#but it could be worse considering it came from a person coming down from a 38.5 fever

[conkreetmonkey]

Fart-O-Saurus knows what he is: a weapon. A biological, breathing, sentient sundial bomb, brought into this world to reset it when the same forces that created him deemed it neccesary. He was born a means of mass slaughter first, and a person second. No objective purpose except to kill, with great efficiency and thoroughness.

Perhaps it was cruel for the powers that be to give Fart-O-Saurus a sapient mind, the capacity to feel, and the ability to dream, yet immunity to his own methods of chemical asphyxiation and biological immortality. Perhaps it was thoughtless of them to mould him in the form of the people he was destined to eradicate. He never ages. He never feels thirst nor hunger. Impossibly toxic gas pours from his body in uncontrollable, constant ways that defy the very laws of thermodynamics; nothing goes in, yet planet-killing volumes of matter come out, as if his anus contains a portal to a vast realm of gaseous poison. A seemingly boundless supply of pure, unadulterated death, spewing from his form, never ceasing, impossible to prevent.

Brad Bird once said "What if a gun had a soul, and didn't want to be a gun?" This concept became the basis of The Iron Giant, a film often considered to be the legendary director's magnum opus. In it, an extraterrestrial weapon of war that just so happens to also have a sapient mind and kind heart crash lands on Earth, flung by some far-off, never explained mechanism, presumably relating to whatever now-irrelevant conflict he was manufactured to kill and die in. Retaining a hulking metal form and in-built weapons of immense destructive potential that he has little control over, this titular iron giant must grapple with the conflicting natures of his violent body and gentle soul. He does not want to harm anyone, yet every aspect of his being is designed for that very purpose; every aspect, excepting his inner self. Essentially, he is an axe that loves the trees, doomed to forever struggle with his inherently contradictive nature.

Compared to The Iron Giant, Fart-O-Saurus is at once different and the same. Like the giant, is a weapon that has no desire to kill, a gun that does not want to be a gun. Unlike the giant, however, Fart-O-Saurus has no choice in his actions. He cannot simply learn to exercise control over his strength, lasers and hand cannons as the Giant could, for where the Giant has limited but refinable abilities in this regard, Fart-O-Saurus has no control whatsoever. The gas simply never stops flowing. He's tried, for millions of years, to find a way, but nothing can dam the never-ending cascade of smog for even an hour. It is why he imprisoned himself underground, far away from the fresh corpses of those he'd thought his bretheren, hoping against hope that the world could recover and come to thrive again if only he was removed from it. He cannot die, but he can lock himself in an inaccessible, airtight, well-hidden chamber deep beneath the earth's crust. Right? He knew what the dinosaurs had done. He knew why he had been sent to destroy them. But when he heard the screams, and then the silence that came after the screams, all pretense of moral righteousness fell away like sand through his clawed fingers. In enthusiastically commiting the world's very first genocide, he had become far worse than any of them. Their deaths hadn't even been particularly quick or painless in their brutal efficiency. Did the children really deserve to die? Did the animals? Did any of them? He had no way of knowing. The ultimate punishment had been carried out collectively and mercilessly, by him alone, and he now stood the sole, immortal survivor. There did not even remain any flies to feast upon the carcasses. Just a deafening, oppressive silence, weighing down upon him as if the chemically scorched sky was made of lead.

Humanity can just never leave well enough alone. We always have to know what is unknown, even when there's no potential benefit, even if the process of knowing is deeply immoral, or even has the potential to doom us all. Oppenheimer knew his bomb may have set the atmosphere alight and killed us all, but he ran that first test detonation anyway, because he just had to know. Hishashi Ouchi was kept alive in mind-shattering agony for 3 months, forced against his will to undergo perhaps the most painful experience ever recorded, because those doctors just had to know. And Fart-O-Saurus was unearthed, torn from his self-imprisonment kicking and screaming, the many boulders keeping him in destroyed and the many scrawled warnings on the walls ignored, because those archaeologists just had to know.

And now he's yours. His banana-sized form rests weightlessly in your hand, yet the immense moral weight attached to it pulling heavily downwards upon your soul, down to the caverns Fart-O-Saurus was removed from, down to the souls of the dinosaurs, still burning in hell. His eyes stare into yours. Those scientists had found a way to finally plug him up, but the bastards just had to keep him operational, the apocalypse delivered in an instant with a mere squeeze. For testing, they'd said. They just had to know. Then they sold him to that toy company, and then those people had put him in a box. A darkness reminiscent of the caves enveloped him once more, and he spent years, perhaps decades in transit, changing hands, gracing mantels, stuffing stockings, cluttering yard sales. And now he's here, in the palm of your hand. Your own personal, sentient nuclear football. You'd come to this Goodwill in search of a new jacket, and you'd found was the power of a god. Will you do it? Would you ever do it? It would be easy. So, so easy. Reset history and wipe the slate clean in an instant, with no effort, at any moment, with a device smaller than a toaster. A device you hold in your hand.

Fart-O-Saurus offers no comment. He doesn't even know who or what you are, just that scientists of your kind knew his gas was toxic and unearthed the source anyway, left his apocalyptic rectum still-functional for reasons he knew were excuses for a collectively weak will. The call of the void, seductive and tantalizing. A gun eternally held to every head in the world, the single trigger resting against your fingertip. He knows what he is: a weapon. A biological, breathing, sentient sundial bomb.

The only question is: will you do it?

Submission from Sponch

[nanenna]

This Meeting Could've Been an E-mail

Sleepy King (Nanenna ver.) Masterpost

---

Diana, along with several other members of the JLD, were sitting in a meeting room. John had stood at the head of the table, having just finished outlining the situation for them, and it was grim. She knew if worse came to worse they may have to sacrifice the boy to keep the Ghost King from emerging into their world and wreaking havoc on a scale only Darkseid had managed before, but she prayed it wouldn’t come to that.

“Would not the boy also smell my father’s blood?” Raven asked.

“Unfortunately. You an’ me are gonna stay back and help plan based on what everyone else reads from the boy.”

Diana nodded along, likely that was also her role.

Bruce, in full Batman gear, came stalking into the room.

“About bloody time,” John said with a huff.

“I would hope you have brought them all up to speed on what you know of Danny while waiting.”

John made an annoyed sound, then moved to sit in a chair near the head of the table. “`Course I did, just waiting on you now.”

Bruce stood in the spot John had just vacated. “Oracle.” The room dimmed and the holo-projector  in the table whirred to life. A picture of a small family standing in front of what appeared to be some sort of business run out of what used to be a family home (something fairly common in America, Diana had learned) took center stage. Obviously it was part of a website, Diana could see the web bar with several tabs across the top of the projection, but it was zoomed into the photo.

“This,” Bruce said, pointing to the teenaged boy in the photo from behind, “is Daniel “Danny” Fenton, the boy used in the ritual last night.”

Everyone leaned in closer to look the boy over. There was nothing remarkable about him, a bit thin perhaps but that could be due to the lankiness that comes with growth spurts.

“He’s from Amity Park, Illinois. The town advertises itself as the most haunted city in America, and from what we’ve gathered they earned it. Most pertinent is that last year they were under attack by the Ghost King.”

Oracle must have clicked to the next tab, the family picture was replaced by an online newspaper article titled “Ghost King Thwarted! Is Phantom a Hero?”

“I’m sorry, what happened?” Zatanna asked incredulously.

“There must be some mistake, there’s no way Pariah Dark got free without a single person feeling it,” Dr. Fate insisted.

Oracle scrolled down the page to show several blurry photos taken of a being that looked nothing like what they��d seen last night, alongside a sketch of the being. “Either this was well researched, or somehow this whole event was cloaked,” Bruce said grimly.

“Considering this wasn’t even the most recent attack on the town and a few of them sound like JL level threats,” Oracle’s modulated voice came from the table’s speakers as she quickly tabbed through a few more news articles before coming back to the one on the Ghost King, “I think it’s more likely something is blocking the whole town from us.” She scrolled down more to show several missing or broken photos. “Especially this Phantom person that keeps showing up in every article about ghosts. Even using the way back machine there’s not a single photo of him anywhere on the internet.”

“If the Ghost King has been out,” Captain Marvel asked, “where did he go? I doubt he’s spent the last year just hanging out in a small town in middle America.”

“According to this news article,” Bruce said, “Phantom, along with help from the whole town, managed to get the Ghost King back into the Sarcophagus and sealed him away again.”

John whistled, “That’s quite the feat, even with help.”

“Are you saying Danny was chosen as Pariah’s anchor because he’s from Amity Park?” Raven asked.

“Not just because he’s from Amity Park, his parents are also self proclaimed paranormal scientists and ghost hunters.”

Oracle tabbed to a few different pages, each one with a different picture of one of Danny’s parents proudly holding ominously glowing green weapons or with vials of glowing green goo. Sometimes one in the background of another.

John squinted at the photos, “Is that pure æther?!”

“How?!” Captain Marvel and Zatanna both asked incredulously.

“They call it ectoplasm,” Bruce stated.

John scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Ectoplasm is a word scam artists in the 1800s made up to steal money from grieving widows.”

“Nevertheless that is what they're calling it. Especially of note that the Fentons run their research out of their home.”

“Where their children live?” Diana asked, horrified at the implications.

“How are they still sane?” Captain Marvel asked incredulously.

“We're not sure they are,” Batman said grimly. Oracle tabbed to a street view of the Fenton home, easily identified by the large sign on the side. The strange addition to the home's roof was an… interesting choice.

The other attendees of the meeting were becoming agitated, several of them shifting in place as they got ready to speak.

“Before this goes any further,” Bruce stated firmly, “all this to say the cult that kidnapped Danny Fenton did so with intention. Amity Park certainly needs a full investigation, but it will have to wait until after this crisis with the Ghost King is dealt with.”

“Æther exposure might explain why the kid could handle being Pariah’s anchor.” John sighed then stood up. “Alright, if that’s all the info you got…”

Bruce grunted in acknowledgement.

“The clock’s ticking.” John left the room, the others all following after.

Diana hung back to speak with Bruce. “We’ll find a solution.”

Bruce just hummed to show he heard her. She knew he wasn’t handling the situation well, a child’s life was at stake and he had to hand the situation over to others. There was only so much she could reassure him, so she chose instead to go see the boy for herself.

The JLD members that had attended the meeting were all gathered in a kitchenette discussing logistics. Diana left them to it for the moment and simply went down the hall to the room she knew the boy was sleeping in. The lights in the hallway were already dimmed, thankfully, so she simply quietly opened the door and poked her head inside. Clark was sitting on a chair next to the boy’s bed. His posture was a relaxed sprawl, but his face was furrowed in concentration. He looked up and smiled when he saw Diana.

“How are you?” She asked at barely a whisper, knowing he’d hear her just fine.

“Guilty, now that I know he mistook me for his father.”

“Sadly this is an ask for forgiveness situation.” She gently pat Clark’s arm, trying to console him.

The boy himself looked like any other teenager, dead to the world while tucked safely into bed. She only hoped they would find some solution and tomorrow he would be tucked just as safely into his own bed.

[the-hilda-librarians-wife]

My (super low effort) entry for @sketchbookweek Day 2 - Past/Future

You know, if I were smarter, this would be a commentary on how canon leads us to believe that both Johanna and Kaisa’s childhoods were filled with loneliness, and how they wouldn’t want their children to experience that, and how having a bigger family would bring them both so much closure. But I’m not. So instead this is actually just me showing off my brilliant mutuals’ OCs. Look at them. Look at them this instant

From left to right, there’s Saskia, Seasaidh and Lauren, by @blaithnne, and on the right edge is Mattie, by @airborneice. Plus sketchbook and Hilda, of course 💜

[thyme-in-a-bubble]

just for tonight

a/n: sure, I was vigilantly working on a different wip (a very long one that needed a lot of strength to get through) but then this whole fantasy came to me and i just couldn't stop myself... at least i downgraded the idea from a full-fledged series (which i sadly very much do not have the time for) to just a slutty little one shot in an au that i can always pop back into whenever the itch pops up (or when anyone has a slutty request for it hehe).

summary: before you could even consider the possible consequences, a desperate request then fell from your lips, “well, what if I’m not asking you to be with me? What if it’s just for tonight? What if I’m only asking you to be with me for one night? Would you give me that?” you blinked up at him, scarcely breathing at all, “would you be mine just till the sun comes up?” 

warnings: bodyguard!bucky barnes x reader, smut, reader's mom is the british ambassador to france, age gap (10-15 years), tattooed!bucky (both a metal arm and tattoos as picked in a poll by you), beefy!bucky, forbidden romance, posh political party, alcohol consumption, wet dream, lingerie, stockings, one night stand (except we already know those fools can't keep it to just one night), kissing, dirty talk, manhandling, size kink, oral, fingering, impact play, squirting, gaping, belly bulge, multiple orgasms, overstimulation, penetrative sex, unprotected sex, creampie

word count: 4907

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“You sure, you don’t want some?” you squinted over at your bodyguard as you lowered the champagne flute from your lips, “this shit costs more than my dress, which is really saying something,” you pointed to the red silk gown that hung from your frame, “this is Dior.”

“I’m good, miss,” Bucky uttered, tight-lipped as always. 

“Right, sorry,” you sat the glass down at the tall table you stood beside, “can’t drink while on duty.”

Posh parties such as the one tonight were always a bit of a drag to get through. Even though you’d been hauled along for most of your life, they’d never gotten any more amusing. 

But when your mother hired Barnes to be your personal bodyguard a few months back, the thought of getting dolled up just to have a bunch of provoking politicians talk your ear off about ideas you’d never in a million years support, somehow didn’t seem as bad as it used to now that he was constantly at your side. 

It had been a little incident involving your phone getting hacked, an explicit video nearly getting leaked, one that had been made for an ex who lived in another country to make the distance more barrable, and a few threatening messages from the perpetrator that had been the reason for your new shadow. 

Though you’d been resistant at first, storming into your mother’s office to state that you were a grown woman and didn’t need a babysitter just because someone tried to exploit an old sex tape that in your opinion wasn’t even that big of a deal, swiftly got squashed when a then stranger cleared his throat behind you and shared the more gruelling threats that had been made alongside the hacking. 

You’d hoped and prayed that he’d turn out to be a pain, that his personality could squash the feelings that fluttered inside of you whenever you looked at him, but unfortunately, he wasn’t an asshole. He was quiet, professional to a fault, but he wasn’t a dick. If anything, all of the silence and all of the glances to always keep track of you made the crush worse. It made you feel as if you were in a Jane Austen novel, reading between the lines of subtext your unreliable brain came up with.

“You tired?” he asked as a yawn rolled out of you. 

“Mhm,” you hummed behind the palm you had brought up to your lips. 

“The car’s ready to take you back to the embassy whenever you are.” 

A grateful smile twitched at your lip as you offered him a small nod of confirmation, “I’ll just go tell my mom.”

The ambassador, your mother, had her back turned to you as she talked business with a small group of people even though the hour had grown late. 

You waited for a sliver of a break before you tapped her on the shoulder and whispered in her ear.

“Hey, mom?” her palm found yours as she turned to look at you, “I’m gonna head home.”

“Oh, alright,” she leaned in and pressed a small peck to your cheek, “see you tomorrow, love.”

“Bye,” you gave her hand one last squeeze before heading out of the elegant venue, your guard still only a few paces behind you. 

A dusty drizzle met your skin as you exited onto the midnight streets of Paris. The sensation made you want to walk home, though you still followed Bucky to the black car already waiting and slipped in when he opened the back door for you. 

The light from the city reflected on the back of his metal hand as it gripped the steering wheel. You could faintly spot the prominent veins on the other one dance beneath the inked skin as it did the same, tattoos you still ached to discover just how far they stretched beneath his dark suit. 

Though soon your gaze flickered away from his silhouette as he drove, and fluttered out to the glittering cityscape rolling by, the vision of which swiftly lulled you to sleep. 

When you arrived home, Bucky’s steely eyes found your slumbering form in the rear-view mirror. You didn’t rouse when he opened your door and carefully picked you up into his arms. You didn’t wake either as he carried you inside, all the way up to your bedroom, and layed you down on your bed. 

Gently, he removed your heels and quietly placed them down on the hardwood floor before he grabbed your duvet and tugged it over your form. 

But just as he moved to leave your side, half asleep you caught his hand.

“Don’t go…” you murmured hazily, eyes still shut. 

And so, he didn’t.

Bucky simply reached for the tufted chair nearby and, as silently as he could, scooted it closer to the bed. 

Barely an hour passed before you woke. 

Before you even blinked open your eyes, your fingers began to slide down your body as the sinful dream you’d been blessed with still lingered in your foggy brain. 

Though when your eyes did flutter open and discovered the star of the dream sitting in a chair right next to you, your hand halted its voyage, and you sucked in a startled breath. 

“You okay?” he asked softly as you blinked a few times. 

“Uh,” the throbbing that still lingered from the dream probably wasn’t going to fade any faster with him sitting there with his unwavering stare, “yeah, I’m–, uhm…” you propped yourself up on your elbow before sitting up more, “I’m fine.” 

“Did you have a nightmare?”

“No, it wasn’t a–…” your sentence then crumbled as you sucked in a breath, “what are you doing watching me sleep?”

As you met his gaze, he then uttered, “you asked me to stay.”

Your eyes then widened, “I did?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh…” though you couldn’t recall, heat still began to bloom on your cheeks, “I’m sorry, I didn’t–”

“It's alright,” his shoulders offered a faint shrug. 

Averting your gaze, you noticed that you were still in your dress. You weren’t quite sure if it pleased you or not that Bucky didn’t try to strip it off you, though it was probably less the moral intentions and more the fantasy of him peeling it off of you that swayed you. 

“Were you just planning on sleeping in that chair all night?” you asked. 

“No,” he shook his head, “I wasn’t planning on sleeping at all.” 

A tinge of guilt stung in your chest, “I’m really sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking, I must have been asleep or something…” you then swung your legs over the side of the bed and got up. As your fingers raised up to pluck off your sparkling earrings, your feet began to carry you in the direction of your wardrobe. Dropping the jewellery off in a small porcelain bowl on the opposite bedside table, you then glanced back at your bodyguard and said, “you don’t have to stay any longer, you can go back to your room and get some sleep.” 

Offering you a nod, he then began to walk towards the door. 

Though, as you reached back to undo your dress, you abruptly uttered, “wait,” and he stopped before his steely fingers could enclose around the door handle. Turning to glance back at you, a bold request then hesitantly fell from your lips, “could you maybe help unzip me?”

He barely made a noise, simply hummed quietly in response before his slow stride carried him towards your frame as it twisted for your back to be turned to him.

When you felt his touch on the zipper, tugging it down ever so slowly, your breath came in ragged, and your eyes fluttered shut. You swore you felt his radiating heat seep into you as he exposed more of your goosebump-ridden spine. 

As the straps tumbled over your shoulders, your hands came up to your chest to hold it up even though you wished for nothing more than to let it drop before him.

