#but this is the beauty and heartbreak of knowing how nearly every character dies before they truly reach middle age

[treefey]

"Terence crept nervously through the forest, glancing often over his shoulder. He was a slim, agile boy, perhaps fourteen years old-- though he did not know his age exactly-- and he moved easily among the brambles." (The Squire's Tale, page 1)

"Gawain shrugged. 'Is that so rare? Until I began traveling with you-- fifteen, twenty years ago, or whatever it was-- I never had contact with the Other World." (The Squire's Quest, page 4)

"Terence [...] said, 'About fifteen years ago--' 'Sixteen,' corrected Eileen, who had gone back to her embroidery." (The Squire's Quest, page 21)

----

I'm having a really hard time this reread of The Squire's Tales, and the quotes above from Squire's Quest hit hard and made me think.

I found The Squire, His Knight, and His Lady in my middle school library. I was 12, younger than Terence at the time.

Let's assume everyone's math is correct about Terence's age (I trust Eileen to be the most accurate). 14+20=34 . Terence is around 34 in Squire's Quest. I'm 34. I just moved into my own house, I've gone back to school, started a new job. It generally feels like I have plenty to do and to give. When Terence died, he was my age (or close enough to), had just been knighted, had just publicly married his love. All that potential was cut short in a violent tragedy, and a happily ever after in the Other World doesn't negate that tragedy.

I will likely (hopefully) outlive Terence. Knowing that I (hopefully) will get to be an age that Terence never did is just heartbreaking. Also wtf i've been reading these books for over two decades no wonder they're so formative to my personality

[luc1ferian]

okay guys please don't kill me

I ACTUALLY REALLY LIKED READING SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH

OKAY HEAR ME OUT.

I thought the romance was fine, I just wish Fenchurch and Arthur didn't immediately fall in love, Fenchurch is an interesting character and I was really sad when she was simply just removed in MH :( BUT WHAT REALLY INTERESTED ME was the mystery of the dolphins and how the only people who know something of the fate of the earth is a traumatized british man, a schizophrenic cellist, and a very sane californian biologist. i like how they brought back arthur's ability to fly and i think it's really funny how fenchurch and arthur did it on an airplane wing....flying through the moonlit sky with my girlfriend with walkmen is a dream of mine now. also there's the ENTIRE SECOND HALF of the book with ford breaking in and reenacting his shenanigans, arthur introducing fenchurch to ford and then the whole fucking,, boarding the spaceship scene which might be the funniest thing in the entire series and it's by ford so of course. and then they go to see the Message with a decaying marvin and not only is it a genius message but also the last thing marvin sees before he fucking dies?? they also made his death in the radio show 1000000x more heartbreaking i think i almost cried actually.

i do get why people don't like it, i am personally upset about the lack of zaphod and trillian, who are, by the way, my favourites (so its odd that the book without them at all is one of my favourites i agree). this book did have a lot more romance than sci-fi but i found it nice that arthur was actually able to rest kind of. i need more fenchurch angst in my life my girl nearly figured out the answer to the question of life the universe and everything (at least i think she did i may be misunderstanding what happened), has been in and out of the hospital multiple times, is a cellist, has a really interesting family to say the least, is done with everything in less of a "i am surrounded by idiots" way and more of a "I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE" way and i think that's beautiful. not sure if people were upset about adams making marvin die but i think that's one hell of a way to go out

oughh i also really like the gag character of rob mckenna for some reason i reference him every time it rains

guys please don't lynch me i just have questionable taste but i've been in the closet for too long 😔 i think it's in my top three favourites but there are better books he has written definitely and you're allowed to disagree with me definitely thumbs up!

[lubdog]

today the vet told me that my dog has a heart arrhythmia.

the diagnosis of cause could be a variety of things, but the end result is the same in every prognosis:

she is going to die.

I remember I used to wonder why people got pets.

I told my best friend that I wouldn’t put myself through the pain of loving something so much, just to know I only had a small fraction of my time on earth to give to it; even less, considering normal, daily things that require my presence or attention.

And then I got a dog.

and a cat, and another dog.

and every single one of them is going to die.

it could be in a year, or five years,

or I could get lucky with them, and they could live until they’re seventeen, or thirty-one-and-a-half, like the oldest living dog in the Guinness Book of World Records (if you ignore the possibility of that being a false claim).

but regardless of how long (or short) I am blessed with their presence and unconditional love,

I am reminded of how I sign up for devastating heartbreak without much consideration, nearly every day.

I read books and watch films where my favorite character dies, and I can see it coming long before I’ve closed the last chapter, or the credits roll.

I make friends with the knowledge that we may one day outgrow each other, and never speak again.

I watch an elderly neighbor feed stray cats in his spare time,

who tells me he was feeding a group of them once and noticed there was a single, pure white kitten of whom he was particularly fond,

whom weeks later, on his drive home from work, he saw lying on the side of the road after being struck by a vehicle;

its white fur striking against the monotone grey of the pavement.

He tells me about her, as he feeds this new group of kittens; tells me he spotted another pregnant mama the other day,

that there’s more on the way.

he tells me that the cats won’t come up to anyone else, but he can stand there amongst the kibble and cans and watch them eat, and every now and then one of them will approach him.

That white kitten died, to my knowledge, about nine years ago.

I just saw the man yesterday with his bag of kibble underarm,

and I recall he was a fairly heavy smoker a while back,

but I haven’t seen him pull out a cigarette in years.

When we give our hearts as fair game for the breaking;

in whole, and without attempt of cheating the rules

or manipulating the boundaries,

only then, are we returned something of sanctity.

something abstract that cannot be measured in word or equation or form; something that has only one rule: it must, and can be, alone, felt.

We are given one piece of unchallenged knowledge when arriving to this existence:

every piece of it is temporary.

every single parcel of it all is Sugar Cube Purity.

I asked the vet for information about warning signs that my dog was nearing the end,

“the last thing I want is to unknowingly allow her to suffer” I told them.

I will make the choice, whenever that time comes, to gift back to her a small fraction of what she has given to me, throughout every moment she has been mine.

I will help her go, I will give her back to the earth and God, and whatever else it was that graced me with the gift of her existence.

I will bear the pain that comes with the choice of loving,

and as much as I hate to see it,

so will she, even if it’s just momentarily.

“People have held their dying children” I remind myself,

a last ditch effort to remove myself from some of the suffering;

to build a wall in my heart against the inevitable products of love.

but eventually I will return, after dismantling my imagined protection, brick by brick,

to this fundamental truth:

This love was never meant to be measured against its various other ‘selves’-

for Christ’s sake, I cried when my pet tree frog died,

and I still think of him-

And while I have never had to bear the extraordinary weight of loving and losing a child,

I am convinced that every manifestation of this beautiful, heart-wrenching gift

stands alone as its very own intrinsic experience,

that can only be measured alongside, not in comparison with, its innumerable other manifestations.

We cherish, and we are cherished.

we fear, and we are feared for.

we give, and we are returned gifts.

we are substantially changed with every experience of love

and its subsequent, and less welcomed friend, grief.

we are challenged to learn the value of our existence, through the eyes of those we value.

