into the back of your throat at the sight alone, but you swallowed your anger. He’d never been able to react to your rage with anything but his own.

You paused at the monstrosity’s feet, and his voice came to you – reverberating in the back of your mind like the final tones of a chapel bell. “Beloved,” he whispered in the back of your mind, sending a pang of pure agony through your skull. “You aren’t supposed to—”

“I will not hold a conversation with a mumbling voice.” You cut him off swiftly, teeth grit and eyes narrowed. “Either I will speak to my husband's face or I will not speak to him at all.”

A moment passed without a response. Then, stiltedly, one of his monstrosity’s hands tore free from its scaffolding, lowering itself to the ground beside you. With some reluctance, you stepped into his palm and allowed him to raise you to the frontmost panel of his abomination. You refused to call it a face, because to call it a face would be to admit it was his face, which would be to admit that this strange machine was in any way an extension of him. The metallic panel raised and disappeared into some unseen cavity, revealing the hollow, unit chamber behind it. Revealing your husband.

Or, rather, revealing the mess he’d made of himself.

He had never been the pinnacle of beauty, but his pale skin now seemed bleached and colorless, his lithe form limp and crumpled. Glass tubes filled with a pulsing, violet substance had been drilled into the nape of his neck, the base of his spine, the curves of his shoulder bones, and the smile he paid you as he came into view was labored, a fight against some artificial exhaustion. Before you could think better of it, you stepped out of his palm and into his chamber, falling to your knees beside him and wrapping your arms around his neck. “You are,” You pressed your lips into his temple. “the biggest idiot,” Then again, into his cheek, the curve of his jaw. “I have ever met.”

He let out an airy chuckle, melting into your chest. “It used to take a vat of water and thirty minutes of electrocution to make you kiss me like that.”

You ignored the phantom rope that coiled around your lungs at the reminder of the first decades of your relationship. You tried to think of it as little as you could, but his vision had always been more rose-colored than your own. “Can’t I show my husband affection?” You raked your fingers through his hair, resting your lips against his forehead. “It’s not as if I’ll be able to kiss the metal coffin you’re locking yourself inside.”

Another laugh, this one more labored than the last. “You could, if you wanted to. Just wait until it’s finished. It’ll be more glorious than you could possibly imagine – a vessel befitting of the most powerful archon this wretched world has ever bowed to.” He attempted to straighten, only to collapse under his own weight. “It’ll be an improvement to this form, at least.”

“I quite like your current form. It’s only a shame it has to house such a rotten personality.” You looked outward, to his empty shrine. At the time of your last visit to Inazuma (meaning, at the time of your last successful escape from your husband), his creator had still been locked inside a similar cage, or so another yokai had told you over bottles of sake and a game of cards. That visit had been one of your shortest. He knew you too well, by then, and it’d only taken him a few weeks to realize you’d run where you always would - home. “I suppose I’ll be left in the care of your doctor, when you’re finished.”

His response was immediate, purely reactive; a sudden snarl paired with a flash of bared teeth. “Dottore should be thankful to so much as breathe your air. You’ll be the paramour of a god.”

“I’ll be left alone while you turn yourself into a monster.” Your voice was hollow, distant. Even now, months into his transformation, it was difficult to describe the flavor of your devastation. He’d taken you from the place where you belonged and kept you as a trophy. He’d denied you any companionship aside from himself and cut away parts of your world until it revolved solely around him. He tucked dried flowers into the letters he wrote you near-obsessively whenever he couldn’t be at your side. He carved open your skin then demanded you keep your own mutilation out of his sight. He used to read you myths and fairy tales for hours every night, when human language was still foreign to your tongue. He was the closest thing to a friend you’d ever had.

And he was leaving you.

You wondered, briefly, if this was how he felt whenever you tried to get away from him, but discarded the thought quickly. It was your heart that ached the most in the wake of his betrayal, and your husband never did have one of those.

“I can’t remember the last time I was on my own,” you admitted, a pained smile tugging at the corner of your lips. “I won’t ask you to stop. It’s just, when you’re done, I—” The air snagged in your throat. You inhaled sharply, then rested your head on his shoulder. “I’d like your permission to return to Inazuma, my lord.”

Silenced lapse, thick and heavy, between you. He was the closest thing you had to a friend, which meant he knew just how where to plant his knife and, more significantly, just how to twist the blade.

“No.” Stern, stiff, unyielding. Rather than softening over the centuries you’d spent together, he only seemed to grow more callous. “There’s nothing for you, there. You’ll stay here, with me, and I will rule this rotting land with you at my side.”

You opened your mouth, prepared to protest, to argue the way you hadn’t since the first years of your imprisonment, but closed it just as quickly. You buried your face in the crook of your neck, and your husband let you, eager to soak in the touch you so often denied him. Fire, despair, anger bit and thrashed inside of you, but it was all you could do to hold him, to keep him near.

It was all you could do to think of what you would become, after he was taken away from you.

[wwaheoh]

"Running Into Them at the Mall", Cunning Hares x gn!Reader, SFW, Fluff

a/n: can you tell i'm even worse at writing happy things?

At the mall, you were perusing through some movie tapes, action, comedy, horror… nothing that you felt was good enough for the Cunning Hares Weekly Movie Night. Usually you’d go to the video store on Sixth Street, Random Play, to find movies, but since you’d heard about them having to make a new account and helping Wise save Belle from the Hollow, you didn’t want to also put pressure on them to get more movies when their main income was basically gone for the time being.

Sifting through the remainder of the ‘New Release’ row, a familiar voice rang out from behind you.

Nicole ///

“Hey! Looking for a movie?” You could hear the smile in her voice. Looking back, Nicole got close, in her usual getup, hair a soft pink, basically pressing against you as she looked at the movie you had been reading the description of. “Ooh~ cheating on Random Play huh?” She spoke with a playful, teasing tone, slyly wrapping her hand around yours to get a better look at the movie you were checking out “No! Just heard about everything and don’t want to impose. I think we've watched everything there ten fold.”

“Mm, and you didn’t want to come with me to the mall?” “You got your nails done, they’d take longer to be finished than it would to check out all the movies in this whole store!” She looks at you with a deadpan expression, “Hey, perfection comes with time (and money).”

After picking out a movie, you rented the tape out for the week, before heading to the food court to grab some food before home. You realize that she had basically gotten you to buy her free lunch for the day before heading back to the base…

Billy ///

“Yo!” An artificial voice of Billy spoke behind you, nearly spooking your soul out of you. For such a loud metal-bodied guy, he was surprisingly quiet. “Whatcha looking for?” He peaked over your shoulder, “Ahh, mm, never thought you’d like this sorta movie? It ain’t Starlight Knights: The Movie but whatever, c’mon! There’s an arcade here, heard they got God•Finger, gotta get my name onto the top of the leaderboard!”

Giggling at his antics you agreed, but you reminded him that you had to pay before leaving. The movie you got wasn’t particularly your kind of movie, more dramatic and less action-y explosion-y type.

He got Number One on the Leaderboard, with you landing at Number Three.

Anby ///

Turns out, Anby was also shopping at the mall, having accidentally taken the shopping list you made- that you’d forgotten at the base.

“Hello.” The usual monotone voice had a happy tone to it, something hard to hear had you not been as close to her as you were. Turning from the movie you’d been reading the description of, you waved with a smile. “Hey Anby! Wanted to try a different spot to find a movie.” She nodded, crouching next to you to read the text on the movie cover you were holding. “This doesn’t seem to be the type of movie you’re usually interested in.”

“Yeah, been just browsing for now… wait. Why are you here? Don’t you pick next week?” “Huh? The shopping list I picked up said I was to find a movie for this week.”

You looked at the bag she held in her hand. You looked at the bag you had resting by your side. You looked at her cute face, soft white hair framing it like a picture.

“That was my shopping list.” You broke the news to her.

“Oh.”

“That was $40.”

“Nicole’s going to blow a lid.”

“Yeah…”

The two of you went through the extensive inventory of movies available in the shop, choosing one the two of you believed Nicole would like. Maybe this would save you two from Nicole’s wrath.

Nekomiya ///

a/n: i didn't forget her this time!

“Ooh? Looking for a movie?” You nearly jumped out of your skin. The sneakiness of a street cat- er, catgirl, was not to be underestimated. “What’re ya thinking?”

“Hey Nekomiya, just browsing. Nothing’s really catching my eye.” “Well, y'know what they say! You can’t think on an empty stomach, meow!” You stared at her with a deadpan expression. “Did you come here all the way just for some free lunch?”

“Aha… no! (Maybe).” You sighed, but understood. Commissions had been low recently, on the account of Nicole- and by extension the whole of the Cunning Hares, working to aid the citizens in the lawsuit against that corrupt construction company. Awful business that.

“Alright, c’mon. I’ll go check out, then let’s get some fish in that belly!” “Hey! Not all of us want fish!” “Then what do you want?” ”Mackerel…” “That’s fish.”

Bringing the video tape to the front, you paid before making your way over to the food court with Nekomiya.

[lostyesterday]

I’ve seen a lot of joke posts about how Kira is a lesbian because she has short hair but, like, Kira’s appearance is the last reason why I generally read her as a lesbian. DS9 clearly intends to show that Kira is attracted to men, but I have always found this attraction to feel forced and artificial.

As one example, when Kira gets together with Shakaar in Crossfire or Odo in His Way, both episodes focus solely on Odo’s and Shakaar’s feelings toward Kira. Their perspectives are explored extensively, and their romantic feelings toward Kira are very explicitly depicted. Neither episode does anything whatsoever to explore Kira’s perspective on either of them. In fact, before Shakaar and Odo confess their love to Kira, there is absolutely no indication whatsoever that Kira has romantic feelings for either of them. Obviously there are Doylist explanations for this (namely, sexism), but what comes across from a narrative perspective is the implication that Kira suddenly and spontaneously developed feelings for both men after they said they were in love with her. Which is obviously possible – I know some people do experience attraction this way. But it also could read as extremely lesbian. I did the same thing several times when I was younger and thought I was straight. If someone tells you they have romantic feelings for you, and you genuinely like them and enjoy their company, it can be very easy to convince yourself that what you feel is romantic love. And you want to convince yourself, because you want deeply to be connected to other people.

When Kira breaks up with Shakaar because the Prophets let her know they weren’t meant to be together, part of me can’t help but imagine that she might feel relieved deep down. There’s no need, now, to wonder if she truly feels the same way toward him that he feels toward her. There’s an excuse, now, to go back to the way it was before when she didn’t have to interrogate all of her emotions in search of the ones she was supposed to feel.

When Kira tells Odo she loves him enough to let him go in Chimera, and when she truly lets him go in the finale, I imagine what part of her she feels she is losing. Odo is one of her closest friends – one that survived one war and then the next and in the end she lost him anyway. And she has lost so much, and so there can be no relief in this, but maybe in some small way it is still easier to pretend you loved someone the way they loved you once you’ve lost them.

And I compare Kira’s interactions with these men the show describes her as being in love with to her interactions with Jadzia or Keiko or Cretak, and I just find her chemistry with women so much more convincing. There’s no effort behind it – just connection. I don’t think what I’m saying here is the “correct” way of interpreting Kira as a character – it is simply my own interpretation based partially on my personal experiences. But I do think that it is a valid interpretation.

[wttcsms]

it always leads to you ; sae itoshi

pairing sae itoshi x f!reader  word count 2.4k  synopsis 5 times you can't escape the memory of sae + the 1 time he comes back. content contains ex boyfriend sae, attempts at moving on, second chances author's notes this serves as a prologue to my new mini multipart series here but could be read as a stand alone one shot <3

zero.

Sae Itoshi breaks up with you five days before graduation, which is also six days before he hops onto a plane to an entirely different continent, and it’s seven days before your second anniversary. 

The worst part of it all, though, is that even across the world, you can’t seem to escape him.

one.

Smartphones, you discover, for all their artificial intelligence, still can’t keep up with the intricacies of human relationships.

At least, that’s how it feels. 

It’s been seven days since graduation, six days since he left the country, and five days ago, you were supposed to be celebrating your anniversary with him. A week. It’s been a week since Sae reverted back to Itoshi, a week since you’ve practically ignored every invitation from your former classmates (his friends before they were ever really yours) to hang out, and a week since you last texted him. 

Still, when you swipe through your phone, thumb hitting the search bar, your eyes flicker down to SIRI SUGGESTIONS.

Send a message to sae🫶🏻. 

You turn off your phone after that.

two.

You’re still number one best friends on Snapchat. It shouldn’t mean that much to you, but it does. It’s been one month since Sae left, leaving you, his little brother, and maybe everything else in Japan tying him down, behind. 

He’s still at the top of your best friends list, still the only one with the special emoji next to his user that signifies his status, still the common denominator in every single one of your Snap memories. 

You wonder if you should delete your entire account; start fresh, maybe.

(You don’t, though. It’s too much of a hassle, is what you tell yourself. What you know and don’t need to bother to say is that you’re scared he won’t be able to find you in case he needs you, and you’re still not ready to give up any scraps of Sae you have left of him, and you must be delusional because there’s a part of you that holds out hope that he’ll want you back because you’re still number one best friends — he hasn’t been Snapping anyone else.) 

three.

You run into his mom at the grocery store. 

You’re not sure how to react at first. All you know is that you see her before she sees you, and in that split-second, you had the opportunity to run as fast as you could, but you didn’t.

You’re not sure why. You can blame it on shock, or fear, or even admit that a small part of you craved an interaction with her because, by extension and some sort of delusional logic, connecting with her would be like connecting with Sae. 

She smiles at you, and your feet are firmly planted on the too-shiny tiles of this supermarket, and the shelves full of instant rice are closing in on you ‘til the world feels so small and all that’s left is just you and her and the tantalizing spirit of Sae. 

He takes after her more than he does his father. Growing up, he didn’t like hearing the adults say oh, you look just like your mother! because he’s a boy, and no boy wants to hear that. It’s the truth, though. When you originally spotted her, it was her distinct reddish-brown hair that caught your attention. It’s the same shade she passed down to Sae, and seeing the familiar color up close shouldn’t cause your throat to close up and to give your stomach nervous flutters, but it does. 

“[Name]!” She gives you one of her gentle smiles, and the warmth of it seems to unfreeze you. You can move freely now, and you choose to smile back at her. You’re not sure if she knows that her son broke your heart and that he did it so coldly and clinically, with the precision of a surgeon. Without feeling or remorse. You don’t know how to react properly when she closes the distance between you two to give you a hug, one that doesn’t indicate that she’s going to treat you like her son’s ex. 

You return the hug, of course, but when she pulls back to speak, you know that you should have just avoided her when you had the chance. 

“How are you doing with Sae’s move to Spain? You haven’t come by the house in a while. I hope you know that I miss having a daughter around.” Her soft laugh does something cruel to your soul. He didn’t tell her, then. She doesn’t know. You wonder if he maybe left that responsibility to you, if crushing his mother’s spirit was a burden he personally chose you to bear. You never knew he had such a mean streak in him.

“Sorry, Mrs. Itoshi.” The words taste bitter on your tongue, and you think the polite smile you give her is more of a grimace. “Your son and I…” Aren’t together. Broke up. No longer on speaking terms. 

You can’t even say his name, and you can’t admit the truth, and luckily enough, she was once a teenage girl too. 

“I see.” She says, and you wish she says it coldly. You wish she would view you as a stranger, so that way the split would feel more real. Instead, she’s telling you that you’re still welcome to visit their household any time you want. You know she’s not extending this invitation to be nice; she genuinely wants you to come by, and that only makes you feel worse.

four.

On the eve before you leave for college, your graduating class hosts a bonfire party on the beach. You originally don’t want to attend, but you know that being antisocial for the rest of your youth would ultimately do more harm than good. 

Almost no underclassmen are present, so you’re surprised that when you look up after hearing the sound of footsteps approaching, it’s Rin that’s standing near you.

Rin’s always been a little more awkward than his older brother. It’s endearing, in a way that all little brothers happen to be when you love them. Without your tie to Sae, though, you know that you can’t adopt Rin as your own sibling anymore, and you two haven’t even spoken since the breakup. 

“Congratulations on your graduation and getting into UTokyo.” 

“Thanks.” You smile at him, but you’re a bit confused as to why he showed up to a party just to congratulate you. Rin’s never been the type to attend parties, and you hope that he isn’t trying to get into any trouble with Sae’s brotherly guidance now gone. 

“Have you heard from Sae after he left?” 

Sae’s always harbored a soft spot for Rin; this you know for a fact. Rin sounding dejected at the mention of his brother only adds to your confusion. 

“Um, no. We don’t really talk anymore, actually.” 

Admitting this out loud now doesn’t hurt nearly as much as admitting it a few weeks ago did, so clearly you have some “healthy” progress going on. At this rate, maybe you’ll even be able to stomach the action of deleting his phone number. 

“Oh.” And then a minute later, Rin is sitting cross-legged in the sand next to you, two feet of space separating you both. “He doesn’t really talk to me anymore, either.” 

Oh, great. Now you’re basically having a pity party with your ex’s younger brother, and you two are probably about to have a good cry session about how he essentially abandoned you both. Who would have thought that rock bottom had a basement? 

You don’t know what to say in reply, so you don’t say anything at all, and the two of you just sit in silence, staring at the sun setting over the sea. Thirty minutes into the party, you couldn’t even fathom why you wanted to force yourself to endure social interaction with people you have no true relationship with, and you snuck off to the edge of the beach to just be alone with your thoughts. 

“Sae really likes the sea.” Rin breaks the silence once more. “I heard him talking to our parents when he called last week. He says the water in Spain is beautiful, and it makes him feel at home.” 

This beach is where he asked you to be his girlfriend. The moment your toes touched the sand, you were transported back to simpler times, where Sae was still Sae, and you were happy. He brought you here on your last anniversary (maybe it’s best to start realizing that it’ll be your only anniversary with him), and you sat in this same position with him, watching the sun set over the sea, basking in the bliss of young love. You suppose that back then, you really liked the sea, too. 

five.

Everyone has a type, you suppose. A preference for when it comes to selecting a partner. 

You’re still young and woefully inexperienced, but you’re a pretty, single girl on a college campus full of cute, single boys. The possibilities are endless.

So what are the odds that when you finally sit down on a dinner date with one of your classmates (your first date after Sae), and the two of you are doing the obligatory “get to know each other” first date icebreakers, your date tells you:

“I’m actually here on a soccer scholarship.” 

It shouldn’t affect you the way it does. It’s been nearly two months, after all. Soccer isn’t a sport exclusive to just Sae. Lots of people play the damn sport. It’s a fucking international sport, and a popular one, at that. 

“Oh! That’s cool!” You’re lying through your teeth, and your date can’t tell. And you shouldn’t hate him for it; he doesn’t know you, and he’s known you only from the first two lectures you two sat next to each other for. You know it’s absolutely unhealthy and probably unhinged to start comparing him to Sae, but you can’t help it. It’s like once the word “soccer” left his lips, he summoned the ghost of Sae, and his presence is now haunting you. He’s standing behind your date, and you can see Sae clear as day, maybe even better than you can see your classmate, and he’s shaking his head as if to say is this really the best you could do after me?

And you hate your date, and yourself, and Sae, and you know it’s bad. You know that you should have moved on by now, but it’s like he cursed you. As if everything in this world somehow has a connection to Sae, and it doesn’t make any sense, but sometimes it does because for a brief moment, Sae was the whole world to you. 

six.

You’re back in your childhood home for the long weekend. Your parents are ecstatic to have you back, and it feels good to be back in your hometown and sleeping in your own bed. College has done wonders for you, and maybe being in Tokyo has helped you heal. Everything is new and shiny there, and best of all, everything in that city has thankfully been left untouched by Sae.

There’s a cute boy that shares mutual classes and friends with you, and your best friend, Cami, keeps hinting that he’s going to ask you out soon, and you can’t help but tell her that if he does, you’ll gladly say yes. 

You think he’s going to mention something about wanting to take you out judging by the texts he’s been sending you ever since you’ve got back home, and you’re too focused giggling at your screen to even bother to check who’s knocking on your front door. All you do is open it, looking up briefly to see who it is, only to nearly drop your phone once you realize who’s standing on your front porch. 

Sae Itoshi is standing right in front of you. In the flesh. Not some figment of your imagination or a hyper-realistic delusional daydream. You know it’s him because you would have never anticipated him finally finding a haircut that suits his features. He looks leaner than before, angular features of his face now more defined, sharper. His cheeks have slightly hollowed out, and maybe you’re just projecting onto him when you think he looks more tired now than he ever did before. 

Your phone vibrates, signaling that you’ve gotten a text back, but you can’t focus on anything but Sae. There are a million different scenarios that have played through your head whenever you daydreamed about what would happen should you ever come face to face with him. There is nothing in your head now. 

“Hey,” he says, with a nonchalant audacity only a truly cocky bastard could pull off. The first thing he says after breaking your heart and leaving you in ruins is hey. In your head, you know you deserve better. Your heart, however, practically jumps at the sound of his voice, like a dog reuniting with its owner that’s been away from home for years. It doesn’t matter what he does or says: a small part of you, maybe all the parts that matter most, will always be fulfilled with having Sae’s attention. 

“Can I come in?” 

While trying to move on from Sae, you realize that leaving yourself ready to invite him back into your heart is essentially like leaving the front door of your house unlocked for him, because even though you know you’ve given him a key, you also know that he’s most likely forgotten he has it. It’s why you could never truly form any romantic attachments to anybody else; you were still too busy trying to leave yourself open for him. 

Now, in this moment, you finally have a chance to finally be rid of him for good. You have the opportunity to get the final word in. You can slam the door in his face, and he will never have the chance to be let in again because even if he holds the key, the locks have changed. 

That chance evaporates the moment you move away from the entrance, inviting him back in, and telling him,

“Of course.”

[johannestevans]

A Man's Indentures

Fantasy/romance short. A man indentured is dispatched to an island to be a bailiff’s bodyguard.

13.5k, M/M, rated M. A man indentured for his parents’ debts is dispatched to a magic-poor island to serve as bodyguard to the local bailiff — an imperfectly beautiful man who has indentures of his own.

Adapted from a TweetFic. CWs for economic violence and the violence of poverty as a cudgel throughout, non-consensual body modification, debts, sexual violence, etc.