And when the zipper finally reached its end, he lingered right behind you just long enough for you to catch the tether of it. Slowly, as if you were dealing with a skittish bird, you rotated around. You didn’t dare to look him in the eyes as you let yourself follow that magnetic pull you’d been trying to keep at bay. Your gaze flickered up to his lips as heated puffs of air seeped from your lungs and you slowly, hypnotically, inched closer. 

But then Bucky opened his mouth and said in a soft and quiet tone, “what are you doing?” making you halt, though not pull back. 

“Please don’t act like you don’t already know… I know you do…”

“You can’t,” he uttered, though didn’t move to walk away either as he captured your gaze, “we can’t, alright?”

“Why not?” you breathed, your eyes returning to his lips, “is it really that important for you to stay professional over everything else? Or is it that I’m just a job to you?” your heart felt as if it was gonna beat straight out of your chest, “you know I like you, I know you do. You notice everything, so of course you know. Am I right?”

A long exhale then flowed from his lungs before the faintest of nods tilted his head, “…yeah.”

“And I have eyes too, I’ve seen the way you look at me,” a shiver trickled down your spine, “so, are you really gonna just stand there and pretend you don’t feel something too? Just go back to your own room and continue to protect me like nothing’s going on?”

“Y/n, I can’t be with you,” he shook his head heavily, “you know I can’t.” 

Can’t or won’t?

Before you could even consider the possible consequences, a desperate request then fell from your lips, “well, what if I’m not asking you to be with me? What if it’s just for tonight? What if I’m only asking you to be with me for one night? Would you give me that?” you blinked up at him, scarcely breathing at all, “would you be mine just till the sun comes up?” 

As if your quiet whispers melted him completely, your bodyguard breathed, “…fuck…” and the next thing you knew, he’d grabbed your face and seized your lips. 

It was like something inside of him had snapped, something you had shattered, with the way that he kissed you as if he’d been drowning and your lips were oxygen. 

As you lost yourself in the sensation of his tongue dancing across your own, you let the red dress drop down your body, passed the sheer stockings that clung around your thighs, to the floor. Like fire, one of his hands disappeared from your cheek and ran down your frame, grazing over the black lingerie that was now exposed.  

Though heated and hungry at first, the kiss soon softened into lighter pecks. 

With his metal hand, he held your face close to his as he withdrew from the kiss, an action you weren’t quite ready for as you dreamily trailed after him a bit, longing for his lips. 

“Are you sure this is what you want?” his hot breath fanned across your features. 

“Yes,” you whispered swiftly. 

But as you dizzily blinked up at him, he simply hummed for you to elaborate, “hm?”

“Yes, I want you,” goosebumps tingled across your skin. 

“You want me to what?” his thumb swiped over your cheekbone. 

“I want you to–, to–…” you fumbled as you felt your desire drip and soak your panties, making them cling to your aching core. 

“To what, huh?” 

“To–… fuck me,” the embarrassingly desperate words tumbled out your mouth. 

“You want me to fuck you?” his unwavering stare briefly dropped to your parted lips.

“Yes,” the syllable rushed out of you. 

“Say it again,” he tilted his chin. 

“I want you to fuck me.”

“Louder,” his feet began to shift, causing yours to shuffle back as well. 

“I want you to fuck me.”

“One more time,” his hand had dropped down to your jaw and his fingers curled slightly to dent your soft cheeks. 

“I want you to fuck me, please!” 

With the hold he had on you, he swiftly dipped down and pressed his lips to yours once more. The world then fell out from under you as his grasp scooped down your frame and plucked you up.

Your arms tangled around his neck right before your back collided with the closet door and your lips tilted away from his as a short squeak slipped out. The distance however lent Bucky to let his kisses dance down the length of your neck and across your cleavage, so perfectly framed by the sheer fabric of your bra. 

Though the hickeys he began to plant across your skin made your eyes roll in your skull, your fingers still captured his tie and tugged him back up for your lips to crash against his. As you moved to push his blazer off, his sturdy grip on you shifted though still held you close as the jacket fell from his burly frame and your palms swiftly scooped over his broad shoulders and down his chest, now one layer closer to letting you actually get to feel the furnace roiling beneath.

Cupping his face close, whimpers seeped out of you and vibrated against his lips as his fingers dug into your ass and rubbed your barely covered cunt over the palpable tent in his pants, your want surely drenching through your thin underwear and marking him as well. 

You almost didn’t realise that Bucky had moved till he dropped you down on the bed. Taking a step back, his tongue briefly flicked across his breathless lips as his fingers lifted to tug his tie off. 

Staring directly into your soul, he uttered, “take your bra off,” as he tossed the tie to the floor and your fingers scrambled to fulfil his request. When you flung the lingerie to the ground, right next to his crumbled tie, the cool night air kissed your pebbly nipples and Bucky let out a murmured curse right before bending down to press his lips to yours. 

Balanced on your elbows, you parted your lips and let his tongue sweep across your own. His touch coasted down your frame, barely granting your tits any attention before his grasp hooked around your thighs and yanked you closer to the edge of the mattress. A surprised yelp escaped you at first at the sudden shift, but as the sting of saliva, that had lingered and connected you from your sloppy kiss, snapped back against your skin, the short cry morphed into a fizzy giggle. 

The light laugh however faded away when you watched him sink to his knees at the foot of the bed. Your legs curled up even further on either side of you, though you weren’t quite sure if that was you or him pushing them up and cracking you open that much more. You could feel his breath hit your pantie-clad core as his gaze fixated on the soaked spot right over your puff. 

When his palm slid up your inner thigh, he only had to reach out his thumb for the broad pad to ghost over your covered slit. His eyes swiftly flickered up to capture yours, checking your reaction as you began to squirm from his feathery light touch. 

Hooking his finger in the gusset, he pulled it to the side and a glossy string stretched out and clung to the fabric as he revealed your glistening pussy. 

A breathy moan billowed out of you as he began to touch you, rolling your little pearl beneath his touch. Finding your eyes once more, he held your gaze as he then leaned down to press a gentle kiss over your clit. 

“This okay?” his voice vibrated against your bundle of nerves, making you twitch. 

“Mhm,” you nodded foggily, “you can do anything you want.”

“Anything?” his lips twitched into a smirk as his fingers stretched from where they were clutching your panties to brush over your button.

“Yeah,” you breathed, “fucking anything.” 

Your mouth then hung agape at the sight of him dipping down to ruthlessly taste your desire. It didn’t take long before he lost himself in you so fiercely that he momentarily leaned back only to rip your underwear off. Both of his hands curved around your bottom, raking across your skin as he drew you even closer to his tongue and dragged it through your wet folds.

Bumping his nose against your clit, he let himself make out with your cunt a moment longer before planting a farewell peck over your pearl and pulling back. A dollop of spit dropped from his lips down onto your pussy. Catching the drop with his fingers before it slid away, he rubbed it into your own juices and made you that much more of a mess. 

“O-oh,” you moaned as he slowly slid a long finger into you after teasing your weepy entrance enough to make you shiver. 

“Fuck, you’re so wet,” he groaned at the soppy sounds his efforts conjured.

Craning down to kiss your clit sloppily, Bucky then slid his ring finger in beside the other, curving them gently as he reached even deeper. 

When he momentarily retracted his digits to land a small tap over your puffy petals, the smile that bloomed on your face only egged him on further. Plugging you back up, he then retracted and repeated the slap though with more ferocity. 

Your head began to lull a bit as he brought his vibranium digits down to roll your clit and his fingers began to fuck you harder, not faster, but with an intent that made your pussy sing for him. 

With your thighs trembling, they nearly slammed shut as you felt the end near, but your bodyguard only slid his strong metal forearm over your legs, hooking it right under both of your bent knees, to keep you spread nice and open for him. 

The veins on the back of his inked hand popped from how fiercely his fingers rocked within you. 

Stretching his thumb up to strum your clit, he tried to sneak a third finger inside of you as he felt your walls begin to flutter around him. 

“That’s it, I’ve got you,” as he always did in every manner, evidently. A smile curved at his lips as your eyes fluttered closed and a symphony of moans flowed out of you with every last tender stroke he offered you to carry you over the edge, “atta girl.”

Melted against the sheets, you caught your breath as he planted one last peck on your inner thigh before standing back up. 

Slowly, with his gaze ever glued on you, he unbuttoned his shirt, gradually revealing the silver shine of the dog tags that hung from his neck and the tattoos that sprawled across his skin. Going all the way up from the hand still shiny with your essence, the ink swirled up his right arm, across his pecs, down his back and even curved over to his left shoulder and intentionally tangled into the gnarly scares sprouting from the border of his prosthetic. 

When the button-up hit the floor, his fingers drifted down to unhurriedly remove his belt, pulling it out of the loops, he let it join the shirt before he undid his pants and let his cock spring free. 

“Jesus christ…” your jaw couldn’t help but drop to the floor as your eyes fluttered at the intimidating reveal. 

Noticing the anxiety that peeked through your lust-ridden expression, his low voice found your ears, “what? Did you change your mind?” 

“No, I just–…” you couldn’t tear your eyes away from his fat cock as it throbbed before you, “I got a bit nervous all of a sudden.” 

“No reason to be nervous, baby,” he breathed out a smile as his fist curled around his girth.  

“Oh really?” you nearly began to laugh. 

“You’ll be fine,” drool threatened to escape the corner of your lips as he slowly began to stroke himself, “trust me.” 

“Really? Because I’m not so sure I’ll be able to take that…” 

“You will,” he uttered calmly as he dipped down to give you a kiss, “don’t worry,” a hand slid into your hair as he cradled your face and ushered your gaze to find his, “you know I’d never hurt you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, you’ll be fine,” his thumb curved to sweep over your cheek a few times. 

“Yeah,” you gently nodded and repeated after him, “I’ll be fine.”

“That’s my girl,” he smiled. Kissing you once more, he then pressed a peck to your forehead before his grasp found your hips and he suddenly flipped you around, onto your stomach. 

Helping you up onto your hands and knees, a hazy smile stretched across your features as he bent down over you and pressed kisses all along your spine. Dragging his bulbous tip through your sopping folds, he then teased you for so long, never granting you any more than a dizzying nudge, that whines began to escape from you.

“P-please,” you heard yourself beg as your fingers bunched up the sheets. 

“What?” he continued to flick and tap your swollen clit with the head of his heavy cock.

“I–I want it–, plea–, please fuck me,” you blubbered desperately. 

“Oh, now you want it, huh?” you could hear the smirk that dominated his face, “suddenly not so nervous anymore about me stretching you out, are you?”

“Bucky, plea–, o-oh–,” you felt your limbs tremble beneath you as he slipped the very tip inside. 

His efforts were so slow at first, gradually giving you more of his length and just shallowly fucking you till you blossomed and opened up for him. 

Gradually, his thrusts began to ease from a mind-numbingly slow pace to something that truly scrambled your brain. You soon lost yourself completely to the molten sensation of his fat girth steadily splitting you open. 

Though when he finally bottomed out within you, a shrill gasp slipped out passed your lips and your frame shuttered beneath him. 

Drawing his hips back just enough for you to regain the ability to fill your lungs with oxygen once more, you heard him murmur in your ear, “what, is it too much dick for you?” retraining his thrusts slightly, he kept his tip from kissing your cervix, “that better or is it still too deep for you?” his hands dented your hips.

“N-no, no, it feels so good, it’s just–,” a whimper slipped out of you and broke up your slurring, “you’re so fucking big, I’ve never–,” you felt like you could feel him all the way up in your throat, “no one’s ever been that fucking deep before.”

One of his hands curved down to your clit at the exact same time as your own did. As they met, he let your own fingers swirl over your puffy pearl as his simply lingered, till he suddenly grasped your wrist and gently led it away from your pussy, further up to your lower stomach. 

“That deep?” he pressed down on your palm and let you discover the dull bulge that formed in your belly at every one of his dizzying thrusts, “has no one ever stuffed you that full before? Not even one of your pretty toys you play with so often?”

“Nuh-uh,” you panted as his warm contact dissipated from your spine and he straightened back up. 

A gravelly moan slipped out past Bucky’s lips as he glanced down to see how tightly your creamy pussy was gripping onto his cock. Your fingers returned to the sheets as his wide palm came down to slap your ass, your back arching at the impact and consequently angling his efforts so that the details of his dick brushed against your g-spot in the most heavenly way imaginable. 

He only buried himself inside of you a few more times, his heavy sack tapping against your buzzing clit at every electric buck, till your pussy gushed around his fat girth. 

“There you go,” he pulled out only to insistently flick your puffy pearl with his tip, “fucking hell,” he then plunged his cock all the way back in before dragging it back out, “keep going,” ushering more squirt to drizzle out. He kept up the overwhelming pattern till your pussy stopped gushing for him, till he’d pushed you through the overstimulation and your cunt slowly began to relax again for him. Eventually, when he steadily withdrew from you, he craned his neck to relish in the way your little hole had stretched out and accommodated so well for him, it even winking sinfully at him every time he pulled out, “good fucking girl,” he growled at the sight, “told you so, you’d do just fine,” your shaky frame jolted as he slapped your ass again, “look at you now fucking gaping for me, christ…”

With a ring of your cream staining the base of his cock, he let himself return to your warmth for longer than just a few seconds, fucking you with such ferocity that your pliant form, still molten and unsteady from your second orgasm, collapsed onto the mattress below. 

Though he successfully caught you before you could slip off his cock entirely, he still let you drop down on the bed, though softened the fall for you, before he followed suit. 

The weight of him on top of you felt so comforting and soothed on your tingly skin.

“You okay?” he kissed your cheek before spreading your stocking-clad legs with his own. 

“Hm,” you nodded foggily and felt yourself drool onto the sheets as he squished you further into the mattress.

Your shaky moans filled the bedroom as he slid back inside, “fuck, you feel so good…” sloppily nipping just below your ear before he picked up his pace. 

The chain that dangled from his neck felt cool on your skin and acted as a stark contrast to how hot his body felt pressed against your back. 

“You think you can be a good girl and cum for me again?” he groaned into your ear as his efforts echoed sloppily, “let me feel that pretty pussy squeeze around me one last time?”

“I-I don’t know,” you trembled beneath him, every one of his deep thrusts making you jolt and gasp for air as he was practically splitting you in half. 

“You don’t know?” he sweetly whispered in your ear as he curled his arms under you. One hand slid under your tit and caught your pebbly nipple in a rude pinch while the other soared down to your sore and swollen clit, “can you try for me? Try and cum again,” your eyes had fallen completely shut, so your whole reality had just become Bucky’s reassuring weight, his tantalising efforts, and his sinful whispers that seeped directly into your soul, “try and squirt for me one last time, sweetheart.” 

And so, you did. It didn’t even take that long before you tumbled over one last time and your pussy creamed for him, drenching the already damp sheets beneath you, as he swiftly came as well, throbbing deep within your clenching cunt and filling your little hole up to the brim till it tried to leak and escape around his girth.

His heavy pants faded from your ear as he slowly crawled off of you, cascading a tender trail of kisses all the way down your body till he gently retraced his track of pecks and settled down next to you. Fluttering your eyes open as his palm slid up to your heated cheek, he gazed into your hazy eyes for a moment before leaning in to softly press his lips to your own. 

You wanted to curl in closer to his frame, but your body was so exhausted that you could barely raise your pinkie finger. Fortunately though, as you layed there in wordless wonder, Bucky’s arms draped around you as he scooted in close, hugging you to him and gently caressing your skin as you continued to blink back into his ocean eyes, not uttering a word out of fear that you’d ruin the blissful moment.

After perhaps a small eternity had passed, he briefly raised his head up slightly to catch sight of the small clock on your bedside table. 

“There’s still a few more hours left before the sunrise…” he settled back down beside you.

“Oh, yeah?” a soft smile tilted up your lips as his touch began to travel south. 

“Yeah,” his lips gently parted in a silent moan as his fingers slid through your sore folds. His stare was transfixed on how your brows knitted together and a quiet hiss slipped out of you as he swirled over your sensitivity, playing with the hot load he’d pumped into you as it slowly leaked out, one of his digits too brash not to try and stuff it back inside, “what do you think?” sharing your breath, he inched in and let his nose nuzzle against your own, “do you want me to be yours just a little bit longer or would you rather I’d return to my own bed?” 

© 2024 thyme-in-a-bubble 

[whetstonefires]

I will say I have no real problem being okay with Chrestomanci being a positive figure who also believes in spanking for extreme misbehavior (iirc the thing Cat gets hit for is having supposedly committed assault on one of the servants and Gwendolyn was also getting spanked for something that could probably get her sent to jail) because the setting is a pseudo-edwardian one where it would be sort of weird if he didn't consider that an option on the table, and he is at no point intended to be read as a flawless person.

In fact, the plot of Charmed Life is in many ways Christopher Chant mishandling the interpersonal situation until it escalates to murder and insurrection.

The physical chastisement explicitly was the wrong thing to do, and achieved the opposite of his aims, and he apologizes later, albeit very casually.

The plot of Lives of Christopher Chant, his origin story, is even more emphatically the story of Christopher making bad decisions about who to trust and communicating very badly, until everything reaches a crisis point. Conrad's Fate also features Christopher largely making situations worse.

He's good at his job and generally means well on the whole, but he's very intentionally written as kind of a dick who's capable of charm but not actually good with people, and is used to getting his way.

On the other hand, the backstory book was written later and one of the few ways his parents didn't fuck up was they never hit him, and no one at his boarding school did either, which retroactively makes the ear-boxing scene in Charmed Life more bizarre. I think he gets hit once in the whole book. Outside of being killed; the cricket bat incident doesn't count.

Also there is internalized sexism in it, sometimes it really pops, but the recurring motif of very fake very pretty extremely controlling women as her main style of female villain is also very much a realistic depiction of what the most effective female abusers act like, and how they get away with it. I'm partway through T. Kingfisher's new A Sorceress Comes to Call that's built around such a villain for the same reasons.

(There are male villains in Jones' books built on the same model, like Uncle Ralph, doing the same things but with slightly different tools because gender affects your practical options in a gendered society.)

Which I think is very appropriate for children's fiction? Children are the people most likely to experience this form of abuse and need perspective on it.

Because a lot of Jones' work is in the same category as like, Steven Universe, where if you forget the intended audience is under the age of thirteen and it is largely concerned with the kinds of life experiences you have as a child, you will have trouble reading it in good faith.

The bit I always struggle with is the bigtime of-her-generation belief that the ideal male love interest is about ten to fifteen years older than the heroine, apparently so he can be masculinely high-handed and confident and mildly condescending, and it's justified by the difference in life experience rather than just his being a prick, a strongminded woman can believably live with it.