Love never fails, not because we are incapable of “failing” in our endeavors of love-

but because it is inherently reciprocal

and it always gives exceptionally more than it takes.

My dad tells me that upon learning the news that my grandmother was pregnant with him, her firstborn;

my great-grandma vowed to never smoke another cigarette, for as long as she lived.

and she never did.

We are instilled with the most powerful ingredient in the making of living,

right from the beginning.

we only choose to quiet its voice when those around us have forgotten how to let it burst loudly from within them;

when they stifle parts of it in themselves, and by association, in us.

When the time comes, I will get another dog.

I will go in with all the intentions of imagining that the painful second-phase of love is far off;

for it will be barely visible at the time.

but I know that I will allow it to arrive when it’s ready.

And for the time being, I will both bear and enjoy

the difficulty and intentionality of staying in this current, present manifestation of love with my dog,

for however long I am granted.

“To be loved, is to be changed.”

[blutea]

today the vet told me that my dog has a heart arrhythmia.

the diagnosis of cause could be a variety of things, but the end result is the same in every prognosis:

she is going to die.

I remember I used to wonder why people got pets.

I told my best friend that I wouldn’t put myself through the pain of loving something so much, just to know I only had a small fraction of my time on earth to give to it; even less, considering normal, daily things that require my presence or attention.

And then I got a dog.

and a cat, and another dog.

and every single one of them is going to die.

it could be in a year, or five years,

or I could get lucky with them, and they could live until they’re seventeen, or thirty-one-and-a-half, like the oldest living dog in the Guinness Book of World Records (if you ignore the possibility of that being a false claim).

but regardless of how long (or short) I am blessed with their presence and unconditional love,

I am reminded of how I sign up for devastating heartbreak without much consideration, nearly every day.

I read books and watch films where my favorite character dies, and I can see it coming long before I’ve closed the last chapter, or the credits roll.

I make friends with the knowledge that we may one day outgrow each other, and never speak again.

I watch an elderly neighbor feed stray cats in his spare time,

who tells me he was feeding a group of them once and noticed there was a single, pure white kitten of whom he was particularly fond,

whom weeks later, on his drive home from work, he saw lying on the side of the road after being struck by a vehicle;

its white fur striking against the monotone grey of the pavement.

He tells me about her, as he feeds this new group of kittens; tells me he spotted another pregnant mama the other day,

that there’s more on the way.

he tells me that the cats won’t come up to anyone else, but he can stand there amongst the kibble and cans and watch them eat, and every now and then one of them will approach him.

That white kitten died, to my knowledge, about nine years ago.

I just saw the man yesterday with his bag of kibble underarm,

and I recall he was a fairly heavy smoker a while back,

but I haven’t seen him pull out a cigarette in years.

When we give our hearts as fair game for the breaking;

in whole, and without attempt of cheating the rules

or manipulating the boundaries,

only then, are we returned something of sanctity.

something abstract that cannot be measured in word or equation or form; something that has only one rule: it must, and can be, alone, felt.

We are given one piece of unchallenged knowledge when arriving to this existence:

every piece of it is temporary.

every single parcel of it all is Sugar Cube Purity.

I asked the vet for information about warning signs that my dog was nearing the end,

“the last thing I want is to unknowingly allow her to suffer” I told them.

I will make the choice, whenever that time comes, to gift back to her a small fraction of what she has given to me, throughout every moment she has been mine.

I will help her go, I will give her back to the earth and God, and whatever else it was that graced me with the gift of her existence.

I will bear the pain that comes with the choice of loving,

and as much as I hate to see it,

so will she, even if it’s just momentarily.

“People have held their dying children” I remind myself,

a last ditch effort to remove myself from some of the suffering;

to build a wall in my heart against the inevitable products of love.

but eventually I will return, after dismantling my imagined protection, brick by brick,

to this fundamental truth:

This love was never meant to be measured against its various other ‘selves’-

for Christ’s sake, I cried when my pet tree frog died,

and I still think of him-

And while I have never had to bear the extraordinary weight of loving and losing a child,

I am convinced that every manifestation of this beautiful, heart-wrenching gift

stands alone as its very own intrinsic experience,

that can only be measured alongside, not in comparison with, its innumerable other manifestations.

We cherish, and we are cherished.

we fear, and we are feared for.

we give, and we are returned gifts.

we are substantially changed with every experience of love

and its subsequent, and less welcomed friend, grief.

we are challenged to learn the value of our existence, through the eyes of those we value.

Love never fails, not because we are incapable of “failing” in our endeavors of love-

but because it is inherently reciprocal

and it always gives exceptionally more than it takes.

My dad tells me that upon learning the news that my grandmother was pregnant with him, her firstborn;

my great-grandma vowed to never smoke another cigarette, for as long as she lived.

and she never did.

We are instilled with the most powerful ingredient in the making of living,

right from the beginning.

we only choose to quiet its voice when those around us have forgotten how to let it burst loudly from within them;

when they stifle parts of it in themselves, and by association, in us.

When the time comes, I will get another dog.

I will go in with all the intentions of imagining that the painful second-phase of love is far off;

for it will be barely visible at the time.

but I know that I will allow it to arrive when it’s ready.

And for the time being, I will both bear and enjoy

the difficulty and intentionality of staying in this current, present manifestation of love with my dog,

for however long I am granted.

“To be loved, is to be changed.”

[asweetprologue]

Nili’s Benchmark Geraskier Fic Rec List

hey yall! I officially hit 750 followers (a few days ago, I blew past the benchmark without even realizing!), which is... insane. I truly can’t believe that so many people over the last year have enjoyed my presence in this fandom enough to continue to follow my work. you guys are so great and I love you all so much, so I decided to put together a gift for you!

this is a list of my favorite geraskier fics from the fandom, which I have been putting together over the last year or so. a few of these are big in the fandom, but a lot of them are smaller pieces that I feel deserve more attention! I have provided ao3 and tumblr links where I could find them, as well as ratings and summaries. Most of these are canon!verse because I’m not personally a big fan of modern au’s, but there will be a few of those scattered throughout as well. I’ve divided the fics into two sections: oneshots and multichapter. See the list below the cut!

Being in this fandom truly has gotten me through the pandemic in a big way and I have made so many good friends while here. thank you all for validating my weird obsession with these characters and enabling me in these trying times <3

Oneshots

all that was good, all that was fair (all that was me is gone) | M | 7517 | WARNING: Graphic Depictions Of Violence | @xdandelionxbloomx

Somewhere, deep in a forest, a man drags himself from his grave by sheer power of will. He lies gasping on the forest floor and does not know who or what he is. The world is wide and wonderful, though, and there is so much to see.

Or, Jaskier is so stubborn that he literally comes back from the dead.

Another fascinating addition to the mythology of the Witcher. Jaskier’s slow rediscovery of himself is so well done here. One I’ve come back to again and again. 

As Fast As Love Can Go | T | 9628 | @bygodstillam

There are Faeries in the Wood.