Read on Medium. / / Read on Patreon.

---

His name is Josep Garnet, and he’s the most beautiful man on the island, perhaps even in the world.

It’s the commonly held opinion on the boat over. He overhears a man telling another traveller – not an indenture like Denari, but a tourist, a student of architecture and history intent on sketching the results of non-magical building techniques – how pretty he is, how even the straightest of men wants to fuck his arse or make use of his mouth, and two of the crew laugh and nod their heads and murmur their agreement.

He assumes it’s the same as it ever is – one man gushing about a favourite whore.

Garnet is pretty, true enough, when Denari lays eyes on him.

He’s tall with exaggerated features – high cheekbones, a narrow waist, a plump arse and thighs, delicate hands, pretty lips. His hair is the colour of lilacs, and but for his eyebrows, there’s no hair on his face at all.

His irises are the colour of pearls.

The white should be unnatural, should barely be distinguishable from the whites of his eyes, but there’s a dark ring around his irises showing the separation, and the effect is strangely hypnotising.

He’s guarded when he meets Denari, looking down at him with a cold expression. He dresses in fine clothes, neatly tailored and covering him from the top of his throat down to his toes, and he wears gloves as well. It’s a fine day, a little too fine to be wearing such a high-necked shirt and so many layers, but it’s not as though he’ll be the first man Denari’s ever met more concerned with modesty than sense.

They were meeting outside of a modest office at the portside, a set of noticeboards displaying documents of varying descriptions – bounties on debtors who had fled to the mainland, a few calls for particular objects of value, stolen or simply rare, a few open job postings and vacancies.

“You’re indentured?” Garnet asks.

“Uh huh,” Denari says. “Since I was a lad. I’m to stay in lodgings at the debtors’ house?”

“That’s correct,” Garnet says, gracefully inclining his head. “You’ll have a bed, three square meals, a little money to play with. It’s hardly an extensive allowance, particularly with the economy here on the island, but it’s something. How much longer have you?”

“Thirty years.”

Garnet’s pretty eyebrows rise – they’re delicate things, carefully plucked like a woman’s, thin. His eyelashes are fine things too.

“You racked up high debts,” he remarks dryly. His tongue is pierced, Garnet sees, a silver barbel shining inside his mouth when he speaks.

“My da did,” Denari says, and shrugs his shoulders. “What else was a son for, he said, but to pay off a man’s debts?”

Garnets says nothing to this, but his nostrils flare – he’s got damn near no hair at all in them, and his nose is a prettily carved thing too. Denari sees all these details, sees that he’s pretty, but there’s something artificial in it, something constructed, that sets his teeth on edge.

“Come,” Garnet says, shouldering a bag and taking up a box of papers, gesturing for Denari to take up a cart outside the office, which Denari does. “I’ll lead you to the central square, and then to the debtors’ lodge.”

“Yessir,” says Denari, and Garnet blinks, frowning slightly, but he makes no comment as they walk side by side through the city streets. The island is quite hilly in places, a mountain in the distance, but Denari is relieved to find that although the road Garnet leads him down weaves somewhat through the various buildings, public gardens, statues, and monuments, he does not lead him uphill, and the road beneath them has much more evenly laid stone than he might have guessed for a magical island like this one.

Lesh is a large island with a few scattered, smaller islands in the seas around it, although they’re even more treacherous to journey to than the mainland and back, and starved of significant magic as it is, it’s impossible to build with active magic. It’s full to the brim with examples of fine art or novel forms of architecture, building, and garden design – the lack of magic and magical technology forces students of the craft to be innovative if they can’t be rich, and even the very richest are still beholden to the limitations of physical labour.

There’s a reason so many indentures are dispatched here to the island from all across the continent.

“You been a bailiff long?” he asks.

“Twelve years,” Garnet answers.

“You like it?”

“No.”

Denari sniggers, and they walk in silence for most of the rest of the way, which is no hardship. Denari looks at the different houses and public buildings around them – museums, shops, different storefronts, and all the public art, as well. Now and then, Garnet will gesture to one building or another, saying who lives there, or saying what that business sells.

The lodging house is uphill from the central square, but it’s not too painful of a walk, and although it’s a little steeper than he’d like, the bricks are well-textured and the wheels on the cart have been given additional grip to help them keep their purchase, not to mention a complex system of braking mechanisms to ensure a safe stop even if they were on a steep incline.

“I live not far from here,” Garnet says once Denari parks the cart outside of the central office.

“You indentured yourself?”

“In a way,” is the cool answer. “The evening is your own – I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Aye, sir,” Denari says.

Garnet gives him a queer look this time, as though Denari’s said something very odd or unusual, but he makes no comment as he disappears into the office with his papers.

Inside that night, Denari listens to the other boys laugh as they talk about him, about Garnet’s pretty arse, talk about tugging on his pale purple hair, talk about the magic in his voice and the spit on his lips, about how every word he says drips with lust – and not just that, but a woman’s lust, a whore’s lust, the lust of a bitch desperate to be bred, and doesn’t even care who by.

Denari, swinging in his hammock, takes this in with vague interest and distant disbelief, and wonders what exactly fucking piece he’s missing here.

“He’s a born slut,” says the fella in the next hammock over. “Craves a man as most crave bread and water.”

They’re laughing, the other men, but it’s not the mocking laughter of sarcastic comments – it’s laughter more of agreement, horny agreement, and Denari shifts his leg, making his hammock swing a little wider from one side to the other. They all seem to believe it, what they’re saying.

He thinks of Josep Garnet, cool and a bit haughty, but with a careful blankness to his face and his tone, covered in layers of fabric, and tries to imagine him injecting lust into anything he’d said today.

Hmm.

* * *

“Master Fayt, you are six weeks overdue on your repayment,” Garnet says, sounding almost board as he looks up from his clipboard. “Good faith has been extended to you, but it is swiftly evaporating. If you cannot pay us an instalment today—”

“D’you get off on this?” Fayt growls.

He’s a big man, bearing, and Denari gets ready to beat him back if he lunges for Garnet, but as soon as he’s within six feet of the man, his angry demeanour changes, a ripple passing over his face, and his snarl becomes more of a sneer.

“You do, don’t you?” he asks lowly.

Men might lie with men in all kinds of ways, fuck them all manner of ways too, but Denari’s never seen a man look at another the way that Fayt is looking at Garnet now – maybe, he’s seen a man look at a male whore this way, but even then, he doesn’t think so.

There’s a derision in his face usually reserved for women as he looks Garnet up and down, and Denari can see Garnet isn’t surprised. He sets his jaw, presses his lips together, leans his head slightly back, as Fayt asks, “You do, don’t you? Fuck yourself to the thought of it? Finger yourself raw thinking of the men you humiliated, casting them out of their homes, their businesses?”

Garnet’s tone is even, his voice measured and slow, as he says, “Master Fayt, even a small instalment paid today—”

“Why? The fuck good is the gold to a whore like you – going to stuff it up that greedy cunt of yours?” There’s a snarl on his lips as he spreads his thighs and grips at his crotch through his trousers, making an obscene gesture. “I’ve something better for you, you little bitch, come here and—”

“Denari,” says Garnet, sounding almost bored as he turns away and rolls his eyes, and that’s all the invitation he needs to break the fucker’s nose.

Fayt hits the floor hard, clutching at his face instead of his cock now, and Denari can see something dazed in his eyes as he looks up at Garnet for a second as though he’s never seen him before.

“Go in, boys,” Garnet barks out, and the other men get ready to move as Denari grabs Fayt by the shoulder and hauls him up and away, taking him out front and out of the way of Garnet and his work. “Start with the booze, then the crystal.”

* * *

All week, it’s the same – a lot of the men seem straight as you please, men who’d never so much as glance at a boy even if he was paid for and trussed up ready for them, but once they’re close enough to Garnet physically, once they’re within the sphere of whatever influence he has, it’s like they forget it all.

“Ask, if you want to ask,” says Garnet over dinner one evening, the two of them at a table together. Garnet is a free man, for all he implies he’s half-indentured, and he invites Denari out twice, this one the second time. “I can see the question on your tongue.”

“Spell, is it?”

“Spell?”

“What makes men act the way they do around you,” Denari says.

“Men act as they act,” Garnet says lowly, taking a little sip of his drink.

He’s fussy about his drinks – whenever they come into a bar or a pub or a café, he keeps an eagle eye on whoever is making his drink no matter where he is, often requests or specifies a specific worker on shift, usually a woman. Even now, the two of them sitting in a booth separate from the rest of the pub with Garnet nestled against the wall, he keeps laying his palm over the open vessel of his drink as though to shield it from interference.

Two men tonight have tried to send over drinks for him tonight, and he’s refused each one: Denari’s drunk each of them, each time with Garnet wrinkling his nose at him and looking faintly disapproving.

“There’s an aura around you,” Denari clarifies. “Something that makes men lose themselves.”

“Not all men,” Garnet points out in a very quiet, nigh venomous tone – he’s almost smiling, though not quite. It’s a curiously angry expression, a hardness in his pearl-white eyes.

“They treat you the way they’d treat a woman,” Denari says. “Not just a woman, either – a whore, a cheap one.”

“Yes,” Garnet says. “You don’t, though, do you?”

Denari shrugs his shoulders. “Suppose not. Turn it off for me, do you?”

“Turn it off?” Garnet repeats, and he laughs – there’s genuine humour in it, caught by surprise, no matter that there’s an obvious bit of gallows in there. It makes the uncomfortable perfection in his face yield somewhat – the faint ghost of dimples, very nearly smoothed away, show around his mouth, and when he laughs, one eye closes more than the other.

Denari feels himself smile at the comforting softening of what feels like a polished mask, at the soothing appearance of those tiny little flaws.

“I’m not able to turn it off,” Garnet murmurs. “Would that I could.”

“Another drink for you,” says the woman from the bar, holding a tall glass of honeyed cider. “From that fella over there, this time. Surgeon from the tall ship out of Ila.”

“Take it if you want it,” Garnet says when Denari looks across at him for permission. “Sari wouldn’t let him put anything in it.”

“I might if he paid me enough,” argued Sari, and Garnet’s answering laugh was dry as Denari took the glass and tasted it, letting out a satisfied smack of his lips afterward.

“Free drinks taste good,” Denari said.

“You’re stupid,” Sari said, folding the tray under her arm – she was smiling at him flirtatiously, and Denari beamed right back at her as she said to Garnet, “I like him. You should keep this one.”

“We’ll see,” said Garnet, and looked back to his meal.

* * *

It doesn’t affect women, not in the same way. Some of them look Garnet’s way, true, look at the fine thing he is admiringly, desirously, but not in the conquering way the men do, even when they’re very close to him – some women smirk or mutter, give him foul or disgusted looks, laugh amongst themselves.

Most of them silently ignore it, or very occasionally give Garnet a look of sympathy, although Garnet never meets their gazes, never shares the sort of knowing look some women do with one another. They look his way, and he doesn’t look back.

The work is easy enough, though, and not particularly difficult. Here on Lesh, most of the work orders they have, for reclamations or evictions or whatever else, are for the very rich fucks who can afford to live on the island.

There are a handful of poorer free residents, but they live out on the island outskirts or on the smaller islands nearby, on the shittier and harder-to-work bits of land, where foundations can’t be built as deeply. Gods know, the work isn’t as hard on the soul when most of their responses are for businesses rather than individuals, and most of the individual debtor on the list are richer and have posh family to fall back on if they leave the island for the mainland.

“Come,” Garnet orders him one early afternoon, and Denari follows good-naturedly, his hands in his pockets. He’s been on the island a few months and he knows most of the streets okay by now, but they haven’t been down this one, and it’s a little too out of the way to use as a shortcut.

They’re up one of the steeper pathways, some of the oldest houses on the island built high around them and stretching up toward the sky. They’re made of carefully sculpted grey brick, every fifth brick sculpted of a shining silver that catches the light, and they all have silver edging around their windows, their doorframes, or silver filigree painted on their straits and beams and supporting columns.

Garnet leads Denari up the steps off the street and through a silver-arched doorway. All these houses are built flush together in a multi-levelled terrace as the street climbs higher up the slope, many of them with different coloured rooves and matched – this one’s roof tiles are dark green, and as well as the silver edging around the green-painted door, there’s a silver door-knocker as well.

Garnet doesn’t knock on it, just pushes the door open and heads right in, and Denari hesitates as he stands on the welcome mat.

“This place on the docket?” he asks, looking in bafflement at the fine hallway mirrors and the various expensive coats hung up on the rack.

“No, we’re breaking for lunch,” Garnet informs him, sweeping off his coat and hanging it up, and Denari obediently does the same.

All the harassment, the men’s eyes on him, the catcalls in the street, it never seems to interrupt Garnet’s natural sense of authority – he gives crisp orders as easy as breathing, and he’ll let any of their men call him any name, make any overture they feel like or curse in his face, but as soon as they disobey, he calls for the whip.

He always watches, too, stone-faced over the indentured men’s lodgings as the foreman brings the whip out, calls for a different braid or set of tails if he doesn’t feel the man is feeling it enough. He has a good eye for that sort of thing, even though he never delivers the beating himself – they always break under the punishment, make their apologies even though they never fucking mean them.

“One of them could rape you,” Denari had told him last night after one such beating. “They’re bigger men than you to a man – you not worried about making a show of punishing them like that, making them angry?”

“I ask for one thing and one thing only,” Garnet had replied. “That my enforcers do as they’re bid.”

“What, so long as they try to rape you off-duty, you’ve no quarrel about it?”

“I haven’t the time to spend worrying about such things.”

Denari doesn’t know if that’s true, but Garnet never does seem worried about it, never seems to show any anxiety. Maybe it’s a brave face, a refusal to show weakness in response to threats, but he doesn’t seem worried in their relaxed moments, either. He doesn’t seem worried now, the two of them in this painfully fine house, the door closing behind them.

“You live here?” Denari asks.

“Not anymore, no,” Garnet murmurs, and then smiles as a woman comes down the hall toward them. She’s a very finely dressed woman in a dark green dress, white pearls around her neck and hanging from her earlobes, and she reaches for Garnet’s cheeks, touching her thumbs against them as his hands go – seemingly automatically – for her waist. “Hello, Irin,” he says richly.

“Hello, Josep,” says Irin brightly, pecking Garnet on the lips before she draws away from him. “Who’s this?”

“Denari,” Garnet answers for him.

“Denari,” she repeats, and she sweeps around him, looking him up and down critically, appraisingly, her skirts shifting as she moves. He bows his head to her, saying nothing at first. “Well,” she hums. “Where did you come from, Denari?”

“Darjan, ma’am.”

“You miss the bustle of the city?”

“The island bustles plenty.”

“Does it?”

She shares a look Denari doesn’t understand the full meaning of with Garnet, and then leads them through to a warm and well-lit dining room, quickly setting another place for Denari at the table. A servant brings through plates for each of them, and Denari sits beside Garnet and begins to eat.

Little attention is paid to Denari as the two of them – Irin and Garnet – make idle and easy conversation with one another, plainly well familiar with each other. Not anymore, he’d said – what, they were married before? They’re too familiar with each other, physically, to be siblings.

Denari hopes.

“Work good?”

“It’s infuriating, as ever,” Garnet says. “And how’s your leisure, my dear?”

“The opposite of infuriating,” Irin says. “It’s quite perfect. I’ve just redecorated the salon.”

“I saw when we came down the corridor,” Garnet says. “I know you were worried about that wallpaper being overpowering when you ordered it in and you saw it on the bale, but now you’ve got it up it looks lovely.”

“As a feature wall only,” Irin says dismissively, waving her hand. “I was going to have it on all four, and that would have been a bit too much, I think.”

“What are you going to do with the rest of the bale?”

“Oh, I gave it to Kel Frenkel on the south side of the island.”

“On credit, presumably?”

“Credit’s long gone, now,” Irin says in satisfaction, smiling. “Two lovely new dresses, that wallpaper bought me.”

The food is fucking great, and it’s not like Denari knows anything about interior decorating beyond what’s easiest to lug into the back of the bailiffs’ wagon, so he doesn’t mind not being included in the conversation as he eats from his plate – fresh, perfectly salted ham peppered with flakes of crystal pepper that sizzles and pops on his tongue, root vegetables that have been pickled and fried to a gorgeous crunch, and a fresh and spicy side salad that refreshes the palate in between bites of the rest.

“Your hair is turning a lovely colour,” Irin says. “This soft lilac, it’s pretty – not quite grey, hm?”

They talk on with one another, the conversation idle and easy – it’s evident that they know a good deal about one another’s lives, and as much as Garnet seems very familiar with the house and the ins and outs of Irin’s wardrobe, Irin is very familiar with Garnet’s work and its rhythms, knows a lot more about debt collection than Denari would have expected of a posh and fancy woman like her.

He still isn’t quite sure if they’re siblings or lovers until Garnet helpfully makes it a bit clearer by turning the conversation and asking, “How’s the newest beau?”

“Dull,” Irin sighs. “Worse in bed than you were – he’s interested in art, vaguely, but he hasn’t any taste.” Than you were – ex-lovers, then.

“No?”

“We went to the mainland this week past, went to a museum in Lix.”

“Oh, at the Spire?”

“Oh, no,” Irin says witheringly, wrinkling her nose – it’s almost as pretty as Garnet’s. “A new built hall near the university, far too much natural light, more like a chapel than a museum. Aims to be historical, I think, but…” She trails off, shaking her head, then goes on, “I believe the exhibition’s intention was to showcase art and sculpture from different temple schools, but I assume there were budgetary limitations. Or academic ones.”

Garnet snorts. “You can hardly blame him for that,” he says diplomatically. “You held your tongue as to your criticism, I assume?”

“I was waiting for him to make some comment,” Irin says. “Walking down this agonisingly bright hall, seeming some sub bar pieces on display from the Solstice School, some oils that were never properly cured in between these shitty little clay sculptures, a piece of dryad’s topiary, no… No cohesion. No intention. Good curation is a lost art these days, I swear to the gods.”

“We can always agree on that,” Garnet says. “And him, um… Perry?”

“Petty.”

“Petty. He was too shy to make criticism, was he? What, sound carried too well in this awful hall, too worried about being overheard?”

“I don’t think it was anxiety – he’s a bit too stupid to know good from bad in this area, I think. The way he led us in there, I think he must have asked about as to what I might like and picked the first thing someone mentioned that had “art” in the sentence. We mostly walked in silence, him smiling like a dunce with a head injury. He kept asking, “Do you, erm, do you like this one?” whilst pointing at some plinth or other, and nonsense like that.”

“That’s a shame,” Garnet says, and then, in the casual tone one might ask after the weather in, “Going to marry him?”

“Maybe,” Irin muses. “It would be something to do with my summer.”

“One needs something to fill the days. And perhaps marriage would encourage him to buck up his ambitions.”

“Maybe,” Irin says, looking doubtful. “Like as not, though. He has money and his face is handsome enough – there are other men for the rest of it.”

“Tut tut,” Garnet says, and she laughs.

Denari’s almost finished with his plate, and now, having reached the natural lull in their conversation, they both look toward him.

“Do you wish to marry, Denari?” Irin asks.

“I don’t know anything about art either, ma’am,” he tells her, and her laugh is even more handsome as she laughs this time, her chin resting on her hand. Her teeth are a bit too perfect, too similar to the pearls she’s wearing in their whiteness and their smoothness, but it’s only her teeth that have been overworked like that – the rest of her face has a more natural, organic beauty to it, isn’t overpoweringly artificial in the way Garnet’s is.

“You’re a funny one,” Irin says, and Denari glances at Garnet, who leans back in his seat to watch the both of them speaking to one another, sipping at his wine. Denari’s never seen him look so at ease with a drink in his hands – in the whole time they’ve been in the house, he’s never covered his glass once. “Josep doesn’t usually socialise with his bodyguards much, let alone bring them here – most are stupid as mutton and smell almost as bad.”

Denari doesn’t know what to say to that, so he suffices himself to say, “He’s a good boss.”

“I bet,” Irin says.

“Was he a good husband?” Denari asks, his tone experimental, and he seems to have judged it rightly.

“Gods no, terrible,” Irin says, and her gaze flickers to Garnet’s unmoving face. “But he fucked well, and he was interesting. Made life quite exciting.”

When they make to depart, Irin kisses Garnet on the mouth, and Denari observes the want in her body, the way she presses her breast up against Garnet’s, tugs his hands to once more rest on her waist. He lets her kiss him, holds her as directed, but he makes no reciprocation, is cold as marble.

“Such a shame,” she murmurs when she pulls away. “You miss it, don’t you, Josep?”

“More than you do,” Garnet says with a bitter smile, and Irin’s laugh is airy, but has some scorn or schadenfreude in it, some slight cloud in her expression.

“Perhaps,” she allows. “But it’s a close thing.”

* * *

It’s an unpleasant afternoon. They evict two families in a row, each with young children and babes in arms – if it troubles Garnet at all, it doesn’t show in his face.

“Where am I to go!?” the second mother demands of him. The first had been the weepy, quiet sort, agonising to hear, to see, but at least passive – this one is a lot angrier. “Three children,” she hisses. “I tried to pay your instalments, but the interest kept going up – I’ve three children to shelter, to feed, to clothe. What am I to do?”

“Indenture the eldest,” Garnet suggests flatly, gesturing to the boy who has his arms around his sobbing siblings. He’s stout for his age, but round-faced – he can’t be older than twelve, and is probably younger. “Pay the others’ way with the price of him, if you can’t find work for him or yourself.”

The smack across Garnet’s face rings through the courtyard.

As they walk back to the lodgings in the evening, Garnet says without rancour, “You’re meant to guard me from harm, Denari.”

“It was one slap, she didn’t harm you,” Denari replies. “And you had it coming.”

“She shouldn’t breed so many mouths to feed if she can’t feed them.”

“If she doesn’t let her husband fuck her when he’s back from sea, she’ll not even have the pittance of his pay. And you know how unreliable contraceptives are on this island – better than me, I bet.”

“You’d win that bet,” Garnet murmurs.