And like, this formula is not dead; Naomi Novik has at least two instances of this kind of 'ship in work published since Jones died, although with massively larger age gaps because the annoying men are magic. But it's not usually pursued with intensity anymore outside of contexts where the power difference is being fairly explicitly eroticized, so when you see women of her generation upholding it as aspirational in normal contexts, it is very uncomfortable from a modern feminist perspective.

seeing ppl holding up Diana Wynne Jones as a more progressive alternative to JKR when u know the Terrible Secret (that 1 instance of egregious homophobia) but there's no point bringing it up bcos it's in 1 single instance in a book that's out of print so who gives a shit but also like. you know.

[yurunivo]

Synopsis: continuation of this idea (and also subtracting and adding a few of my own) part 2 part 3 part 4

TW: yandere behavior, cult ish behavior, mentions of blood, injuries, torture, SAGAU, inaccurate personalities, bad grammar, english is not my first language, very short

Characters: Natlan cast x Creator!gn!reader (slight yandere Archons too)

You hated this.

All you were doing was playing genshin and then you suddenly got sucked into the game! At first, it was a dream come true, but now you wanted to be out of here as fast as possible. All this suffering just because you looked like someone?

Mondstadt was a no no. The acting grand master found out so quickly, and the knights of favonious were on your tail. Liyue was also a no, the millelith and adepti was also there. Heck, Zhongli came out of retirement just to catch you! Inazuma? Raiden was enough. Fontaine wasn't any better either. You got put on trial, it's only because of plot armour that you managed to survive.

Sumeru was a bit better. The dendro archon found out about your status quickly, due to Irminsul. But, her people were out of her control, so you got hunted down anyway.

The abyss was even worse. Once they sensed that the creator came back, they were ecstatic to kill you. The abyss weren't known for their fondness of the gods after all. Right now, with the amount of times you fought the abyss and the people of teyvat, your entire body was like a piece of paper ready to be blown away.

You were walking to Natlan, as fast as your legs would take you. Your arm was filled with abyssal energy, and you had open wounds all over you. The sand got into your injuries, which really stung. It was hell trying to walk, but the tiny sliver of hope that Natlan would be different would be enough to keep you going. Usually, your wounds healed instantly every time you were injured, but the attacks from the abyss slowed down your healing. You would show your golden blood, but the injuries healed too fast and the people would be too consumed by anger to even notice your golden blood.

How long has it been since the chase started? Like one or two years? You couldn't really tell. Your mind was foggy, and your body was trembling and shivering. Just the thought that you'll eventually heal and get hunted down again, without anyone knowing about what was truly going on was enough to consider dying. You coughed your way through to Natlan, and as the sandy desert came to a halt for the beginning of Natlan, you could only hope that Natlan would be different.

It wasn't long till you passed out, but you got a tiny glimpse of a Saurian watching you...

Your head hurt, everything did. You woke up to your injuries healed, as you thought what happened. Your body probably managed to heal itself, so that was already explained. What was not so good and definitely needed explaining was that the environment you were in was certainly different, even if you remember not seeing much.

You saw a little girl coming towards you. She looked familiar, but you began to panic. Were you really going to get hunted this time too? If that was the case then dying seemed like a better option than anything.

"Are you okay?! You really looked like you weren't going to survive!" Huh? Why wasn't she attacking you? Was this really a dream? Thank god! You felt like crying at the kindness you were shown after so long!

The girl introduced herself as Kachina. You thought that's why she looked familiar. Perhaps you were not thinking straight from the suffering that you were inflicted on. You introduced yourself too, but you used (fake name) instead of who you really were.

"What happened? You looked so pale and your entire arm was covered with abyssal energy! Did you get attacked on your way here?" She asked so innocently, which made you realize that you had to create a fake story, and fast. You contemplated for a moment, creating a fake story within seconds was hard, but the sheer thought of being hunted again left a bad image on your brain.

"Ah well, I was a runaway from my home in Sumeru. I encountered some enemies and that's what happened to my arm. Is there any place in Natlan where I can get a job and a cheap house and a job? I don't have any Mora on me," you lied through your teeth. You had Mora from the treasure chests you saw in the wild, but it would be weird that a runaway who left everything behind has Mora on them. You felt bad lying to Kachina. But, for your survival, everything was necessary. She seemed to believe you, so you internally sighed in exhaustion. Children were so naive.

She felt so sorry for you, even though your story was fake. She took a cherry flavoured candy from her large bag and gave it to you. Finally, tears started to slip through your eyes. It's truly been so long since you had seen kindness being shown to you. A tear fell from your eyes as you cried. Kachina began to panic, but realized that it was best to stay quiet. You sobbed and sniffled as Kachina continued to comfort you. You again passed out from crying so much.

"There is a bar nearby that you can work in! And for the place to stay in, they have a space above the bar where you can be at!" You walked together as she continued talking. She was nice to talk too, and didn't really pressure you and ask any more questions which might have made you uncomfortable. You changed your clothes too, wearing gloves to hide your injuries from the abyss. You looked at the bar she led you to and thanked her profusely. She was so kind, certainly a gift from the gods!

You got the job and a place to stay. All you had was cleaning duty, and, compared to the injuries and (sometimes) vomiting you had to deal with by yourself, this was a piece of cake. You just cleaned the counters, the glasses and the floor and also throw out the rowdy people in the bar. The room you live in now was cramped, but it was at least better than having to sleep in defeated hillichurl camps with no protection whatsoever.

After getting a stable income, you started giving Kachina a lot of gifts. After all, she helped you so much when you literally had no will to live. She always tried declining them, but you always insisted, saying that she deserved it. She really did though, you needed to pay back her kindness from the beginning anyway. You also started visiting her much often, exploring or just talking with her.

You do meet her friends eventually enough.

"(Fake name)! These are my friends, Kinich and Mualani! I hope you get along with them well!" You were shaking, what if they weren't as kind as Kachina? What if they find out? What if, what if-

But, they were much more easy going than what you expected. Mualani was very cheerful, and Kinich was also very kind! Something was weird though. Ajaw was much quieter than usual. Sure, he still had those narcissistic comments, but it was like he toned down on them a bit. That was very confusing, but if the others didn't notice then you didn't need to bother.

You sometimes visit Mualani in the hot springs, just keeping your arms out of the water for the abyssal energy not to spread. You also sometimes visit Kinich in the Scions of Canopy. He does his extreme sports like bungee jumping, you just watch. Again, it was really unnerving on how much quieter Ajaw was..

But, this happiness wouldn't really last for long.

You were cleaning in your bar, secretly listening into some drama in one of the tables. A woman came into the bar. She was clad in a dark cloak, so you couldn't really see her. But, upon taking a closer look, you realized it was... Mavuika?!

You were sweating like your life depended on it. How did she even figure out that you worked here? Did you have to move again, when you we're just getting settled? Was this perfectly calm life just going to stay for false hope? Seriously, you were scared. You went to go clean another station instead of your own, but not until she managed to give you a message.

"I've been meaning to meet you for a long time, how about we just talk outside later?" She smiled warmly, but you just felt a chill down your spine. You were terrified. But, considering how powerless you were, you agreed. You never know what she might do after all.

Your shift was done, and you gulped as you walked outside. Mavuika was there, waiting for you. She waved, and you nervously waved back. You looked down at yourself. Your hands were trembling, and your entire body was shaking. The sweaty feeling in your palms never went away, it was uncomfortable, but not nearly as uncomfortable as having to talk with an archon.

"I already know that you are our creator, please rest assured," huh?! She already knew? But how? You never revealed your identity,what was going on?! But, all you did was nod your head, still nervous on what she could do.

"I've heard of the chase that you have been through in other nations, but please be assured that I will not do the same. I will protect you from the other nations, and you can continue living your life as it is. I will do my best to help you lead a normal life," you were shocked. Absolutely shocked. Since when did an archon treat you so nicely?

Venti chased you with his bow and arrow, and you got nearly got sucked into the black hole that he had in his burst. Moral was leading the adepti and Liyue Qixing to find and hunt you. You just completely avoided Inazuma. It would be terrible that the Shogun would find you, since she's not as "nice" as Ei. You thought you could start a new in Fontaine, but you got put on to a death sentence by the Oratrice. At least Neuvillette had some kind of pity for you. The eremites, grand bazaar and the scholars of Sumeru were also in the hunt. You started reflecting on how much suffering you had to deal with, as tears welled up in your eyes again. You went to hug Mavuika and just sobbed in her shoulder. She looked surprised but didn't question it as you cried. She patted your back over and over again, letting you cry all your frustrations out.

Of course, it's not like people won't find out eventually.

Kinich was the first to find out. He offered you to bungee jump with him, and you stupidly agreed.

"It won't be that bad, I promise," oh how you shouldn't have believed him. You were screaming the entire time that he held you. Ajaw was fuming at Kinich, which, again, was very weird. He never cared for anyone before, so what was going on?

Though he was holding onto you, it didn't really stop you from getting injuries by nature itself. You had a cut on your cheek, as blood began to seep out. You landed, and it was only when Kinich was recovering from the adrenaline rush, did he notice your cut. He was speechless. He was just staring as you realized the cut you had on your skin. Your eyes widened at the revelation.

"W-wait, I-I can explain!" You didn't even know what you were panicking for. Wasn't it a good thing that they found out? If so, then why did it feel like your heart has been shattered into a million pieces when he found out? Ajaw then screamed at Kinich, like he was reprimanding him.

"You filthy servant! How can you not realize that the creator was with us all this time?! Honestly, what went on in your head when you took them in such a dangerous activity?!" He spewed out to Kinich, while the boy was still in a state of shock. Finally, as if he got to his senses, he muttered out:

"You're the creator?..." He mumbled under his breath. He looked extremely shocked, and also extremely guilty. He ran out of words so quickly. This is how he treated his creator the whole time?

He was about to apologize, but you interrupted him. There was no way that you would let him even say sorry, not when you want to live your life as a human instead of some divine being.

"If you want a more detailed explanation for this... predicament, meet me at the outskirts of the Children of echoes, you'll get all your answers there."

Mualani was second to find out. You two were walking through her tribe, talking about getting swimsuits for the hot spring. The area was very humid, and the floor was very slippery.

Suddenly, you tripped on your steps and fell on the ground. A scratch was on your knee, as you realised that the blood would show. You tried to hide the injury from Mualani, but she took a glance anyway. Her expression was very surprised, but all she did was wrap a piece of cloth around your knee. It really stung, but you really hoped she wouldn't ask any questions about it.

She took you to a secluded area with no people. Just you and her. She was staring for a long time, and you gulped in nervousness. You were enjoying your life without being chased or worshipped, why did this peace have to end now?!

"Well, (fake name), actually it might not even be your real name.. But anyway, I know it might make you uncomfortable, but please explained what happened a bit ago," she asked and all you did was mumble an incoherent sentence with a bitter tone.

Kachina was last to find out. You were exploring some ruins that you found along with her.

It was just supposed to be a little expedition outside in Natlan, but you got way too many cuts from the rocks inside. It didn't really hurt, so you brushed it off, forgetting that Kachina didn't know you were the creator. When she lit up a fire to check in on everything, that's when you realised this. You tried to stay out of the light as much as possible, but she found out very easily.

"What's wrong (fake name)? Why aren't you coming near the fire?" She innocently asked. You cursed at your self for not realizing that she didn't know sooner. But before you could respond, she dragged your wrist into the light in an attempt to see if you had any injuries or not. When she saw the golden blood however, she turned quiet.

"Y-you're the creator?" She asked, almost terrified. Oh what had she done! Treating the holy creator so casually like a friend! You only looked down at her, feeling guilty at putting so much terror to her mind. You patted her head, unsure of how to respond to her.

"Yes I am, but I am your friend still, am I not?"

Spies can exist anywhere and everywhere. After all, it's such a common phrase in Liyue, the walls have ears.

However, the spies that were there to find you and excecute you, were certainly incompetent in their job, letting their emotions get in the way of things.

Seeing the golden blood for their own eyes, the blood of the "imposter" that they were hunting down, was not really easy to swallow. Instead of kidnapping you, they just took a picture with their kamera and ran like the wind, doing anything to inform their leader.

When the Archons found out, they were nothing less than shocked. They have been hunting their creator the entire time? No, this couldn't be! They trembles at the photo in hand, realising how bad they fucked up. Now they were more determined to find you than ever, not to kill you, but to welcome you into their arms. They will get you back, no matter what it takes. Oh and the actual imposter? They're as dead as they can be. Nothing matters except you now.

Nothing else matters.

This is so short Lmaooo hope you like it tho!

[fandoms-x-reader]

Overprotective and Ready to Fight - OM! Brothers

Requested By: @opiopal

Word Count: 2,972

Oneshot

Summary: Fighting a demon who spoke poorly about your love interest and winning.

You weren’t normally an angry person. You tried to be very calm and  kind. You were the one who talked others off the ledge, not the one who needed to be talked down. In all of your time in the Devildom, you were sure none of the brothers had a chance to see you get really angry.

But finals were coming up at RAD and you were under a tremendous amount of stress. You had been pouring every ounce of your energy into studying. You had been staying up late and skipping meals which you admitted had started to make you a bit cranky.

Today you had just found out that your teacher was adding an additional part to the final. A part that you hadn’t been studying for at all because you were under the pretense that you wouldn’t need to.

So, now your stress levels were incredibly high and on top of that you had dropped your lunch in the cafeteria so you were hangry. You were on the verge of having a complete mental breakdown and for some reason a popular demon had decided it would be fun to mess with you today.

They came up to you and began saying rude and nasty things about the demon brothers, particularly one of them. Normally, you would stomach the rude comments and move on, making sure to give the demon brothers extra love that night to make up for the terrible things that were said about them.

But as previously stated, you were having a bad day, and the demon just crossed a line. Wrath overtook you with every word they spoke until you completely snapped. You threw one good punch to the demon's jaw and a collective gasp broke out from the students that surrounded you.

Before you knew it, the demon began fighting back, using every advantage they had over you. But, you were so angry you didn’t care. How dare they talk about your demon like that? Who did they think they were? 

You fought with everything you had until you felt someone pulling you off the student. You turned to face them and your heart skipped a beat when you saw that it was Diavolo. He didn’t necessarily look angry, but he didn’t look very pleased either.

You turned your attention to the demon you had been fighting only to see they were also being restrained by Barbatos. Barbatos led them away and you turned to look at Diavolo. You knew you probably shouldn’t have snapped and started a fight, but if he heard what that demon was saying, he would understand!

You gave him a small smile before asking, “We don’t have to tell Lucifer about this, right?” Diavolo let out a small sigh. He wished that was true, for your sake. But, unfortunately, if Diavolo didn’t tell him and Lucifer managed to find out on his own, that would be a much worse situation.

So, here you were sitting in the infirmary at RAD. Your small wounds were being treated and you could hear muffled voices on the other side of the door. It was undoubtedly Diavolo telling your seven roommates what had happened. 

You winced when you heard the door to the infirmary open and you held your breath as you waited to see which one was coming in to talk to you.

You did what?!

Lucifer was absolutely livid. Not only did you put yourself in danger, but you had embarrassed Diavolo. What could have possibly driven you to such insanity?

He needed to know because the whole situation was absolutely preposterous to him. 

He entered the infirmary first, surprised to see how good you looked comparatively. He had passed the other demon as they were taken to a separate room and they looked a lot worse than you did.

He silently admitted he was surprised by your capabilities, especially considering the difference in strength and the fact that you had no magic or weapon.

But, this was no time to compliment you. 

You knew better than to speak when Lucifer was wearing his angry face so you remained silent as he approached the bed you were sitting on.

“What were you thinking?” Lucifer asked, his gaze falling to your hands where he noticed how bloody your knuckles looked.

“In my defense, this is technically all because of you,” you stated. Lucifer now looked shocked and furious. Were you really trying to place the blame on him? He hadn’t even been there!

Before he could respond angrily, you continued to say, “They were talking bad about you.”

That caught Lucifer off-guard. Were you telling him that the reason you fought the demon was because they were talking poorly about him? Did you realize he was the most powerful demon of his brothers and perfectly capable of fighting if need be?

Still, Lucifer couldn’t help the pride that began to swell in his heart. You fought on his behalf and won. He found it adorable that you went to such lengths to defend him. But, he couldn’t very well thank you in front of everyone.

So, he went with a neutral response. One that he hoped conveyed his true feelings behind the whole situation without betraying his image of power.

“No more fighting.”

Did Diavolo just say you picked a fight with a demon?

Mammon was beyond surprised at the news. You were just a fragile little human. What were you doing trying to fight demons?

The other demon passed by the group and Mammon’s heart dropped. They looked horribly beat up and if that’s what they looked like, he could only imagine what you looked like.

He couldn’t wait any longer. He needed to make sure you were okay. So, he quickly swung the door to the infirmary open, pausing when he saw you. 

You looked mostly fine. A couple of cuts and bruises and some bloody knuckles, but that was it. You practically destroyed the demon and came out looking like you took a small fall. Mammon made a mental note to never make you angry.

The doctor demon moved to wrap your hand and was a bit rough with it. You winced slightly and Mammon stepped in.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Mammon stated as he shooed the doctor away, taking over. He gently grabbed your hand and your eyes met his. “I know ya’ got guts, but isn’t this a little much?” Mammon asked, carefully wrapping your hand.

“They were saying some terrible things about you,” you replied, keeping your eyes on your injured hand. Mammon faltered for a moment at your words. No one had ever cared about him enough to fight for him. “Ya’ fought them because they were talkin’ trash about me?” Mammon asked.

“Well, wouldn’t you fight someone if they weren’t talking bad about me?” you questioned. Fair point. “Yeah, but I’m a demon,” he countered. 

Mammon finished wrapping your hand and told you, “Lucifer’s gonna give ya’ a long lecture for this.” Great. Just what you needed.

“But afterwards, do ya’ wanna come over and watch a movie?” Mammon questioned. He wanted to help make you feel better, especially after finding out you were fighting for him. You were his precious human and he wanted to make you feel that way.

Your eyes lit up at the idea and you immediately agreed. This is why you fought that demon - to stand up for the one that always made you feel better.

Levi didn’t typically go to RAD in person. He preferred to take all of his classes from the comfort of his room. But, he had made a special exception today and he was very glad he did.

He heard that something went down between you and another student, but it wasn’t until he was standing in the hallway with his brothers that he found out you had gotten in a fight.

As if on cue, the other demon walked past him and he took note of all of the damage. You did that much to a demon?!

Part of him wanted to make sure you were okay; but, also, Levi had to know how you pulled off such an amazing attack.

He entered the infirmary, a mix of excitement and fear built up inside of him. But, when he saw that you were mostly fine give or take a few bruises and cuts, nothing was left but his excitement.

Out of politeness, Levi still asked, “Are you okay?” But after you reassured him, he moved onto his more pertinent questions. 

“How did you manage to beat that demon up so badly?” he asked. You shrugged your shoulders before replying, “I was just so mad that I couldn’t stop punching.”

“What did they do to make you so mad?” Levi asked. He genuinely wanted to know what happened to turn you into a badass rage monster.

You gave Levi a small smile before telling him, “They decided to say awful things about you, spreading rumors left and right. I couldn’t stand it.”