That's what everyone said, at least, not that there was any solid proof. Jaskier had tried, more than once, to find some. Just a hint somewhere, of a real story, of real magic. But all anyone seemed to have was stories.

Jaskier was determined to find proof. He wasn't expecting to find a witcher in the process.

Fascinating fic with some really interesting worldbuilding, and a fresh new take on True Love’s Kiss. Also with some great art by @hehearse!

beautiful, he stirs up still things | T | 2575 | @alittlebitmaybe

“You’re not asking me to dance,” says Geralt.

Jaskier turns his palm up on his knee, offering it. “I think you’ll find I am.”

Just them dancing. This is a lovely sort of pre-relationship dynamic. So soft.

Dialogue Prompt | NR | 2932 | @reinvent-and-believe

Dialogue Prompt 48: “You make me want things I can’t have.” Wordless I-love-you 50: buying them a special treat when you go out shopping

Geralt gets Jaskier a gift, which prompts some confessions.

Even a small love | E | 22,272 | WARNING: Rape/Non-Con 

“Well,” Jaskier replies distractedly. “Lots of things want to strangle you.”

“You don’t.”

It isn’t a particularly troublesome accusation, or even necessarily an accusation at all.

This is one I read early on in the fandom, and it really stuck with me. The dynamic between Jaskier and Geralt is perfect, and the misunderstandings between them feel so realistic. The non-con is not extreme, but do mind the warnings. 

For the Space of a Heartbeat | T | 2021 | @drowningbydegrees

As it turns out, falling into bed with your very best friend who you are privately very much in love with isn't nearly so nerve wracking as waking up with them the morning after.

Just sweet, morning after discussions. I love to see them talking for once.

Greensleeves | T | 10,414 | @rebrandedbard

When Geralt crosses paths with Jaskier in the spring, the world is dressed in green. Quite literally. Everyone everywhere is wearing green, and it all comes down to a song Jaskier has written that, to his mortification, has become popular throughout the Continent. It's torment, being forced to preform the song over and over again and have his heart broken anew. But who is this Lady Greensleeves the people say Jaskier is so maddeningly, heartbrokenly in love with? At the baron's wedding party, Geralt is determined to find out.

This is one of my personal faves - there’s just something about Jaskier’s feelings being put on blast while Geralt remains totally oblivious that I think is so very them. And the resolution at the end is delightful.

I Don’t Wanna Fall (If It’s Not In Love) | E | 13,902 | @writinglizards

The first time it's out of desperation. Things get rapidly out of hand from there.

OR the building of a relationship through mutual wank sessions.

I love everything Ashley writes, but this one was the first fic I read by her and it still has a warm place in my heart. I also highly recommend It’s Been A While (makes me cry every time) and Tell Me Honestly

Like a Storm, Like a Flood | T | 1065 | @valdomarx

Jaskier is leaving for the winter, and Geralt can't bear the thought of not seeing him for months.

It was soooo hard to pick only one fic by George, but this one is so soft and sweet and yearning I just had to go with it. This is really just about Geralt finally hitting a breaking point and saying enough is enough.

one flesh | E | 10,763 | WARNING: MCD 

“Well, then. I’m a ghost.” Jaskier spread his arms grandly. Geralt held his gaze for a moment, then dropped his head and laughed. Jaskier put his hands on his hips. “Do fill me in on what’s so funny.” It wasn’t funny. It was just so - ridiculous, the things Geralt’s fucked up brain would invent. This had to be the last nail in the sanity coffin, it just had to be.

Or: Jaskier is a ghost, and Geralt is a mess.

Jaskier dies and comes back as a ghost to haunt Geralt into taking care of himself. Geralt does not handle this gracefully. This fic is so sad and heartbreaking, but the ending is so sweet.

to render it transparent | E | 23,901

Geralt wakes up warm, peaceful, and utterly content, which is how he knows that something is severely wrong.

Sigh. This fic. This is a time travel fic - Geralt ends up in the future living with Jaskier on the coast, just after the mountain. It’s slow and beautiful and extremely bittersweet, all about how we choose to love people despite how much it can hurt us.

With All the Continent A Stage | M | 4745 | @greyduckgreygoose

Later, Geralt learned that the play was four hours long. Four hours long. It didn’t feel like it. Most of it passed by in a fever dream of ominous music, dance-fighting and dryads in gossamer leaves, swinging from hoops attached to the ceiling. Yennefer made an appearance, played by Priscilla in a glittering negligee. She sang a song to Geralt about putting him “Under Her Spell”, and they had a sensual dance number which was made a little strange by a sickened Jaskier (played by Jaskier) coughing loudly in the background.

(Jaskier invites Geralt to a musical production inspired by his own life.)

Jaskier basically writes Geralt a love letter in the form of a four hour long play. Geralt is an idiot about it.

Multi-Chapter Fics

A Lover’s Lament | M | 25,364 | @somedrunkpirate

So,” Jaskier begins, as casually as he can, “you are telling me, that in theory, if I were to be in love with someone — anyone — that person could well be in terrible danger?”

Of all terrible and ridiculous things that have threatened Geralt’s safety, Jaskier’d never thought that loving him might be what will get him killed.

I honestly can’t count the number of times I’ve read this fic. The monster is so interesting, and the mythos of it fits seamlessly into the world of the Witcher in my mind. Jaskier being so afraid that his feelings are going to put Geralt at risk, clearly unable to see that Geralt is going through the exact same thing. I think about the scene with them looking at each other almost daily. 

A Pair of Gloves, the Scent of Roses | M | 24,134 | WARNING: Graphic Depictions of Violence

In the bustling days before the Midsummer festival, Geralt is sent into the countryside to deal with a monster - with Jaskier once again by his side. But the bard has not forgiven him, and while he's not hiding his contempt for the Witcher, he is recalcitrant about revealing his true motives for joining him. As the hunt turns into a desperate mission to save an innocent man and the monster is not what is seems to be, Geralt learns a few new things about his old friend and decides to finally attempt to mend the rift between them...

This is one of my favorite’s in the fandom - it feels so believable, the world is so rich and the oc’s are convincing and charming. Geralt and Jaskier feel so honest here, stumbling around each other but still drawn together. Beautiful beautiful beautiful

Bearing the will of the flower | NR | 11,449 

The way Jaskier sees it, his hobby of following a witcher around was always pretty likely to get him killed.

The fact that it's happening now because the witcher in question doesn't love him, he thinks as he coughs up crumpled flowers, hardly makes a difference.

My favorite hanahaki fic in the fandom. I’m such a sucker for these, and these two idiots being so incapable of talking about their feelings really makes them prime candidates. 

Food of Love | T | 22,488 | @wallatile-qvibbler

I brought a dead princess back to life through the power of song is the kind of thing that would have got an eyebrow raise even from the stone-faced Geralt of Rivia, so it's a good thing he and Geralt will probably never see each other again.

(or: the one where Jaskier channels magic through his songs, and it almost never goes as expected.)