Most contraceptives don’t work on the island for the same reason all the architecture is creative and non-magical, for the same reason there aren’t any mages around unless they’re obscenely powerful – Lesh and the surrounding islands are surrounded by heavy deposits of lassium, a heavy, dark ore that absorbs and interrupts magical flow. Magical contraceptives and charms, even herbs, are often sapped of their effect out here.

Lassium absorbs magic the same way that gold and other magic-conductive magics can channel it, and a lot of people can’t handle it directly without making themselves ill – the more magic that you naturally channel and carry through your body, the more damage it will do you.

Some assassins carry it – they have to be raised on islands like this, away from magic, to make sure they can handle their lassium-forged blades without the stress of it killing their bodies, and it’s a life-long commitment. They build up heavy magical resistance in their bodies, able to wield those blades, resist magical spells, but they can never be healed with magic either.

“Did she divorce you? Your wife?”

“Our marriage was dissolved.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

Denari shrugs. “Maybe not,” he says. “But I have my answer.”

Garnet disappears into the office to work through the last of the paperwork of the day, and it’s dark when he comes outside again. Denari’s shift is long-ended and he’s not on duty, but he’s sitting outside Garnet’s office just in case, and it turns out he’s right to.

Two of the bigger lads, Yett and Pul, see Garnet as he steps out of the office – they don’t see Denari, hidden in shadow where he’s leaned up against the wall, the hanging sign between him and the lantern’s light.

“Oh, here’s the pretty gem now,” says Pul, and Yett whistles.

“Look how tight he’s wearing those trousers.”

“Look at the cinch of his little waist.”

“Only seems little compared to that fat arse of his.” Yett raises his voice to ask, “You got pretty tits under that woman’s blouse too, boss?”

Garnet ignores the both of them, sweeping past – Yett’s features darken, and he gets to his feet.

Behind them, so does Denari.

Garnet grunts as his shoulders hit the stone of the modest bathhouse’s wall, one of Yett’s hands open over his breast.

“Hey, boss,” Pul scolds him, voice husky as he adjusts his trousers. “We were talking to you. Ain’t good manners to ignore a man saying hello.”

Garnet lets out a bitten out noise as Yett grips him between his legs, pressing his fingers up and between them – he’s stiff as a board and there’s a red blush on his cheeks, making his hair seem a darker purple under the dim lantern light.

He looks at Denari over the men’s shoulders, his expression unchanging, as Denari silently approaches from behind, grips Pul and Yett by each of their heads of hair, and knocks their heads together as hard as he can. He feels the hard clunk of bone on bone as much as he hears it, and they both yell then stumble, Yett dropping to his knees and Pul landing on his arse – with no further word at all, Garnet swiftly walks away from both of them and leaves the compound campus.

Denari goes inside for dinner.

* * *

“Thank you,” Garnet says tersely the next morning. “For last night.”

“You shouldn’t walk around here alone after dark,” Denari tells him. “You don’t see the laundry girls or secretaries doing that.”

“No,” Garnet mutters. “I just forget at times, that’s all.”

“Don’t see how you can forget.”

“I was thinking about work, not men roving about, wanting to swing their cocks as weapons to hit something with,” Garnet says quietly.

“You can’t afford to be distracted like that,” Denari advises him.

“Can’t I, indeed?” Garnet’s gaze is as scalding as his tone, and Denari breaks it automatically.

It’s raining as they go about their business that day, although they’re just in one warehouse, thankfully, reclaiming stock from a foreclosed carpet and furniture business.

Garnet doesn’t seem uncomfortable with the warehouse’s geography or how it’s laid out, seems to know it almost automatically – he’s as comfortable as he is in people’s homes, as he is in closed business, as he is anywhere.

A lot of bailiffs Denari’s worked alongside have been brisker, angrier men. It’s the sort of attitude you need in this line of work to stay on task over the grief and the fury and the mess of it all, something to distance you from everything, from everybody.

Garnet’s haughty distance is in many ways more frightening than a regular bailiff’s obvious and open anger and rage – it’s more off-putting, seems less human, somehow, and yet that control serves him frighteningly well.

Whether they’re taking the safes and staplers out of a closed-down bank storefront or turfing out an aged widow from her reclaimed family home and taking her heirloom porcelain away to pay off her husband’s debts, it’s all stock to Garnet, just listed numbers in blue and red columns.

What’s really frightening, sometimes, is how fair he is.

He has no patience for someone trying to barter with him, trying to assure him that certain items are worth more than they really are against their accounts, trying to blag a foreign currency off as if he doesn’t know every damn rate of exchange by rote – checks them twice a day.

But at the same time, more than once, he’s been in some family home with people in tears in front of him and barked, “Stop!” at the collectors as he points to a specific piece – furniture or a curio or a piece of clothing or jewellery.

“This cabinet,” he’d said a few weeks back, “is a Vex original. It will be worth two thousand crowns on the mainland with only minimal restorative work.”

“That? But it’s just an old cupboard, my grandma brought it with her when they came on the boat!”

“It will pay off the bulk of your loan and its dues, leaving approximately 8% of the account outstanding. With your permission, we will reclaim this cabinet only, and you can work out a payment plan for the remainder. Is this acceptable?”

It puts some people off, Denari knows. When somebody’s in desperate tears, trying to reckon with a lender’s cleaving through their life, the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen talking coolly about dues and percentages is a little too much to cope with.

Denari watches him now as he trails down the numbers on the board with his pen, his expression blank as ever. He wonders if that’s what makes it look so inhumanly perfect above all else, the fact that he barely fucking moves it, wears his face like a static mask.

There are bruises beginning to bloom on his neck where the carpet seller had grabbed him before Denari could haul him off.

He’d breathed into Garnet’s face as he’d clasped him by the skinny neck, shoved one of his knees between Garnet’s thighs – he’d been about ready to shove him back over a stack of red rugs.

Guy’s in cuffs now and outside against the wall.

Garnet looks rattled by it, Denari thinks. It doesn’t show in his facial expression, no, but his white eyes are moving up and down the board a few times too many, and his breathing is just a little bit faster than usual.

“You need to do much in the office today?”

“No, why? Want a reprieve?”

“Let’s get a drink,” Denari suggests.

Denari watches the blink of Garnet’s pearly eyes, the flutter of his pretty eyelashes, before he raises his head and looks back at him. “A drink?” he repeats, tilting his head to one side.

“We haven’t gotten one in a while. Seems a nice evening for it.”

“Fine,” Garnet says impassively, and looks back to the board. His breaths remain fast, he’s still a little bit distracted, but Denari fancies his shoulders have loosened just a little bit, and the set of his lips softens just a fraction.

Denari walks away from him to help the other guys haul shit out, but he always keeps Garnet in his eyeline.

* * *

“Mr Garnet,” says a rich voice as they approach the bar, and Denari looks at the man in front of them, old and liver-spotted, wizened. He’s very tall and was likely handsome in his day – he wears very expensive-looking mage’s robes, the golden embroidery alive and moving on his belt and around the hems of his skirts, the lacing on his boots and his robe front.

Denari can feel lit, can feel the magic that pulses through him and around him – he’s no sorcerer himself, has no real sense for the stuff himself, but after these four or so months on the island, he’s barely so much as seen any magic in operation, alone been close enough to feel its pulse.

The guy must be crazy powerful in order to command this sort of casual magic even on a magic-dead island like this one, and when Denari glances back at Garnet, he sees that the man’s eyes are down on the floor.

“Doctor Keenchild,” Garnet says with an overwhelming politeness, the deference not seeming right on him at all.

“Keenchild,” Denari repeats even though he’s suddenly distantly terrified, even though he wants anything but this guy’s attention – he only realises in this moment what a relief it’s been, living here on Lesh with no threat of spellwork or enchantment. He might still be indentured here, but at least no one can reach out with their magic and puppet him around, move his limbs for him, reach into his brains and shuffle his thoughts and feelings around – reach into his body and shuffle other shit around, too.

“That make you the boss of bosses?” Denari asks, looking the mage in the eyes, which are blue but pulse with crackling energy under their surface. “Keenchild & Co.?”

“Boss of bosses, what a curious turn of phrase,” he murmurs. “You’re Mr Garnet’s new guard, hm?”

“Yessir.”

“I believe I own your indenture,” Keenchild says with infuriating nonchalance. “Lew Denari, six-and-thirty, from good breeding stock, I think. A dockworker and a baker, hm? Your parents passed their strong muscle onto you, I see – and not too ugly, either.”

Denari doesn’t flinch as the old man tucks up his chin, his knuckles warm and tingling against the underside of Denari’s jaw. The magic radiating from him shoots through him, crackles under his skin and makes all the hair on his body feel like it’s standing to attention. He’s not surprised by the touch or the casual sense of ownership, but what does make him let out a grunt of surprise is a tiny zap of energy the old man sends into the sides of his jaw, compelling his mouth to open so that the old man can examine his teeth.

As Keenchild grips him by his face, peering at his teeth the way a farrier might examine those of a horse, he says in idle tones, “Very good, very good.”

Denari’s stomach churns, and he feels the awful ghost of Keenchild’s touch on his face even as he retracts his hand.

“That seems a nasty mark on your neck, Garnet. Caught in bed with someone’s wife again, hm?”

“A debtor, sir.”

“Of course.”

Keenchild’s hand withdraws very slowly, and even as it draws farther and farther away, Denari can feel the static weight of his magic lingering against him, the stubble on his face tingling, the hairs inside his nose, his ears.

“Best keep him out of trouble, don’t you?” he says to Denari, making a nod of his head toward Garnet. It should make his big stupid traditional wizard’s hat shift on his head, but he must keep it in place with magical pins. “Used to be no punishment could deter this young man from sowing his wild oats… We found a solution though, didn’t we? And aren’t you all the prettier for it?”

As he steps away from the bar, he leans in to murmur in Garnet’s ear, and Garnet stands very still to let him, then gives a brisk, short nod. Denari doesn’t think he imagines, based on the abrupt lurch of Garnet’s posture, the way he suddenly straightens by an extra half-inch, that the old man gives his arse a squeeze as he departs.

Denari and Garnet sit down at a booth separate from most of the bar – their usual spot in this place, a shadowed booth that keeps men from noticing Garnet as they walk past, keeps them from wanting to touch him – and there’s no space for them to sit at the table.

“Keenchild,” Denari says after they sit in silence for a few minutes, their drinks untouched on the table. “He did this to you. The, uh… That.”

“He did.”

“’Cause you were sowing your wild oats.”

“I think it was less the sowing itself and more the fields in which I ploughed,” murmurs Garnet, stirring his drink with a cocktail umbrella Denari’s pretty sure was intended as some kind of humiliation.

“Fuck does that mean?”

“Well, I fucked Keenchild’s youngest daughter,” Garnet says. “And the eldest. One of the sons, no idea which, don’t really recall. I’d previously lain with his first wife once while she was visiting the island – the third came to live here and we carried on an affair together for some time.”

Denari looks at him, wondering for a second if Garnet is joking, but it’s not like humour is ordinarily his strong suit. “How long?”

“Oh,” Garnet murmurs, scratching the nape of his neck and looking thoughtful. “Four years, thereabouts.”

“You were a shit husband to Irin.”

“But always an excellent lover.”

“And so, what, he took your cock away and put in a cunt instead?”

“Somewhere in between,” Garnet says. Maybe this frankness would be surprising from somebody else, but it’s not, not from Garnet. “What he did to me went a little… A little wrong, I think, because of the way magic is distorted, its flow blocked, here on the island. He wasn’t satisfied with his first attempt, so…” Garnet is still and silent for a few moments, and then he slowly brings his drink to his mouth and takes a sip. “The first was an attempt at emasculation – to replace the features I had with something more to his liking, that he might plunder me as I had plundered what was his. He wanted more, though, to add further punishment – a curse, then. For men to not only desire me, but desire me as men do women, to see me as a prize to take, to pillage. And to the nth degree, at that.”

“Men hate women on this island,” Denari says. “I’ve lived in a few kingdoms, different places – it’s the worst here I’ve ever seen. The rape, the abuse. All of it.”

“Mm, yes, so I’ve learned,” Garnet says dispassionately. “Magic is in many ways an equaliser, and all forms of violence here are exaggerated, those of class, caste, and economy included.”

“You been raped?”

“That was rather my point, yes.”

Denari nods his head.

“You don’t,” Garnet says.

“Rape, me? Fuck no.”

“You don’t desire me, either,” Garnet says. “You’re inverted in that way, are you? You like men only?”

“You’re a man still, aren’t you?” Denari asks, and Garnet looks faintly ill, but doesn’t answer. “I do like men,” Denari says. “Men mostly, I’d say – not only, but nearly wholly. Didn’t you say you’d fucked one of Keenchild’s sons?”

“Only from behind – he was pretty.”

Denari faintly laughs, because it just doesn’t match up with the man before him now, the way he speaks on his past. His entitlement, his haughtiness, that matches up, but… Well. As perverse as it is, he guesses that was Keenchild’s intention.

“I probably don’t desire anybody like I would have,” Denari adds.

“Like you would have?” Garnet repeats blankly.

“Were I not gelded,” Denari says. When Garnet seems uncomprehending still – he would have thought it was noted in his indenture papers, but maybe Garnet missed that bit, or just didn’t recognise the symbol – he adds, “They cut me when I was twelve. I was already indentured, and too unruly before I fully entered my puberty. They cut out the problem at the root, so to speak.”

Garnet has turned a few shades paler. “The whole thing? Rod and tackle?”

“Just my bollocks,” Denari says. “I’ve a cock, but it’s not developed in the way it should be, a little small. Still get hard, though, can still have sex after a fashion, I just don’t lust like a lot of people do. They did it slow, like you do with sheep.”

“I’m not familiar with sheep, or at least, not this element of their care. Is castrating a sheep so different to castrating a man?”

“It’s normally a quick cut, a little surgery. They still wanted me to grow, though, to toughen, put on muscle. They cut off the blood flow with a magic band, let my bollocks shrivel and die so they just fell off. No direct cutting, and they used some kind of magic to juice them of their essence, so I would still grow tall and hairy, but lose my wilful spirit.” He laughs darkly.

Garnet only looks more ill now, his skin tinged green.

“I could,” Denari says, and then, “I do.”

Garnet’s chalk-pale face shifts, his pretty brows furrowing, his head tilting marginally to one side. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I rather lost our conversational thread somewhere about the point your bollocks fell off.”

“Desire you.”

That puts a little colour back into the other man’s face – two pinpricks of pink initially show at the tops of his cheeks, and then the colour bleeds downwards and reddens his face. It’s a nice colour, healthy. His lips look a bit pinker too.

“Are you indentured or not?” Denari asks. He’d assumed before that Garnet was a free man, but he has his doubts now. It’s one thing to do this sort of modification on a slave or indenture, but on a free man? “In a way, you said before.”

“Not in the literal sense,” Garnet says. “Used to be I was saving to leave.”

“Used to be?”

Garnet nods his head, sliding his palm over his lips. “Irin and I – Irin’s from a wealthy family as you could see from the house, me, my family were fishermen, mostly. Her money’s tied up here on the island, so the plan was for us to retire in Nez. Warm, cultured, lots of magical conveniences – outside of Alexia, maybe.”

“Strict laws about indentures in Nez,” Denari says. “Slavery outlawed, no indentures, can’t even make prisoners labour.”

“Yes,” Garnet says. “What with the popularity of magical constructs there, in the libraries, the museums, the way constructs have been able to develop complex personalities and demand the rights that go with them, Nez is quite committed to all forms of liberty.”

“Don’t want that anymore?”

“When Keenchild caught me… Well. It’s a deformation, enough to dissolve a marriage, and my desire for women, for sex, really, evaporated. The intimacy is nice, but I lost the drive I once had, the hunger, the need, the craving. There used to be such triumph in it, too, but no longer. And now I can’t leave the island.”

“Why, Keenchild won’t let you?”

“It’s not a matter of let,” Garnet murmurs. “Retiring to the mainland with Irin was quite the thought once upon a time, but now? You think this curse is powerful here on Lesh, with all its interruptions and dampening of magical flow – on the mainland, I’d be torn to shreds in short order if I was lucky.”

Denari wrinkles his nose. It’s his turn to feel sick now, knows he probably looks pretty green – under the table, Garnet’s foot brushes against Denari’s, and their ankles touch against one another. His skin is warm, but not in the unnatural way that Keenchild’s had been. It’s nice.

“He fuck you?” Denari asks.

Garnet’s foot immediately withdraws, but he feigns ignorance as he asks, “Who?”

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Denari says. “Just the, um, the way he touched you, the way he looked at you, Keenchild. You owe him a debt?”

“No. I’ve always been very careful about debts and loans,” Garnet says. “But he owns most of an island I cannot leave, controls the only protections I might reach for, so he has my leash in hand either way.”

“You ever want another line of work?”

“I can’t cope with offices,” Garnet murmurs. “I don’t like desks.”

“You don’t like desks?” Denari repeats with a short laugh. “What?”

“Sitting at them, the static expectation, the chairs. The paperwork. I hate it.”

“You do mountains of paperwork in a day,” Denari points out.

“Yes, but most of it is outside or somewhere different, with a clipboard. Offices, they’re stifling. I may not be a fisherman, but I retain my family’s natural inclination to free movement.”

“Bizarre,” Denari murmurs, though not without fondness.

“You must have a dream or two,” Garnet says. “What you’ll do when free of your indentures.”

“A few decades left to go.”

“You never think on it?”

“I try not to.”

“But when you do?”

Denari exhales. “Not this,” he says. “I hate moneylenders, hate enforcement. The violence of it. I’ve considered retirement to Nez myself.”

“You’re a very good fighter for disliking violence.”

“A fight can never be as violent as the process of a place like this,” Denari murmurs. “Homes held ransom, families made homeless. Children bought and sold as commodities – indenture, slavery, interest and due demands. Money itself seems to be a hangman’s noose.”

“Not so much as a lack of money is,” Garnet says, though he seems far from offended, “but I take your point. What for you, then, on retirement? Baking? Making candlesticks? Keeping bees?”

“Dunno. What does Irin do?”

“Enjoys herself.”

“I could give that a try.”

Garnet’s smile is a bright flash, and as warm as sunlight.

* * *

It’s an hour later that sees them in Garnet’s modest lodgings outside of the city centre, the windows double-barred, four sets of locks on the door, lights over every entrance.

Garnet’s pretty lips are well-practised at kissing, and his hands aren’t shy on Denari’s body.

Denari pushes Garnet back from him in the bedroom and falls on top of him on the bed, beginning to layer kisses on the side of his neck before Garnet can draw him into a kiss again. The other man sighs and arches his back as Denari eases him out of his clothes and drops them aside.

The bruises on his throat, beginning to darken now, look agonisingly obvious against the skin, the purple in them bringing out the colour in Garnet’s hair. He has some softness to his breast, and when Denari tongues over one pink nipple, Garnet lets out a keen.

His skin is sensitive, and Denari takes pleasure in mouthing over his body, tonguing over his nipples, tracing over his navel, and finally breathing hot air over his cock.

It’s on the smaller side, struggles to harden. He can see where the magic hasn’t taken full effect – he has bollocks only half-descended, soft and small, and in the midst of the sac flush to his body is the tiniest, shallowest cunt he’s ever seen. It’s wet, but scarcely deeper than Denari’s thumb.

Garnet howls when Denari licks his finger and strokes about the rim of it, and squirms desperately as Denari sucks Garnet’s cock into his mouth at the same time.

He comes easily, sweat a golden sheen on his body, and in the aftermath he looks up at Denari awed and exhausted.

“Your turn,” he says dazedly, reaching with a clumsy hand for Denari’s waistband.

“I don’t really spend,” Denari says. “I get hard, after a bit of work – but it’s more for the intimacy. It doesn’t satisfy me like I think it does you.”

Garnet’s expression is unreadable, his pearly eyes wide. “You’re sure?” he asks. His voice has urgency, solicitous and genuinely earnest, as he asks, “What can I do for you?”

“Let me hold you,” says Denari.

Garnet’s expression crumples, such vulnerability showing in his usually perfect marble features as Denari’s ever seen, and Denari cups one of his cheeks, kissing the opposite side. Garnet curls into him, moulds their bodies against one another, and Denari marvels at how soft and silky Garnet’s hair is under his fingers, at the warmth of his body.

“Keenchild,” Denari says after half an hour of this, dozing in the dark together.

Garnet, sounding half-asleep, grunts against Denari’s breast, one arm banded over the roundness of his belly. “What about him?”

“He going to fuck you? That what he said in your ear?”

“Mm.”

“You have to go?”

“Not tonight.”

“But you can’t… not?”

“No.”

“Sorry.”

“Jealous?”

“Sad. Angry for you.”

“I’ve not much space in me for anger any longer,” Garnet murmurs, his thumb stroking up and down Denari’s sternum. “That’s one more thing that’s been robbed of me – another modification to suit me to Keenchild’s preferences.”

“It’s the most fucked up thing about it, being enslaved or indentured or ensorcelled, even,” Denari says. “That you should be customised and tailored like a bespoke suit, your body owned by somebody else and changed out from underneath you.”

“Oh, yes, quite, a horror, all of it,” Garnet agrees dismissively, and curls all the closer. “But here, respite.”

“Respite,” Denari repeats, and closes his eyes as he holds Garnet tighter.

* * *

Denari sees Irin a week later while he’s picking up dockets from one of the lenders on the west of the island – Garnet had made the journey to Keenchild’s home, and said he was unlikely to return for a few days, if not a week. Four nights they’d shared a bed, and every night since, Denari thinks about it, about where Garnet is, about what Keenchild is doing to him.

“Hello, Denari,” says Irin when she sees him, moving directly through the market toward him, several bags over one of her arms.

“Call me Lew,” he says. “If it suits you.”

“You know,” she says, her eyes sparkling as she puts her arm confidently in his and draws him with her, “it does.”

He takes her bags and walks with no great rush, watching as Irin peruses the different market stalls, picking out this thing and that – a silk scarf, some hand-made earrings, a basket of apples.

“You don’t have to, Lew,” she says, her naturally mischievous features becoming more serious when he takes the third box from a trader and carries them under his other arm. “I can have all this delivered.”

“I don’t have to,” Denari agrees. “I’m free in this moment to do as I please.”

Her expression is a mask of distant discomfort, and he smiles at her hesitation. “You don’t live far, and I’m a strong man,” he says. “I’ve carried greater loads than this for farther distances, and with no choice in the matter at all.”