Levi let out a startled noise before blushing furiously. You fought someone to defend him? Your coolness level just went up by a million points for him. 

Did that mean you liked him enough to think he was worth protecting?!

Levi will pull the security footage of the fight and make it an online sensation. No one would ever pick a fight with you again thanks to him.  

Satan knew something bad happened involving you the moment you started fighting. He could feel his sin radiating around him. It took him a moment to figure out it was coming from his pact symbol, but as soon as he did, he was on a mission to find you.

You were seriously angry right now. He could feel it. And he was a bit worried about what it would lead to. 

But he was too far to reach you before the fight ended and was left standing in the hall with his brothers while Diavolo explained what happened. 

Even though he felt your rage, he was still surprised when he found out you got in a fight; and, even more so when he saw the damage you did.

When Satan entered the infirmary and saw you he couldn’t help but smirk a bit. The demon didn’t stand a chance against you. 

You didn’t notice him at first, focused on your knuckles that the doctor was tending to. So, Satan walked up to the bed. He noticed that your eyebrows were still furrowed from residual anger and to Satan it made you look feisty like a kitten. And where others would have been deterred by it, the look drew Satan in.

“You’ve got a lot of anger in you,” Satan teased. “You’re one to talk,” you retorted and Satan let out a small chuckle. 

“What made you so mad?” he questioned. You let out a small sigh before replying, “They decided to say some rude things about you.”

Satan’s eyes widened slightly. That’s all it was? Some demon said some rude things about him and it sent you into that much of a rage? Were you that protective of him?

Satan couldn’t help but smile at you. You protected him in your own way and he would make sure to protect you from whatever punishment Lucifer decided to come up with.

But, he made you promise not to start another fight with a demon. Next time, you might not be so lucky and he didn’t want you putting yourself in danger.

You got in a fight? Were you hurt?

Asmo was freaking out right now. What if you bruised your delicate skin? Or worse, cut it?! 

His panicking was only worsened when he saw the demon walk by. He nearly fainted at the thought of you looking even half as bad.

He quickly rushed into the infirmary and relaxed a tiny bit when he realized your condition wasn’t even close to being as bad as the other demon’s.

But, your knuckles were bloody and you did have some bruises and cuts so he still wasn’t very happy.

“Y/N! Your poor knuckles! And skin! Why did you fight that demon?” Asmo asked frantically, his eyes filled with worry as he scanned over all of your features, surveying the damage.

“I was just trying to stand up for you,” you replied. “Me?!” Asmo asked, even more confused now. 

“They were saying some really rude things about you,” you replied honestly. Asmo’s heart swelled at your reasoning. You risked your own body to defend him.

“You’re soo cute,” Asmo stated pulling you into a hug and placing a few kisses on your cheek. He then moved and began placing kisses on each bruise and cut you received, spending extra time on your knuckles.

“As soon as we get a chance, I’m treating you to a spa day. We’ll get the best of everything and get you back to your perfect state in no time. There won’t be a blemish on you,” Amso told you, hugging you once more.

He’ll use his connections to spread terrible rumors about the demon who said those things about Asmo to ensure that they never start another fight with you.

He couldn’t handle the stress of seeing you bloody or bruised again.

Beel was the one who got in fights the most when it came to protecting his family. He was no stranger to it and was unphased by it. But what he didn’t expect was for Diavolo to tell him you got involved in a fight.

You must have had a good reason. You were normally so slow to anger. So whatever the demon said or did must have set you off.

He had seen the demon walk by the group and he couldn’t help but let out a small gasp. When Diavolo said you had gotten into a fight, he didn’t expect that it was to this extent. The demon could hardly walk on their own!

Beel entered the infirmary and walked straight up to the bed, grateful that you only had a few minor cuts and bruises. 

He carefully took your hand in his when he reached the bed and inspected the damage on your knuckles. He frowned a little before asking, “Does it hurt?”

“A little,” you replied. Beel nodded his head before questioning, “What did they do to make you so mad at them?”

“I didn’t like the things they were saying,” you replied. “Was it about food? I hate it when people talk negatively about food,” Beel stated.

You let out a small laugh before replying, “No, it wasn’t about food. It was about you, Beel.” 

Beel’s eyebrows furrowed a bit as he turned his head to the side, trying to understand. What could that demon have said about him that was so bad it made you start a fight?

“I just didn’t like hearing them say bad things about you when you’re so kind,” you added.

Beel immediately engulfed you in a hug. The demon had merely spoken a few unkind words about Beel and it managed to send you into a rage all to protect him.

But you were only a human and fighting demons was dangerous. “Next time, you tell me and I’ll fight them for the both of us,” Beel told you.

You nodded your head and Beel pulled out of the hug to ask, “Do you want to go eat? I bet you worked up an appetite.”

You appreciated the way Beel always made sure you were fed and taken care of.

Wait, were they talking about the same Y/N?

Part of Belphie wanted to bust out laughing at Lucifer and Diavolo’s faces. Surely they never thought you would be capable of starting a fight with a demon when this exchange program started.

However, when the other demon walked by, Belphie became concerned. They looked like they had just fought a war. Belphie’s main focus was now on making sure you were okay.

He quickly entered the room and let out a small breath of relief when he saw that you were okay. But, relief soon turned into confusion as he approached the bed. How did you come out with hardly anything more than some bloody knuckles?

“And I thought Satan was the hothead,” Belphie teased, giving you a small smile. You frowned at him in response before replying, “I had a bad day.”

Belphie let out a small snort at your words. “I don’t think having a bad day is a good enough reason to beat someone to a pulp,” Belphie replied.

You stayed silent, not wanting to give him your reason. “Come on, what’d they do?” Belphie asked curiously. 

“They talked bad about you,” you replied, avoiding his gaze. Belphie was surprised, to say the least. You did all this because that demon decided to smack talk? And about him nonetheless.

“My hero,” Belphie joked, and you rolled your eyes. In reality, Belphie was flattered that you cared enough about him to defend him. And he was glad that you didn’t get injured in the fight.

“Well, once Lucifer is done with the ten-hour lecture, I guess I have no choice but to take care of you. Since you fought for me and all,” Belphie stated and you only further pouted at him. His sarcastic nature was getting on your last nerve right now.

Belphie could see his quips weren’t amusing you, so he put his hands up in mock defeat before pulling you into a hug.

“Thank you,” he finally said as you rested your head against his chest. “You’re welcome,” you replied and Belphie couldn’t help but smile.

As soon as Lucifer was done with his scolding, he would make sure to give you lots of cuddles.

[ceilidho]

take me home, country road

[ao3]

You have nothing on your person apart from a hastily packed suitcase and the dress you came into town wearing, on the run from trouble back home. Too bad John's missing a bride that matches your description. Or: the 1800s (mistaken) mail order bride au (chapter 13)

first chapter >> last chapter

-

You could just tell him. 

You consider it at least once a day, particularly in the mornings when John sits up on his side of the bed and hesitates briefly before rising to his feet and going downstairs to start breakfast. You can feel the way he wants to lean over and touch you, and the way he holds himself back. The way he pulls his hand back at the last second from where it hovers over your prone body.

He leaves you in bed with an ache in your stomach so deep that you swear it’ll swallow you whole. But you have no choice but to sigh and sit up as he shuffles around downstairs, the morning well on its way in. There’s nothing to do now but move forward.

The atmosphere in the house is tense. You walk on eggshells around each other, unsure of how to bridge the divide. The eggs jump in the pan and brown at the edges, and outside the feather reed sways in the breeze. You’re weary of each other and yet hardly capable of being apart.

Maybe that’s just on your end. 

You’ve taken to watching him from afar in recent days. In the absence of his physical touch, which comes sparingly now, his hands always curled into fists like he’s holding himself back from reaching out and touching you, you’ve resorted to the only thing left to you: the visual realm. That’s what you glut yourself on now, and while it doesn’t fill the hole in you, it soothes the ache. 

You watch him with the horses in the paddock, always confident and sure-footed with them. Suspenders straining against the muscle of his back and his shoulders, sweat running in rivulets down his back, the sun golden on his face. At dinner, he collapses into his chair, exhaustion written into every corner of his being, and you drag your eyes over the jut of his stomach, the layer of fat over his muscled core. Hairy forearms braced against the table while he eats (no manners, that one). 

Any thought of bolting in the night now seems unwise. Your previous aspirations of freedom seem foolhardy in the light of day. You give it some consideration. Say you had succeeded in escaping—now where would you be? Alone wandering the mountains, parched and starving? Drinking from the ravine? Eating poisonous berries and hawthorn leaves in desperation to have something in your belly? Or hogtied in some bandit’s tent, enduring a fate worse than starvation or death? 

You shudder to think of it. 

In the days since John brought you home, you haven’t seen hide nor hair of Graves, nor anyone else in pursuit of a woman from back east. No bounty hunters, no officers of the law, no rogue agents. It’s as if they came, found nothing, and simply wandered on through.

You should’ve just waited them out. It’s clear now, what you should’ve done, but who can argue with the past? You’re sick of telling yourself that there might’ve been another way. It doesn’t change the way things are now. 

There’s nothing to do now but move forward.

The routine is the same. You head into town every morning and try to say as few words to each other as possible. You glance at each other when the other isn’t looking. The glances grow longer with the days, the stubborn sun refusing to set until well into the evening hours, and your own eyes refusing to part from his form. When you catch him watching you in turn, his eyes are always heady, filled with something like longing.

Outside, the sky is cornflower blue; clouds bulge and drift away. 

Life returns to some degree of normalcy, despite the sense of something unresolved hovering in the air. John’s deputies come over again for supper, and with them they bring better table manners this time. At least Soap doesn’t belch at the dinner table and Kyle leaves his hat at the door. Simon is taciturn as always, but that comes now as a comfort.

The men play cards in the living room until even the fireflies go to sleep, until the night is a thin paste spread over the world, the sharp edge of the knife scraping over the craggy limestone peaks and ridges and spreading it evenly. You go to bed alone, the bedroom door cracked open enough to see the flicker of lamplight against the wall, their shadows weaving in and out of it. 

He must come to bed at some point because his side of the bed is warm when you wake up the next morning. You put your hand there to soak up his warmth until you can’t excuse lying in bed any longer. Breakfast is, again, quiet, but you feel the compulsion to break the silence bubbling up in your chest. You think if he stares at you even a moment longer, you’ll have no choice but to belt it out. 

The brittle morning is interrupted by the arrival of one of John’s deputies. When Simon rips open the door and barges into the house, you nearly scream, watching with wide eyes as he charges towards the back, looking for John. You flit over to the window to watch him go. He finds John out back mucking the stalls in the stable and there’s a brief moment of intense conversation before you watch as John throws the pitchfork against the wall and hurriedly shuts the stables up, following Simon back towards the house. 

It’s a flurry of motion after that, John throwing on his clothes haphazardly, not even bothering to properly button up his shirt. You unconsciously follow him up the stairs to the bedroom.

“John?” you ask, uncertainly. 

He doesn’t answer you right away. The tension creeps up the length of your back the longer he goes without responding, his mouth set in a flat line. 

“John?” you repeat, more force behind your words this time. “What’s wrong?” 

“Passenger train up east is about to be robbed,” John finally grunts out in reply, checking his rifle to see if it’s loaded. “Simon got word.”

“How’d he know before it even happened?” you ask, stuck on conversation because you unconsciously want to delay the inevitable. Your heart pounds hard in your chest, images of gunfire and bloodbaths searing the backs of your eyelids. 

“Informant. He’s got ‘em all over the county.”

Not once does he slow down or pause to take a breath. You follow him back downstairs and through the house, watching anxiously as he loads his gun and tightens the belt of bullets around his waist. He plucks his hat from where it sits hung up beside the door and then exits out of the house, you trailing along helplessly behind him. The porch creaks ominously under his feet as he makes his way down the stairs towards the horses, where Simon already has John’s other horse saddled up and ready to go.

“When will you—” You can’t finish it. It hangs uselessly in your mouth. He doesn’t answer you. 

You follow him to the horses but stumble to a halt when he reaches them first, taking over from Simon and fixing the straps in place. Simon gives you a curt nod when your eyes meet before turning to his horse and heaving himself up onto it briskly, obviously in a rush to get going. 

John turns to you when the straps are fixed in place and he has one foot in the stirrups, brows furrowed deep enough to accentuate all the lines in his forehead. He gestures warningly at you with a finger. “You stay here, you hear me?”

Your brows furrow, affronted at the command. “Excuse me?”

“I don’t fancy havin’ to chase after you for a second time, but I will if you try anything funny while I’m gone.”

“Well, you just see here now—”

“You heard me, darlin’—”

“Price,” Simon growls, cutting him off, and it takes you by surprise to see his usual phlegmatic disposition traded in for something choleric. He’s never been one to talk back or act insubordinately, more of a guard dog than a deputy sometimes. His mouth is set in a hard line though, betraying the tension coiled in his bones. 

John nods and hauls himself up onto his horse.

“You be good while I’m gone,” John says, casting you one last parting glance.

You screw your lips into a scowl. “Don’t you dare die out there.”

That somehow gets a laugh out of him, as jagged as it is. It makes your stomach twist, the goodbye stagnant on your lips. You refuse to say it.

John’s horse whinnies when he pulls on the reins. He gives a sharp whistle, jolting it into motion, and you watch as he circles around and follows Simon down the path, their horses kicking up dust behind them. 

You stand there until their horses disappear over the horizon. Then you linger a little longer.

It dawns on you that John hadn’t said goodbye either. That has to count for something.

Still, you dwell on it over the next hour, hardly able to keep your breakfast down. Any lingering frustration melts away into dread the longer you think about John confronting a train full of armed robbers, his deputies accompanying him or not. The shotguns loaded and strapped to their backs told you enough about what they expected to encounter. The thought makes you shudder.

You try to distract yourself with chores, but that hardly helps. All you can think about when scrubbing the floors is whether someone will have to do the same on the train. You know how hard it is to clean up blood.  

Kate comes over later that morning while you’re still pinning the bed sheets and linens to the clothesline. The sound of horse hooves beating against the dirt elicits your attention first, and when you look down the dirt path leading into town, you see her riding towards you on horseback. A dapple grey gelding, bigger than Buttercup but leaner than the horse that John had chased you down on.

“Morning!” she shouts, still far enough away for it to be necessary. Your hand goes up slowly in a wave, half-shielding your eyes from the sun.

She comes up the path quickly, dismounting before her horse has even come to a standstill. It speaks to an element of comfort on a horse that you haven't acquired yet. Jealousy licks a hot tongue up your innards. 

“Morning,” you greet tentatively. “Not that I don’t appreciate spending time with you, but don’t you have a store to run?”

Kate shrugs her shoulders, sauntering up the walkway. “Folks chip in when they have to—I’ve got plenty of people in town willing to watch the shop for me. Besides, what’s the point of owning a business if you can’t take a day off every now and then?”

You frown, looking at Kate a bit suspiciously. “Did he tell you to come babysit me?” 

You don’t specify who, but it’s obvious enough.

Her lips flatten. “I offered.”

All that does is stoke the flames of your ire. “They seemed in a hurry to leave. Didn’t think John would have time to stop by and ask you to watch his wayward wife.” 

“John didn’t do anything. Simon mentioned that he was coming here to get your man.”

“My man,” you mumble a bit sardonically. Still, her words make you let go of some of your anger. “So he didn’t ask you to come?”

Kate shakes her head, lips finally curling up into a half-grin. “No, ma’am. Thought I’d just get Miles to mind the shop and come give you some company.”

Your frown keeps getting deeper. “Don’t ma’am me, Kate. And I don’t need your company if you’ve just come to make fun of me.”

“Hand to heart—I came only to make sure you were alright.” Her smile grows directly inverse to your frown. “Give me a minute to put the horses in the paddock and I’ll be right back.”

You could almost kiss her for that though. You’d been dreading the thought of having to bring Buttercup out into the paddock on your own, but the thought of leaving her in the stables all day had also felt immeasurably cruel. Since getting lost with her in the mountains, you haven’t felt confident enough to be around her on your own. At least Kate’s presence takes some of that stress away. 

Not all of it though. Stress eats away at you as the day goes on. You can’t seem to go long without returning to the thought of John being shot or stabbed by one of the bandits on the train. Your mind keeps turning to the image of him lying lifeless on the floor, blood seeping out of a wound in his chest, eyes glazed over and far away. 

You chew on your nails until they tear. Kate smacks your hands when she notices.

It’s well past dark by the time John comes home. You notice his arrival first as a flicker of light when you happen to glance out the window. You’d long ago pulled up a chair to settle down beside the window and wait, Kate in a chair on the other side of the room near the oil lamp, flicking through her book, and with the waiting had come a knot in your chest tighter than a fist. A cancerous lump metastasising in your belly, spreading out into every corner of you. 

And then someone riding up the path towards the house holds up a lamp that swings with the rhythm of their approach. Your heart all but stops in your chest, fingers halting in the middle of knitting. It beats a furious frenzy now, alert again, alive in your chest. The needles clatter to the floor when you rise to your feet, dashing over to the door to swing it wide open.

“I suppose he’s—” Kate says, but you don’t hear the rest, already gathering up your skirt to hustle down the porch steps and meet him halfway, heart lodged in your throat. 

When he notices you hurrying out the door and down the path towards him, John brings his horse to a standstill. 

Shadows engulf his form until you get close enough for the lamplight to slash across John’s face, illuminating the deep, sunken troughs under his eyes. He looks exhausted. The top button of his shirt is missing, perhaps ripped out in whatever altercation he’d gone to stop. Your eyes flit over him, looking for any sign of blood or injury, and you find it along the grooves of his knuckles, the skin there torn and bloodied. He hadn’t even bothered to wrap his hands in gauze before coming home. 

John smiles down at you. “Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”

That’s almost enough to make you sway on your feet, lightheaded. You hadn’t realized the toll his sudden absence had taken on you, or the worry that’d been festering in your belly, but as it drains out of you, it almost brings you to your knees. 

“Are you well?” you ask, throat tight. 

He doesn’t answer you. Instead, he shifts his weight and swings his leg over his horse to dismount, eyes on you the whole time. You can hardly pull your eyes off him, not even for a second. His horse, well-trained enough to not wander off without its rider astride it, huffs out a breath but otherwise remains in place while John walks towards you. 

Your heart jumps in your chest when he lifts a hand to cup your cheek and drops a firm kiss to the center of your forehead, the heat of his kiss suffusing through you. The hairs on your arms and the back of your neck lift. Your arms erupt in gooseflesh.

“Never better,” he says when he pulls back. You can feel the warmth of his breath against your forehead when he speaks. It makes everything from your collarbone up go hot.

You hear the door open again. “Hi John,” Kate calls from the door.

“Hi Laswell,” John calls back to her, but his eyes never leave yours.

A heavy silence pregnant with meaning passes. You’re not sure what to read into it, but reading’s never been your strong suit. 

“I’ll see myself out then,” Kate says. “Leave you two lovebirds to it.” Her words make you bristle, but even that isn’t enough to pull your eyes off your husband. 