This is a Jaskier and Renfri centric fic, which wasn’t something I knew I wanted until I read this. Jaskier is a bard which in this AU comes with magical powers, but it feels so well integrated into the universe that I wish it was just... how the Witcher is. Renfri is so good here, and even though Jaskier and Geralt barely even interact you can feel the tension and love between them. Cannot recommend highly enough.

friends and allies of the witcher | T | 10,312 | @theamazingbard

Yennefer crawls over to her newest cellmate. They’re curled up on their side. Breathing, but only just. She’s not sure what she’s hoping for when she turns them over. Still isn’t when she sees that it is indeed Jaskier.

“Shit."

Yennefer and Jaskier each suffer in more ways than one at the hands of Nilfgaard.

Yennefer and Jaskier get capture by Nilfgaard and tossed into a cell together. Exactly what I want out of season 2 honestly. Their interactions are gold.

I’d Be the Choiceless Hope | E | 45,188 | WARNING: Rape/Non-Con | @lesdemonium

As a baby, Jaskier was visited by a fae, who gifted Jaskier's mother with Jaskier's obedience. As Jaskier grew older, the "gift" became more of a curse.

You know I’m not gonna make a rec list without listing Zoe’s Ella Enchanted au. Need I say more?

Silver and Copper | M | 56,139 | WARNING: Graphic Depictions of Violence | @kaer-cuan

Geralt is just supposed to pass through the quiet Lettenhove area. He's not anticipating being begged by its people to help save their viscount from a curse that keeps him from daylight. Lord Jaskier, they call him, and he's likely dying.

As Geralt struggles to untangle the ugly web of history that has lead to the increasingly complicated curse, he finds himself spending more and more time with the strange young viscount and wondering just what he might have been before the curse, and who he might be after. But things are not always as they seem, and as the curse tightens its grip on Jaskier, Geralt is forced to face the fear of failing yet another person whose choices were stolen from them.

Or-

Jaskier is kept from becoming a bard. Geralt finds him anyway.

This is a fic that haunts me. It’s very scary in parts, and mind the tags - there are some very heavy themes here. But it’s beautiful and touching, and Jaskier feels very true to himself even though his origin is so different.

we could be married (and then we'd be happy) | E | 50,222 | @a-kind-of-merry-war

Jaskier reached into his pocket, fingers grasping around the little box. He pulled it out with what he hoped was a romantic flourish, flipping it open to reveal the simple gold band inside. “Geralt,” he said, confidently, cooly, like this wasn’t terrifying, “Will you marry me?”

Geralt and Jaskier fake marriage proposals to get free deserts and shit but it goes tits up when Vesemir catches them in the act. Not knowing how to fess up, they go along with it for a while, which is hell because they’re both pining like mad. As I said, I don’t love modern au’s, but it’s merry so of course this one had to end up on my list.

~

And that’s it! 20 fics for you, and hopefully you can all find one or two you haven’t read before. There are a lot of people and fics that I didn’t include in this list only because I was trying to not put a million down (which I could). I highly recommend anything by @wherethewordsare, @julek, @contemplativepancakes, @witcher-and-his-bard, and @inber, as well as those linked to fics above, and I’m sure there are others I forgot to mention. Yall have truly made being in this fandom worthwhile <3

[animeomegas]

Omega!Naruto Characters - Death from a broken heart.

Anon:  I don't know if you do, but some aus say that a person can't sruvive after their mate dies, like they die from a broken heart. Do you have that in yours, can you write who would be most likely to die mayeb please xx

(I love this headcanon! In my au, I think that if a person feels like they have nothing left to live for after their mate dies, they die with them. This is my ranking for how the boys would react when you had been mated for a while, but before having children. 

I wrote a Naruto one first, but I’m already half way through a BNHA version, so look out for that.)

Warnings: Suicide, major death, depression.

LEAST

1. Naruto – ALIVE – He is in mourning for a long time, but ultimately, he manages to turn your death into something meaningful. He memorialises you with a beautiful shrine in your home that he can’t bear to leave. He tries to ‘solve’ whatever it was that killed you. For example, if you died from sickness, he would assign lots more funds into the hospital and medicinal research. It’s not easy for him at all, but he could move on someday and take another mate, many years down the line. He has so much love to give and he wants to receive love in return, and he knows you would want him to be happy. However, he would never tolerate a new mate who was jealous of you or wanted him to get rid of your shrine. He could never do that to your memory. He picks a mate he knows you would love.

2. Iruka – ALIVE – He is deeply depressed when you die. He throws himself into his work as much as he can, distracting himself until he has a complete breakdown. He relies on his friends a lot during this time. Iruka eventually learns to distract himself in healthier ways, processing with your death in smaller increments rather than all at once. He might get another mate, but it would be very unlikely I think. It would be more likely that Iruka decides to adopt an orphan and throw himself into raising that child with as much love as he can. He would raise the child knowing you as their other parent, telling them stories about you, showing him pictures and visiting your grave with them.

3. Gaara – ALIVE – He is angry. It has been a long time since he was this angry. Gaara blames himself for a long time, which sends him down a dark path. Ultimately what saves him is his siblings. They keep him sane and happy to the best of their abilities and Gaara throws himself into his family as a result. It’s the only place where he can feel okay, if only for a little bit. If his siblings ever have pups, Gaara is committed to being the greatest uncle of all time and the pups love him. However, he can’t help but get lost in his thoughts sometimes, wondering what your children would have been like. He misses you every second of every day. He would be extremely unlikely to get mated again.

4. Shikamaru – ALIVE – He is furious. With the situation, with himself, and with you, for leaving him alone when you promised you wouldn’t. Another one who leans a lot on his friends and family to get him through the darkest time in his life. He lashes out at people and is very difficult to deal with after you die. I definitely see him as the kind of person to take on one of your hobbies to help him deal with your loss. Whatever it was you loved to do the most, he will start doing as a way to ensure that he will never forget you. He may get mated again, he may not, it depends a lot on if he meets someone he falls in love with again. But if the clan elders ever try and push him to mate again so that he can have an heir, he will flip his shit big time. He sees it as a direct attack on your memory.

5. Shino – ALIVE – He withdraws into himself. He speaks to no one other than his father for about a month after your death, refusing to go about his life as normal. Because it’s not normal and it will never be normal again. He takes a long hiatus from missions which he spends sorting through his thoughts and memories of you. The things he never said, the things he never got to do, the things he should have done. He tortures himself for a few weeks before his father pulls him out of his slump by force. They go for walks together, trying to find certain bugs, just like they did when he was a child. They cook together, Shibi closely monitoring Shino’s diet, knowing that hunger takes a big hit after the death of a mate. This is what saves Shino, but he will never mate again. He refuses. He couldn’t do that to your memory, but he also couldn’t do it to himself. Not again.

6. Neji – ALIVE – He gets so close to death. He stops eating, stops getting out of bed, stops working. He just lays there wasting away. He is convinced that he’s going to die and he feels weirdly happy about that. He doesn’t fight it at all, but instead embraces all his misery. It’s when his teammates come to visit him that everything changes. They find him close to death and panic. They rush him to the hospital, making sure that someone is with him at all times. They tell jokes, they organise games and read to him, anything to make him feel better. And it works enough that he can leave the hospital in a fortnight. Even after that, they keep up around the clock supervision for him, making sure that he is never alone with his dark thoughts for too long. Slowly, but surely, he recovers. But he never forgets. And he certainly never mates again.