“Yes,” she mutters. “You have.”

After dwelling on this emotional dissonance, she finds a middle ground that seems to satisfy her – for every item she picks out for herself, she picks one out for Denari.

“Oh, new boots, these will be splendid for you.”

“What a handsome shirt, the same shade as your eyes!”

“Do you like to fish, Lew?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Irin, Irin, please. Would you like to start? I’m sure Josep would take you.”

“Does he fish?”

“No, but he likes to get himself wet and splash about. I’m sure you’d work it out together.”

An hour or so later, Denari stands in the hall, watching Irin remove her gloves and hat, laying them down on the hall table as a servant takes away the things Irin has bought for herself – the servant is a free woman, Denari sees.

“It’s how my family made their money,” Irin says when Denari watches after her leaving. Denari is packing the ridiculous number of gifts Irin had bought for him into a crate that had been brought out for him. “Centuries back, my great great whatevers were sorcerers of renown – they didn’t lend money or take debts, but they enchanted collars and made charms.”

“Slavery?” Denari asks.

“Mm,” Irin hums. “Not of men or elves, at first – they started out making saddles and bridles, began enchanting them for use on magical beasts, you know, magical elk and deer, great fae horses.” Her tone is quieter as she leads him through to the salon, pouring him tea before she pours her own. “They captured a centaur and wanted to modify a saddle, to “tame” him as punishment, and then when the war with the orcs started in the Bright Kingdoms, the same enchantments were modified for them, and soon enough…” She makes a sweeping gesture. “Moving to indentures over slavery was the moral choice, apparently.”

“Most places these days don’t allow for it,” Denari says. “Or they limit the duration – me, I was taken as a boy, and the time on me was most of a lifetime.”

“Your parents were taken in by a bad loan?” she asks with sympathy. “Or gambling?”

“Legal action,” he says. “My father worked on the docks, and there was a bad accident one day, a beam on a ship broke and landed into a flour store. The enchantments weren’t up to code – huge boom. The ship had been written off and abandoned a decade before, the company long-since dissolved, so they went for the dockers.”

“Fucking Hells,” she hisses, and it makes him laugh, how easily she swears with her posh islanders accent. “I’m so sorry.”

“It is what it is. You out of that trade now, I guess?”

“My mother divested us when my father died – not sooner, mind you. Only when it became unpopular.”

“What do you think of Garnet?”

“What do you mean?”

Denari sips at the tea she’s poured for him, shrugging his shoulders. “He’s not exactly opposed to the practice, is he? Heard him suggest it to a family the other day.”

“He wasn’t always as he is now,” Irin says, pulling her legs up underneath her on the sofa and tugging a blanket over his lap. “He used to be angrier, used to be…” She stops, sighs.

“He told me about it,” Denari says. “That his personality was different, before, um… He’s at Keenchild’s at the moment.”

“I heard he was on the island. He pushed his luck too far with it – I used to tell him so, the way he used to be, so spirited, so… Well, so stupid. Keen with numbers, sharp, with this edge of justice to him, but rebellious.”

“Rebellious?”

“Oh, yes,” Irin says. “It wasn’t just the sex he was wild about, fucking people all around – that never bothered me anyway. No, he used to come home and would talk about what he’d done that day. How he’d fiddled the numbers here or there, helped a man out, made sure a child escaped indenture. That sort of thing. Now… It’s not that he doesn’t care. He does, still, it’s… It’s all distant for him compared to how it used to be. What that spell did to him, it didn’t just soften his features, make him pretty, it separated him from his heart, a little. From the passion he used to have.”

Denari’s nausea is a distant thing, but he’s very aware of it, of the bubble in the base of his stomach. “Broke his spirit,” he supplies, and Irin nods her head.

“Yes,” she says. “Exactly.”

“He can’t reverse it?”

“Keenchild’s the most powerful sorcerer from here to Nez, I expect,” Irin murmurs. “To leave the island would be difficult – to find a witch not just powerful enough, but willing to do the work, and not affected by the magic themselves… I’ve sent letters. Tried to invite people, even, but most of them wouldn’t risk the journey to Lesh, and without a way to guarantee Josep’s safety on the mainland.” She strokes a hand over the blanket in her lap. “No, no, he’s stuck that way, I think. It might die with the old man – or dissipate after his death, at least, it might take a few days. The physical changes, those are permanent.”

“You still love him,” Denari says, and Irin looks slightly surprised.

“Well, of course,” she says simply. “Why would I not?”

“He’s different. In personality, in body, in everything.”

“Not by choice,” she says. “We’re no longer man and wife, but of course, I love him.”

“He loves you,” Denari says confidently, and Irin smiles, her eyes shining.

“He does – quite adores me, really,” she says. “He fucked insatiably when we were married, women, mostly, but pretty boys too. Brought some home for us to share, at times – he’d bring gifts, mostly. Cakes, jewellery. He was so… You see him now, and he’s so reserved, so subtle in everything. He used to serenade me in the street, used to fall to his knees and sing.”

“That sounds awful,” Denari says honestly, and Irin laughs, and it’s a beautiful laugh, bright, easy.

“Oh, it was – his voice isn’t awful, but he’s no bard. He’d drop to his knees on the cobbles, kiss my skirts, grip me about the waist, sing me love songs or quote me poetry.”

“Other women too?”

“Not the serenades, I don’t think – I was married to him, after all, I had to put up with more than most.” She was smiling faintly. “But yes, he was effusive. With compliments, about his skills as a lover, about the beauty of the world. He was a very bright flame once.”

Denari nods, slowly. The past few nights, he has been surprised by Garnet’s passion on some things – it’s not effusive or loud or exaggerated, but it has been potent. He’s quoted poetry against Denari’s chest, talked philosophy, complimented him.

He wonders what he might have been like, had they gelded him later, or had he not been gelded at all – would he have been as bright as all that, laughing, singing in the street? Angrier, more wilful, a revolutionary?

“He likes you very much,” Irin says quietly. “He seems to feel very safe with you – it’s good to see. I’ve not seen him so relaxed since before Keenchild bound him up, seen him loving something. Someone.”

“He soothes me too,” Denari says. “I feel at liberty with him, I guess.”

Irin squeezes his hand. “Good,” she murmurs. “That’s good.”

“Will he interfere? Keenchild? He mentioned having my indenture papers.”

“I doubt it,” Irin says. “He already has what he wants from Josep, and takes it as he pleases.

The next sip of Denari’s tea is bitter on his tongue.

* * *

Denari returns to the lodge to find that his bunk has been tripped of its sheets, his meagre possessions – his boots, his towel, a few books, his clothes – have been packed into his travelling trunk and await him in the hallway.

“The fuck?” he demands.

“You don’t look pleased,” says the lodging warden – he’s a grumpy old sod most of the time, but now he’s got a faint smile on his face.

“Why would I be pleased? My rank as Garnet’s guard, my seniority, I deserve that bunk, I—”

The warden looks at him, laughs, and says, “Boy, you’ve no need of that fucking bunk. Your friend, Garnet, bought out your indenture – you’re a free man.”

The next argument dries into dust on his tongue, his indignation evaporating, and he stands still, frozen.

“Wh…” He looks about himself, uncomprehending – there are tousles for rank and territory from time to time, shuffles of power and struggles between indentures, and it had been natural for him to assume this was more of the same, someone taking the fucking piss.

More believable.

He muses it over in his head, what he’s going to do next, staying the night at one of the public lodgehouses, the ones for free men. When Garnet comes through, Denari is sitting on his trunk outside the bathhouse with Irin’s box of gifts beside him on the floor.

“I have your papers here,” Garnet says, almost shyly. “Officiation of our debt paid in full – ordinarily, upon completion of your repayment, you would receive a stipend of a fractional wage per year served, but—”

“How the fuck did you afford it?” Denari asks, looking up at him.

Garnet, clipboard in hand, shrugs his delicate shoulders. “Since my punishment, I’ve lived very modestly – I paid a third. Irin has a fund to pay off indentures as well, a reparations fund.”

“She paid the other two thirds?”

“Not her, no, but her charity. I took out a loan with them against my salary – at a very reasonable rate of return, I might add. My credit is more well-regarded than most, what with my profession.”

Denari stares at him, his mouth ajar, as he thinks of Garnet telling him he’s never been in debt before. As he stands over Denari now, he slowly crumples, his shoulders tightening, his perfect mouth twisting.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes out. “I should have asked your permission, I acted on impulse, I—”

Garnet lets out a startled noise as his shoulders hit the wall. The clipboard and the officiation of Denari’s freedom flutter to the courtyard floor with a pouch of coin, and Denari focuses on the pleasant heat of Garnet’s cheeks under his palms as he cups the other man’s face.

“You’ve freed me, and you apologise,” he murmurs. “You are mad, Josep Garnet.”

Garnet’s lips part, and Denari delicately traces his lower lip with his thumb before he leans in and kisses him, brushes their lips against one another. It’s rather tender, lacking in urgency on either of their sides – it’s nice.

“I don’t own you,” Garnet bafflingly feels the need to assure him. “I don’t, you owe me no doubt, there is no obligation, and I was already working to pay off your debt, you must understand, it wasn’t only because we became intimate with one another, it’s—”

Denari’s never heard him speak so much in so short a time. “Yes, I know,” he says. “I see my papers there – I know how you are. You did a very kind thing, and you acted with all the fairness due the situation.”

He can feel Garnet’s pulse under his fingers. “Yes,” he says.

“You know, all of a sudden, I find myself with no place to stay at the fault of some stranger,” says Denari. “Without meaning to indebt myself to you, Mister Garnet, might I trouble you for a place to stay?”

Garnet stares at him, his lips thinning. It’s a perfectly severe look. “Are you making fun of me?” he asks, and Denari laughs, patting his cheek.

“Yes, Josep, I am.”

The simmering anger becomes something sweeter – irritation, with fondness mixed in. “You will not soften me by use of my forename, Lew.”

“Won’t I?” Denari retorts, and grabs his case.

* * *

“Suppose this means I’ve lost my job?” Denari asks.

“I’ve budget to pay you a modest salary,” Garnet says. He’s naked and laying on his belly, and Denari, lying beside him, traces his thumb up and down the line of his spine, down to the small of his back. “I thought you might not like to go on working with me. The work being what it is.”

“What do you do on your days off?” Denari asks, and Garnet glances at him.

“What do you mean?” he asks. “You know.”

“If I’m not here – before me. What did you do then?”

“Well, I might meet Irin for lunch at hers, or she might come here.”

“You like fishing, she said. Or, not fishing, but splashing in the water.”

“Too much risk in that, these days,” Garnet murmurs.

“Do you go anywhere? Alone? Or, with people, trustworthy people?”

Garnet looks slightly lost before he says, “Where should I go where there are no other men, but where men are welcome?”

Denari squeezes his hip, and changes the subject.

* * *

He used to swim as a boy before the debtors had come, living on the coast as they did. His father had insisted, said he’d seen too many boys drown for lacking the skill, had trained into him the strength and stamina to swim against decent currents.

He’s never had a real day off before, never truly and really and genuinely been at actual liberty and at his own command – natural, he supposes, that he should return to that which brought him pleasure before he lost his freedom.

He’s always swum when the option was available to him, and it’s natural enough for him to swim now, to dive. He searches the mussel beds with faint interest, looking at the shells.

Lassium is the colour of obsidian, but lacks its shine, its glassy shimmer.

It absorbs the magic that flows near it, about it, and thus has a strange effect on light as well – when he picks up a shard loose on the seabed, it makes his hand feel immediately cold, makes his body throb, shock with it. He’s never used magic himself, never even been taught enchantment – he knows that for some in richly magical places or for magical species like dryads or elves, even to brush their fingers against a shard like this would be such a shock as to kill them.

He's no magic user, and on the island, he’s had a good length of time to adjust.

He expects it’s the same for any change in environment – he’s heard men talk of dizziness when moving to a far higher elevation from sea level than they’d lived before, heard people talk of the shock not only of changing heat but humidity when travelling.

Denari surfaces still holding the shard in his hand – it’s no great dagger of a piece, small and sharp, threatening to crumble. It’s a hard stone, but it’s evidently been weathered by the currents, the sea, only a little bit bigger than a marble.

Doctor Keenchild is standing on the docks, his thumbs curled through the heavy belt that cinches in his robes, from which hang various magical accoutrements – golden instruments, a scope, a pouch of ingredients, maybe.

In his youth, he probably was a handsome man. His hair now is thick and shaggy, a few faint streaks of gold showing through the grey mane; he has a hard chin, a strong nose, and only light stubble on his aged cheeks.

“Hullo, free man,” he says. “Much luck to you on this auspicious day, hm?”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Denari says, swimming toward the dock and stowing the lassium stone in his pocket before he grips at one of the posts and hoists himself up to sit on the edge. “I thought you’d be pissed.”

“Why should I be?” Keenchild asks, tilting his head. “Young man, I take no pleasure in holding contracts of indenture – they are an unfortunate means to an end, the recoup of debts that might not otherwise be repaid.”

“Is that all indentures are to you” Denari asks. “Collateral that happens to be a little more active in balancing the debts incurred?”

“I don’t claim to think it pleasant,” Keenchild says. “On the contrary, it strikes me as rather tragic, parents selling their children and whatnot.” He clucks his tongue and slowly shakes his head, his great lion’s mane shifting in the breeze. “But there’s many a parent, young man, who would rather sell their child than offer their own labour, husbands offering their wives as chattel in order that they might pay for more drink or put money betting on cockfights or whatever else. The poor demand high loans, then cannibalise each other in their repayment.”

“And what would the poor do, if they didn’t take those loans? Starve? Lose their homes?”

Keenchild laughs. “I envy your expectations of your kinsmen, young man. Alas, I see more gambling debts and money wasted whoring or drinking than I do on such noble endeavours.”

“You’re leaving?” Denari asks, gesturing to the boat on the next dock over, which is loading up a ship via the gangplank. He recognises some of the stuff onboard – merchandise reclaimed from debts the past few weeks.

“Mmm, I visit a few times a year, when I can – my wife, she has a sensitivity to magic.”

That would be wife number three, Denari supposes, the one Garnet had carried on an affair with. Had she been there at Keenchild’s manse, whilst Garnet was there this week? How much of doing what he’d done to Garnet had been to punish him, and how much had been done to punish his wife?

“She has to stay here on the island, or she gets sick?”

“Here or elsewhere with high lassium deposits,” Keenchild says, gesturing with a heavily ringed hand. “Too much exposure to magic saps much of her energy, I’m afraid, makes her hair fall out. Quite awful.”

Denari is silent for a second, looking up at the older man, feeling the magic radiate out from him in faint pulses. They’re not touching, though within touching distance, and Denari can feel the heat and crackle of it on the air between them, a contrast to the heavy, cold weight of the lassium in his pocket.

He can’t stop himself from asking, even though he suspects the answer, even though the horror begins to churn within him even before the words take shape, “What does it do to her, as powerful as you are? When you touch her?”

For just a moment pure triumph shows in the old man’s expression, sly and dark and utterly sadistic. His eyes glitter, his lips twisted in a nasty leer that shows off his too-white, magically bleached teeth, even more artificial than Irin’s, and Denari feels the magic bubble off him.

All at once, the face is exchanged for a mask of theatrical disapproval, Keenchild’s eyes wide, his lips an O. “Young man!” he scolds, faux scandalised, and laughs as though Denari is an incorrigible child. “Such a forward question to ask of a man and his wife.”

“You like to hurt people,” Denari says quietly as he gets to his feet. “Makes sense – indentures, debts, they’re a way of trapping people, keeping them in their place. And even if you can’t indenture people, your wife, Garnet, they’re trapped here. Fish in a barrel.”

“Now now,” Keenchild says in a tone of warning, his rich voice cut through now with a note of steel. “Mr Garnet behaved badly, for which I gave him a well-earned punishment, bringing him to heel – he’s no prisoner, though. He can go wherever he pleases.”

“He doesn’t even leave the house when he’s not working,” Denari says. “Do you know that? He can’t go anywhere without someone trying to jump him, just goes between his house and his ex-wife’s.”

“A reversal of the previous state of affairs,” Keenchild says unerringly, with a quiet laugh. “He was such a tomcat before, wouldn’t leave the house without pouncing on some pretty girl, from in front or behind, so long as he could take his pleasure from her and corrupt her virtue, devalue her, besmirch her.”

“What you do, that isn’t corruption?” Denari asks. “Were any of those girls ever scared of Garnet the way that everyone you fuck is terrified of you?”

The old man takes a step closer, his eyes hardening.

Denari guesses, by the unnatural way he stiffens, the way his reflexes just don’t seem calibrated for it, that he’s just not used to being punched, that he’s not used to physical attacks at all. He lets out an indignant, wordless roar as Denari grabs him by the cheeks and forces his mouth open.

Before so much as a word can pass the old man’s lips, even a syllable of an incantation, Denari is forcing the lassium stone from his pocket past the cage of his teeth and onto his tongue. The wave of magic that had been ready to burst off of the old man, to burn or evaporate or throw him back, fizzles out.

It feels suddenly sapped out of the air, feels the rippling weight of burgeoning magic abruptly disappear the way that darkness flees a room when the lanterns are lit.

Keenchild stumbles back and Denari follows him, pushing his chin up. He holds the old man’s mouth closed – he’s obviously very magically powerful, but with age, he’s lost most of his muscle, any of the physical power his body might have had in youth. Denari pinches shut the old cunt’s nostrils and he snorts, coughs, his eyes wide and watering as he heaves in a choking, struggling gasp of no air at all—

Then swallows.

Denari watches the hard lump of stone slide visibly down his throat.

Keenchild’s blue eyes bulge outwards, white froth beginning to bubble up around his mouth as he tries and fails to heave in a breath. His knees buckle, and Denari catches him under the aged arm.

The same numbness he’d felt from the stone is now mirrored in the old man’s skin.

He’s trying to talk – trying to yell, probably – and can’t make any noise at all but breathy, whistled chokes.

Denari yells up the docks, “Hey! Help! It’s Doctor Keenchild, he’s having some kind of fit!”

He makes sure the old man sees his smile as he helps him down to the floor.

He filters through the crowd as some other mage rushes to help the old man, hears someone ask, “Filton, were you in the water?”, ducks under the shouts and the gathering crowd.

Josep Garnet is standing in the middle of town at the central crossroads.

He’s standing in place, his hands at his sides, his shoulders to a lamp post. People are walking past him with nary a glance in his direction – men are walking past. One brushes his shoulder, grunts a short, “’Scuse me, mate,” and keeps on walking.

His pretty face has a dazed expression on it.

He looks somewhere up in the clouds, but his eyes refocus as Denari approaches: his gaze fixes on Denari’s face, and the smile that draws across his pretty lips is slow and perfect and seems to come very, very easily to him.

“Don’t tell me I’ve paid off your indentures just so you can face a noose,” he murmurs, hand reaching forward. Denari cups the back of it, drawing it up against his cheek, kissing the palm.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Denari says, shrugging. “I don’t think he’ll be able to talk before he dies.”

“Should we be getting on a boat and fleeing town?” Garnet asks, raising his eyebrows as he adjusts Denari’s shirt collar – a gift from Irin and slightly too large for him but very comfortable, and a flattering colour.

“Nah, if they catch me, they catch me,” Denari says. “Let’s go invite your ex-wife out to dinner. Let’s go to a restaurant.”

Garnet sighs, pressing his lips together. “Lew, I can’t very well go out to a…” He stops. Blinks. Laughs. “Oh.”

“Yeah, we’re both free men, each of us at liberty,” Denari says. “Irin too, except for the man part. Let’s go out, have a meal. When’s the last time you got drunk?”

“A decade go.”

“You want to?”

“Yes,” Garnet says, winding his arms around Denari’s neck. “Yes.”

“And uh… His wife, Keenchild’s.”

“Miletta.”

“She’ll be okay, right?”

“I’ll go to her tomorrow,” Garnet says, and Denari kisses his cheek, wraps his arm around Garnet’s waist, and they walk along with almost no one looking their way at all.

Irin’s fiancé opens the door – he is a bit plain – and doesn’t recognise either of them.

“Irin, darling, we’ve come to take you out for dinner!” Garnet calls right past him as if he’s nothing, as if he doesn’t matter at all – Irin’s servant, who Denari had seen before, he greets with a pleasant, “Hello, Yuna.”

“Hullo, Mr Garnet.” She says, laughing.

“Won’t you join us? Just us girls.”

“I’ll stay home, but thanks, Mr Garnet. Congrats, I guess?”

“Thank you, dear.”

“What the fuck is happening?” asks the fiancé – he’s swiftly eclipsed by Irin, who stands next to her beau, looks at him to Garnet back to the beau, back to Garnet… then leaps into Denari’s arms.

“Oof, why me, woman!?” Denari demands, wheezing through his next laugh, but he shifts his hand under Irin’s arse and sweeps her over his shoulder, picking her coat off the rack and tossing it over top of her.

Yuna disappears down the corridor as Garnet picks out a set of gloves and shoes to complement Irin’s coat, and the three of them descend the steps into the street again.

“Irin, what the—” the beau starts, barely audible over Irin’s squeals of triumph and delight, her feet kicking.

“Oh, for Gods’ sake, Eric, come if you’re coming, we’ll explain on the way!” she says impatiently – over Denari’s back, she reaches to cup Garnet’s cheeks and kiss him on his forehead. “Close the door behind you!”

“Pass me her shoes, would you?” Denari asks as Irin starts to explain the whole thing to Eric the fiancé, and Garnet walks beside him as the two of them put Irin’s shoes on for her before setting her down on the floor.

“You’re a funny man, Lew,” Garnet murmurs in his ear.

“You’re a funny one yourself, Josep,” replies Denari, and kisses him on the corner before Irin impatiently grabs the both of them by their forearms and groans at them to hurry up.

FIN.

[zvhiux34]

(Credits to its respectiva owners ).

Pairing: König x virgin reader

Plot: You and König had a special date, where you both confess your feelings to each other. But he suspects there is something more.

warnings: Fluff, angst, slow burn, Reader is veeery stubborn. Age gap+10 years (She 18yo, König 30yo). Sexual inuendo. English it's not my first language

W.c: 2.5k

What a treasure to have found you.

pt.1 pt.2 pt.3 Pt.4

Until now, your meetings/dates with him took place during the morning and afternoon.