“Don’t look so put out—Soap’s just down the path waiting to take you home,” John scoffs. Sure enough, when you peek around him, you notice the slight flicker of light that burns at about the height of a man sitting astride a horse.

Kate rolls her eyes. “So chivalry’s not dead. Thank the Lord for small mercies.”

You don’t hear her go around the side of the house, but she must because she comes back a few minutes later with her horse, lead in hand. Her goodbye goes unnoticed by you or John, barely audible over the sound of the crickets in the bushes. You come back to yourself only when her horse takes off down the path towards Soap, and by then your voice is too faint, the words evaporating off your tongue. 

The moment finally bursts when John shifts his weight and winces. You frown. “You’re hurt.”

He huffs. “Just a sore rib. Nothing worth fussin’ over.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Your eyes flick down to his bloodied knuckles. “Your hands need tending to anyway. We should get inside.”

John nods. “I’ll put Chiron away and then come in.”

“Chiron?”

“This boy here.” His horse chuffs when John pats his neck lightly, smoothing a hand down the length. It slots into your mind—another piece of this place assimilated into your being. Another name you’ll never be able to shake. 

You hurry back inside while he takes Chiron around the side of the house towards the stables, the lamp still swinging from his hand. It’s how you track him from the window. It’s too late now for them, but you remember staring off into the distance earlier, watching the fireflies flicker in and out of view, gold will-o-wisps hovering over the fields. Now it’s quiet, and nothing outside moves. Even the moon hides behind dark clouds. 

You wait by the window until you see John come out of the stables, headed back towards the house. Only then do you exhale. 

He sits at a chair in the living room and spreads his legs, forcing you to step between them to get close enough to treat him. You bandage his torn knuckles under the light of the oil lamp in the corner of the room. John doesn’t so much as flinch when you clean them, gently inspecting the wounds to remove any debris that might’ve gotten in. He’s a good patient; hardly makes a sound as you wrap the gauze around his knuckles. 

“Do you want me to call the doctor in the morning?” you ask, then start a bit at the sound of your own voice, inexplicably loud in the relative silence of the room. 

John shakes his head. “Don’t bother. Wasn’t anything too serious.”

You frown. “Are you sure? I don’t want to risk it getting infected—”

He turns his hands over in your loose hold, curling his fingers around yours. You blink at the stark contrast between his and your hands. His fingers are thicker than yours, swollen at the joints, and the skin of his palms is calloused, rough to the touch. You’ve felt them over every part of you—loose at your waist, gripping the nape of your neck, prying your thighs apart. Holding your hand. Sunk deep into your quim. 

You can recall the feel of his touch from memory now. 

“It’s not that bad, darlin’,” he rasps, dragging his thumb back and forth over your fingers. “Y’did a good job fixin’ me up. You’re a good little nurse.”

“I’m no substitute for proper medical care,” you snip, still frowning. 

“Ah, if I die, I die.”

“That’s not funny,” you snap, abruptly incensed, and the joking twist of his lips unfurls at that, the creases around his eyes smoothing out. He looks at you like there’s something new writ large on your face.

There’s a tremble in your lower lip and a tremor in your hands that you hadn’t noticed until now. Once you notice it, it’s impossible to shake; your lip wobbles when you have to pinch back your tears. A stubborn one nearly leaks out until you sniff and blink it away. 

“Now where’s this all coming from?” John asks, voice pitched low and intimate, just for the two of you. 

His voice laps over your bones like bourbon on the rocks, glistening amber in the setting sun. Except it’s dark now and there’s not a drink in the world that could dilute the emotions welling up in you. You’d be a blubbery drunk anyway; you’ve always been something of a sad sack. 

“I thought you might come back hurt,” you whisper. “And you did.” 

His thumb strokes over your unblemished knuckles and he lifts your hands to his mouth to kiss the very same spot he just brushed. “I’m sorry to make you worry, darlin’. I meant nothing by my words. We’ll go to the doctor tomorrow.”

The bur of his beard tickles the back of your hand. His acquiescence brings some of your candor back. “Well, only if you want to.”

“Don’t get smart with me, wife—”

He stops short when you giggle, his eyes widening infinitesimally. You wonder if it’s the first time he’s ever heard you laugh. It’s not something you can help though. The joy spills up from you unbidden. 

John sighs. “We’ve been making a right mess of things, haven’t we?”

You go to say something, but all that comes out is a soft hum of agreement. 

It’s in front of you again. An opportunity to tell him everything, to make things right. To land in the soft sediment of truth and come out unscathed and better for it. All you need do is open your mouth and say it; say that there was a man back east that tried something untoward and you did what you had to in order to protect yourself. You think on some level John would understand that. 

Again you open your mouth. Again nothing comes out.

There’s love and then there’s thinness, words preserved in amber. He takes your whole world in his hands and you want to say, is it safe here? Can I call this a home?

There's love and then there's a heaving mass of recollection. It is an ancient thought: to love and be loved in verity, in one's own sphere of understanding. You don’t yet know if that’s possible for you, but you’re starting to think that maybe here is something close to that. Something gentle like wildflowers springing up from beside train tracks, the sprawling emptiness of the plains on either side. 

Still, it is not enough to make you tell the truth. Maybe now the consequences are different. You think less of a jail cell and more of being deprived of this man that holds your hands tenderly and looks up at you with such clear affection. 

If love has a way of speaking, it is marbles in the mouth; it masticates its own words. It chokes them back out of fear, out of longing to keep things right. 

So instead, you ask, “Can we just put it behind us and move on?”

John lifts a hand and slides it around the back of your neck, drawing you in for a kiss that makes your heart melt in your chest, caramel-rich. You moan into his mouth when his tongue traces over your lips, hands dropping to sink into the lapels of his shirt, pulling him closer to you.

When he pulls back, the folds around his eyes are crinkled, lips pulled up into a fond smile. “Already forgotten.” 

You exhale. This is reconciliation. It comes home limping and bruised, but it comes home to you. 

[parkerslatte]

Clouded | Part One

Eris Vanserra x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 4.7k

Warnings: blood and injury. mentions of torture. beron in general.

Summary: Y/N works as a servant in the Forest House when an unfortunate encounter with Eris leaves her without her job with no valid reason. When she is at her small house, Eris shows up covered in blood. Truths Y/N has wanted to know for years come to light.

A Court of Thorns and Roses Masterlist

Part One | Part Two

•••

Y/N tried to carry herself with as much grace as she could muster. At least if she looked like she belonged, people would respect her more. Her servant clothes were ratty and torn, Beron had no care in the world to use his money to supply the servants who weren’t typically seen around the Forest House in a lavish uniform. The only reason Y/N was walking around the house was because her friend had gotten sick so Y/N took on her duties as well as her own. 

The hall was empty when Y/N entered it. No voices were to be heard so Y/N relaxed her shoulders. All she needed to do was get to Beron’s personal kitchens and collect all of the pots and pans to be swapped out with new ones. The only thing Y/N wanted to avoid on her way there was—

She collided with a firm chest and before Y/N knew it, she crashed to the floor, knocking all of the air out of her. 

“Of course it would be you I run into,” a voice sneered. 

Y/N finally looked at the person she collided with and her worry turned into anger. “Out of everyone, why have I been cursed to see your face this early in the morning.”

Eris rolled his eyes. “What are you doing in this part of the house? The last I heard you work four floors below where no one is witness to your unsightly appearance.”

“I am doing my friend's work while she is sick,” Y/N answered. “I guess it is a foreign concept to you. Both work and friends.”

Eris offered a sarcastic smile in return. “I see your comebacks have changed.”

“I see you have changed, for the worse,” Y/N muttered. 

Y/N remembered centuries ago when she once considered Eris a friend— perhaps even more. She thought he was the most amazing person ever. What a huge misjudge of character. 

Y/N held out her hand. “The least you can do is help me up.”

Eris looked around the hallway for a brief moment. Y/N sighed. Of course he would look before being caught touching a simple servant girl. 

The moment their hands touched, Y/N gripped onto Eris’s hand tightly before pulling harshly. The heir of the Autumn Court was swept off his feet and came tumbling to the ground. 

Y/N only intended for him to fall down next to her— not on top of her. Eris’s elbows were braced on either side of Y/N’s head as he saved himself from his entire weight pressing on top of her. His body was perfectly slotted between her thighs. His face hovered over hers, so close she could feel his breath brush her face like a gentle caress. 

Y/N met Eris’s eyes and her heart skipped a beat. She had forgotten how beautiful the colour of his eyes were. 

“Y/N, I—“

Footsteps echoed down the hallway and Eris rushed to get up from Y/N. The moment he was on his feet and straightening his jacket, Beron walked around the corner. 

Eris looked down at Y/N, a scowl on his face. “Don’t ever touch me again.”

Beron cleared his throat. “Eris, is this vermin bothering you?”

“No,” Eris said quickly. “She isn’t.”

“But, you mentioned—“

“I will escort her out, Father,” Eris said and gripped Y/N’s upper arm. 

Before Y/N could say anything, Eris dragged her down the hallway and out of sight. Once Y/N was sure they were alone, Y/N pulled her arm from Eris’s grip. 

“Eris, get off me!” Y/N exclaimed. “I need to get back and do my job.”

Eris only gripped her arm once more and pulled her into a small storage room. He pressed his back against the door. 

“Eris,” Y/N said. “I need to get back to work.”

“No you’re not, Y/N,” Eris said. “You are leaving.”

Y/N scoffed. “I am not leaving. If this is just for pulling you down to the floor and harming your ego—“

“It isn’t about that, Y/N!” Eris snapped. “But you are leaving and never coming back here again. If I ever see you in this house ever again, I will banish you from this court myself.”

Y/N’s heart dropped. “Eris…”

“Go, Y/N,” Eris said. “I don’t want to ever see you again.”

Eris opened the door and gestured for her to step out. Y/N followed, her gaze cast down to the floor. 

“I am sorry, Eris,” Y/N muttered. “But I need to keep this job. I cannot afford my house without it.”

“That is not my problem, Y/N,” Eris replied, straightening his jacket once more. 

“Please, Eris,” Y/N begged. “Out of everyone in this house, you are the one who knows of my situation.”

There seemed to be a flash of regret across Eris’s face but it was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by a sneer. “Y/N, I do not care about your situation. If your father were any smarter then he wouldn’t have gotten himself in debt before he passed, leaving you to pay it all off.”

Y/N’s eyes glistened with tears. “I hate you, Eris Vanserra.”

“I hear that a lot,” Eris said, looking away from Y/N. “It doesn’t sound any different when you say it. Leave, Y/N, before I need to force you.”

Eris sauntered down the hall, leaving Y/N alone in the centre of the grand hall, tears falling down her cheeks. 

***

The following day, Y/N spent hours looking for jobs in the nearest village. Conveniently no one was hiring. The moment she was home, Y/N spilled out all of her savings onto her bed. Although she had already paid over half of her father’s debt, she still had a long way to go. Paying only half had taken her nearly a century with the wage she was on. 

Y/N sighed and slumped down into the small tattered armchair. She loved her father dearly, she always had and she grieved him more than she cared to admit. But she hated him sometimes. She hated him for leaving her with the burden of his debts. 

Before she and her father were cast out in the Autumn Court, her father was well respected amongst the nobles and often spent his time with Beron and his other advisors. He often brought Y/N along and it was there she first met Eris. The heir was an only child at the time so was often bored of playing on his own. It didn’t take them long to form a friendship. They were attached at the hip…until the long awaited consequences of her fathers debts caught up to him. 

Beron offered her father a job in the house to earn money to pay his debts, probably the only kindness Y/N saw the High Lord give at the time. Only it wasn’t a kindness at all, it was simply a death sentence. Beron was well aware of her fathers debts amongst the other nobles and allowed him to fight in his army, completely untrained and unarmed– leaving Y/N completely alone. 

At first she thought she could rely on Eris and she could, until his brother came alone when they were twenty. It was as if a switch flipped within Eris. He went from Y/N’s best friend to someone she hated and despised. He was cruel and cold, despite the fire coursing through his veins. Y/N hated that she still saw him occasionally around the Forest House…well, that wouldn’t be a problem now. 

Y/N tried not to cry as she looked at the money on the bed. She barely had enough to pay for her food for the week. There were times where Y/N debated running away, she debated leaving Prythian completely, somewhere where Autumn had no ties. She could start a new life– a happier one. 

But something always pulled her back. Y/N didn’t know what but she needed to find out. 

A loud thump echoed through her small house. Y/N stilled and didn’t move. What if it was someone trying to claim their money now that they knew she wasn’t protected by the walls of the Forest House? What if they weren’t there for money at all?

Another loud thump, this time more desperate. 

Y/N carefully slid her dagger out from its hiding place and slowly walked to her front door. 

Another thump more desperate than the last. 

“Y/N…” Eris’s voice weakly called out. “Please…let me in.”

Y/N walked faster over to her front door and opened it with a scowl. 

Her dagger clattered to the floor. 

She let out a gasp. 

Eris collapsed into her arms.

***

Y/N panicked as she rushed around Eris to clean up all of the blood covering his body. And from the scent of it, every single drop was his. The rise and fall of his chest was shallow as she cut away his white shirt. Well she assumed it was originally white. 

His pale torso was coated with a layer of blood, some had dried but most of it seemed fresh. The deeper wounds still bled freely. 

Y/N wasn’t sure what to do. She could only heal small wounds and gashes, that was only what her father had taught her. This was extreme but they were too far away from a proper healer. By the time they got there, Eris would be dead. 

“Come on, Y/N,” she muttered to herself. “You can do this.”

She worked on stopping the blood flow from the large open gash in his side. She wiped away all of the dried blood surrounding the area. The gash wasn’t as large as she originally thought but it was deep– too deep for her to deal with. 

Tears pricked Y/N’s eyes. Not only would she be an outcast from the village because of the debt she owed but now she would be an outcast because she let the heir to the court die. 

“Eris,” Y/N whispered. “Please stay with me. Don’t you dare die on me. Not today.”

***

Most of the larger wounds on Eris’s body were cleaned and were slowly beginning to heal. The smaller cuts and bruises were only faintly there now. Y/N’s hands were still stained red from Eris’s blood. She hadn’t moved from her position on her coffee table since she finished sewing up the gaping wound in his side. Y/N was sure she had never been so scared in her life. What would have happened if she wasn’t able to help Eris? There were instances where she was sure he was going to die right there on her couch. Y/N shook her head, banishing the thought from her mind. Eris was alive, the clear rise and fall of his chest gave that away, no matter how shallow it was. 

Despite her uncomfortable position atop the coffee table, Y/N didn’t move, didn’t blink as she watched Eris. His wounds had slowly begun to heal but she still did not trust her own healing abilities fully. If any of the wounds got infected whilst they healed, Y/N didn’t want to wake to Eris dead on her couch. 

Y/N let out a yawn but continued to keep her eyes open. 

***

When Eris finally awoke, it was to a shout of pain. He shot up from his position on the couch, ripping open the wound Y/N had so carefully stitched. His hand flung to his side, pressing down to slow the bleeding. 

Y/N ran into the room, panic flooding her eyes. Eris was confused. Why was Y/N here? His heart beat faster as he surveyed the room. It had been many, many years since he had last been inside this small cabin but he recognised it instantly. Eris only began to panic even more. 

“Of course you wake when I was getting a drink for myself,” Y/N said, sitting down on the table in front of him. “And you ripped your stitches open.”

“Y/N,” Eris gasped. “What am I doing here?”

Y/N wiped her hands down her face. As she shuffled closer, he could identify the dark circles under her eyes that he knew were not there the last time he had seen her. And as she shuffled closer he only now noticed his lack of shirt, bare skin exposed to the air. Shame instantly rose within Eris. 

“You turned up here yesterday evening,” Y/N said, a haunted look in her eyes as her gaze drifted to the side. “You were covered in blood– your blood.”

Eris gulped down air as he pressed on his wound harder, he could feel the blood begin to slither between his fingers as he tried his best to keep it within his body. 

“Here,” Y/N said, the softest Eris had heard her voice in years. “Let me help.”

“You’ve done enough,” Eris said, letting his facade and walls turn to steel. “I can deal with it from here.”

The moment Eris went to stand, he collapsed instantly. Y/N rushed to his side and helped him settle back on the couch. The bloodstained couch. It was a wonder how he was even alive.

“Let me help you, Eris,” Y/N said, more firmly this time. A tone he was far more used to.

“Why?” Eris scoffed. “Because you care about me?”

“No,” Y/N said. If she had any idea of the dagger that word sent to his heart. “I don’t need the heir of Autumn to die on my couch. I’m already an outcast in the village already.”

Eris's eyes softened. “I’m sorry, Y/N.“

“I’m glad I could help you Eris, but why are you here? You threatened me with banishment not even a day ago and now you show up here begging for help,” Y/N said. 

Eris sighed. “I don’t know why I ended up here, Y/N.” It was a lie but Y/N didn’t need to know the truth— at least not yet. 

“Then what happened? You nearly died on me multiple times,” Y/N said, her voice catching. Eris fought the urge to reach out. 

“I can’t say, Y/N,” Eris said, looking at his bloody hands. 

Y/N scoffed. “Eris, you show up on my doorstep close to death and you cannot tell me what happened?”

Eris squeezed his eyes shut. “I can’t, Y/N.”

“You can’t or you won’t?” 

“Both,” Eris said, meeting her eyes again. 

Y/N sighed. “Let me see your wound back up.”

“It’s fine, Y/N. I need to leave,” Eris said. 

He tried to stand but the moment he tried, he grunted in pain. His side felt as if it were on fire. 

“Eris, you need to have this stitched again,” Y/N said, shuffling closer. “It won’t heal properly otherwise.”

Eris held her gaze. He could see the gleam of the unshed tears lingering in her eyes. Eris knew they weren’t for him. They were because of him. If he had died within her house, he didn’t even want to imagine what the rest of the village would say about her. He didn’t want to imagine what his own father would do to her. Eris only knew it would be far worse than what was done to him. 

“Fine,” Eris said and allowed himself to pull his hand away from the wound. It was still bleeding but not as much as before. 

Silently, Y/N moved to his side, sitting down on the dried blood. Eris cringed. That was his blood covering the couch. It was his blood covering her dress. 

Eris could barely feel the needle stitching his skin back together. All he did was stare forwards at the small table in the centre of the room. It was the same table as the last time he was in this house, Eris noticed. 

***

511 Years Ago

Eris laughed as Y/N pulled him into her house. It was late at night and the house was empty, her father was working late and Y/N took it upon herself to drag Eris back here. 

“Y/N, why have you dragged me here?” A twenty year old Eris asked as a nineteen year old Y/N dragged him down to sit on the couch. 

“It was your birthday a few days ago,” Y/N said. “And I know that you didn’t do much for it because your mother and father have been fussing over your mothers pregnancy. So…”

Y/N reached into her small bag and pulled out a small box. She handed it to Eris. 