7. Itachi – DEAD (kind of) -  Itachi shuts down, but he doesn’t die, at least not immediately. He hyper focuses on his plan, following the steps automatically. He’s happy with every step he completes, because he knows the final step is his death. He clings to the knowledge that he will die soon, which ironically is the only thing that keeps him alive. He is colder than ever. From an outsider’s perspective it might not seem that he is that affected, but when he’s alone he just sits in silence, sometimes tears run down his face. When he is finally an inch from death at the hands of his brother, he smiles. He doesn’t think he’ll see you again. He doesn’t think he deserves that kind of happiness. People like him don’t deserve that. But at least, he hopes, it might stop hurting.

8. Kakashi – DEAD – He’s been through so much, that he thinks he should be able to cope by now. He knew this was going to happen after all. He waited so long to get mated, because he was scared, because he knew that you would leave him or be taken from him like everyone else. He’s tired. He’s so tired. He’s probably at least nearly 40 at this point, he’s far older than he ever thought he’d be. You taught him what it meant to truly live, not just survive. He can’t go back to how he was, he can’t. He goes to your funeral and stands there in silence. He accepts every condolence and offer of help with a silent nod. He promises his friends that he will go to a specialist therapist first thing in the morning. When everybody leaves, he sits by your grave all night, asking you for forgiveness for everything. For not being quick enough to save you, for pushing you away so much at the beginning of your relationship, and finally, forgiveness for what he’s about to do. He knows you would tell him to fight and survive the heartbreak, but he can’t. He heads back to his apartment for the final time, breathing in the air and taking in the sights. He piles everything he has that smells like you onto his bed and lays down in it. He apologises one final time before closing his eyes, knowing that he won’t be waking up.

9.  Sasuke – DEAD – He should have known his would happen. Everything he loves gets ripped away from him, so why would you be any different? He’s furious when he hears the news. He destroys your house, throwing and smashing everything he can get his hands on. And when he’s destroyed everything, he just sits down in the middle of the living room floor and cries. He knows that people will show up soon. He knows that everyone knows he’s at risk for hurting himself, but he won’t let them take away his choice. He doesn’t want to do it anymore, he just wants to be with you. So he collects himself for a moment and then he runs. He doesn’t pick a place he just runs where he knows no one will think to look. He ends up sitting in between some trees on the floor of a training ground no one uses. He watches the stars for a few minutes, remembering every time he would do that together with you. He talks to you quietly, closing his eyes and convincing himself that you’re laying beside him. In the end, he doesn’t wait to die from his broken heart, he does it himself.

MOST

[solicuttle]

Expiration

You didn’t deserve to die. But you died anyways.

-----

Word Count: 1.0k

Warnings: Death, Major Angst, No Happy Ending

Characters: Kuboyasu Aren, Teruhashi Kokomi, and Saiki Kusuo,

-----

This has been in my mind for a while so I just really needed to get rid of it.

-----

Saiki Kusuo

You make Saiki so, so weak. He hadn’t wanted to go to the damned forest range anyways. It was the location of one of his biggest headaches, the volcano that’s responsible for Saiki repeating the year.

But your interest had been piqued this time around. With a little convincing, little begging and a little bit of coffee jelly it hadn’t taken much to drag your boyfriend out to the forest.

He didn’t know why you’d wanted to visit the forest; it was undoubtably boring. But you were ecstatic, even when you were swatting away the insects who came to harass you. Saiki nearly teleported away when he saw them, the devious creatures. You were bribing him with sweets whenever he complained long enough, so why shouldn’t he stay?

Saiki should’ve left earlier. He should’ve seen it coming, should’ve predicted the volcanic eruption—

And he did predict it! A volcanic rock would hit you in your heart, so Saiki tugged you just at the right moment. But the speed and vertigo in which he’d done it had snapped your neck. You were dead.

Then it happened all over again. Saiki had a chance to right things. This time he’d teleported you to Paris. Yet you’d inhaled enough volcanic ash to have an attack and collapse in his arms. Less than five seconds had passed before you’d crumpled up in his arms. Dead.

The loop repeated. And repeated. And repeated. And he still couldn’t save you. And you were still dead.

Saiki hasn’t lost hope. He has lost a track of time; time is infinite when you’re trying to save the one you love. But no matter what he does, you don’t make it.

How long has it been since he’s seen your smile? How long has it been since he’s been in this loop of losing you over, and over again? Is this the universe’s way of telling Saiki that he’s never going to be happy?

Why?! Is this some sort of sick joke? That despite being all-powerful, he’s not powerful enough to save you?  

It’s not funny.

------

Kuboyasu Aren

------

When you’d proposed hiking to the forest, Kuboyasu had been onboard. He’d helped you pack things for your own little adventure, and despite your concerns that it wouldn’t fit onto his motorcycle, Kuboyasu had whisked you away.

Riding on the motorcycle had been one of your favorite activities, and one Kuboyasu had been fond of. So why does he have to ride back home, alone? The sounds of sirens in the air following him, yet the sirens can’t do anything to save you from certain death.

You are going to die. And there’s nothing Kuboyasu can do. He doesn’t even know yet. If he did, he’d cherish these last moments, hug you into his arms like you were going to vanish at any moment. Because you are going to vanish. Right about… now.

You stopped for a little breather, telling jokes to pass the time. Kuboyasu had been watching you, a smile etched onto his face. It’s moments of tranquility like this that keep him going, that remind Kuboyasu why he left his previous life behind. Is this why he’s going to lose everything?

You don’t even notice. You’re still smiling and Kuboyasu’s smiling and then you’re not anymore, keeling over and onto the ground. Kuboyasu’s on you in seconds, worry clear on his face. It’s heartbreaking to realize you’re dead. It’s soul crushing to realize you died with a clear smile on your face, none the wiser of your impending doom.

He rages. What else can he do? Kuboyasu calls the ambulance, clinging onto that sliver of hope that you’re still alive. But with each passing second and no response from you, the certainty of your death fills him with dread.

Kuboyasu’s angry. He rages against the world, smashes the tree you’d been leaned on, kicks at the ground beneath him like it’s worthless because it is—

What’s the point of anything if you’re not here with him to enjoy it?

-----

Teruhashi Kokomi

-----

What’s better than a day out into the forest, alone? For one, Teruhashi can relax slightly because the likelihood of her crazed fans following the both of you is low. And two, it makes you happy to be here, with here? Who is Teruhashi to deny your requests?

If she’d been stronger, if she’d denied you the one thing, you’d asked for maybe you would’ve still been here.

Her smile is genuine for once, holding your hand and slightly swinging it every passing second. She picked one of her favorite dresses – one of the dresses that you loved. You loved a lot of things, you know.