Going out at night... only mean one thing.

Running into your parents, and having big problems with them.

When he saw the doubt in your eyes, he didn't hesitate to convince you.

—Come on, princess, it's not a bother for me to pick you up at your home—He assured you, while he put a lock of your hair behind your ear—I'll rent a carriage, so I can go to get you, 'kay?— Then, he placed a kiss on your cheek that burned away allá your doubts.

And here you were, about to escape through the window of your room before your soldier arrived at your fake home.

Or worse, discovered which one was your real house.

You did some juggling to escape without dirtying your dress, until to step on solid ground without harming yourself, then you began to walk through the neighborhood.

You walked down the sidewalk until the lights of a car «Or maybe a truck» coming in your direction dazzled you.

The driver, whoever it was, got out and started walking towards you.

When you tried to see who it was, he took you in his arms at bridal style to the vehicle with such ease that you recognized who it was.

—You are very stubborn, princess —He admonished you as he scolded you on the copilot seat— You were going to go on your own no matter what I told you, uh?—He sat in the driver's seat, and put the truck in motion.

—I may be stubborn, but you are cheeky— You crossed your arms in objection.

—Believe me, you haven't seen anything yet—He answered with a smirk in his face.

You did like it, but you were a little embarrassed to admit it out loud.

—Where did you get this truck?—You ask to avoid the past subject.

—It’s nice, isn’t it?—He inquired, You didn't know the model, but it was big and rustic at the outside, just like him—It's rented, I wanted to rent a carriage, but I couldn't found one, so I did what I could, little princess—You let out a chuckle about it.

You rembered how the soldier warned you days ago to you not be too surprised if he appeared with a car, so you don't get so tired of walking.

You appreciated his gesture a lot.

He drove until you two reached the destination, apparently, it was a place that was starting to become popular due to the amount of people there.

You all entered the park, and as you immersed yourselves in the site with the others, every source of artificial light disappeared.

It was a kind of path with long bushes on the sides that led to extensive green gardens.

It seemed that the only lighting was the cold light of the moon that came from somewhere, you could see each other without problem as the guide led the group and you along the path, while he was explaining some stuff about the main leads of the evening.

Then he fell silencie, and suddenly a little yellow flash appeared floating in the air.

—Mommy, look!—You heard a child pointing at it in the air to his mother.

The fireflies began to appear one by one until you could no longer count them all, they flew around the entire space as if they were stars in the sky floating around you like bright bubbles.

The children were exasperated with excitement, the adults were fascinated, and when König looked down to see your reaction, you were simply contemplating the spectacle without any words that could express your emotion.

It was such a beautiful and surreal scene that it transported you to a scene from a magical movie where you were one of the fairies belonging to this forest.

The soldier caught your attention by grabbing your hand.

It was the very first time when he entraleced his fingers with yours, and you let it be enjoying every second of the moment, his hand was warm and protecting over yours.

When you looked at him, he pointed out a path that no one had noticed.

You let yourself be guided by him and entered a passage of green bushes, which led you two to a large garden where the fireflies floated around a beautiful gazebo in the center.

You and König walked under the gazebo, looking at the spectacle that loomed around the two of you.

And suddenly you understood what was going to happen.

—You like the place, don’t you?— The soldier asked to you, you stood in front of him and looked up, straight into his eyes.

—Yes, it's very beautiful — You answered, still moved by what the scenery conveyed to you, as if it was possible to bring magic to real life.

—If you like...we could come many more times—He proposed with a thread of longing intertwined in his voice, at this point you were excited for the fact he has included you in a future plan, together.

—Yes, I would like to—You expressed with sincerity.

You felt his warm fingers cup the edges of your face with his eyes fixed on yours, you remembered the first time you'd see his icy blue eyes in that park, the guilty ones for transmitting you the mystery of a calm sea you wish to discover.

—Dove, when I came to this city... I never expected to meet...someone like you —He paused for a moment, while he found the right words— But my biggest surprise was when I started to get to know you and...I discovered a tender, intelligent woman, with hundreds of other virtues that I don't know how to say in english —He let out a light chuckle.

«Liar, liar, liar»

But those thoughts didn't stop your heart from beating hard.

—I accept you with everything you are... And you... would fulfill one of my wildest dreams if you accept me with... everything I am —He confessed in a whisper that captures you.

His message was so clear you had no chance to pretend you didn't understand anything.

But you had stopped acting rationally for a long time ago.

You stood on your tiptoes and finally shortened the distance between your lips with his.

It had been a long time since you had placed your lips on someone else's, but none of those chances could compare to this.

He received the kiss like a person receives a coat in the middle of a cold night.

He put his arm around your waist and in a movement as sensual as daring, you felt your chest pressed against his.

If you were the warm coat, then König was about to freeze all this time, until he found you.

But the way you kissed him back made you think that perhaps the person about to freeze was you.

The intensity that enveloped you both made you believe for a moment you were going to faint.

König, who apparently noticed this, instead of stopping to calm the waters, he simply adjusted his grip on your body.

Even though you were the one who started this act, he was now the one who was taking the reins, you were even a little disappointed when he stopped the kiss but without ever letting go of his arms, while both of you caught your breath.

The soldier couldn't help but contain the ear-to-ear smile on his face.

—Princess... You didn't let me... finish what... I was going to say...

«What?»

The soldier, seeing your confused face, carried you until you both reached and sat on a bench nearby.

Several seconds passed before he spoke again.

—First of all, I don't intend for you to feel like I'm invading your privacy —He assured, you nodded slowly— But I'd be lying to you if... If I told you I haven't noticed strange things about you.

Your heart almost skipped a beat.

—Things... Like what?

—For example, since I've been spending more time with you...—You saw how he searched for the best words to not hurt you even by chance— I've noticed how sometimes you're very meditative, you're very careful with what you say and...you give me the impression on certain occasions you agree to do things just so I don't ask you more questions.

He began to caress your chin with the tips of his fingers.

—And above all... I'm worried by the way your gaze turns dark...and sad. —He tells you almost in a whisper.

And you finally understood that your mask was not as perfect as you thought.

—Many times I have wanted to ask you the reason... But I know I cannot force you to be honest with me if I have not been honest with you.

And now perhaps the moment you have been waiting for has arrived, König will finally show you his true face.

You thought of several scenarios that did not help to quench the growing panic inside you.

«Tomorrow I return to the Middle East to never return»

«I have one month to live»

«I'm married and I have four children in another country»

—You are married and you have children abroad? —You interrupted in an attempt to accept the cruel reality.

The soldier looked at you strangely, and then let out a loud laugh.

—Jeez princess, who do you take me for? I am not married and I do not have children, in fact, I never thought of doing that until I met a certain person—He answered you suggestively—But it can be worse from your point of view.

Here it comes, you prepared for the final blow.

—I'm not a simple soldier.

«Okay»

—The truth is...I work as a mercenary for a private company dedicated to dismantling terrorist groups in foreign countries, among other words, I kill for a living.

König said it so fast that you needed a moment to process everything

«I kill for a living»

«Dismantle terrorist groups»

You felt how the rising panic slowly subside.

—...So you kill criminals for a living, right? —You saw the soldier, mercenary or whatever he was looking at you, expectantly.

With his looks, you're not surprised by the nature of the job he had.

—Basically.

—Bad people all and the scum of society?

—...Yes.

«Was it questionably moral? Maybe»

«It's a perfect reason to run away?...No»

You shrugged your shoulders, and only managed to say «I get it»

—So it doesn't bother you? —He questioned.

—No.

—Not even a little?

—No.

You saw how König stretched his limbs as if he were releasing pressure from them, as if he were a prisoner whose sentence had been pardoned.

—Christ, princess, you don't know how much it relieves me to hear you say that— He bellowed, then, like he was holding it in all this time, cradled your face in his hands and kissed your forehead, both of your cheeks, and the tip of your nose.

—By the way, in fact «König» is not my real name, it's a code—He confessed.

That did surprise you a little more.

—So, what's your real name?

He brought his mouth close to your ear and whispered his real name, but to tell the truth, you paid more attention to the way your skin received his warm breath on it.

A war was taking place inside you to balance what would be best for you, but the feelings that this man brought to you, mercenary or not, overwhelmed you so much, that you couldn't think well.

Obviously he confessed that so you could do the same with him.

He delicately placed his forehead against yours.

—Your turn—He whispered.

Your mind came to the realization this wasn't the first time you thought about confessing everything to him.

Anyway, he was going to insist a thousand times on taking you home even if he had to drag you.

And his hundreds of lights were going to turn on red when he saw you couldn't enter the house you supposedly called «your home».

And you couldn't ignore the feeling you had at this moment, you felt like you weren't going to free yourself from the knot you felt in your stomach until you confessed the truth to him.

He's a good person, he would surely understand you, and he wouldn't see you as less for your situation.

But...but....

Besides, there were only a couple of exams left that you would take this Monday, and you would finally complete your studies.

The next day, would be the day you'll finally leave your house.

You'll be free to go out with him whenever you wanted.

Free to do whatever you wanted to do with him without caring who's watching you.

Free of the fear.

—It's true —You answered in a delicate mumur— There's something I haven't told you...

The soldier paid more attention to you than he ever had before. You wanted to find the right words but your vocal cords wanted to betray you, feeling the knot that was forming.

—...But I can't tell you —You looked into his eyes, unlike his, yours were already wet, you took the hand that had comforted you so many times without knowing— Until after tomorrow, then I swear... I'll tell you everything.

Just one and a half days.

You waited for König to say a word, a sound.

But he only managed to say an «Okay, little dove»

And you got up from the bench to return to the group.

You knew from his gestures he was a little disappointed, but despite that, his hand never left yours.

After that, you had dinner in a quiet place with a pleasant conversation...and he took you back to the home he believed all this time it was yours, and say goodbye with a sweet kiss on the lips before you get out of the car.

He waited to you enter to the house, you knew the moment when he realized you lied to him when you, instead, entered in another backyard's house.

You looked at him as you watched him leave

You assumed it was for the best, just two and a half days and this whole farce would be over, if he accepted you again despite the lie.

On Sunday, you dedicated yourself to reviewing your notes, you studied from morning to late night.

You made a great effort not to think about kiss of last night, and the way that made you feel.

On Monday you attended high school and gave your all in your two final exams.

That was it, you had finally finished high school. You talked to your group of friends, one of them commented that you looked more radiant than ever, which you thanked him for.

You agreed to meet up to celebrate that you had finally finished the hell of school.

You attend to work routinely to do your shift, several of your colleagues congratulated you for finishing your studied, you thanked them all.

You were sincerely happy.

With the money you received today, it was going to be enough to get out of your house once and for all.

Right know, under your bed, there was a suitcase with your clothes and enough things you needed to start from scratch, in a small apartment in the city that you were going to share with a girl your age, while you waited to start college.

Everything was going as planned, the day after tomorrow you would have a new home, living with a complete stranger but in peace, which was what you had been longing for all these years.

While you were working, you thought about your mercenary with whom you haven't spoken since Saturday night...not even by text to wish you luck.

That thought made you a little sad until you saw him walk through the door.

Carrying a bouquet of flowers.

And heading towards you.

You froze immediately, almost dropping the ipad from your hands.

König finally reached surrounded you with his arms while he whisper to you congratulations in middle of dozens of costumers looking at the two of you.

At that moment, you didn't know if you were overcome with happiness or in the grip of a nascent panic.

Because today the manager, the eyes and the ears of your father in this place, was taking his turn tonight.

And he's probably watching you from somewhere in the restaurant.

M A S T E R L I S T

[haircarecetres-blog]

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[racefortheironthrone]

I learned recently that Emma Frost is actually a natural brunette (instead of blonde). However, I also recently read "X-Men Phoenix Warsong" where the rest of Emma's thousand daughters are revealed. In their capsules, they are all shown to have blonde hair, and since Sublime probably didn't see the need to dye their hair then I assume it's their natural color. Since the Cuckoos have different hair than Emma as well as an improved diamond form, I'm wondering if they aren't purely clones. Could Sublime have included the DNA of one or more other mutants to enhance their powers? Could the Cuckoos have a "father?"

Yes, Emma is a natural brunette (although her mother Hazel and most of her siblings are blond, which is plot relevant for later) who was relentlessly Mean Girled by the popular blond girls at her private school. There's a whole fascinating sexual psychodrama about how the ideal form that Emma transformed herself through extensive plastic surgery and high-end cosmetology and fashion into is the avatar of her stock photo "bullies" that I'm not qualified to get into, but needless to say Connor Goldsmith has you covered on this.

And yes, one of the many problematic elements of the creative decision to have the Stepford Cuckoos (hat tip again to Connor) be Emma's biological children is that they're all naturally blond identical quintuplets who all look like young Emmas, even though Emma's appearance is deliberately, consciously artificial and genetics does not work that way, Lamarck.

However, this is due in part to the fact that they are not technically clones of Emma - although they are clones of each other, created en masse originally in their thousands by the Weapon Plus program. That fact is potentially quite significant, because it is highly likely that the Cuckoos' genetic father chosen by Weapon Plus (out of some weird Lamarckian eugenic theory, because the Super-Soldier Serum does not work that way either) is none other than Steve Rogers (whose preserved DNA samples as part of Project Rebirth makes him also Weapon Zero), and who also happens to be blond with blue eyes.

I like this idea a lot, mostly for the comedy value of the whole Emma/Steve ship. The Cuckoos historically think that Cap is an old square (then again, they think anyone over thirty is old). But I do kind of love the thought of them trying to parent trap Emma and Steve together as a prank - only for Steve to become the most awkwardly well-meaning "dad who stepped up" ever. I think the Cuckoos would absolutely hate being dragged to Mets games, but they'd probably be really surprised when Cap takes them to MoMa the next weekend and demonstrates a frighteningly in-depth knowledge of art history and a surprising familiarity with queer NYC circa the 20s and 30s.

[ootah-canadiensis]

STRIIIIIDERRRRR!

I wanted to see how I would interpret the very... very strange anatomy of the Strider. And let me tell you, I had a very tough time figuring out the damned thing.

First of all, You might notice a huge lack of the carapace that covers the Strider's legs and main body, that is because I've figured that the exoskeleton is largely artificial as the other synths seem to have it (with exception of the Hunter,) and that inclined me to believe that the Strider didn't naturally have it, and without it It would largely be that dark green musculature, which of course any living thing would have some form of skin and not exposed muscle. Another point towards the carapace being artificial is how it segments, appears to have bolts and of course, the ventilation on it's back. All of these factors would lead a pretty clear image that the synths originally had other forms of covering, with maybe some exception of the Dropship.

And of course, the mouth and "hand." The mouth is where the particle cannon of the Strider was, as it appears there are vestigial compound eyes next to it, and following the evolutionary advantage of the eyes being close to the mouth, as to know what you're eating... It only makes sense to put the mouth there. One thing that I also noticed in the HL:A model for the strider is that a small piece of musculature seems to "wrap around" where the particle cannon is, which I think might be some form of lip structure?

Next down the line on the head region are the bolts downwards of the giant "bolts" grafted onto the side of the neck, which I believe cover where the ears might've been? In my sketch you can see two frog-like tympanic tissues there. Since the Strider naturally is pretty fuckin' tall, it probably wouldn't need extensive protection for the ears (and also because it was easier for me to draw.)

And the next is... The hanging sack of meat that is the Warp Cannon. God, that was just so challenging to try and rationalise how and why a creature would even have something like it. And yet rationalise I did, as I made it where it is able to grasp things and function as a hand or arm, which inside of it is also it's reproductive organs which are more often than not sealed away like a cloaca or something.

Lastly, the feet of the Strider. I wanted to make sure that it's rounded end was still noticeable, while also resembling like an actual functioning foot. Which I ended up with a soft foot with 5 toes arranged in a star pattern. I had to add that in because it wasn't very clear on my sketch of the foot. I also ended up adding those hairs as sensitive whiskers.

And now for my own personal interpretations for its behaviour pre-combine (as if EVERYTHING wasn't my own personal interpretation beforehand)

In HL:A, you can hear "speech" from the Striders. That is something that caught my attention, and I think that might suggest that the Striders were also just as intelligent as us, just in their own way. As for their culture and society... I'm not sure, if someone wanted to use this as a base for something, be my guest :) At minimum their intelligence could be compared to something like an elephant.

And their feeding habits I imagine are a lot like sauropods of earth, using their rake-like teeth to strip off food such as branches or whatever their native flora might've been like. And speaking of their immense height to reach those glorious foods that most other animals can't get too...

They must have been on a planet with lower gravity, I mean just listen to their walking sounds in-game. Do your legs make creaking sounds just by walking? Their legs are clearly under stress from holding up their weight on Earth's gravity, and because of their new-found body's composition of being made of Combine stuff, their legs won't break! But if you were to place a pre-combine Strider on earth, their legs would- should shatter from their immense scale.

And their ears, I think that the Striders largely communicated through infrasound, largely making noises below our range of hearing which they would have naturally heard with their two sets of ears. With exception from the infrasonic communication being that of the deafening howls and "craggles" as I like to call them. And for their sound design in Half-Life: Alyx? I think those may be sounds that are generated from some kind of Combine tech. Not sure, though.

And I believe that is all I have to say, it was delightful trying to figure out just how the Striders probably would've functioned before the combine came along and mutilated them. And it was so incredibly hard not to have the Strider's warp cannon not be exactly what it looks like. If anything was hard to understand, I apologise since I wrote this all in one sitting and didn't have the time or patience to read it over. This will probably be my last Half-Life post like this unless I still have other ideas for how a lot of the aliens of this lovely franchise live beyond being an obstacle for Gordon to bash with a crowbar

[soltheocracy]

The road to perfection

In which Albedo is too attached to his darling to let them go, no matter what.

He’s done it. He’s finally done it.

With an undisclosed liquid dripping down his forearms and powdered chalk coating his gloved hands, he leans over his creation. His creation, concieved of fear and obsession.

His poor, pitiful darling, ever so generous, so kind, loyal, perfect, and still so terribly ill-fated. It is truly the fate of all mortal creatures by nature, he knows all too well. Afterall, there’s no stopping the hand of Celestia when it extends towards you, intended on taking you away.

He watched your body deteriorate by time, clutching your wrinkled hand tightly as your conscience peacefully drifts away from you. Laying in the arms of your beloved, you pass on, unaware of the lives your fleeting presence will influence and consequently bring to ruin.

Your abscence left an abysmal void in him. How could a human come and nestle themselves so deep into his heart, only to leave without his explicit permission? Wallowing in despair at the loss of his beloved, he wandered the streets of Khaenri’ah as if the never-ending stroll would exhaust his being and he’d eventually join you in the afterlife.

But then he saw you again. Sure, you looked different in a few ways; your hair wasn’t as shiny as before. Oh, Archons it wasn’t even the same color, but it had to be you.

Approaching the person in a feverish manner only to be met by denial and rejection, Albedo was stunned into silence, looking at the extension of you he had falsely put together in his mind with a cold glare. Surely you’re just confused, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You love him.

Even after his relentless efforts, ‘you’ still continued to deny him. ‘You’ shut down his advances each time he tried as much as touch you; but that’s all he craves, beloved. And if you won’t let him do whatever his heart wishes, then he might resort to taking unsavory actions.

————————

But he couldn’t. No matter how much you resisted him, he could never hurt you. So, with a heavy heart and shaking hands, he let you slip away from him once again. And so, the cycle continued over centuries.

It continued until it didn’t. He had enough of going so far into your relationships, only for you to selfishly leave him to suffer in his ever-consuming loneliness.

But no longer would he stand for this. If his beloved thought they could escape him using natural causes as an excuse, he would prove them wrong. He would go above and beyond for his beloved, no matter what it took.

No matter what kinds of crimes against humanity and even Celestia itself he had to commit, he couldn’t even care for the divine punishment he was bound to receive once word of his experimentation got out.

He would make his darling permanent. He only needed to figure out how to make them perfect.

————————

He always did like Starsilver. The colour of it- when extracted- could make an elegant hue of blue for his portraits. The leftover grains from the mineral gives texture, personality; something that his creation lacked so far, but he was determined to change that.

You didn’t even have the consciousness to form a single thought. Perhaps he should keep you this way. So pliant and motionless, without a single urge to resist his desires, but then again, he does miss having meaningful conversations with you.

This way, you’ll be just like him! The perfect couple, isn’t it so romantic?

Caressing down your cold, artificial leg, he nuzzles his cheek into your still limb lovingly. Albedo marvels at the way your skin reflects the gleam of the frigid moonlight, the way your hair - which he religiously combs day after day- cascades around the stone table you were laid on.

He can barely wait until you wake up.

————————

Although you gained your conscience only a moment ago, your eyelids felt so heavy you couldn’t open your eyes. As sound slowly fades in, you hear quiet humming accompanied by glasses clicking against eachother. The freezing temperatures that would otherwise bite your skin now feel merely comfortably cool, the air filling your aching lungs stung as if you haven’t taken a breath in a million years.

Unbeknownst to you, during your painful inhale, you let out a strained gasp. You only realized your mistake when the humming stopped and pure silence set in.

Your breathing -however excruciating it feels- accelerates in panic, the rise and fall of your chest giving you away clearly. You dare not open your eyes in fear of what you might see once you do.

But you couldn’t hear anything other than your own hushed breathing. No humming, no glasses, footsteps… No sort of sound whatsoever. Perhaps whatever put you on edge has been finally driven away by your presence. Waiting for a few more moments in anticipation of something, anything happening, but still nothing.

Opening your eyes, you’re met with a face only inches away from you. Albedo’s hair frames his face and drapes down, tickling your skin. His dazed, icy eyes gaze into yours, as if searching for a soul.

“You’re finally awake, my beloved.”

“I missed you.”