“You didn’t need to get me anything,” Eris said. 

“Well I did,” Y/N said, casually holding onto his arm. 

Eris slowly opened the box and was greeted by the sight of the most beautiful ring. 

“I had it engraved!” Y/N said excitedly. “I know how much you love to be around me…”

Eris rolled his eyes but didn’t object. 

“So,” Y/N continued. “You will always have a piece of me with you. I asked for the gem in my necklace to be split into two.”

Eris read the engraved text on the inner part of the ring. 

“For the days you feel alone…”

“I have a matching one,” Y/N said, taking her own ring out of her pocket. 

“All you need to do is touch the gem embedded in the metal and I will feel it,” Y/N said. “The same with me.”

Y/N slipped her own ring onto her finger. It was thinner than Eris’s ring yet just as beautiful. She lightly ran her finger over the gem and Eris felt his ring heat up the smallest amount. 

“Y/N…” Eris said, looking at the ring in his finger. “How much did you spend on this?”

Y/N shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

Eris looked at Y/N, many emotions overwhelmed him to the point where he couldn’t find the words to say. Despite having a good relationship with his mother, she had never gotten him a meaningful present before. His father never really cared about birthdays so Eris rarely even got a ‘Happy Birthday’ from his father. 

But this gift from Y/N trumped any other gift he had received before, or will ever receive. He felt a tug and his breath was gone for a brief moment. 

“Thank you, Y/N,” Eris said, his finger gliding over the small gem. 

Y/N smiled. “You’re welcome. Now you will always know I am beside you.”

Eris couldn’t think of anything to do but pull her into him, wrapping his arms around her body. Y/N’s arms snaked around his neck, embracing him tightly. 

The scent of her overwhelmed Eris. Her scent was once he could always pick out in a crowd of a thousand. It was comforting for him, it made him feel safe, loved. 

“Y/N…” Eris began, afraid for the words that were about to come out of his mouth. “I love you.”

Y/N’s body went rigid before she pulled away from Eris, an indescribable expression on her face. Eris’s heart sank. 

He quickly avoided her gaze and shuffled uncomfortably on the couch. “I’m sorry. Just forget I said anything.”

Just as he went to stand up, Y/N gently clasped his hand. “You love me?”

Eris met her gaze once more. “I do. I have for a while now, I just didn’t want to complicate things. I didn’t want to lose you as a friend.”

Y/N shook her head. “You haven’t lost me as a friend, and you never will.”

Eris offered a stiff smile. “Well I would prefer it if we just completely forget that this ever happened between us.”

“Why?”

Eris shuffled. “Because you don’t return my feelings.”

Y/N smiled, soft and gentle. “I never said that.”

Eris’s heart skipped a beat. 

Y/N laced her fingers with his. “I love you too, Eris. I never said anything because I thought you would never return my feelings.”

A sigh of relief slipped past Eris’s lips. “You love me back?”

“Of course I do,” Y/N said, positioning her body closer to Eris. “How could I not?”

Eris smiled. “I honestly don’t know what to do.”

“I do,” Y/N said and soon enough her lips were pressed firmly against Eris’s. 

***

“Eris,” Y/N said. “Eris!”

Eris snapped out of his thoughts and turned his attention away from the table in front of him. “Yes?”

“You’ve been staring blankly at the table ever since I began stitching up your wound,” Y/N said. 

Eris looked down and noticed she had already finished. He barely felt it at all. “Thank you.”

Y/N nodded before moving away from him. Despite the fire coursing through his veins, Eris suddenly felt cold. 

“Now are you going to tell me what happened?” Y/N asked as she wiped the blood from her hands. 

“No,” Eris replied, grunting in pain as she shifted positions. 

“Still so stubborn,” Y/N muttered.

“I need to leave,” Eris said. “I don’t want my mother wondering where I disappeared to. And I have other matters to finish.”

“You are not going anywhere,” Y/N said. “Not until you are fully healed anyway.”

“I am leaving, Y/N,” Eris said.

“You can barely stand without causing pain,” Y/N commented.

“I can,” Eris said. 

Y/N folded her arms across her chest. “Prove it.”

“Fine,” Eris said.

This time Eris did manage to get to his feet but the pain all over his body made him sway in place. He felt as if he were being beaten all over again. 

“See,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’m fine.”

Y/N rolled her eyes. “Sit back down, Eris.”

“I’m not staying here, Y/N,” Eris said as she took an excruciating step towards the front door. “I can’t.”

“Why? Afraid being seen with a servant girl will ruin your image?” Y/N spat.”

“Don’t,” Eris hissed.

“Don’t what?” Y/N said, cocking an eyebrow. 

“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” Eris said. “You are so much more than that.”

“As if you believe that, Eris,” Y/N scoffed. “For years you have looked down upon me for being a worker in the Forest House. You have sneered at me in the halls. You have constantly belittled me whenever someone sees you talking to me. You act like I am the scum of the whole of Prythian. I can’t believe I loved you all those years ago.”

Loved. 

Past tense.

The one word cut Eris deeper than any other wound on his body. Of course he already knew that Y/N no longer loved him but it didn't hurt any less to hear it come from her mouth. 

“I have my reasons for everything, Y/N,” Eris said, closing his eyes, wishing he were anywhere else. 

“It would help a lot for you to justify them,” Y/N said, her voice cracking. “You were my first kiss, my first love, my first everything. I always imagined what our life would be like together. I pictured it every day. The day my fathers debts were made public, you comforted me, you stayed with me for those first few weeks when it was the hardest. It was in those moments when I realised how deep my love went for you. Everyone else abandoned me, but you stayed.”

“But the moment your brother Tycho was born, everything suddenly shifted. You became a completely different person. You became cruel, distant and cold, not just toward me but to everyone who was close to you,” Y/N said, her eyes brimming with tears. “You became a stranger to me. I thought it was just the stress and gave you the benefit of the doubt but the moment my father passed away and I heard you laugh with your father about it, I knew that beautiful heart inside your body had turned to stone.”

Eris squeezed his eyes shut. “I had my reasons.”

“As you’ve said, but I deserve to know the reason why the Eris standing before me right now, killed the male I was once in love with.” Y/N’s voice broke and Eris dreaded to find out what he would find if he opened his eyes. 

“I can’t–”

“That is bullshit, Eris,” Y/N exclaimed. “I deserve to know why the male bleeding in my living room replaced the one who I shared so much of myself with.”

Slowly, Eris opened his eyes. Tears were streaming down Y/N’s face. Eris’s heart clenched as he fought the instinctual urge to reach for her. 

“It was because of you,” Eris confessed, his voice barely above a whisper. “I did all of it to protect you from my father and my younger brothers, everything.”

“What do you mean?” Y/N asked. 

“I have already told you too much, Y/N,” Eris said. “I need to go before my father finds out where I am.”

As Eris turned, Y/N suddenly gasped. 

“Eris,” Y/N said. “Your back…”

He knew what she could see. The scars that littered his back were his own secret, one he preferred no one else knew about, not even his own mother. When Eris had received the beating from his father, he was shocked to discover that he wouldn’t be adding to the collection on his back, but on his torso and chest instead. 

“I told you I needed to protect you from my father,” Eris said before limping out of the small house. 

The moment the cold air hit his skin, Eris hissed in pain. He was more aware of every cut and wound on his body. 

“Eris, don’t walk away,” Y/N begged as she followed him.

“Y/N, go back inside,” Eris said. “And don’t ever talk to me again. I can’t let him anywhere near you.”

“At least stay until you are healed,” Y/N said. “Your power is drained. Are you really going to walk all the way to the Forest House from here? You could die in this cold.”

“Better out there than in your house,” Eris said, each step felt like a rain of daggers. 

“Eris, please just come back inside,” Y/N said. 

“Y/N, the longer I stay here, the more danger you are in,” Eris said. “My father has most likely already sent my brothers after me. I cannot be seen with you. It will only confirm his suspicions.”

“What suspicions?” Y/N asked.

The more Eris walked the more he could feel his energy drain. He dragged his feet along the path to the gate of Y/N’s garden. His legs began to get weaker and weaker and his head spun. He had lost too much blood to be up on his feet this fast. 

“Please, go back inside,” Eris muttered.

“No, what suspicions, Eris?” Y/N asked. 

“Please…” Eris said, feeling himself get weaker. 

He buckled under his own weight and fell onto the cobblestones below him. He could barely lift his arm up. The sound of Y/N’s quick footsteps echoed on the ground and she appeared in his vision. 

“Y/N,” Eris mumbled. “Please, just leave me here.”

“No,” Y/N said. “I told you to stay inside but you didn’t listen.”

“I can’t be seen with you,” Eris siad, his vision becoming blurred.

“I don’t care, I am not leaving you here to die. I won’t let you,” Y/N said.

“I can’t let you get close to me,” Eris whispered. “It was the only way to stop it.”

Eris couldn’t stop the words falling from his mouth. Everything he never wanted to say aloud was coming to light. 

“Stop what? You are not making any sense right now,” Y/N asked and Eris felt the warm caress of her hand on the side of his face. From what he could see, Y/N looked concerned, all the hatred for him had seemed to be wiped clean from her face. 

“Stop the bond snapping,” Eris mumbled, leaning into her touch. “You are my mate, Y/N.”

Eris’s eyes fluttered shut as he felt himself drift into unconsciousness. 

[iconicstoner]

love bites & apologies

gn!reader x jasper hale

words: 1960

summary: when Jasper accidentally leaves marks on y/n’s neck after kissing them, he has to figure out how to make it up to them and their parents.

“Sugar, you are so sweet,” Jasper’s words came out like a husky southern growl, just centimeters away from your face. Slowly, his hands push through your hair as his icy lips move down your neck. He sends a chill down your spine with the feeling of his cold touch, and yet your whole body feels hot with pleasure. Just as Jasper begins to pin you down, his lips still grazing your warm neck, the sound of someone clearing their throat startles both of you. The two of you turn to face the person quickly, and embarrassment adorns your face when you realize who caught you. Jasper releases the firm grip he had on you and raises his eyebrows at the towering lean figure standing in the doorway.

“Y’know, I can hear all your thoughts, and usually that would be helpful, but I don’t want to hear,” Edward pauses to glance between the two of you, “those thoughts.” Your face flushes with embarrassment, and Jasper’s would too, if he was still capable of it.

“I’ll have you know, from the moment you met Bella, I could feel every emotion you felt about her, and that was ten times worse. Do you know how awkward it is to feel lust emitting from the house, just to find out it’s coming from your brother?” A smirk is still etched onto Jasper’s face as he finishes drawing out the words with his charming Southern accent. Edward tenses with embarrassment, and he doesn’t say anything for a long time, considering what Jasper knows. Then, as he begins to look back between the couple sprawled out on Jasper's bed, he begins to laugh.

“Why is he doing that?” you ask in a low mumble. Jasper gives Edward a look of confusion, before turning to you. The second he sees you, his face drops, no longer smirking, and he is in utter shock.

“Oh, Emmett is gonna love this,” Edward says between laughs. Before Edward even finished his sentence Emmett was standing at his side with just the mention of his name. When he looked into the room, he burst into laughter too.

“Nice one, Jasper!” Emmett exclaims as he pats Jasper’s shoulder with intense force, almost knocking Jasper, who is in a trance-like state, over. “It’s like you’re all grown up. Quite the cowboy,” He says, sarcastically. Your confusion is palpable to the brothers, but before you can even ask, Edward is pointing a small handheld mirror at you, giving you a great view of your neck. It’s almost entirely purplish-red from all the places Jasper had been kissing you. You let out a gasp that causes all laughter to cease.

“I’d love to help you,” Edward said with a smile, almost as if he was enjoying this moment, “but since Vampires don’t have blood, we don’t have this problem.” As his brothers spoke, Jasper stood to the side, continuing to look down at you with a slight horror at the mistake he made.

“We could try makeup? I know Rosalie has a ton somewhere around here,” Emmett suggests, at least trying to be helpful.

“Going home with pasty white makeup all over your neck is almost more suspicious than just letting people see the hickeys,” Edward said to Emmett playfully. “And also, curfew is in fifteen minutes, so I’d hurry home,” Edward says to you, knowing this will only be worse if you also break your curfew.

Before you’d even had time to think of a plan, Jasper was already ushering you to the car. He raced down the slick asphalt to your house in the silver Jeep. The car was completely silent the whole drive, but Jasper kept a firm grip on your thigh with his right hand. Emmett and Edward were in the back, and as you pull into the driveway, you can only hope your parents won’t kill you.

“Hold on,” Jasper says, his cool hand touches your jaw, and he leans in to give you a soft, cold, longing kiss, “just in case it’s the last time,” he mumbles into your ear as he reluctantly pulls away from the kiss.

“They can’t ground me for as long as you're alive,” you remark playfully.

“Yes, but they can ground you for as long as you’re alive,” he says, with a sweet syrupy quality to his voice. His hand slowly and delicately traces down your jaw until it's back in his atmosphere again. You crave to grab his hand or to press his skin against yours for just one last second, but you know you can’t look like this and be late. You climb out of the Jeep, step inside your house, and close the door behind you, but Jasper doesn’t take the Jeep out of park.

“What are we doing, Jasper?” Emmett questions uneasily.

“Jasper wants to know what y/n’s parents are going to feel when they see what happened,” Edward explained, already knowing what Jasper was thinking, which was helpful because Jasper would give anything not to speak right now. No one said anything for a moment, but then Jasper tensed, sitting up a little straighter. Edward slumped back, seeming almost uncomfortable by what was happening. Emmett could tell this meant that your parents had noticed, and things didn’t seem good.

“I can feel their emotions. It’s so strong that I can hardly distort them, at least not from this far.” Jasper paused after the words left his mouth, but he didn’t move. “What are they thinking, Edward?”

“I don’t want to say,” Edward said monotonously. Emmett stiffened, and for someone so hard to miss, he seemed to wash away with the tension of the moment.

“Tell me,” Jasper demanded. The brothers sat very still for a very long time before anyone spoke again. The sound of chirping crickets filled their ears, and the stars shined down on them. However, they didn't notice any of their surroundings, as they focused their attention on what was happening in your house.

“They think you’re a freak,” he paused, for what felt like centuries, before saying, “They want you two to break up.” Before Edward can continue, Jasper put the car in reverse and sped home so fast that even Edward wanted to suggest slowing down.

“What am I going to do?” Jasper asked as he opened the front door to the Cullen's house. Emmett and Edward shuffled in behind him without a word.

“You’re going to have to make it up to y/n’s parents,” Emmet advised.

“You’re going to have to make it up to y/n too,” as soon as the words escaped Edward's mouth Emmett and Jasper were staring at him, waiting for an explanation. “When I was listening to their thoughts, y/n was mad that you weren’t more careful.”

“I’ll figure something out,” Jasper said, his voice full of exasperation.

A week passes, and somehow Jasper finds himself standing next to Carlisle at your doorstep.

“Jasper, I’m surprised you asked me to do this for you,” Carlisle says quietly as he taps his stone-cold hand against your front door. “This relationship must mean a lot to you.” The door opens before their conversation continues, and they’re greeted with your father's presence. Days had passed since Jasper had gotten to see you. After what happened last week, Jasper called your house, but when your father answered, he told Jasper to never call back again. Jasper had hoped he’d be able to talk with you at school, but you anxiously avoided him, and he wasn’t looking to upset you anymore. It was the slowest week of his 160-year-old life.

“It’s great to see you. I’m Dr. Cullen, Jasper’s father. I was wondering if we could have a word?” Your father is hesitant at the question, but allows the two of them to come inside. The three of them sit at the dining table that your mother is already occupying. As they sit, Jasper nervously fumbles with his hands, worried that his plan to involve Carlisle as his ‘father’ wouldn’t work the way he hoped.

“Jasper,” you say as you walk into the kitchen, surprised to see them, “and Carlisle, what’s going on?” You make your way to the table and sit down on the far end, with Jasper on one side of you, and your father on the other. Jasper could feel the nervousness emitting from you, and it almost matched his own. He wanted to grab on to you and never let go as he took in your intoxicating scent and warm skin, but instead, he settled for inconspicuously placing a hand on your knee and hoping your family didn’t notice.

“I wanted to discuss with you all what happened last week,” Carlisle said, looking more serious than you’d ever seen him. When he said the words, almost everyone in the room had their eyes on your (no longer purple) neck. Except for Jasper, who was looking deep into your eyes as if they could heal him or ease his pain. “What Jasper did was irresponsible, and I do not condone that kind of behavior. We have both raised two very responsible, mature, and sensible kids. As disapproving as I am, what they did was not dangerous. Our children had the self-control to stop themselves before things got too out of hand. I know these kids make each other happy, and I believe we should continue to let them see each other.” Carlisle hardly gave anyone time to speak as he felt the disapproval radiate off your parents. “And if it would make you more comfortable, they don’t have to be together at my house anymore. At least not alone.” There was a long pause after Carlisle finished speaking, as if what he said compelled everyone to silence. Jasper gently squeezed your knee and glanced at you hopefully.

“I’ll agree that they continue to see each other, on the condition that they can only be alone together in public, or at our house, with the doors open, while we are home.” It might sound like a big ask, but Jasper knew how secretive and creative Edward was with Bella, and for someone so special to him, he was willing to try and be just as sneaky for you. The idea of sneaking into your bedroom late at night filled him with excitement, and he quickly thought of all the ways he could climb into your bed without your family noticing.

“I think we can agree to that,” Carlisle said with a wide smile and stood up to shake your father’s hand. Jasper smiled eagerly as he stood up, beckoning you to stand too, and wrapped you into a hug. Even if his skin was glacial, he still warmed your heart. You attempted to suppress your excited laugh as Jasper kissed your cheek.

“Hey,” your father called out disapprovingly, causing Jasper to loosen his grip around you.

“What?” you mused, “the doors are open?” Jasper tried to hide his smile in your hair as your parents let out a collective sigh.

“Don’t push it you two,” Carlisle said just loud enough for only you two to hear. He threw the two of you a knowing wink as he made his way back to the front door. Jasper smiled in a way you’d never seen before and slightly adjusted so his back was facing your parents. Gently, he leaned down to kiss you one more time. This time, he let his cold lips meet yours, and even if it was just for a second, you could feel every ounce of his love.

“See you soon, darlin’,” he said with a hushed sultry southern accent. Next time you two were together, he planned on continuing what you never got to finish.

[hoe4sports]

How this ends p2

|Part one| Part three | Part four

Message from the author: Hi babies, this took longer than expected. Part three coming soon.!Sorry, this is probably shit compared to the first part. Oh well, sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit.

Warning: Angst

Summary: Mapi finds Alexia in a horrible state, but there is no comfort from Mapi.