The volcano wasn’t supposed to erupt. How was she supposed to know there was a volcano in the forest? It was hidden beneath the vast expanse of trees, and even when glimpsed at it seemed like a mountain. But if she’d been stronger, if she’d been smarter…

Her regrets mean nothing now. The eruption was sudden, ash rising in the air and Teruhashi was terrified. Her mouth hung open in a silent scream, your grip on her hand growing stronger and then—

Your grip goes lax. Her gaze lands on you, you with a molten rock lodged in the place where your heart should be.

You’re dead. Her grip on your hand should be borderline painful; if you were alive you should be whining about the pain but you’re not and Teruhashi can’t help but break into sobs. Her mask cracks into nothingness. What’s the point of putting up a façade if no one’s here to see it? It’s not like you’re alive.

Teruhashi’s beautiful when she cries. But you’ll never get to see it because you aren’t alive anymore and all that’s left of you is your corpse. The thought has your girlfriend – now ex-girlfriend – sinking onto the floor in despair.

Teruhashi’s oddly quiet. She’s blank. How does one react in such a situation? It’s so fast, so sudden that she doesn’t know what to believe.

She doesn’t want to believe it.

[tsukishumai]

Chemical Reaction - Kuroo Tetsuro

Summary: When the universe hands you a second chance, will you be able to move on from the mistakes of your past? 

college!Kuroo x fem!reader

a friends to friends w/ benefits to lovers type of deal.

Warnings: some light NSFW, slow burn, aged up characters, mentions of smoking, mentions of alcohol, fingering, cursing, and a little heartbreak. angst to fluff

Word Count: 7.3k (it goes by fast, I swear (′ꈍωꈍ‵))

A/N:  Jesus... this started out as a prompt, but it snowballed into whatever the hell this is. And it was supposed to be done by Kuroo’s bday T-T but better late than never! I poured in a lil extra love into this, pls give it a shot, lmk what you think, and I hope you enjoy !

Your history with Kuroo Tetsuro went back a little bit further than you’d like to admit.

He had been in your class for all three years you were at Nekoma, but you had really only popped onto each other’s radars second year.

He had been assigned the seat next to you, and while you were upset that your best friend, Eri, had been sat all the way across the room, you didn’t exactly mind the view.  

Right off the bat, you knew this was going to be trouble for you.

The guy was cute, funny, and smart. How hadn’t you noticed him before?

“Hey, L/N-chan,” he said, already making you blush with the addition of the honorific, “I have many chemistry jokes… but I’m afraid they won’t get a good reaction!”

You couldn’t stop either the face palm or the giggle that slipped out of your lips.

Kuroo was an easy person to get along with. He always greeted you in the mornings, and never really bothered you during class. On the rare occasion he stayed in the classroom for lunch, the two of you would strike up a conversation, but it never went past the surface.

Until about halfway through the school year. Your teacher had assigned a project that required a partner.

You looked to Eri, only to find the little traitor pairing up with the guy she had been eyeing since first year.

You sighed, not even mad at her for trying to shoot her shot.

“Want to be partners?” your head shot to the boy next to you.

“Uhm. Sure!”

And so it went like this; the project was due at the end of the year, requiring a research paper, and a 7 minute power point presentation.

Once or twice a week, the two of you would meet up at the school library either before school or after your club activities.

Kuroo was smart; smarter than you but you’d never say that to his face, so more often than not, the two of you would finish what needed to be done that day, and spent the rest of the time just talking, and getting to know each other.

By the third time the two of you had gotten kicked out by the librarian for laughing too much, Kuroo suggested meeting at his house on the weekends.

Surely that doesn’t mean what you think it means right???

It doesn’t, lmao. This guy was a good student, he made sure you guys finished your parts, because there was no way he was going to get anything less than an A.

Oh, you guys finished a little early today? Great! L/N-chan! Help me with my receives!

As the weeks pass by, there was a mutual progression in the relationship, neither of you seeing each other as project partners anymore, and falling into a comfortable friendship.

For Kuroo, that is. You, on the other hand, just became way too good at acting like you weren’t falling in love.

The school year is coming to a close, and you turn in your project.

Surprise, surprise! You guys got an A.

Seriously, the teacher said she was going to start using it as an example for the future students.

You couldn’t even be happy about your passing grade; you were too sad that your time with Kuroo was ending.

“Well, it was really fun being your partner this year,” you said, and Kuroo cocked an eyebrow at you.

“Why do you sound like someone’s dying,” he joked, “Anyway, Kenma said he bought a new game, but it’s multiplayer. What time are you coming this weekend?”

Bitch, ya heart nearly jumped out of your chest.

For a little while, you were content with things being like that. You had become good friends with not just Kuroo, but Kenma as well. You guys weren’t always together, but definitely made a point to make time for each other.

While you guys were usually busy during the week, club activities, homework and school taking up most of your time, Saturdays at Kuroo’s had become a thing well into your third year. As much as possible, you would try to attend his games, and he would try to bring you snacks when he knows you’re stuck studying.

You tried really hard not to read into the things he would do for you.

Surely, he’s also held Kenma’s bag while walking him home, right?

He’s memorized his whole team’s schedule; it’s nothing special if he also has yours memorized.

You know that he only brought you lunch today because he had to share half of his when you forgot yours.

All normal friend stuff, right! Right?!

“I met a cute girl the other day,” he said to you absentmindedly one morning before class.

Wait. Your chest shouldn’t feel so tight, should it? Your eyes are swimming, and your head is floating. Every breath feels like lead in your lungs, and you kinda wished the ground would swallow you whole.

“Oh, Really?” you tried to be nonchalant, and hoped he didn’t notice the shakiness in your voice.

He nodded. “Yeah… she’s kinda funny.”

But you were really funny, weren’t you? You were the one that made him laugh like a hyena, made him clutch his stomach and gasp for breath, right?

“Is that so?” your mouth felt like sandpaper, “Why don’t you try taking her out on a date?”

You wish you had never said those words.

You knew the girl he was talking about; you had seen Kuroo approach her in the hallway.

She was your teammate in the track and field club; not one of the fastest, but she was beautiful, kind, friendly, and Kuroo was right – she really was kind of funny.

“You should have told him first, you know,” Kenma had mumbled from next to you once, eyes never leaving his game while yours quickly shot him a glare.

It was just the two of you at the lunch table – Kuroo mumbling an excuse about having plans with another “friend”.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Kenma just rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

You spend the next few weeks avoiding him; it was easier since he didn’t sit next to you in class anymore, you weren’t really replying to his texts as often, you stopped visiting him and Kenma at practice, and you had missed the game you had told them you would try to go to.

You were kind of starting to realize that it was mostly you that had to go and seek them out.

Now that you weren’t doing these things… where was he?

You would catch a glimpse of Kuroo when he would visit your teammate during practice; he would try to greet you but you’d only shoot him a tight smile.

So when you heard a loud knock on your door at eight o clock in the evening, the last person you expected was the roosterhead himself.

“Hey,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “I could tell something was bothering you, and I’ve been trying to give you your space, but… it’s been weeks now so, I just have to know… Are you avoiding me?”