“Welcome back~”

[nebulousbrainsoup]

EVOLVE

PAIRING: biker!kang yeosang x fem!reader GENRE: romance, strangers to lovers, fluff, smut, lil bit of angst, teeny bit of comedy SUMMARY: more often than not, a life lived in Night City is carefully crafted, slotted firmly between preapproved lines—or it is if you value keeping it. whispers of freedom float just beyond the city's neon lights, and it's only through a chance encounter with the most unlikely of characters that you finally start to hear them. TAGS/WARNINGS: explicit content, minors do not interact!, biker!yeosang, biker!seonghwa, misuse of lore terms, extensive control of emotions, artificial intelligence, food, shady government tampering, mysterious disappearance/implied death of unnamed bg character, near-death experiences, mild motorcycle wreck, injury, language, discussions of government corruption, alcohol consumption, discussions of being unhappy with life, unbetaed & barely edited, pov shifts, inspired by outlaw teasers/posters & @hwaightme's This World (Bai is well aware of my shenanigans); tell me if i missed anything pls! WORD COUNT: 12.6k PLAYLIST: Don't Stop - ATEEZ ; Control - Halsey ; Paranoia on Main Street - Demi the Daredevil ; ERROR - The Warning ; Ghost - Halsey ; Virtual Reality - rey ; Aqua Regia - Sleep Token ; AMOUR - The Warning ; BURN IT DOWN - Linkin Park ; Z - The Warning ; mercy - KiNG MALA ; EVOLVE - The Warning A/N: it's finally here, and with a playlist too!!! (yes it's a lot of The Warning, but this whole fic is ERROR-coded i had to) this fic has taken me close to a month to write, it is my baby, so pls treat it with care <3 i have to give world's biggest shout out to Bai for inspiring this absolute beast and for giving me the privilege of tipping my hat to it and her in my first full-length ateez fic. i hope it lives up to expectations. much love, ash tagging the homies: @jaehunnyy & @justhere4kpop

nsfw tags under the cut ; masterlist | join my taglist | buy me a coffee?

this work is 18+. this is a friendly reminder that if i catch a minor interacting with this work, they will be blocked. so don't :)

A/N 2: y'all remember the opening to the Kingdom performance of Rhythm Ta? "The disease is human emotion"?? well, that was echoing in my head on a very obnoxious repeat, and this fic (and its smut scene) absolutely reflects that. you've been warned. NSFW TAGS/WARNINGS: explicit consent included, protected sex, yeosang keeps a condom in his wallet (don't do that!), they're both switches p.2, outdoor sex, pet/nicknames (doll, angel, Sangie), hair pulling, lil bit of marking, yeosang's voice, oral (fem receiving), handjob, decently fast-paced, also emotionally charged; lmk if i missed anything!

It was always unnerving, delivering in this Sector. He'd done so countless times without incident, but even so, Yeosang could feel the infinite eyes of the Guardians upon him. His first trip to this particular building had left him shaken, turning down any more legitimate, above-board deliveries for the rest of the night and hightailing it back to the rest of the Blue Birds as soon as his duty was done. Mars had been less than pleased, scowling at him as he scolded, “As far as they can tell, you’re a delivery boy. There will be no reason for suspicion until you run.” A valid point, certainly, but one Yeosang had trouble reminding himself of while trapped in that neon maze. 

The next night, he dutifully shoved down the nausea that crept up his throat and the shudder that threatened to rip down his spine as he stared up at the looming steel pillar in front of him. Plastic bag in hand, he took a deep breath and pressed the building's buzzer, trying to find comfort in the shadows and the familiar blue of the lights.

The intercom crackling to life startled him, nausea welling up inside him again as he spoke, “Blue Bird Delivery with an order for Y/N.”

“Come in, I’ll meet you down in the lobby!”

It took a moment, that first night, to recover from hearing a human voice rather than the monotone, robotic rasp of a Guardian coming from a government building. He hadn’t expected life or warmth to greet him amidst the blinding lights of the lobby, but both did as you stepped out of the elevator, still in your lab coat and gloves, smiling softly and subtly at him as you patted your pockets. “Shit, I forgot what I owe you.”

Something about the way he looked as he tilted his head in confusion, helmet still on and bandana still pulled up around his nose, had you focusing all your remaining willpower on not doubling over in laughter. “You paid online. You don’t owe me anything.”

His turn to bite back laughter came then, standing there with his arms folded and his lower lip between his teeth as he watched the gears in your head turn.

“Long day, hm?” The words left his mouth before he even registered them, and as your eyes snapped back to his visor, his heart jumped into his throat. 

To his surprise and relief, you laughed, and the tension in both of your bodies drained simultaneously. “It’s two in the morning and I’m having my dinner delivered to work,” you countered, “you tell me.”

Behind his mask, Yeosang smiled. “Have a good evening.”

Nothing about the anonymous man on the moped should have piqued your interest. But that same night, as you settled in the empty employee cafeteria, the stranger seemed unwilling to vacate your mind. Sure, he’d joked around with you; that was unusual in this Sector with the plethora of Guardians milling about at all hours, but not unheard of; and it was a little odd he hadn’t taken his helmet off. Neither of those things, you thought, were good enough justifications for the thought that circled your mind on repeat until sleep finally began to take you; when can I see him again?

As luck would have it, the answer turned out to be “soon” and “frequently.” You and your team were already a week behind the requested lead time on your current build, and as the days dragged on, the microchip’s flaws only seemed to multiply exponentially—much to your annoyance; you’d warned the design team, after all. Of course, the longer it took, the worse the hours got. By the time you made it home after twelve or more hours locked in the clean room, being leered at by eyeless creatures and pulled into at least one far-too-heated debate over a fix or adjustment every two hours, it was all you could do to make it into bed. Cooking was not an option; you lived on delivery.

It wasn’t always Blue Bird—they seemed to reserve themselves for the late night and early morning; but when it was, it was always him. The same jacket, same jeans, same fingerless gloves and bandana obscuring his features, and the same warm, silky baritone greeting you from underneath it all. He rarely joked with you again, seeming to become skittish as more of your team members stayed later and the late-night Guardian presence increased, but you continued to exchange basic pleasantries. Your manners wouldn’t leave you in the face of tighter security. Still, you couldn’t blame him in the slightest—you yourself wanted to have a word with whatever psychopath had designed their ‘faces’—but you couldn’t help missing the teasing lilt his voice held that first night. 

Around a month after your late nights became mandatory, you had trudged into work as usual, with four hours of sleep and the largest coffee cup in your arsenal the only things keeping you upright, and the chaos you were met with nearly made you walk back out. Your production manager was nowhere to be found, leaving you and the rest of your coworkers to scramble to find something, anything that could direct your workflow for the day. It was you who, in sorting through the papers in and on the desk in his office, figured out why. Every ounce of your self-control went toward keeping your eyes from shifting to meet the cameras as you shoved the incriminating papers back where you had found them, rising to your feet to sift through the mess on the desktop once again. Somehow, even with your shaking hands and unfocused gaze, you managed to find what you were looking for, pulling the newest revision of the drawing from a stack you were positive you’d already searched. Hidden, maybe, you thought. 

Returning to the clean room and pinging your team melded hazily into going over the drawing, which faded into you handing out tasks on autopilot until, finally, you were left alone at the work table you had claimed as your own. Falling back into your chair, you finally let yourself acknowledge what you had seen—drawings. Dozens of them, tucked—no, pointedly hidden away between the various books and manuals stored in the bottom drawer that, until this point, you could have sworn was always locked. They weren't unusual for your production manager to have in the slightest, under normal circumstances—their desk was usually covered in white sheets.

But between the loyal employee’s unannounced “sick day” and the amount of White-Out painted across months of drawings for new tech you and your team had been having unprecedented trouble with… These weren’t normal circumstances, and you figured they wouldn’t be coming back to work any time soon. Before you could lose yourself wondering what exactly this development would mean for you and your team, the whirring of a camera lens zooming snapped you out of your thoughts, and you quickly buried yourself in your work once more. Prying would only get you in trouble.

The morning passed in a blur, you spent your lunch hour staring at the stark white wall behind your newest, least jaded coworker’s head as they prattled on, and before you knew it, those still intent on keeping eight hour shifts were beginning to filter out of the building. The ever-present hum of machines and voices slowly dwindled until you were alone with the buzzing lights overhead and the sound of your own breathing. Most days, this was when you got your best work done. No one else was here to bother you, fewer people meant fewer Guardians breathing down your neck, and you could make any snide comments or use any language you wished without offending the sensibilities of anyone nearby. But tonight, once your last coworker had waved goodbye and the click of the door shutting behind them had finished echoing ominously behind them, the usually comforting silence that enveloped you brought with it a sense of unshakable dread. Shifting uncomfortably, you let your eyes wander over the empty clean room, lifting your head nearly imperceptibly. 

You wanted to leave. Every hair on your body was standing on edge, and every fiber of your being was screaming at you to run, to get as far away from this Sector as you could. Something was going on here, and you couldn’t shake the feeling that the crosshairs were zeroing in on you next. But running—leaving, you corrected yourself; you have nothing to run from—early would only arouse suspicion, wouldn’t it? You’d lived your life slotted neatly between the lines the government had drawn, but that hadn’t kept you from hearing the horror stories of those who toed those lines or, heaven forbid, stepped across them. There was no reason to feel this way. 

Until.

For as large as the Guardians were, the things were nearly silent in their movement. If you hadn’t tinkered time and again with their abilities yourself, you’d believe the stories that they could teleport. It was in front of you in the time it took you to blink, and you nearly jumped out of your skin as your eyes met the chrome monstrosity that was its ‘face.’ Gingerly setting down the delicate tools and microchip in your shaking hands, you set carefully practiced neutrality on your face and suppressed a shudder as its message began to play.

“L/N Y/N. Requested by Upper Management. Follow.”

In seconds, ice filled your veins. If anyone had asked, you’d tell them, truthfully, that it was survival instinct alone which carried you to your destination. When you finally came back into yourself, you were staring at the imposing wooden doors you knew belonged to your location’s operational manager. Steeling yourself with a deep breath, you knocked, and were immediately met with your manager’s voice ushering you in.

“Hello, sir,” you greeted, bowing lowly as you shuffled over the threshold.

“To you as well, Miss L/N,” he offered in return from behind his desk, snapping shut the file in his hands. “Please, have a seat. We have much to discuss.”

“So what’s our next move, then?” Yeosang chewed on the inside of his lip thoughtfully, listening to the silence on the other end of his comms grow ever louder. “Seonghwa?”

“If I had an answer, I’d tell you,” his companion spat back, leaning further down over his handlebars and pulling ahead of him. It didn’t matter that they needed a new game plan within the next few hours, he was done talking. With a sigh, Yeosang sat back, rolling his own throttle forward to keep pace as he fell in behind his friend. 

Night City sped by in a blur as they rode in silence, eyes and ears trained to the streets they were patrolling. Small houses gave way to apartment buildings and local shops with no movement on the streets, but still the tension in Yeosang’s shoulders rose with each passing minute. Finally, as they passed into the city center and neon skyscrapers began to loom over their heads, he could stand it no longer. He felt like he was suffocating, and they were miles off-course for their patrol anyway. 

“Mars. Something feels off,” he called, pulling off his throttle and sitting up straighter.

There was silence for a beat as the other man pulled further ahead, and Yeosang watched his helmet turn. “What are you seeing that I’m not?”

“Nothing, I just have this feeling—”

“Well, keep an eye and an ear out, and we’ll deal with it when we have to.”

He sighed, tossing a narrowed side-eye Seonghwa’s way before turning his gaze back to the streets and leaving him with his thoughts. Maybe it was just this Sector, he reasoned. The artificial gaze of the cameras, drones, and Guardians was enough to put anyone on edge. Couple that with the time he’d been spending here, making deliveries of all kinds, and of course he was feeling on edge. It was nothing.

It took another block for the itching anxiety to come back full-force. “Mars.”

A sigh crackled over his comms. “I don’t see or hear anything, Hermes. It’s probably just the surveillance systems getting to your head.”

Yeosang sighed, nearly resigning his edginess to paranoia again. Until, out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement. “On your left, look.”

A person was quickly making their way out of the government building he brought most of Blue Bird’s above-board deliveries to, oblivious to the two motorcycles sailing in their direction. He saw the moment Seonghwa made his decision, weight settling further over his handlebars as he shifted into a higher gear. In moments like this, he thought—moments where his desperate search for adrenaline dragged someone else a little too close to the line they delivered others across; the moniker of the ancient god of war fit his friend a little too well. 

He knew the drill by now; fall back, open mid-distance communication with whatever unit was patrolling here for clean-up—just in case he cut a little too close to you—and meet back—wait.

His head snapped up from his watch, abandoning his redirect halfway through in favor of surging forward to catch up with Seonghwa. “Mars, don’t!”

The shout had Seonghwa’s helmet snapping up in alarm, his weight shifting back and throwing both him and his precious Suzuki Hayabusa off-balance. For a moment, he tried desperately to downshift and tame the beast under him, a cause that quickly became lost between his own speed and the downhill slope of the street. You had frozen in your tracks at the sight of the two machines barreling toward you, one now out of control, and Yeosang’s heart skipped a beat or two as the events in front of him began to unfold in slow motion.

You had been sent home early—well, early for you, anyway; the weight of your new position heavy on your shoulders. Production manager. It was everything you should have wanted—everything you had wanted at one point; but the thought of coming in to work tomorrow morning, moving your meager belongings out of your locker and into your former boss’ office to pretend everything was fine had bile rising in your throat. Your meeting with upper management had shed no light on the mysterious disappearance of the last person in charge, and you couldn’t shake the feeling that a target had been painted on your back now, too. Maybe that was just paranoia, though—you had no plans to sabotage any products, after all. What reason would anyone have to make you disappear?

Lost in your thoughts as you began the trek home, you failed to drag your eyes from your feet, only noticing the two headlights careening toward you when the rumble of their engines was close enough to feel in the ground below you. You froze, stunned as your heart jumped into your throat. Was this the dread you had been feeling? Was this the curse of your new position? There was little you could do about it now, you supposed, staring down what you were sure was certain death. It was silly, but you couldn’t help wondering whether your new delivery boy friend would miss you.

“Shit!” Seonghwa hissed, the curse crackling in Yeosang’s earpiece. 

Your shoulders tensed and you took a step back and raised your hands, clearly bracing for the oncoming disaster. Mere seconds before your fate would have been sealed, he watched the unimaginable unfold in front of his eyes; Seonghwa, heeding his words of caution, threw his weight to the right, sending his bike skidding away from the both of you. The grunt he let out as he hit the pavement weaved together with the screech of metal on asphalt, a discordant symphony echoing through his helmet. You added no harmony of your own to it, only flinching as the man who would’ve been your doom rolled to a halt at your feet, visor reflecting familiar blue neon as he stared at the sky. He saw rather than heard the breath you let out, watching your shoulders drop from your ears as you stumbled away from Seonghwa’s prone form.

“What the fuck,” you gasped out, one hand splaying out over your chest as you caught your breath. Adrenaline was coursing through you, leaving your heart pounding and hands shaking as the other biker sidled up next to you.

“I’ll say,” the man below you grumbled, slowly climbing back to his feet. He winced as he settled his weight on his right leg, limping heavily as he made his way back to his friend and leaned against their bike. “You should probably look before you cross the street next time.”

“I was halfway into the road, you ass!” You fumed, snarling at the man before you in stark contrast to the last time you’d met a masked stranger. “You could’ve gone around me—it’s not like you were driving a car!”

Yeosang couldn’t help the giggle he let out at the sight of you—mild-mannered, eternally frazzled you—standing toe-to-toe with the infamous Mars, masked vigilante leader of the Blue Bird biker gang. He bit his lip quickly, hoping his mic hadn’t picked up the quiet noise. 

No such luck, it seemed, as the other man whipped around to face him. Somehow, the visor was more intimidating than the scathing glare he knew lay behind it. “Something funny?” 

He shook his head, the action dizzying him just slightly when coupled with the weight of his helmet and the adrenaline cooling in his veins, and raised his hands in surrender. “Nope,” he hummed, nodding over to the wrecked Hayabusa. “You think you can get that thing to the shop, or do I need to do it for you?”

Seonghwa shifted his weight, testing his injuries lightly. “Help me get her up and I’ll take it from there,” he muttered.

Something about the man with the cruiser was familiar, you decided, as you watched the pair cross to the bike and set it back upright. You couldn’t put your finger on it, but between his voice and the way he carried himself, he reminded you of someone. You’d never seen either of their bikes before, though, and both of these individuals struck you as the type who were connected to their respective machines. You were still racking your brain for the answer as his friend pulled away, sparing you no apology, and it wasn’t until he reached up, tugging at the chains around his neck with familiar, skeleton-gloved hands, that it hit you.

“You’re the Blue Bird Delivery guy.”

Yeosang froze in his tracks, blinking and stunned as he scrambled for an excuse. “I, uh…”

“Your friend just almost killed me. The least you could do is be honest,” you prodded, crossing your arms over your chest.

The way he looked down told you there was a sheepish smile on his face, and you wanted nothing more than for him to finally remove his visor so you could bask in it. “Yeah, I am.”

“Does my near-death experience mean I get free delivery next time?” you quipped. The laugh that left him this time was full-bodied, heard even through the thick padding and metal of his helmet. You decided then and there that you would stop at nothing to hear that sound again. 

The grin you gave him in exchange was sunny, another mark of your warmth in the midst of Night City’s eternal chill. “I might be able to arrange something for you, sure,” he hummed, his smile evident in his tone. “But that might end up being my paycheck you’re cutting into.”

You shrugged. “I’ll tip the difference.”

“Then there’s no point!” Another cheery laugh bubbled up from him, and you found yourself leaning closer to the delivery boy-turned-biker as you shared in his joy. For all the leather and mystery, he didn’t seem all that intimidating; he was nothing like his counterpart had been. He seemed shy and maybe even friendly behind the facade, and the interactions you’d had with him before seemed to corroborate your guess. Again, that familiar feeling of longing that had struck the first night came back to you as he took a step back toward his bike.

Luckily for you, your mouth worked faster than your brain. “Would you want to maybe go get coffee with me?”

Your inability to read his expression meant the silence you were met with had you wanting to pull your words back into your mouth; to rewind time so you’d never spoken; so you’d looked up and seen Delivery Boy’s idiot friend speeding at you; so you’d never ordered from Blue Bird in the first place—

“I can’t, tonight,” he muttered. If he removed his helmet, you would be able to see the tips of his ears turning red. “But maybe another time?”

Your heart sank. When would you ever have time again? “Um, maybe. We could exchange information?”

He tensed, shaking his head gently. “I know where to find you.”

Again, you felt yourself deflate. “Can I… Could you at least tell me your name? So I know who to contact if your friend ever tries to kill me again?” Your attempt to lighten the darkening mood was half-hearted at best, but you tried for a weak smile.

For the third time that night, Yeosang froze. It felt like every camera and Guardian in the vicinity had their lenses trained on him as you asked what was, to anyone other than Yeosang and the rest of his friends, the simplest question in the world. This time, he recovered quickly, unwilling to draw more suspicion to himself than Seonghwa already had with his stunt. “Hermes.”

Your brow furrowed, and he found himself wanting to swipe the crease between them away. “Just Hermes?”

He nodded, stepping back to his bike and tossing his leg over the body, feeling suddenly like a rat in a trap again. “Just Hermes, for now. You can find out the rest later.” He sent you a wink as his bike roared to life under him, only to hang his head when he realized you couldn’t see it. 

You tilted your head at him as his shoulders shook with silent laughter. “Hermes?”

“Yeah, I, uh… I shouldn’t try to flirt. Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you around, Y/N.”

Staring after him, still in the middle of the street, that longing feeling pulled at you again, following his dimming taillight over the horizon.

He was flirting?

“You did what?!”

Yeosang flinched. He was very rarely on the receiving end of Seonghwa’s wrath, but between the wreck and his… slip up with you earlier, he found himself squarely in the sights of Mars. 

“What was I supposed to do, give her my full legal name?” he argued, crossing his arms over his chest and frowning, trying to at least somewhat match the energy in the warehouse. “That would’ve been a death wish.” 

“So you gave her your callsign instead?” Yeosang shrugged, earning a scoff in return. If he were being honest with himself, he didn’t know why he’d done what he’d done either. “What you should have done was hopped on your bike and come straight back here, like we always do.” 

His eyes turned to the floor, and for a moment, everything was silent. “She recognized me,” he muttered, quiet voice still managing to echo like a whipcrack between them.

“You took your helmet off in the middle of the city?!” Seonghwa was on his feet now, yelling, and Yeo might have been scared, if not for the panic flashing behind his friend’s eyes. 

“No, no, I’m not that stupid.” The older man settled, leaning back against the beam beside him once more, arms crossing over his chest. “My voice, and the gloves, I think. She didn’t say, but she pinned me, and I panicked. I couldn’t just turn tail and run; that would’ve looked worse.” 

Finally, a smile cracked the cold demeanor Yeosang had been facing down, and the tension between the two men split as Seonghwa shook his head in exasperation. “If you make me wreck my baby again, I’m making you pay to fix it.”

The comment earned a hearty eye roll as he shifted his attention back to the bike he’d been outfitting upon Seonghwa’s arrival. “As if Yunho makes you pay.” The other man hummed dismissively, and he chuckled quietly. “Could’ve gone a lot worse, anyway. She could’ve had the Guardians on us in seconds for you running her down.” 

Seonghwa frowned, staring thoughtfully at his freshly patched bike for a moment. “She could have. Why didn’t she?” He murmured, eyes flickering back up to Yeosang.

“I… hadn’t considered it.” The younger blinked, matching the elder’s frown and sitting back on the ground. Why wouldn’t you call the authorities on them? They were at your beck and call, hiding just beyond the gates of the building you’d been in front of at the time. Most people in your Sector would have quickly taken advantage of the convenience, leaving the two outlaws to flee for their lives. It wouldn’t have been the first time, nor did Yeosang think it would have been the last. 

“Do you know what she does there?” He blinked out of his thoughts, shaking his head. “You might consider finding out, since you’re friendly enough to be recognized. She’s clearly not as far up the government’s ass as some of the rest of them; she could be a good in, since we just lost our last one.”

His frown deepened at the suggestion, stomach turning at the thought. “She might just do grunt work. I deliver to her a lot—she’s always there.”

“Worth a shot, though. I’ll take anything we can get at this point.”

“Maybe,” he hummed, chewing on the inside of his lip. 

It was an excuse to see you, at least.