-

Alexia found herself sat in the darkness of your her bedroom. Her physical state was horrible. Her mental state was somehow even worse. She resembled a homeless person more than herself. Her clothes were dirty. All of them actually because she hadn’t washed her own clothes ever, her mami washed them until she moved in with you. It was one of the things you took care of, that she took for granted. Her stomach felt like it was about to hop out of her body to slap her in the face for not eating. She hasn’t done any food shopping because for the last years, you had done all the groceries without her having to even think about it. You would always buy her favourite things, but she hasn’t considered why her credit card dispute was low each month. Yet another thing she took for granted, you paid the groceries. The apartment had a screaming need for a vacuum and some dusting. She hadn’t done chores since moving out. You managed all of those things. Just another thing she had taken for granted. The mail was sitting unready in her overfilled postbox. You had been taking care of the mail. Clean clothes showed up in her wardrobe, food was always available, fruits were always in sight, the apartment was always spotless and the mail were always taken care of. The guilt was eating her alive.

The first week after you left, she shut the feelings out. She focused on herself and her progress. Her captaincy demanded her to set a good example, so she showed up at practice. She did her drills, her conditioning and her strengthening. She pulled herself together and made sure to do her duties.

But she was fuelled by an underlying rage. Cursing herself for making the biggest mistake of her lifetime. The shield she had put up to protect herself from her own feelings had started cracking. Alexia then pushed harder. And harder. And even harder.

Her body pushed as hard as it possibly could until the world came crashing down on her a late Friday. The heartache that she had brought upon herself felt haunting. Like she was watching an avalanche bouldering down the mountain to get her. She couldn’t get away from the avalanche. She couldn’t hide her feelings from herself. The only thing she could do, was to wait for the avalanche to get her. And with that, she was forced to deal with the harsh reality of her actions by staring at the ghost of what once was her first love in the apartment.

Eli got worried when Alexia didn’t show up for the weekly family dinner, then she got even more worried when she showed up at your and Alexia’s apartment without anyone opening the door. Alba tried to comfort her as best as she could saying that Alexia probably was out with the team, feeling slightly guilty for taking her anger out by shaming your name. Alba had tried to reach out to you, without having much success.

Alexia couldnt for the life of her figure how she had managed to get herself into this position. She loved you. She still did. You were her first and only love. She would put you over football any day of the week. Always patient, understanding and loving. You never made a fuss about anything. You never let her down, you never forgot anything and you always prioritised her before you. You never put pressure on her and never had unrealistic expectations. Whenever she forgot important dates, you forgave her. That was just your nature. You were her peace.

-

Two weeks post break up, Alexia had been missing work for a week straight. The coach told the team that she was taking time off for “personal reasons”.

How ironical that what she thought was going to help her career, ended up hurting her even further.

Alexia found herself sitting in the bedroom. Her head couldn’t bear to stay in any room longer than 5 minutes. She didn’t get groceries, and she was living out on whatever you had placed in the freezer earlier. She was sitting in the bed staring at a picture frame. The picture was her favourite picture of you, from Alba’s wedding. Her in her suit and you in a pink bridesmaids dress. She touched your face hoping to feel some familiarity, some sense of comfort but there were none. It was cold. A tear started running down her cheek and she leaned back into the bed as she started into the ceiling feeling emptier than ever. It felt like her world had stopped turning. Her heart hurt so bad that she felt like there was something physically wrong with her. Her head was spinning.

Alexia found herself in a position that she had been in more times that one since you left. Tears were steaming down her face and her sobs were increasing. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping she could stop feeling. It was exhausting to have all of these feelings running around like a pack of wild horses. But then, her cries were soon stopped by knocking on the frontdoor.

“Hola, Alexia!»

«Mierda» Alexia mumbled under her breath. She knew that voice. It was Mapi. And Mapi wasn’t the type of persona to leave. She gave it her best shot as she held her breath.

“Alexia! I know that you are home! So open up before I break in por favor”

Alexia got up from the bed and wrapped herself in your favourite blanket. A pink fuzzy blanket with red hearts. A blanket she praised the gods for that you didn’t take with you. She brushed through her hair with her bare hands hoping to look more presentable, before stomping herself to the front door.

“ALEXIA! Sé que estás en casa!” Mapi yelled again, but this time slightly annoyed.

Alexia swung the door up, and Mapi’s jaw dropped in shock. Alexia looked like a train wreck. Like a ghost of herself.

“Que?” Alexia said with an annoyed look on her face while squinting her eyes.

“Ai, Alexia, what happened to you! You look horrible” Mapi exclaimed, still in shock. We eyes wide. Alexia rolled her eyes to her before grabbing the door to close it.

“Adios, Maria” she mumbled. Her hand grabbed the door handle and pushed it close. But her action was blocked by the length of Mapi’s foot.

“I’m coming in” Mapi said pushing past Alexia moving towards the couch. Alexia sighed before closing the door. All she wanted, was to be left alone to cry. To figure herself out. But, Mapi had other plans.

Mapi sat down in the couch and patted the seat next to her. Alexia slowly crept towards the couch before sitting down a bit further from Mapi, then Mapi had initiated. Alexia could feel the lecture incoming.

“Are you sick?”

“No”

“Are you injured?”

“No”

“Is Y/N sick or injured?”

Alexia’s eyes started tearing up. She couldn’t speak. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. She didn’t have the strength within her to yell. All her emotions were spread out across her body and she couldn’t keep it in even if she had tried.

"Is she sick? did she have a miscarriage?? Why didn’t you tell me!! I would’ve brought over Ing-” Mapi said in shock before being cut off by Alexia. Her and Ingrid, had experienced a miscarriage earlier, and there was nobody that understood you better than Ingrid.

“She isn’t sick, Mapi. I broke up with her…”

Mapi sat completely dumbfounded in the couch unable to process what she just heard. She didn’t want to believe her own ears. Her eyes widened even further and her jaw was practically on the floor.

“You did WHAT now? Come again??”

“I..ugh.. I broke up with her”

Alexia looked to the ground staring at her toes, embarrassed of her own actions.

“Alexia, after 13 years a; it’s not breaking up anymore. It’s practically a divorce.”

The words hurt Alexia more than she could imagine. It felt like someone had pulled all the air out of her lungs depriving her of Oxygen. She hadn’t thought of it like this. She had planned to ask you to marry her, but it ended up being postponed because of the World Cup. Just like everything else; the kids, the house and even the second cat you had begged her for. There was nothing Alexia regretted more than not letting you get a second cat. Hell, she wanted you to have all the cats in the world if that meant that you would come back to her. Alexia nodded while she sniffed. She hadn’t thought of it this way.

“Si, Mapi. I was so dumb, it is the dumbest decision I have ever made. And now, she’s gone for good”

Mapi and Alexia sat in the couch in silence. Mapi’s eyes wandered around the room. She could just now see the state of Alexia’s million dollar apartment. It looked like a garbage truck had exploded in there. The decor, your books, and all of the pictures you had put up if you, Alexia and your family from back home was gone. You had even taken the picture of your cat with you. She looked at Alexia and saw how Alexia’s eyes looked dull. Her face was puffy and her skin was red.

“Can I ask why? Did you fight? Did she..cheat?”

Alexia took a quick breath in. You would never cheat, and Alexia didn’t understand why. You had waited for 13 years for something she promised you years and years ago. Alexia wouldn’t have waited for anyone for that long. Mapi raised her eyebrow at Alexia expecting a damn good explanation.

“I thought that she was using me, distracting me from work, distracting me from getting better. She asked me to stay more at home and spend time with her..”

Mapi’s eyes widened again while lifting her hands up in the air.

“Are you delusional? Ai, she loved you even before you had money and fame! Alexia, she asked for your time? A just good enough woman would demand. She is more than a good woman. She is perfect, Alexia. Anyone would be honoured to have her in their life”

Alexia nodded quietly feeling like she was getting scolded by Mapi. But, inside her Alexia knew that it was well deserved. After what felt like hours of silence, Alexia shrugged her shoulders to Mapi’s dismay.

“Do you love her?”

“Mapi, it’s not that easy”

“Si,Alexia! It is!”

“Maria..”

Mapi raised her eyebrow, she felt like her head was about to explode. The fame really had ended up going straight to Alexia’s head. But, the damage was already done.

“I don’t even recognise you, anymore.”

“Please Mapi, don’t say that”

Mapi shot her a look. They had known each other since they were teenagers.

“But I don’t, Alexia. After the fame? If somebody showed me who you are more now back when we were 15, I would’ve never believed them. You are a shadow of yourself.”

Alexia’s eyes teared up. Mapi’s words were exactly what she needed to hear. But it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. The words felt like gunshots running through her heart.

“How, how do I make this right?”

Alexia furrowed her brows while her tears rolled down her face; Mapi got up from the couch before moving towards the door. She crossed her arms before the corners of her lips curved downwards.

“I’m not sure you can”

[bigfatbreak]

Something I've been wondering for a while in the ML fandom. But after Season 5 ended, I saw a lot of authors coming to the consensus that Emilie is a "bad parent".

Where did that come from? Did I miss a fandom meeting where that consensus was reached? Or is that a consequence of Gabriel being a bad parent, having her as a bad parent by proxy?

I am mostly curious about where this headcanon came from, for some many different authors following the same path.

the series tries really hard to make Emelie seem like an angelic woman, but the problem is, it constantly steps on its own toes doing so.

even before her death, Adrien didn't go to school, wasn't socialized around others, never had a "real birthday gift," was only socialized around Chloe and his "cousin" sometimes, and though he yearned for school, was still denied that. The show says "oh she's a good person," but doesn't SHOW her being a good person.

the show contradicts itself. Emelie has to be good, because she's a dead mother who sacrificed her life for her child, but the show reveals the quality of life for that child was basically zilch, like owning a dog. The general idea of her being a bad parent is because being self-sacrificing doesn't make someone inherently good, in fact in Emelie's case, it made her all the more selfish.

if she knew she was dying and still had the audacity to keep her son from making connections with other people, all she was doing was saddling him with an immense amount of grief he would have no real way of processing, making her death the only thing he could ever revolve around for the rest of his existence.

Not only that, Gabriel seemed to follow the mindset of "oh she's just gone, not dead," which would only make things worse - and if Emelie suspected Gabriel might act the part of the fool, why didn't she ensure there was a support system for the both of them? To be fair, she doesn't have Gabriel on strings, but she literally has complete control over Adrien and just... decided to make him her emotional support child? a crutch through her death? an accessory to show what a good person she was???

maybe we really are missing parts. maybe she actually was an exceptional woman - but that SAME woman could be cattled and convinced to keep Adrien alone for his developmental years??? if we're following the idea that she was actually super good and kind, then we have to accept that she's also immensely stupid for allowing her husband to convince her that Adrien should be a bird in a cage.

Either she's loving but overall selfish, keeping Adrien for herself in spite of the damage it would cause, OR loving and stupid, letting Gabriel convince her to keep Adrien in the dark in spite of the damage it could cause.

the show may WANT us to route emelie down the path of overall "good," but considering her husband was such a miserable excuse for a parent who's attitude really hasn't changed that much from the past, like draws to like and we can only draw our own conclusions.

honestly i think Zoe put it better here, but there's my two cents on the matter.

[foxy-eva]

Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Summary: Spencer was the right person at the wrong time, no doubt about it. When you’re finally back in town, you’re ready for a fresh start. 

Request: Exes with Feelings, Having an Argument, Finding Comfort in Each Other's Arms

Pairing: Spencer Reid x GN!Reader

Category: Fluff, Comfort 

Content Warnings: mentions past break-up and fighting, a little misunderstanding, heavy kissing

Word count: 2.1k

Author’s Note: I wrote this for @imagining-in-the-margins New Beginnings Writing Challenge

Masterlist

Endless hours of late-night phone calls. More time spent on planes than inside each other’s arms. Weekends that were never quite long enough.  

“Distance makes the heart grow fonder,” Spencer said. 

He was nothing but supportive of your decision to take an internship on the other side of the country. There was no doubt that the two of you could make this work, you were soulmates after all. 

“So fond it sometimes starts hurting,” you added. 

Neither of you expected that what should have been a temporary arrangement could turn into something more permanent. But when you got offered a full-time position for your dream job, you had to make the most difficult decision of your life. 

“You could come with me, you know,” you told him after letting him in on your decision to take the job offer. He only shook his head. 

“Why is your job more important than mine?” You hissed, angry that he wasn’t even considering that option. When he didn’t answer, you added, “Why is your job more important than me?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

Neither of you wanted to end this relationship but after that argument you knew it was inevitable. Spencer’s stubbornness stood in the way of him begging you to stay, even though you wished for nothing more than one of those cheesy airport scenes from the romcom movies you liked to watch together. 

He never showed up, though. 

It was hard to believe that all of that happened almost a year ago. The heartache never fully went away and it got worse now that you were back, walking the streets of a city you once called home. Your job made you happy for a while but after months of trying and failing to make new friends, you had to admit to yourself that you missed your old life. 

And more than anything, you missed Spencer. 

The city still felt familiar as you stepped closer to the apartment building you spent so many days and nights in. It was almost like no time had passed when you walked up the stairs to Spencer’s apartment. The hallway still carried the same scent of old wood and the steps still creaked underneath your feet. Before you had reached his door another memory flooded your mind. 

Turning your head, you looked down the hallway and remembered how Spencer spun you around right there in a little impromptu dance when you came home from one of Rossi’s infamous dinner parties. You were happy then - some might even call you naive - and so convinced that you’d spend the rest of your life with the man of your dreams. 

The more you got lost in reminiscing about times long gone, the more you could almost feel the warmth Spencer always radiated. Your skin started tingling where he used to press his palms against you, holding your close as if nothing could ever come between the two of you. 

You sighed as you let those memories go. There were so many uncertainties as you stepped closer to his door. You weren’t sure if he still lived here and you didn’t know if he had found someone else to keep close since you left. The rational part of your brain knew that you should have called him before showing up, that he might not even want to see you. 

But those past months you recognized that you were nothing but a fool when it came to love and romance. He didn’t show up at the airport for you but a part of you still believed he would take you back just like the people in those romcoms always did. 

Relief washed over you when you found his name still written on the door of apartment 23. 

Three knocks. No answer. 

You lingered for a few moments to listen for any movement behind his door but there was none. Spencer wasn’t home and your life really wasn’t some corny movie. 

As you walked away from his door you contemplated your options. Maybe you should send him a text or even write him a letter to let him know you’re back in town. 

Or maybe you should just let it go. 

Just when you reached the last step, a tall curly-haired man entered the building. You recognized him instantly, many moments before he even realized that you were there. He greeted the doorman before turning his head towards the staircase and spotting you. 

Spencer’s face was impossible to read and looked nothing like you imagined whenever you dreamed about running into him again. Where you hoped to find a bright smile, only a thin line was visible. He looked as if he wasn’t sure you were real, as if he couldn’t trust his own eyes. 

“Hi Spencer,” you broke the silence. 

“H..Hi,” he stammered as he stepped closer. “What are you doing here?” 

I’m trying to win you back. I came to tell you how much I miss you. I want to start over. I’m still in love with you. 

There were many things you could have answered but none of the obvious explanations made it past your lips. Instead you said, “I have a job interview.” 

Spencer was confused and raised his eyebrows. “In my building?”

“No, not here of course,” you awkwardly laughed. “I have a job interview here in DC tomorrow. And I thought I’d come by to say hi.” 

Spencer just stood there like a doe caught in the headlights. It still seemed like he had a hard time processing what was happening. 

Right when he wanted to open his mouth, a raven-haired woman entered the building behind him. She was almost as tall as him and absolutely gorgeous. 

“Hey, are you ready to leave?” She asked when Spencer turned around to look at her. 

“I’ll be there in a second,” he answered before finding your eyes again. “I’m sorry but now is not a good time. Can I call you later?” 

Of course he had found someone else. 

You were too late. 

“Don't worry about it!” You said and quickly walked away from the most awkward situation you had ever been in. 

When you were almost around the corner, you heard Spencer call out your name, followed by, “Please wait!” 

Turning around, you found him running towards you. He slowed down the closer he got, coming to a halt about an arm-length away from you. He looked back and you followed his sight, spotting the woman getting into a car. She didn't drive away, instead it seemed like she was waiting for him. 

It was as if you were struck by lightning when you suddenly felt Spencer's arms wrapping around you. A hug was the last thing you had expected in that moment. It took you a moment to reciprocate the gesture, your arms closing around his body as if no time had passed since you last got a chance to do that. 

Never before had an embrace felt so healing. Like two lost puzzle pieces finally finding their way back to each other. You instantly felt the warmth he radiated entering your body and flooding through you.  

For a few seconds it was nice to pretend that no time had passed but once you remembered her, reality came crashing down on you. You wanted him to be happy more than anything but you couldn't deny that you still wished it could be you who he’d find happiness with. 

You were the first to let go, slowly stepping back to find his eyes. “I’m glad you found someone. She seems lovely,” you said while attempting to smile. 

“What..? Oh you mean Tara?” He turned his head to look back at her car for a second. “She’s my new coworker. I’m actually on the job right now, it’s a local case. I was just stopping by the apartment to grab some books I needed.”

Oh. 

“I really gotta get back to Quantico now. Where are you staying?” 

You mentioned the name of the friend you were staying with and told him, “I’m sorry I came by unannounced. You usually have Sundays off so I thought I’d give it a try.”

Spencer smiled at you and said, “No, I’m glad you did. It might be late when I get back tonight but I would really like to talk more.”

“I’m still a night owl,” you snickered. “Just call me when you're on your way home.” 

Several hours passed until your phone finally rang. The call was short, just a simple agreement you’d meet him at his place in about thirty minutes. 

When you stood in front of his door this time, you almost didn't have the courage to knock. After taking a deep breath, you did it anyway. 

As if he had been waiting right at the other side of the door, he opened immediately and let you step inside. 

“I like the way you wear your hair now. It looks great,” he complimented you. 

You noticed that he looked different, too. His hair was longer but his curls still seemed unruly. Just like they used to when you still had the chance to let your fingers brush through them. 

You smiled at him. “You look good, too.” 

It seemed like time had stood still inside his apartment. A few more books were scattered around and it looked a little more messy than what you were used to, but all in all it was still very familiar. Muscle memory led you to the same spot on his couch you always liked to sit in. 

Spencer followed you, taking his seat beside you. It was hard to find the right words when you looked into his eyes. The color of his irises reminded you of wild honey, so warm and alluring you couldn't get enough of looking at them. 

Before you got too lost, Spencer decided to start the conversation. 

“So, you have a job interview tomorrow?” 

“Yeah, I do,” you confirmed. “I want to move back here. I miss DC.” 

I miss you, was what you really wanted to say. 

“What about your job in Seattle?” 

You just shrugged and mumbled, “I’m ready for something new, I guess. Seattle never felt like home.” After a moment of uncomfortable silence you added, “I never should have left.”

Spencer shook his head. “Eventually, you would have regretted not taking that chance. And you probably would have resented me for that.”

“I never thought I would be someone who chose career over love,” you confessed. 

“It’s not that simple,” he disagreed. “I was just too stubborn and hurt to see it back then. It took several months until I could understand that I was trying to hold you back from starting a promising career. That wasn’t fair. I could have easily transferred to the Seattle field office or maybe start teaching at a university there. At the time you didn't have the same opportunities here in DC.” 