You didn’t really know what to say, if there is even anything else to. Even with your head down and eyes trained to your feet, you could feel the burn of his gaze.

“I...” the deep timbre of his voice always managed to give you chills, “I miss you.”

Is he fucking serious right now? He’s so smart, yet he can’t put two and two together? He can see his opponents’ moves before they happen, yet he can’t even see you standing right in front of him?

“I have feelings for you, Kuroo,” you blurted out before you could stop yourself.

Kuroo’s eyes widened by a fraction, his mouth slightly hung agape, dumbfounded by your seemingly random confession.

Except, it wasn’t random to you. You’ve been harboring these feelings for months, and after hurting yourself by staying silent for so long, you decided that you deserve better.

You’ll accept whatever the outcome, if that’s the price for your peace.

“Y/N…” it took him a long time to finally speak, and you try to ignore the fact that this is the first time he’s called you by your first name.

His face clearly showed his struggle to get the words out. “I’m sorry, I didn’t… I –“

You raised your hand. You didn’t really want to hear any more than that.

“It’s okay,” you said, giving him a small smile.

And with that, you shut the door on Kuroo Tetsuro.

You do your best to move on, smiling and laughing with friends you wouldn’t usually talk to you, ignoring the ghost of your past that haunt you every time you walked passed by Kuroo and your teammate down the hall.

You throw back a laugh at whatever the person next to you had said, turning away to miss the fact that Kuroo’s eyes always followed you wherever you went.

Graduation day came and in the blink of an eye, your days at Nekoma were behind you.

The days passed, the seasons changed, the flowers bloomed, and then they died.

You started university, moving to a different city and living with the very same best friend whose betrayal to quench her own thirst became the catalyst for your greatest heartbreak.

You’ve forgiven her for that though, you guess.

Life in college was the breath of fresh air that you needed.

New things to learn, new places to discover, and new faces to help you forget the scars of old ones.

Years pass by, and while you’ve allowed yourself to feel the touch of others, allow them to make you laugh, allow them to make you cry, you’ve never really allowed yourself the luxury of falling in love again.

Who has time for that any way?

Definitely not you. You just needed to finish your undergrad, and get into med school.

You had plans for your life, you weren’t going to compromise your dreams just for another person, and no matter whom you dated or how much they liked you, this fact had always rubbed them the wrong way.

You were finally starting your last year at your undergrad, quite possibly one of the most important years of college, what with your thesis, med school applications, and your entire future pretty much on the line, no big deal.

Your first class of the day was chemistry. You had been avoiding the last chemistry class required by your degree, all of your friends telling you that it was one of the hardest classes they’ve ever taken, and so naturally, you ran away for as long as possible.

The class wasn’t due to start for another fifteen minutes when you walked in, giving you a perfect opportunity to grab a seat of your liking.

You ended up choosing one in the third row – you knew that if you sat in the back, you wouldn’t pay attention.

You take out your laptop, books, and all required materials, using this free time to check any emails from your professors.

You were checking the time – 5 minutes left until class started – when you were interrupted.

“L/N-chan?”

Your feel your body stiffen up at the sound of a voice you hadn’t heard in years.

You turn your head to your left, hoping to all the gods that maybe you were mistaken.

“Kuroo?” you said in disbelief, and oh honey… you could not believe he was standing right before you.

Kuroo seemed like he hadn’t changed at all. His hair seemed a little bit more managed, he was a little bit taller, his muscles filled out his shirt better… but he still had the same goofy smile on his face, and that undeniably mischievous twinkle in his eye.

“What are you doing here?” you blurted out. “I thought you went to a university in Tokyo?”

“I did, but I transferred this year,” he said, “This university has a great marketing program.”

“I can’t believe it,” you mumble out, more so to yourself than him, “It’s been years.”

He gave you a smile. “It has.”

He took the seat next to you, much to your surprise. You almost wanted to open your mouth in protest, but what could you say? ‘You can’t sit there’?

You were thankful that the class had only gone over the syllabus, because you didn’t hear a word the professor said.

When you told Eri about it later, she just laughed.

“I always thought Kuroo-san was a nice guy,” she commented, her back turned while she cooked the both of you dinner.

“I never said he wasn’t,” you said, throwing back the rest of the wine in your glass.

“What, you still like him or something?” Eri teased, plating the noodles she had created and setting it in front of you.

“Of course not,” you grumbled, stabbing at the plate with a fork, and the amused look on Eri’s face tells you that her silence was just to placate you.

The next few weeks of the semester went by without any incident.

Kuroo stayed in the seat next to you, and you didn’t let yourself wonder why.

You were proud at yourself for being able to talk to Kuroo the way that you were; he still made the same stupid chemistry jokes in high school, but now you felt like you could laugh at them without choking on the air around you.

It was easy.

Until it wasn’t.

“Alright everyone,” your professor began one rainy morning, “We’re about halfway through the semester, and this is usually around the time I like to assign a little project.”

All of a sudden, you felt a strange feeling of déjà vu.

“Now, it’s only going to be worth about a third of your grade in the class, so I suggest not slacking off on this one. This is going to require a partner, and before you go texting your bestie that you want to ‘link up’, I’ve taken the liberty of assigning your partner for you.”

Oh, Christ. You were praying you wouldn’t get partnered up with a dead weight.

“When I call your name, raise your hand so I could introduce you to your new partner.”

You waited patiently for your name to be called, but Kuroo’s had been called first.

“Kuroo Testuro.”

Kuroo raised his hand.

“Your partner will be... let’s see here… ah, L/N F/N!”

No. No fucking way.

Your arm involuntarily raised, the professor nodding his head in acknowledgement.

You slowly turn to face Kuroo, who had an unreadable smile placed on his lips, your professor’s voice droning on in the background.

“Well,” he said, laughter laced in his words, “Isn’t this familiar?”

At first, you felt incredibly apprehensive at the thought of being partnered with your high school crush, but at the end of the day, you were actually incredibly thankful.

Kuroo was just as smart and diligent as he was back then, and you had every confidence that your project was going to get the highest grade.

You tried to make it a point to meet in public places – cafes, libraries, and the like.

But soon, Kuroo suggested that it would just be easier and more comfortable to meet at either your place or his.

He only ever came by when Eri was home too, which would have been fine if the smirk on her face didn’t make you so nervous.

You noticed that his roommate was always around when you came over as well. You learned his name was Bokuto, and though he was a little loud, his presence was actually a little comforting.

Honestly, it all felt so… nostalgic. Whenever you would finish your work for the day, then the two of you would spend the time talking, catching up, and laughing at stupid jokes, almost as if the two of you were friends again.

Almost like nothing happened between you at all.

“Hey,” you started one day, curiosity getting the better of you after a particularly steamy conversation about past relationships, sitting on the floor with your iPad on your lap and homework strewn about all over the living room floor, “Whatever happened between you and that girl from high school?”

Kuroo just gave you a sad smile, and you thought she must have broken his heart pretty badly.

“Oh that…” he waved it off, “That was a mistake. A big one.”

You figured it was better not to ask any more questions.