After your little run-in with Hermes and his friend, Blue Bird Delivery was out of service in your Sector. You couldn’t help the pang of disappointment that echoed in your chest every time you checked their app; you’d been hoping that your lack of a report would have kept the authorities off their trail. No such luck, it seemed. The longer time dragged on with no Blue Bird and no word from your faceless friend, the more your worry grew, and after a week and a half of radio silence, you were beginning to lose hope that he was just lying low somewhere. Until, two weeks after you had nearly been run over, their delivery started up again. You couldn’t help but smile as you clicked through your usual order from your favorite restaurant and watched as it was confirmed.

Fourty-five minutes later, your phone pinged to signal its arrival and you made your way to the lobby with a spring in your step. You barely bit back the smile that threatened to take over your face—keenly aware of the Guardian stationed outside of the elevators—as your phone buzzed again, this time to signal the ringing of the building’s doorbell. Forgoing the usual pleasantries, you quickly made your way to the door, this time stepping outside and letting it shut behind you. 

It was unbelievable, really, that you’d managed to peg the edgy biker from two weeks ago as this same moped-riding, unassuming delivery driver. You thanked whatever being was listening for your attention to detail.

He offered you a small wave, fingers twitching in the air, and if there had been a doubt left in your mind that they were the same person, it would have left then. You bit the inside of your lip as you stepped forward and took ahold of the takeout bag in his hand, bowing to and thanking him.

“So, about that coffee,” he murmured quickly, his words overlapping with your own pleasantries as you both stood upright again. You blinked, head tilting in mild surprise as he continued. “When are you off work?”

“I, uh… I could be off in like an hour and a half?” You offered, smiling subtly at his visor.

“I’ll be waiting. I hope you’re okay with motorcycles.” 

You could hear the little smile behind his many masks, and your heart fluttered. “I’ll see you then.” 

“Will I get to see your face?” He stopped in his tracks at your bold question, and you clapped a hand over your mouth. “Sorry, I— If you’re not comfortable—”

“If you don’t mind a little bit of a drive, then maybe.” 

You looked at the ground, taking your lower lip between your teeth to force back your grin. “I’ll see you soon, then.”

It was a risk, Yeosang knew, revealing his identity. Seonghwa wouldn’t be happy when he found out; but what was another bout of his anger in the grand scheme of things, really? If the risk turned out to be worth the reward, he’d end up back in his friend’s good graces at record speed—and he had a gut feeling that would be the outcome. He hadn’t been able to shake the feeling of curiosity and wonder he’d experienced when you greeted him that first night, full of bright life and warmth in the middle of a desolate steel tundra. Something about you was different from the others that roamed your Sector—you’d proven that tenfold two weeks ago; and Yeosang was more than happy for the opportunity to figure out exactly what that was. Meeting you, really meeting you, was the first step. 

It was a risk, sure, but a calculated one.

The closer the clock ticked toward your designated meeting time, the antsier Yeosang got. He’d finished the rest of his deliveries in record speed and closed things down for the night, stopping back by the warehouse just long enough to inform Seonghwa of his plans and make the shift from delivery boy to biker. The elder was yelling something after him that Yeosang didn’t quite catch, tossing a wave over his shoulder before the door clanged shut behind him. He was back in your Sector in record speed, anticipation building in his veins the closer the clock ticked to your meeting.

And as it ticked past, he began to feel trapped. More and more as the seconds ticked past into minutes, he found himself glimpsing his watch, glancing warily over his shoulder and at the door of your building, waiting for you to emerge. Five minutes turned to ten, and ten to twenty; he’d nearly considered calling this a lost cause before you finally made your way from the building, eyes darting around the street as you stepped onto the sidewalk. He watched your face fall just slightly as you saw no sign of him, only to brighten in the next moment as he flicked his headlight back on. Stepping out of his hiding place, he pulled one hand out of his coat pocket, giving you the same wave he had earlier in the evening. He looked ridiculous, you thought, halfway between your delivery boy and the biker you’d met briefly—the same long, black and red leather coat, but this time sporting the same helmet and goggles he wore on his moped.

Barely biting back your grin, you nearly skipped over to him, and he beamed behind his bandana. “I wasn’t sure you were still coming,” he hummed.

You looked down and huffed a little sigh, feeling heat rising to the tips of your ears. “I’m sorry, paperwork just took a little longer than I expected tonight. I’m still adjusting.” 

He shook his head. “Don’t worry. I know what your hours can be like.” Again, you heard the smile in his voice, and you wanted nothing more than to see it. “I wouldn’t have blamed you, anyway. If I were going out to an undisclosed location with a mysterious, masked stranger, I’d be wary, too.”

You giggled softly, and Yeosang’s chest got tighter. He wanted to bottle up that sound and wear it around his neck, close enough for him to pull out and listen to any chance he got. “You don’t feel like a stranger.”

The blush that rose to Yeosang’s cheeks was, frankly, embarrassing, and he was more thankful than ever for his need to remain anonymous. “Neither do you,” he murmured in return.

Reaching down to the backpack he’d dropped at his feet, he unlatched the helmet from it, offering it out to you. “When do you have to be back at work?”

You blinked, tilting your head at him and taking the offered helmet. “I have tomorrow off, actually. New position, new hours.”

“You’ll have to tell me all about it when we get where we’re going, then.”

You’d been entirely unprepared for the feeling of riding a motorcycle, much less riding one with Hermes. When the growl of the engine kicked up beneath you, you’d found yourself clinging tighter to his middle, earning a low chuckle that you felt more than heard. The city streets gave you some time to adjust and by the time you reached its outskirts, your heart rate had mostly returned to normal. As he took you past the little rows of houses that marked the beginning of the edge of Night City and into the warehouse district that followed, though, it picked up again. 

What were you doing? 

You hadn’t told anyone where you were going or who you were with; you didn’t even know who you were with, not really, anyway. A few passing interactions didn’t count for “get to know you” material, in your humble opinion. His friend had nearly killed you, or at the very least nearly put you in the hospital. You had no clue what this man looked like and only had one name, which you were nearly certain was, itself, an alias. 

This was easily the stupidest decision you had ever made.

As he pulled to a stop just before the city limit, the desert sprawled out in front of you, and you loosened your hold around his middle. To your surprise, he noticed immediately, turning over his shoulder to glance at you before pulling your hands tighter around him again. 

“Only a few more minutes, I promise. Hold on tight.”

His voice was like magic, washing over you and soothing your nerves. It brought with it the familiarity and warmth you’d come to associate with Hermes; the warmth of the sun in a place where it had been blotted out. Shifting closer to him and squeezing him tighter, you nodded. “Let’s go.”

Riding through the desert was a rush entirely different than puttering through the streets of the city. Hermes had shifted his shoulders forward, picked his feet up, and sent you sailing into the cool night. You shivered as the wind whipped around you, slipping your cold hands under his jacket to seek heat you couldn’t find through the leather. He jolted slightly at the contact, helmet tilting back toward you for a split second, and you thought you felt him laugh again. It was terrifying, cold and dark, save for the strip of road illuminated by the headlight.

But it was also exhilarating. Adrenaline coursed through your veins as his speed climbed, and although you were freezing, the excuse to curl closer to Hermes was not unwelcome. It felt like freedom, being even five minutes outside of Night City, seeing never-ending darkness rather than eternal, artificial light, being here with someone you barely knew, taking the risk of a lifetime. Your initial fear was gone, replaced entirely with childlike wonder, and you let out a quiet giggle, relaxing just slightly as you gazed out at your surroundings. 

You were almost a little disappointed when, as promised, Hermes began to slow a few minutes later, just as you were cresting the top of a bluff. When he had killed the engine and steadied his bike, he carefully pulled your arms from around him, swinging off of it to offer you a hand. You took it readily, leaning heavily on him as you stood on wobbly legs. He let out a quiet laugh as you stumbled into him just slightly, and you found yourself thankful for the helmet you still wore. Once you had gained your footing, he let you go, letting you remove the cumbersome thing before reaching for the pack he’d secured onto your back before your ride. 

“Sorry again about that,” he muttered, “I really didn’t think before I decided to bring things along. It was either you or the storage compartment on the back.”

You shook your head, running a hand through your hair. “Don’t worry about it, I needed it as much as you did. Holding onto my stuff the whole time would’ve been a pain.” Breathing a pleased sigh, you set your loaned helmet on the seat and turned to him.

He’d removed his own helmet and goggles, leaving only the bandana hiding him as he crouched in the sand, digging in his backpack. It was a little hard to tell whether his black hair was purposefully slicked back or simply still stuck in the same state his helmet had put it in, a few strands falling into his eyes. As he tucked them behind his ear, eyes narrowing in annoyance, your attention was drawn to the movement, and your gaze landed on the birthmark beside his left eye. Your jaw dropped open just slightly as you stared, taking a step forward and kneeling in front of him. Even with half of his face still hidden from you, you could tell Hermes was a fitting name for him—he truly did have the beauty of a Greek god.

Steely gray eyes flicked up as they registered the movement, and you felt the wind knocked out of you under their intensity. Just as quickly as they had snapped to you, they softened, and once again, you were left wondering how to reconcile your delivery boy with the vigilante-esque biker in front of you. 

“I brought some blankets, snacks and soju. I figured we could stay for a little while, get to know each other,” he murmured, looking out to the horizon. 

Was the dim light playing tricks on you, or were the tips of his ears turning pink?

You beamed at him, smiling wide with your teeth for the first time since you’d met, and Yeosang felt his heart flutter. It did that more frequently lately, it seemed.

“Sure, yeah. Does food mean I get to see the rest of your face?”

This time, you heard the giggle that left him, the sound wrapping you up like a warm hug. “That depends. You’re not going to drag me back to the Guardians by my hair if I end up being a wanted criminal, are you?”

“If I wanted to do that, I would’ve sent them after you and your friend two weeks ago.”

He sighed, breathing another laugh and looking at the ground, shaking his head. “Yeah, okay, that’s fair. Seriously, though. I might actually be a wanted criminal, and I might actually need you to confirm whether or not you’re going to turn me in.”

You blinked, brow furrowing for a moment. He couldn’t be serious. Sighing, you gave in. “No, I won’t drag you back to the authorities. I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” he murmured, standing and pulling a blanket from his backpack. “Do you want to face toward or away from the city?” 

You glanced behind you, back in the direction you had come from. The neon lights shone like a beacon in the distance, a slow gradient from electric blues and purples to fiery oranges and yellows as the city spread. Red tinted the edges of the amoebic mass of industry, giving the impression of a spreading fire or trickling blood. You shuddered.

“Away, please,” you murmured, and he nodded, spreading out the blanket to overlook the edge of the bluff, out into the quiet of the desert. Setting his bag at its edge, he gestured to it and moved back to his bike, pointing the headlight out in the direction you would be facing. You settled in, curling in on yourself and rubbing your arms for warmth against the chilly night. 

Before you could dwell on it too much, something warm and heavy dropped onto your shoulders. Glancing up, you found Hermes had shed his coat and settled it over your shoulders, leaving him in a tank top and you blushing. You hadn’t expected a toned body underneath the puffy Blue Bird jacket he always wore, and you could barely tear your eyes away from him as he situated himself next to you. He was a little more than just fit, if his arms were anything to go by.

“So,” he began, leaning back on his hands, eyes fixed with yours on the horizon. “New job, you said? What are you doing now?”

You heaved a sigh, pulling his jacket tighter around your shoulders as your eyes turned to the ground. “Production management,” you murmured dejectedly. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw him shift to face you. “I got… Promoted, I guess. I don’t know why, because there are other people who’ve been there for years that I’m sure would be better at this than me, but…” you trailed off, sighing again, and when you glanced up, the concern in his eyes made your heart skip a beat. “I didn’t ask for it, but I couldn’t really turn it down.” 

His eyebrows creased for a moment, something like disgust or anger flashing behind his gaze. “Why not?”

You shifted uncomfortably, gnawing at the inside of your lip for a moment. “Well, I would’ve been stupid to, for one. And no isn’t a very well-received word when you work for the government.”

He hummed thoughtfully, looking back out over the horizon. “You didn’t have any sort of warning?” You shook your head, catching him glancing at you from your peripheral. “Don’t people usually give a two-week notice or something?” 

“They do when they don’t disappear without a trace.”

Yeosang shot upright at your words, eyes wide as he turned to you. “They what?”

You startled just slightly, turning to better face him. “He disappeared. No word, no sign. I got promoted the same day.”

“That’s… disturbing.” 

You nodded, shifting to rest your chin on your knees, and he shifted closer, settling one arm behind you. Leaning into his side, you sighed. “It happens, sometimes, when people step a little too far out of line. Par for the course in Night City.” You heard him scoff and felt him nod as he wrapped his arm around you, giving you a quick squeeze that had you relaxing immediately. 

“I’ve been wondering something,” he mused, breaking the silence that had begun stretching between the two of you. “Why didn’t you call the Guardians that night?” 

The question caught you off-guard and you sat up straighter, brows furrowing together. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, your building was right there, when you almost got flattened, and I think anyone else in your position would have taken full advantage of that fact. I know others in that Sector have—my friend’s had some pretty close calls before.” 

You frowned, painting careful neutrality back on your features as you stared at the ground. If anything were going yo betray you, it would be your eyes. “I didn’t really… This isn’t a trap, is it? We’ve been over me not ratting you out, but how do I know you’re not trying to trick me into saying the wrong thing? I haven’t even—”

“Seen my face?” he finished, and you nodded. “Look at me, Y/N.”

Slowly, you raised your eyes, your heart skipping a beat or two as you caught sight of his bandana, now resting just above his collar. Excitement surged in your chest as you let your gaze flicker over his features, quickly morphing into confusion and a bit of panic. “You look familiar,” you murmured, shifting away from him. “This has got to be a trap, please don’t—”

“Y/N,” he soothed, his quiet baritone settling your frayed nerves just slightly. “I wouldn’t have anything to do with the government if my life depended on it. Which, I rather prefer the opposite thing I’ve got going on instead.”

The realization hit you like a ton of bricks, memories of his face flashing behind your eyes at lightning speed. Every bulletin, every news story, every poster that had displayed that same silhouette, described the same features you were staring at now, right down to the birthmark you’d been fantasizing about kissing. There were never any photos, but your mind had put together a decent enough replica.

Kang Yeosang was not the monster you had heard described in the media, you didn’t think. If he were, why hadn’t he taken his chance and poisoned your dinner? Why hadn’t he killed you the moment you were outside the city limits? Why hadn’t his friend just run you over? Where, in the slew of calls for his immediate arrest and reminders of how dangerous he and his friends were, was this man; the one who greeted you pleasantly, who made you laugh, and whose own giggles in return could warm you for days? You didn’t know what was real, what to believe anymore.

Despite yourself, you laughed. He tilted his head, an amused and wary expression on his face. “I’m sorry, I don’t— this is just—” you tried, gesturing between the two of you. “My delivery guy is Kang Yeosang, one of the most wanted criminals in Night City. It’s kind of ridiculous.”

The giggle that graced your ears was louder without barriers to cover his pretty little smile, and you beamed back at him, chest tight and warm. 

“Isn’t it dangerous for you to be out and about like that?” you questioned.

He shook his head. “It���s better to hide in plain sight, actually. The Guardians rely so much on facial recognition, anyway, that as long as I stay covered up, I’m not at much risk. The delivery job gives me a good excuse to do just that.”

You nodded thoughtfully, gaze turning back to the desert. “That makes sense, I guess. Are the rest of them doing the same thing?” 

“More or less.” 

“So… your friend from the other night, is he one of your vigilante buddies?”

He was silent for a long moment, and when you glanced back at him, his smile had been replaced with a pensive look. “The less I tell you, the better.” Your heart sank ever so slightly, but you nodded, hoping you hadn’t overstepped too far. “Just… For your own safety, you know?”

“Yeah… That makes sense. Sorry.” 

He turned to you again, tilting his head like a curious puppy, and you bit back a giggle. “Don’t be. I’m sorry for being so mysterious.”

“Don’t be,” you echoed, nudging him with your elbow. “It’s your life on the line, and I rather prefer you right where you are.”

If you could frame a moment, you would choose this one, when Yeosang blushed a shade of pink that was barely noticeable in the dim light, smiling shyly as his eyes turned to the ground. “I’m glad,” he murmured, voice only audible thanks to the complete silence around you, “because I prefer being here, too.”

It was your turn to blush as you reached for his backpack, pulling a bottle of soju from it and cracking it open, tilting the opening toward Yeosang. Cocking his head again, he followed suit, clinking the necks of your bottles together. 

“To being here, then,” you offered, heart fluttering at the return of his sweet smile.

“To being here.” 

With the tension broken, the silence between you two became comfortable, and you unfurled your legs from your chest, shifting to lean against Yeosang. After breaking into the snacks and a few swigs of soju, he finally broke the silence again. “You never answered my question, you know.” 

You thought for a moment, and he found himself holding back a giggle at the sight of the near-pout on your face. When the realization seemed to hit, you perked up quite comically, eyes wide. “Oh! I don’t really trust the authorities anymore. After…” you sighed, chewing on the inside of your lip. “I’ve never really liked them. They’re creepy, I know what they can do, and it’s… I don’t think like what they represent, I guess. I’ve never had the guts to do anything about it, but I’ve always kind of kept my distance. And after my old boss went missing, I didn’t really… I haven’t felt right getting them involved in anything.” 

He listened intently as you rambled for a moment, eyes locked onto your face as he searched for any form of deception. He couldn’t think of a single reason why you would lie to him, of all people, about your dislike for the guardians, and he was relieved when he read you as truthful. Hwa was right, then—you could be a helpful asset.

Nodding as you finished, he turned his gaze back to the horizon and capped the bottle in his hand. “That’s kind of what I thought too, at first, and it built from there pretty quickly. I guess that’s the Captain’s fault, though.” 

“Hongjoong?” You questioned, taking another stiff glug of your drink. 

That was a name that put you on edge to speak, like its utterance would summon its owner. Yeosang only hummed in confirmation.

You tucked yourself further into his side, tucking your legs up again as you picked at the label of your bottle. “I kinda thought you guys were a myth before tonight.” The look he gave you was something adjacent to offense, and you couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up from your throat. “I don’t mean it in a bad way! The stories have just always been so much larger than life. I thought you were a legend the rebels of the city cooked up to keep hope or something.”

He laughed at your explanation, securing the arm that rested behind you around your waist and squeezing you into his side. You hid your face in his chest as heat rose to your cheeks, hoping he couldn’t feel your blush through the thin material of his tank top. 

“You did not,” he teased, shaking your shoulder lightly. When you didn’t raise your head and only mumbled something unintelligible in response, he sat up straighter, the hand that had been holding him up coming to lift your chin. “Oh my god, you did,” he teased when you wouldn’t meet his eyes, tongue caught between his teeth. He let out that distinct, adorable giggle, and you couldn’t stop your lips from twitching into a smile. 

“Yeah, I did,” you murmured, still plenty embarrassed. 

You felt him shift more than you saw it, turning your head to figure out what he was up to. Freezing for a moment as you found his face inches from your own, you glanced between his eyes and lips. His fingers shifted from under your chin to splay out over the side of your face, and you saw the ghost of a smirk tug at his lips.

“You’re blushing, Y/N,” he hummed, making you impossibly more aware of the heat in your cheeks and under his palm. 

When you didn’t respond, he hesitated, a small blip of wariness in the confidence on display in front of you. Before he could pull away completely, in a feat of bravery you didn’t know you were capable of, you pulled him in until your lips crashed together.

The little noise of surprise he let out was muffled between you, but he recovered quickly, pulling you tight against him and meeting your kiss with just as much fervor. He was quick to grab at your thigh, pulling it over his hips and tugging you into his lap. Hands settling on his shoulders, you barely noticed his coat falling from your own before his hands left you to catch it. He pulled back with a low hum and a smile as he settled the garment back where it had been, this time wrapping it in his embrace with you.

“Still think I’m just a myth?” He prodded, earning a scoff and an eye roll from you.

You smirked, though, as you looked back at him, eyes flickering over his own flushed face. “I don’t know, let me check again.”

You were almost sorry to swallow the giggle that left him, but any regret quickly melted away with the feeling of his lips on yours. This one was slower, soft and exploratory, a stark contrast to the sudden heat of the last. He dragged your chest flush with his own slowly, one hand splaying out between your shoulder blades while the other slid around to your opposite hip. The movement had goosebumps prickling over your skin and, despite the warmth of his body and the coat around you, you shivered. He hummed against your lips and held you ever so slightly tighter, hands beginning to wander across the expanse of your back.

When you finally broke for air, Yeosang’s hands settled at your waist, doing little more than steadying you as you breathed each other in, foreheads pressed together and eyes closed. It was like time had frozen around you, the silence of the desert night suspending you in an alternate reality, and it felt as though even the slightest movement would send you careening back to the doom that awaited you in Night City. Neither of you spoke, neither of you stirred; for a few short moments you wondered if you had forgotten how to breathe. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Yeosang broke the silence.

“Do you want me the way I want you?”

There was a rasp to his already deep voice that hadn’t been there before, and when you finally opened your eyes, he was already staring up at you, the desire burning low in his gaze making your breath catch in your throat. Swallowing thickly, you nodded, one of your hands slipping into the hair at the base of his skull. He hummed lowly, pleased, the corner of his mouth ticking up in a smirk, and guided your hips to rest more firmly against his own. You let out your own quiet sigh at the evidence of his arousal pressing against your core, quickly sealing your lips again. He met you once again with passion, an undercurrent of desperation and urgency in the way his hands ran up your body, pushing his coat off of your shoulders. Your grip on his hair tightened as he slid them under the hem of your shirt, and you swallowed the moan he let out, matching it with a quiet whine of your own.

His hands settled on your waist again, thumbs rubbing soothing circles on your skin as he pulled back from you just long enough to speak, “Tell me.” You huffed, trying to guide his lips back to yours, but he held you fast. “I need to hear you say it, doll.”

The pet name had you whining, nodding eagerly as you squirmed against him. “Yes, Yeosang, I want you. Please.”