His words surprised you. It was an admission you never thought you’d hear from him.

“You wanted to choose love and career by asking me to come with you,” he continued, his tone laced with pain. “I was the one who chose his career over love. And I really regret that.”

“Spencer,” you whispered as you moved closer to him. “I missed you so much.” 

He reached out his hand to touch yours. “I missed you, too.”

His touch let something snap inside you, suddenly you were not able to hold back any longer. Without a warning your lips found his, feverishly kissing him as if you could somehow make up for lost time. 

He didn't seem surprised about your display of affection. Instead he reciprocated the kiss with a similar amount of enthusiasm. It was not enough though, there was still too much space between you. 

It was obvious that Spencer felt the same way, his hands pressing against your body until you had found your way into his lap. Between heavy breaths and lips brushing against one another, you started to forget your surroundings. 

Your chest was pushed flush against his, your racing heart sensing its counterpart inside his ribcage and skipping several beats. 

“Please, Spencer,” you whimpered against his lips, unable to let everything in your mind spill from your mouth. 

I’m sorry for leaving you. Please give me another chance. I love you. 

There was no need for those words to be spoken. Spencer understood anyway. 

“I’m yours,” he cooed between more kisses. “I have always been yours.”

Please like, reblog and leave a comment! I need your lovely words to stay motivated to write more stories.

Taglist: @nomajdetective @reidsbookclub @gspenc @samuel-de-champagne-problems @matthew-gray-gubler-lover @malindacath @reidselle @alexxavicry @frickin-bats @spencersprettyslut @sebs-oxygen @happymangospot @cynbx @hotchandspencearedilfs @emiliaserpe @thenerdthatwrites @velvetthunder93 @saturnstringz @missabsey @guacam011y @hugyourlungs @reiderwriter @enamoradax @hales-17 @cham9ions @loaksulluyswife @ecneremili @xserenax-13 @grumpyy-bearr @luredwithpretzels @castiels-majestic-wings @super-nerd22 @pleasantwitchgarden @yeonalie @r-3dlips @evvy96 @torigorie @meyaareads

[zombvic]

SUPER RICH KIDS (marc guiu x reader) pt.2 here

summary : in which fans notice a familiar footballer in the likes of their favorite "super (humble) rich kid"

face claim : wolfiecindy (+ lissie mackintosh)

notes : frank ocean come back !!!!!!!!! might make this a series... this idea came to me in a dream so it might be a lil dumb. gave them a family name and made the dads face claim toto wolff (lmfao) bcs its easier so js ignore that !!! translated spanish is questionable..

pairings : marc guiu x fem!famous!reader

y/n ramsay, the only daughter of peter ramsay, a man considered to be one of the most influential men in the world, the owner of mercedes. not just the formula one team, the whole ass car brand. he is considered a self-made multi billionaire and single dad of two. as a daughter of a man with such high status, it came with exposure. y/n had her own little fandom, girls and boys who admired her beauty, lifestyle and enjoyed her personality. the girl was beloved by many, even celebrities found her videos and instagram posts entertaining. she had a natural charm that drew people in, and amongst those people there was a certain footballer, a certain teammate of her brother known as the one and only, marc guiu.

Liked by judebellingham, marcguiu9 & 7,562,005 others.

ynramsay monaco nights

View all 11,596 comments.

user rawrwrrwrwrwrrr

user HERMOSA

nateramsay wtf without me ?

- ynramsay yeah!!! loser..

user marc and jude in the likes lmao

- user i need to see nates reaction

user + 1000000 aura for her beauty

user idk whats prettier, the view or you

user felt the aura way back in december

judebellingham what a view 😍😍

- user shes not picking u jude (visca el barca!!)

- user marc fight back ???

liked by marcguiu9

Liked by judebellingham, marcguiu9 & 6,452,889 others.

ynramsay read the spanish love deception and now im here

View all 10,885 comments.

judebellingham madrid is better smh..

- ynramsay visca el barca bitch

peteramsay wow i look good

nateramsay where am i ???

- ynramsay dw youll get a personal post ig

marcguiu9 linda 😻 (pretty)

- nateramsay yo marc.. ¿qué carajo? 😁 (what the fuck)

- hctorforrt_ eres marc bastante idiota (you're pretty stupid marc)

Liked by hctorrforrt_, marcguiu9 & 8,222,258 others.

ynramsay @nateramsay am i doing this right ???

View all 8,368 comments.

nateramsay eh.. could be worse

user okay guys.. y/n & hector OR y/n & marc..

- user marc & y/n definetly

- user nuh uh hector and y/n would make a cute couple

- user neither???? guys omg leave them alone

user barca girls stay on top

marcguiu9 the team's lucky charm !!

- user bros down BAD

- user - 10,000 aura for simping

Liked by ynramsay, peteramsay & 4,005,347 others.

marcguiu9 VAMOS !!! tres puntos están en casa !!

View all 3,985 comments.

user bro has the inlaws in his likes

- user and they claim theyre "friends" ... if my "friends" dad was liking my posts id assume were married with seven kids and a dog

ynramsay marcaría un hattrick 🤓☝🏼

- marcguiu9 me gustaría verte intentarlo

user were winning the ucl !! (im going insane)

- user were so back !! (we are not making it past the group stage)

user la masia boys have some kind of fine gene in them its crazy

ynramsay formula is still better sorry bro

- marcguiu9 you trippin dawg 😹😹😹

- user just get married lord...

- user theyre literally built for eachother i swear

Liked by hctorforrt_, marcguiu9 & 11,258,997 others.

ynramsay meanwhile in my head

View all 8,547 comments.

user mother is mothering

user the prettiest

user an angel sent from heaven, deadass.

marcguiu9 ¿eres un rayo? proque eres mcqueen. (are you lighnting? because you're mcqueen)

- nateramsay WEAAAAAK. next

- marcguiu9 can you be the sally to my mcqueen??

- nateramsay better.. u got my approval

- peteramsay not mine !!!

user 11 million likes on ts post jesus marc u got some competition

user the finest girl in the world

user girlie got the whole barca roster in her likes

Liked by hctorforrt_, marcguiu9 & 7,566,058 others.

ynramsay barca weekend things !!

View all 9,568 comments.

user mother is mothering

user wifey, are you cheating on me?

user IS THAT MARCS HAND ???????

user guys that's me please respect our privacy!!

user i think it's hector tbh..

- user nah thats so randon

- user they're clearly just friends

user wasnt expecting a heartbreak today

user im sorry but it looks like marc

- user a HAND looks like marc ???????

marcguiu9 vroom

- ynramsay vroom indeed

- user yall...

peteramsay aprobado 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

- marcguiu9 VAMOOOOOOOS

might be a series or whatever :3 just pls request something

[edenprime]

I keep flip-flopping on whether I like Liara's change in characterization post-ME1. Was she changed exclusively by the devs/writers so that she could be an action girl, which is considered more interesting/sexier? Was it a side-effect of her being put on the "everyone is now an edgelord" train? Or did it actually make sense?

At the present I'm inclined to think it's a mix of the last two. At the start of ME, she says that she's barely an adult by asari standards, that her work isn't taken very seriously due to her young age. We overhear, in ME2, an asari on Illium say that she's 60, so she's finally moved out of her parents' house. I'd say this makes Liara's 106 years around the equivalent of early to mid twenties. She suddenly finds her mother, an extremely well-respected woman in her society, betraying her people and going off with a rogue man who's rallying one of the galaxy's boogeymen to work for him, hunting down and killing innocents, turning them into monsters. Then, when she's gone to hunt her down to stop her, she finds out she's indoctrinated, that she set out to stop Saren, not join him. Benezia finds her mind for a few minutes, tells her she truth of the indoctrination, and attacks her and the person she's falling in love with (her first love, too!) only to die in front of her.

Whether Shepard rejects her or not, it's clear that she's in love with them, that her feelings are still there when the collectors attack the Normandy. And right then, she sees another person important to her, at best a friend and at worst a lover, die in front of her. She finds out there's a race to get their dead body, that it can be given to their murderer, or to a terrorist organization. She chooses, for better or worse, the second, the one who, as she says on ME2, gives her some hope. She admits to Shepard that her feelings got the best of her in that case. After dying for the cause, she sees their reputation be torn to shreds and every discovery they made be buried by politicians.

She loses Feron, another ally, another friend.

So yes, she changes. She's a 23 year old who went from exploring 50 thousand year old dig sites to being in the center of a belic conflict with her mother as an enemy. She sees her love die a horrible death, choking on nothing in front of her.

Of course she becomes obsessive and single-minded. Of course she adopts some of Benezia's worse traits. Of course she hunts down the shadow broker with such ruthlessness. And of course her behavior softens with Shepard - they came back. She's not stupid, I'm sure she knows her gamble, when she gave Shepard's body to Cerberus, was not without its dangers. She knows Shepard could rightfully be mad at her. She knows Shepard could have not come back at all! But she did it all anyway. Regardless of how her behavior can be seen as creepy or morally wrong, I can see where she's coming from, and I don't think she's all that wrong for feeling the way she felt. She stops being the saint she was on the SR1, but she's not an evil witch, and she's definitely not even among the top 5 squad members who needs the most atonement. Or jail time.

[lordprettyflackotara]

till dawn || eyeless jack || the finale

SMUT. MINORS DNI. 18+. this one’s a lil fluffy not gonna hold you guys. i’m so sad to see till dawn end :’) but all good things must come to an end eventually. i think down the line i will create a bonus chapter, but for now this is the end of till dawn. love you all. mwah!

bonus part is here

Knock knock knock!

A groan of annoyance left your lips, your senses resuming as you regained consciousness.

“Wake up fuckers! You owe us waffles!” Ben’s cheery voice flooded your ears, his voice echoing down the hallway outside of Jacks room. You sighed, rolling over and shoving Jack awake. A confused snore escaped his lips, his eye sockets finally opening.

“Huh?”

“Ben wants waffles,” You sighed, flopping back down onto your pillow. Unfortunately you both had lost one too many rounds of mario kart, resorting in a wager of cooking breakfast to end in Ben’s favor. Jack groaned. “Okay Ben give us five minutes!” He called. You rubbed your eyes, looking over at the window. The sun had just reached above the trees, the sunlight beams streaming across the room. A triumphant Ben continued down the hallway, whistling proudly.

“Holy fuck, what time is it?”

Jack chuckled, sitting up against the headboard.

“I told you we’d only have till dawn before someone showed up at our doorstep about breakfast.”

He was right, but converting to rising at the early hours and staying up late was exhausting. You rolled over lazily, your back turned to him. “Have none of them ever heard of sleep schedules?” You grumbled. Jack couldn’t help but chuckle, your settlement into the mansion one that occurred with ease. Your charming personality and ability to cook won everyone over, even the proxies.

“We live in Slender’s mansion babe, we’re lucky the sun even rises here,” Jack replied, pressing a soft kiss against the back of your head. Slenderman’s reaction was a completely different story, the explanation of your existence the longest tale Jack had ever had to explain. Letting humans know about creeps existence was grounds for exile. It was forbidden to make spectacles out of themselves, even if the long term plan was for you to become a creep. (Which, it was not even an option to Jack.)

Becoming one, losing that grasp on sanity or facing an unfortunate fate of torture and death could never be planned though. Unless of course you were Jeff, then you knew how to create an arch nemesis. Jack would never want that for you, which he explained to Slender. Out of all of the mansions residents and outsiders, there was not another creature like Jack. A creature that went into an animalistic heat and needed to mate. Slender knew this and that led to his approval.

Another factor that Slender considered was that Jack was the oldest and wisest. If he was to entrust anyone to bring a human into the house, it was him.

Jack curled up beside you, your back pressing against his chest. “Sleepy this morning are we?” Jack asked teasingly, peppering kisses on your neck and shoulder. You chuckled, moving yourself closer to him. “I would’ve gotten better sleep if someone hadn’t kept me up all night,” You replied. A mischievous smile spread across Jacks lips, his hand slithering down to your hips.

“If it makes you feel any better i’m sure Clockwork didn’t get much sleep either,” Jack said, his lips refusing to stray far from your skin. His hand slithered further up your skin, slipping under your nightgown. You bit your bottom lip, Jacks fingertips lightly tracing your skin. “Thats gonna make a terrible first impression,” You sighed. Clockwork didn’t frequent at the mansion, leading to you never officially meeting her. Having her room be next door and hearing you beg for more? Not exactly the best first impression.

“There have been worse my love. When Jeff first came here Slender tried to make him a proxy. He tried to burn the mansion down,” Jack said, cupping your heart. Your thin panties blocked him from complete access to your cunt. Your breath was becoming shaky, your thighs opening more for him. He inhaled deeply, the smell of your arousal hitting his nostrils. “You just can’t get enough can you?” Jack teased. You groaned softly as he rubbed more harshly against the fabric.

“Of you? Never,” You replied, satisfied to feel Jack push your panties to the side. His lips attached themselves to your neck, his boner poking you from behind. You could feel him suck at your skin harshly, purposefully littering your neck with as many marks as possible. “I’m going to keep looking like a wounded puppy if my neck stays forever purple,” You chuckled, gasping as his fingers rubbed up and down your wet slick. You bit your bottom lip, two of his digits dipping into your cunt.

“My wounded puppy,” Jack snickered. He curled his fingers inside of you, your hand finding its way to his aching cock. He gasped as you palmed at the fabric of his basketball shorts, slipping your hand underneath the waistband. “Not sure if we’re doing to have time for this love,” Jack admitted, even if he didn’t want it to be true. You moaned in response, pumping his shaft as he finger fucked you. “It can be quick,” You offered. You bit the inside of your cheek, refraining from moaning louder.

“Please,” You whimpered, sealing your fate. Jack grinned, the two of you eagerly switching positions. Jacks back hit the soft mattress, licking his lips as you straddled him. Your panties had been discarded, his shorts and boxers pooling at his ankles. Jack was never one to not be in control of sex, even with you riding him. Sometimes he’d let you pretend you were in control, if he was feeling nice enough. But each time you got a bit out of line, Jack was quick to put you in your place. However, he couldn’t deny how ethereal you looked riding him.

You lowered yourself onto his cock, both of you exhaling in relief as he bottomed out inside of you. The shape of his cock bugled from your stomach as it always did, a subtle, very hot reminder that he was much bigger than you. Jacks hands found your hips, leaning forward to kiss you as he guided you. You groaned into his mouth as you rode his cock, his tip hitting your g spot. Playfully you grabbed his shoulders, pushing him back onto the bed. Jack admired your breast bouncing as you chased your high, riding him like a wild animal.

Your body over time came to crave Jacks almost identically to the way he craved yours. (He couldn’t help but wonder if scientifically his cum had altered your hormones.) You smiled lovingly as you looked down at Jack, his facial expression one of contentment. The sun had risen higher, hitting his face at a flattering angle. It highlighted his sharp jawline and round nose. “What’s so funny?” Jack asked. You shook your head, continuing to hold your sinful noises in the best you could as you rode his cock. “You just look so handsome like this,” You complimented.

Jack blinked, “What, under you?”

You giggled, playfully slapping his shoulder. “No EJ, with the sun shining on your skin,” You replied, rolling your eyes. Jack leaned forward, wrapping his arms around your back. He completely and utterly adored you, your flattery and complimentary of him meaning the world. “You look even better, so beautiful taking my cock like this,” He huffed, snapping his hips upwards. You whined as he began to move faster, taking control. You buried your face into the crook of his neck, biting down on his skin to control your noises.

“Thats it, bite me as hard as you want love. Mark me,” Jack panted, his cock abusing your cervix. He was tempted to say hell to breakfast, flipping you over and fucking you senseless like the animal inside of him craved. But he knew you cared about his roommates opinion of you, even if to Jack he wouldn’t consider them friends five out of seven days of the week. Your teeth sank into Jacks shoulder, a subtle growl escaping his throat.

Something about seeing you so primal, but so desperate to keep quiet made him pound into you harder. You could feel yourself getting closer to the edge, a trail of saliva dripping down Jacks shoulder as your teeth clenched around his skin. You whimpered, your hands tangling themselves in his hair as you came on his cock. Your walls spasmed around his shaft, a deep grunt escaping his lips as he came inside of you.

You released his shoulder, grimacing down at the bite mark. “Holy fuck, I don’t know where that came from,” You panted. Neither of you had moved, Jacks gaze moving to your breast. “Neither do I, but it was pretty fucking hot,” He admitted, kissing your breast.

‘Waffles! Waffles! Waffles!’

The sound of Toby and Ben chanting from downstairs made you chuckle. Jack could hear them slamming their silverware down on the kitchen table, the sound making his ears twitch. You slowly slid off of you, whimpering as your walls squeezed the air. His cum slowly dripped down your cunt, the sight the most satisfying sight to Jack in the world. He laid back on the bed, propping himself up with his hands behind his head.

He admired you as you brushed your hair, throwing on clothes. You were so focused, Jacks staring going over your head. It wasn’t until you were ready, turning around to find Jack undressed and unbothered. “What are you doing? Ben’s gonna come through our radio any minute now if you don’t get dressed,” You say. Jack rose to his feet, bringing your back against his chest. He towered over you easily, resting his chin on the top of your head.

“How did I ever get so lucky?” He murmured, pressing a kiss to your head. You giggled, examining your stomach. “Do you think you’ll ever get me pregnant one of these days?” You asked curiously. Jacks eyebrows furrowed, his large hands resting on top of yours. “You do know that’s scientifically impossible right?” He asked. Yeah, maybe his cum was seeping into your hormones. Or maybe your brain.

“Yeah it’s still a nice thought though,” You shrug. Turning around you wrapped your arms around his neck, admiring him from below. Your eyes were dancing with curiosity. Tilting your head to the side a simple question left your tongue, “If I somehow did, you’d want to keep it right?”

Millions of thoughts soared through Jacks mind, ones mixed with the joy of parenthood and ones of terror. Would the fetus become a demon just like him? Or would it be as beautiful as you? What would it eat? Would raising a child in a mansion full of monsters from its worst nightmares be sustainable? But as he looked down at your puppy dog eyes, your orbs flickering back and forth as you awaited an answer.

Creeps had never procreated before, successfully anyways. It would be a first for all of them, especially Jack. He wanted to believe there was a piece of him that wasn’t an organ eating monster. One that could raise and love a child that was a mixture with the person he loved the most. He was almost sure he would’ve gotten you pregnant by now, with the amount of times he’d locked you into the mating press alone.

Truth was Jack would give you whatever you wanted, even if it was most likely scientifically impossible. “I want whatever you want my love,” He purred, pressing a tender kiss to your temple.

Bang bang bang!

“EJ learn how to keep it in your pants and pour some batter in the waffle maker instead!” Ben called.

You giggled, Jack sighing as he pulled on his pants.

“And in the mean time we have Ben.”

“We most certainly do and that’s enough for me.”