Your permission was all it took. In seconds, his lips were back on yours and his hands were exploring every inch of skin they could as his hips rolled up into your own. His explorations left your shirt bunched up, and as the cool night air met your skin to contrast pleasantly with the warmth of his hands, a shudder lit down your spine. His lips parted from your own to pepper open-mouthed kisses and teasing nips down the pillar of your throat, hands dropping back to your hips to drag you more solidly against the bulge in his jeans. You both let out breathy, broken moans and found each other’s eyes, desperation reflected back at the both of you. Your hands fell from his shoulders to slink under his tank top for a moment, fingers wandering over the toned muscles you found for a moment before running over his waistband, tugging at the buckle of his belt.

“Eager,” he murmured, leaning up to nip at your pulse. He ground up into you roughly as he shifted under you, one hand settled firmly on your hip while the other splayed over your shoulders. You barely registered his words, too preoccupied with the need coursing through you, when he spoke again. “Flip with me.”

You complied easily, letting him roll you onto your back and settle between your legs. His gaze was hungry as he ran his hands down your thighs, hesitating when he reached your waistband. A nod seemed to be all he needed to unfasten them and drag them down your legs along with your underwear, leaving you bare to his gaze and the night air, one or both of the sensations sending a shudder lighting down your spine. Feeling exposed, you moved to close your legs, but in a flash, Yeosang was settled firmly between them, fingers kneading at your thighs as he hovered at eye-level with your core. 

He lapped a fat stripe over your folds and it was over for you both. The groan he let out and the hungry way he dove back in had you whimpering in seconds, legs twitching where they rested over his shoulders. His tongue worked over you a little clumsily at first, but the moment he found the things that had you gasping or whimpering, he was zeroing in on them, building you rapidly toward a peak you weren’t quite ready to fall over.

“Sangie,” you gasped, reaching down to tug at his hair and drag him up.

His eyes, closed in reverence of his position and your body, snapped open, and he sucked hard on your clit. You whined, pushing back against the top of his head. “Yeosang,” you tried again, “need you t’... Need you.”

He hummed lowly, pressing a kiss to your folds before pushing himself back up, caging you in with his body. 

“You’ve got me,” he murmured, leaning down to mouth at your neck again.

You whined in protest, hand finding his hair again to pull his lips to yours, earning a low chuckle from the man above you. Reaching for his belt, you ran your nails over the front of his jeans, pulling a hiss of your own from his lips. When fumbling blindly with his belt buckle became a lost cause for both of you, he sat back on his heels, unfastening both his belt and his pants. He paused only to pull his wallet from his pocket and a condom from his wallet before he was shoving his jeans and boxers down. You let out a quiet moan at the sight of his cock, flushed and leaking, propping yourself up on an elbow and reaching for him.

The look of him as you wrapped your fingers around him was a memory you wanted to keep forever. His eyes rolled back in his head and his hips twitched up into your touch, a broken moan falling from his lips. His fingers tightened around the foil packet between them as you slowly pumped his length, his breathing quickly becoming ragged. Within moments, one hand was snapping down to grab at your wrist, halting your movements. 

“You keep at that much longer, angel, and I’m not gonna last.”

You grinned, lip caught between your teeth, thumb swiping over his weeping slit. He heaved an unsteady breath, head rolling back again, before he focused back on you, glaring.

“Fuck me already, then,” you quipped, mouth ticking up in a smirk.

He huffed another laugh, shaking his head as he tore the foil open, reaching for you the moment he had a hand free to pull you in for another kiss. He lowered you to the ground as he rolled the condom over himself, gasping into your mouth at the friction, and you clung hard to his shoulders as he settled back over you. You whined as he parted from you again, tugging at his head to urge him back, but he grabbed your wrist, lacing your fingers and pinning your hand to the ground as he lined himself up with your entrance. 

“You’re sure about this?”

As touched as you were by the check-in, it made your jaw twitch in irritation. 

“Yes, I’m sure, fuck me, Yeosang–!” His name morphed into a long, drawn out moan as he pushed into you in one quick, fluid stroke. His own low sound melded with your own, crafting a harmony that would be echoing in your mind for weeks. 

He paused for a breath, leaning down to kiss you quickly, catching your bottom lip between his teeth. You whined as he shifted within you, breath already coming in short; you were desperate for him, and if he weren’t just as desperate for you, Yeosang would have taken more time to commit the sight to memory. But with the way your walls were hugging him—and the way you had already begged him, the sight of the rapid rise and fall of your chest and the knowledge that he caused that—he couldn’t wait long or this would be over before it had even really started.

The moment you felt him begin to move, really move, within you, you let out a gasp, the hand he didn’t have pinned snapping up to tangle in his hair. You pulled him forward as he fucked into you, pressing your foreheads together, and he followed your lead eagerly, catching your lips in a sloppy kiss. It devolved quickly into little more than you moaning into each other’s mouths, hips rocking together rapidly as you chased bliss together. He was warm, strong and sure above you, and the night around you faded into nothing with the way his body covered yours, leaving both of you once again suspended in a world of your own making. Your cries and whines of pleasure echoed out into the nothingness of the desert, and for once you didn’t bother silencing yourself—out here, there were no repercussions for your pleasure. 

For the second time that night, you mused over how Yeosang—a man you were taught was the enemy, trapped in a prison of his mind’s own making—felt like freedom. The build of the high you were chasing now reminded you of the rush of adrenaline that had coursed through you on the back of his bike such a short time ago, and you pulled him impossibly closer to you, needing to feel his body flush against yours in the same way. A quiet grunt left him as he dropped down to his elbow, stuttering for only a second before picking his pace back up. You settled your feet on the ground, using the leverage to tilt your hips up, and with that small shift, you were seeing stars. His cock was hitting that perfect spot inside of you, his lips were chasing yours every chance he got, and his grip on your hand was tightening; you could tell he was just as close to his peak as you were as he sighed your name against your lips.

He feels like freedom. The thought echoed in your head again, this time louder, and your heart skipped several beats in quick succession. Your chest, throat and core all tightened together, and you pressed your lips against Yeosang’s lips with purpose as your orgasm crashed over you like a wave. You swallowed the drawn-out moan that left him as your walls milked him dry, his hips twitching against your own. He pulled back while you were still lost on cloud nine, wanting to drink in the sight of you, and when his eyes caught the tearstains on your cheeks, his headlight tinging them gold, his stomach dropped. But your eyes blinked open as he wiped them away, a hazy, blissful smile on your face, and he felt himself relax just a bit.

“What’s wrong, angel?” he murmured, and your chest clenched at the concern in his voice. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?’

You shook your head vehemently. “No, Sangie, you were perfect. I just… It felt really good to let go,” you admitted, turning your gaze away from his own. “I haven’t ever been able to, with the whole…” You gestured back toward Night City, and he raised his head to stare back at it, frowning.

WIth a sigh, Yeosang nodded, slipping out of you to sit up. You whined in protest, grabbing at him, and he placated you with a kiss before shifting around to clean both of you up. Once you were dressed again, the cold quickly having become unbearable without his heat, he tugged you into his lap.

“I’m sorry you’ve never had an experience like this before,” he hummed, pressing a kiss into your hair, “but I’m glad I could provide it, and I hope you’ll let me again.”

You smiled brightly against his chest, nodding. “Any time, Sangie. I’m just sorry so many other people miss out on this.”

“Me too.”

“It felt like freedom,” you murmured after a stretch of silence. “You feel like freedom.”

Another moment you wanted you imprint on your brain; the grin he gave you before he yanked you in for another kiss.

When he returned to the rest of the Blue Birds for patrol the next night, Yeosang was keenly aware of Seonghwa’s eyes boring holes into the back of his skull. No doubt he was curious about the details of the previous night’s escapades and itching to give him an earful for wandering off with a government employee and no backup or contingency plan. Sure enough, when the gang split for their respective patrols, he was the one left with their leader. It wasn’t unusual by any stretch, but since the change to his callsign, Seonghwa had been putting Yeosang with other people more frequently to give everyone a chance to adjust.

As they set out, silence stretched between the two riders, and Yeosang couldn’t shake the discomfort it brought. After only a short fifteen minutes, he had to break it.

“You’re mad at me.”

It was purposeful, he was sure, the way he could hear Seonghwa’s drawn-out sigh over his comms. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

“But I didn’t,” he countered, a teasing lilt to his voice.

“You could have gotten yourself arrested.” 

Yeosang scoffed. “What’s the difference, these days?” The silence that met his ears spoke volumes. “Look, I know you aren’t happy about it, but I did it, and I survived. And I think you might be right—she might be on our side, she just doesn’t know it yet.”

Another sigh. “What does that even mean, Yeosang?”

“I figured out why she didn’t call you in.” Silence, this time, but where he had been pointedly keeping ahead of his companion, Seonghwa sat back just a bit, slowing his pace to ride with him. “She doesn’t trust them.”

“Who does?”

“Like eighty percent of the population. Can you be civil for long enough for me to explain, please?” Silence met Yeosang’s ears, but it was miles better than snark. “She’s worked on the things—she knows their wiring and their programming back to front. She could be a very valuable asset to us.”

“So you’ve said—I fail to see how this is more than grunt work.”

“She just got promoted to the position our guy was in before.”

Seonghwa’s helmet whipped to face him for a split second. “Okay, now that is something. Did you convince her to help us, then?”

Yeosang chewed on his lip. “Not yet, but I think I can.”

The deep breath that echoed through his earpiece set his nerves on edge. “You’d better work fast. She’s good at her job—the things our guy was blocking from release are almost ready to be delivered to the masses, according to my intel. We need her position back as soon as possible, and there are already plans in motion.”

There it was. His stomach dropped and bile rose in his throat. “You’ve already called a hit on her.”

“In my defense, I didn’t know it was this girl you’re head over heels for.”

“Says you,” he spat, uncharacteristically nasty, eyeing the way his companion’s shoulders rose. “It wouldn’t have mattered anyway.”

Silence once again, heavy and tangible, hung in the road between the two men.

“If we only resort to death and violence, we’re no better than they are.”

Seonghwa’s scoff echoed as he revved his engine, pulling ahead once again. This time, it didn’t seem like he would be falling back. “I can give you a week. Either convince her or get over her. It’s your choice.”

Yeosang scowled, watching with a glare that could kill as his friend faded into the horizon. He didn’t need a whole week.

Two days later, when you were once again working late and in desperate need of a meal, Blue Bird Delivery was out of service once again. Your heart sank and bile rose in your throat at the implication, and you promptly locked your phone, suddenly too sick to eat. You drowned yourself in your work for the next hour or so, blissfully uninterrupted. It wasn’t until your phone pinged in your pocket, signaling the building’s front buzzer, that you were pulled back into reality. Blinking the measurements and notes from your vision, you frowned, clicking the front camera onto your computer and opening the intercom. “Yes?” 

“Blue Bird Delivery with an order for Y/N,” came the quick reply, Yeosang’s voice crackling through the speaker. You rubbed your temples and sighed heavily, feeling like the weight of the world had been taken off of your shoulders as you relaxed. 

“I’ll be down in a minute.” You bit the inside of your lip, holding back your grin as you made your way downstairs and through the front door as fast as possible.

He seemed even more on edge than usual tonight, shoulders tensed up nearly to his ears, you noted when he came into view. This time, it was you who used his greeting to cover your question. 

“Are you alright?”

He hummed quietly, barely loud enough for you to hear, and turned on his heel, leaving you stunned and confused, a million questions running through your mind. Did he regret taking you out? Did he regret the sex? If he wasn’t here to talk, why was Yeosang bringing you food that you hadn’t been able to order in the first place? He had seemed happy for the rest of the night, holding you close, watching from the street as you had made your way into your apartment building and waved to him from the window, pouting just slightly before you’d arrived that he couldn’t kiss you good night. In a slight daze, you made your way back to your office, locking the door behind you before settling in to eat. No matter how bitter the food would taste now, you needed to eat, but you certainly didn’t want anyone disturbing you. 

Pulling the bag open, your eyes immediately zeroed in on an unfamiliar shock of blue tucked down the side of it. You squinted for a brief second in consideration of it, quickly thinking better of pulling it from the bag. Removing the takeout containers resulted in the paper falling down into the bottom of the bag, and as you set it below your desk as you had made a habit of, readying it for the remnants of your dinner, you glimpsed the message scrawled on it.

“1 hr. -H”

You swallowed thickly, anxiety coiling in your gut. What the hell had you gotten yourself into?

He was waiting in the same place he had been before, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned against the wall. You hesitated as you approached him, and his heart sank. He wanted so badly to touch you, to kiss you, to pull you to him, but he couldn’t risk that emotional breakdown happening in the center of Night City if this went south. Still, he offered you a half-hearted version of his little finger wave.

“What’s with the passing notes?” You questioned, attempting to laugh off the awkwardness. 

“I need you to make a decision.” If you weren’t nervous before, you certainly were now, heart pounding against your ribcage as you bit back a retort about your relationship being too new for ultimatums. “I can either be here as an opportunity or a warning.”

“Should we go somewhere—” you started, only for him to cut you off with a raised hand.

“We’re safe enough here, and I don’t want to waste gas. This is a blind spot for surveillance.” You nodded, wrapping your arms around yourself for comfort. This didn’t feel good. “The rebellion needs someone in your position. Your previous boss was—”

“I know,” you cut in. “I found the forged documents ages ago, before I even took over.”

He went silent, head tilting to the side. You wished you could see the puppy-like look under his disguise.

“He wasn’t sneaky. He didn’t destroy any of the evidence—I found it all the morning I got promoted. The drawings, the inspection sheets, all of it. Are you here to ask me to take over for him?”

Yeosang hesitated. “Well, I was going to, yes. The issue is, you’re a little too good at your job, and if you keep being good at it, I and my people will start losing our footing. And…” He paused, taking a deep breath, trying to ignore the way you were staring at him with narrowed eyes. “There might already be a hit out on you from some of the higher-ups. So it’s kind of a ‘help us or die’ situation.”

Your heart dropped into your stomach. “There’s no other alternative?”

“Not unless you wanted to end up running and hiding for the rest of your life like we do.”

Your decision, and therefore your reply, was instantaneous. “How do I do that?”

If you could see his face, you probably would have laughed at the stunned look Yeosang was giving you. “What?”

“I don’t want this life anymore. I’ve spent my entire life making absolutely sure I fit the mold, and it’s been absolutely terrifying every step of the way. I’ve lost coworkers, friends, even family members for bullshit or unknown reasons and I—” Your voice broke and you paused, regaining your composure. “I felt free with you the other night. I want to feel that again, as often as I can.”

He was quiet for long enough that dread settled back in your stomach. When he finally broke the silence, you could hear the mask fall away from his voice. “Let’s go for a ride, then. We’ll figure this out together.”

You grinned, waiting impatiently for him to settle over his bike before climbing on behind him, wrapping tightly around him, this time in excitement rather than fear. Like the first night, you felt him laugh. “Hold on tight, doll, you’re in for a bit of a bumpy ride.” 

Despite knowing he was talking about more than poorly paved roads this time, your heart soared. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, Hermes.”

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[inbetweenknacksandnooks]

What HSR Girls Smell Like Pt. 4

Ft: Xueyi, Ruan Mei, Yukong and Tingyun

Part 3 (Bronya, Serval, Natasha, Seele)

Part 5 (Black Swan, Siobhan, Acheron, Robin)

More UtC

Xueyi

Can a puppet smell like anything to begin with?

Cold. Artificial.

After extensive trial-and-error, she's found out that no.

Her puppet body can not retain any kind of pleasant smells.

However, clothing, and her false hair... can.

She does what she can, trying to fix and implant things that she's sure smell nice on her clothes.

She has no need to bathe, but she soaks her hair in all kinds of fumes and oils. She's sure it'll wear off once she spends time in her coffin, but... if you enjoy it...

She can't smell anything herself. Three of the five basic human senses have been taken away from her. But she can still see and hear your reactions.

She might accidentally have too much on her, actually.

She'll be sure to use exact measurements next time.

Ruan Mei

Plum Blossoms. Next question.

Like. Ruan Mei uses an overabundance of plum blossom stuff.

Haha, it would be funny to imagine that she has different varieties of the same scent.

"This is my plum blossom perfume, and this is my plum-blossom pastry perfume. I also have them both in shampoo and bath oil form." "Aren't those both the same thing?" "No." :/

They're different to HER, okay! One of them is fresher, and the other is warmer.

Yukong

She doesn't care to put anything on her during the day, and so she mostly smells like her feathered bedding, until stale air from where she now works sinks into her skin and pores.

She remembered Caiyi's favorite scent, and keeps it in a special nook up in the rafters where only she knows of its existence. She sneaks whiffs through the glass bottle, but doesn't dare open it, lest the aroma fade.

Yukong also figures that she's much too old for perfumes, colognes, etc. What is there to disguise if sweat and odors aren't produced?

But, if you ask her to get some kind of smell, she'll do it, probably taking 3 different kinds of scents, spicy, sweet, and fresh, and tests to see what you like the best, and will probably just end up using that, unless you ask her otherwise.

Her tail is actually rather odorous when it's wet, since it has sebum oil, so she tends to use shampoo and conditioner to keep it at bay so that it doesn't stink like wet dog.

She'd really love it if you helped to clean her tail, as twisting your body to reach around and clean every few days to a week can be a drag.

Tingyun

She has ALL KINDS of scents.

Being a merchant, she collects all sorts of things, herbs, spices, perfumes, old pillows, various fabrics, etc.

Inevitably, they all rub off on her one way or another.

She does have special tail-spray she puts on, post-drying after a bath or shower. She experiments a lot with them, one week will be oranges or lemons, the next week will be cherry, dandelions, and so on.

[beanghostprincess]

I don't know why, but I think Usopp, of all people, might smell gorgeous despite the fact of him being a pirate. Maybe it's those long, luscious, beautiful curly hair of his, or maybe it's just an impression given by the fact that he's not canonically that dirty, but my brain only understands simple things, so -- > long hair + not that smelly = smells pretty effing good. And...I don't even think it would be one of those artificial, chemical smells? Like, I don't think he would wear perfume or such [that's more a Sanji thing, which is not bad, but not exactly Usopp].

It's just. His hair products. Natural scented products, that is. Sweet notes of coconut and vanilla, with a little tangy switch given by muted notes of lemon.

Also, a white soap user. I stand by this. 'Cause it makes sense: I think that being a generally very cheap product, he grew up using white soap to clean himself. Simply put, I think the comforting smell of the soap would remind him of his childhood, his village, his mother, and his friends. Also, Kaya is a white soap user, confirmed [she told me].

His clothes are also clean and smell very homey and cozy. And did I mention that probably his skin looks great too? Maybe not, but that's an argument for another day.

This, being a Usopp headcanon, obviously contains lots of Sanuso headcanons.

Because yes, Sanji is enamored of his trèsor's smell. He wouldn't get enough of it in a single day, in a single span of 24 hours. Like, a day it's too little, and I think Sanji would go a bit insane if he didn't get a whiff of his boyfriend's gorgeous smell every once in a while. Because. His boyfriend is his safe place, so his boyfriend's smell would bring him comfort [this considered, WCI would've been absolute hell to him]. Also, I think Sanji is pretty sensitive to scents in general, so Usopp's warm and sweet fragrance makes him feel at home [Zoro being a hater would not have time for this at all].

And don't get me started with Usopp's resident bestest of friends and certified cuddle buddy [Luffy]: you just know that this menace with abandonment issues [affectionate] would claim his Usopp cuddles every now and then. I also think that after the whole Water 7 ordeal, their cuddle session would've been extensive, because Luffy just "missed Usopp and his smell so much". Even Chopper is smitten with his smell! Small, smell-sensitive Chopper!

Nami would love it, too! Hell, even Zoro would appreciate it [more for the fact that it's Usopp we're talking about, and Zoro would not hate a single little thing about him. Except his taste in man, but that's for another day].

So yeah, to sum up this random headcanon, Usopp is gorgeous has a gorgeous smell, and is the crew safe place.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. So much. Usopp looks like somebody who smells so good. Like flowers and wood. No doubt. He takes so much care of his hair and hygiene that it's kind of surprising that he's a pirate, honestly. Although what did you expect from somebody as anxious as him? I'm sure he's worried about this 24/7. And besides, being Sanji's boyfriend he's legally obligated to smell good because I think Sanji would be very sensitive so scents (as you said. Because it's true. I often mention this on my fics, actually).

Kaya and Usopp took care of each other in a ver intimate way!! Showered together. Shared hair products. Did each other's hair. When Usopp joins the crew, he still takes care of his hair and his image but it's mostly out of routine and love for Kaya more than anything. Besies, he loves taking care of his hair because it reminds him of his parents and the way they loved his hair so much too!! Always said it was the best part of him.

And yay!!!!!!!! Sanuso!!!!!!

Sanji absolutely loves Usopp's scent. He smells like flowers and Nami's tangerines and wood and paint and crayons. Idk how to explain it, but he smells like art and home and Sanji can still somehow smell the Merry on him. Poetic little gays. They miss their daughter. Every time Sanji is feeling anxious or just misses his boyfriend, he will go to Usopp and hug him and place his head on the crook of Usopp's neck. And he just kisses his shoulders and skin there and smells his hair for a while. When they go to sleep together and it's Sanji's turn to be the little spoon (happens most of the time, though) he will either turn around to be able to smell Usopp properly or he will just bring Usopp's hands closer to his lips while they sleep. They're the clingiest thing on earth.

Headcanon that after WCI, Sanji's sense of smell is a bit fucked up. The whole place was full of sweets everywhere and everything smelled like chocolate and strong tooth-rooting food. Sanji has a hard time smelling things again that don't remind him of that. He stops baking sweets for a while, too. So he starts reaching out for Usopp more to drown in his scent whenever the memories of WCI are too strong. He spent a long time without being able to be with his precious boyfriend and the only scent that calmed him down. Thinking about Usopp giving Sanji his bandana when they part ways in Dressrosa and keeping it throughout WCI and smelling it whenever he wants to remember how home feels like.

Luffy and Nami also enjoy Usopp's scent but that's because they're the ones who cuddle with him the most when he's free from the hands of his boyfriend. They're,,, So sweet. And Zoro likes being around him also because of that but, you know, it's Zoro and Usopp, they like being together either way.

To sum up the whole thing, Usopp is the most gorgeous man on earth and he smells like a dream.