Eri walked out of her room soon after Kuroo left that night, her arms crossed and leaning against the door’s archway as she watched you wash the dishes.

You guys are getting pretty close,” she mused.

She couldn’t see you roll your eyes. “Well, yeah, we were pretty good friends in high school.”

Eri let out a humorless laugh. “I stand by my statement that Kuroo-san is a nice guy,” she said, walking up next to you to place a hand on your shoulder, “But I haven’t forgotten how long it took you to get over what happened.”

Your hands stilled in the soapy water for a second, but you chose not to say anything.

“I’m just saying,” Eri started to walk back to her room, calling out her last words behind her shoulder, “Be careful.”

Eri’s words echoed in your head whenever you were with Kuroo.

Every time he offered to pay for your food, you made sure to insist you’d pay for it yourself. If he tried to grab your bag from your shoulder when you walked, you’d hold on tighter and say you were fine.

You didn’t avoid him like you did before, but you made every attempt to keep him at arm’s length.

It seems your attempts were all for nothing, however, when the semester ended.

“Amazing job,” were the words that came from your professor when giving your passing grade.

“We did it,” Kuroo said happily, the two of you making your way out of the class, “It’s finally over.”

“Thank god,” you laughed back.

“Hey,” Kuroo started, though he was looking at everywhere but you, “Bokuto’s gone and visiting his boyfriend for the weekend, but I was wondering if you wanted to come over for drinks later?”

You blinked, trying to even your breathing.

“You know, to celebrate the end of the semester, and acing that nightmare class.”

You should say no, right? Wait, but you’re grown now. You’ve moved on from what happened back then. The two of you did work really hard this semester, what’s wrong with celebrating your achievements?

“I think we’ve earned it,” Kuroo laughed.

“Yeah,” you said, and you were glad for it just from the smile that spread on his stupid face, “We really have! I’ll be there.”

“See you at eight?”

You nodded at his words as he waved goodbye, going your separate ways.

Ten hours later, you were sitting next to Kuroo on his living room floor, sake cup full to the brim as BNHA plays on his TV.

“Ah, Deku’s in the hospital,” Kuroo slurred, sake sloshing out of his cup when he pointed to the screen, “That’s a shot!”

The two of you threw back the warm liquid, and you were kind of worried that it didn’t taste like anything anymore.

“Kuroo,” you laughed, “We’re only on the second episode… and I think I’ve taken, like, twelve shots at this point.”

“This was your idea!”

“Well, I have another idea,” you started to get up, causing Kuroo to get up as well, “Let’s order take out!”

He laughed at your red face, agreeing with you.

You started to make your way to the couch, but all of a sudden, you felt dizzy, a head rush taking over your senses as you stumbled over your feet.

Kuroo caught you before you could hit the floor.

“You okay?” he laughed, and the sound of it elicited a laugh from your own lips.

In a second, the two of you erupted in giggles, snickering at nothing in particular while his strong arms still held you in place.

Suddenly, you were hyperaware of his touch on your skin, and you let your eyes trail from the strong hands around your waist, to the golden honey eyes that were already staring at your face.

You can’t exactly remember how, but the next thing you knew, you were pinned under Kuroo on his bed, his soft lips moving in tandem with yours while his hot tongue took over your whole mouth.

Your arms were looped around his neck, and he slid his calloused hands up your arm.

You felt his hands grip onto your wrists before he pulled them off his necked and pinned them onto the mattress.

You took in a deep breath once he disconnected from your mouth, planting a trail of kisses along your jaw line and down to your neck, before you slid his tongue across your supple skin.

You shivered, acutely aware of the fact that he has you trapped.

“Be careful,” Eri’s words echoed in your mind.

Fuck, you tried to think but it was hard when Kuroo just threw his shirt across the room, hovering over you with chiseled abs and defined muscles.

The heat returned to your body when he lowered his head, and popped a hard nipple into his mouth.

Your body arched at the feel of his teeth grazing against your skin, goosebumps racing when he dipped his hand beneath your underwear, a slender finger gliding down your folds before inserting into you.

You weren’t prepared for the intrusion, and he captured the gasp that came out of your mouth with his lips.

He was now holding down both of your wrists with one hand, never realizing that he was that much bigger than you.

He slid out his finger, bringing it to his mouth to give a long lick, before dipping his hand back down, and pushing in two.

You threw your head back when Kuroo curled his fingers, wondering how the hell he was able to find your g spot so quickly.

You felt like an animal caught in his trap, caged in with your arms pinned down, no choice but to let Kuroo draw out your orgasm while he pumped and curled into you, circling his thumb over your swollen clit.

Your legs were shaking while you screamed out his name, embarrassed that you were cumming so hard when he hasn’t even actually fucked you

He didn’t give you a chance to recover from your orgasm

In one swift movement, Kuroo let go of your hands and pulled out his fingers so he could grab a leg in each hand to fold you over in a press.

You don’t even know when Kuroo had taken his pants – or yours – off, and you didn’t have time to wonder.

A moan escaped your lips at the feel of his length filling you up, and you distinctly hear Kuroo tell you to say his name.

“Kuroo,” you moaned, bringing your hands to his shoulders, grasping at his body.

Every buck of his hips shot a jolt of pleasure throughout your body, unable to escape the feeling with Kuroo holding you down in place.

Who the hell would want to escape from here anyway?

“My first name,” he growled, quickening his pace when he felt your walls tighten around his dick.

“Tetsuro!” you screamed without a second thought, the brutal rhythm Kuroo has set driving heat onto your stomach, repeating his name over and over even after you feel your pussy gushing all over him, your cum dripping down from his shaft to his balls.

“Fuck,” Kuroo growled out, driving into you one last time before he spilled hot white, trying hard to catch his breath while coming down from this high.

The two of you lay together in the darkness for a while, your head on his chest and his arms around his shoulder.

The silence that surrounded the room was comfortable; almost like a bubble of peace that neither of you wanted to pop by saying anything.

“Be careful,” Eri’s fucking voice told you, yet again

While you didn’t regret what had just happened between you and Kuroo, doubts were beginning to creep in your mind.

What the hell was supposed to happen now? You’re not sure if Kuroo was expecting this outcome when he invited you over for drinks, but it happened, and you’re not really sure where to go from here.

You’ve already built a life for yourself – one that was truly yours – and you had a path that you had every intention to follow.

Would Kuroo be like every other guy and run away when he finds out you’re not compromising your plans for him? Would you even want to try to fit him into your plans?

You shake your head.

Jesus, get a grip. A guy dicks you down /once/, and all of a sudden you’re thinking about this shit?

“Y/N? You okay?” He asked from beside you.

You lift your head from his chest, sitting up so you could lean your back against his headboard. Kuroo was quick to mirror your actions.

“Kuroo,” you begin to tell him, and he frowned a little at the sound of his last name, “That was… amazing.”

Kuroo blushed a little at your compliment, though he knew it didn’t stop there. “…But?”

“But,” you bit your lip, “I’m not really looking for anything serious right now.”

Kuroo didn’t respond right away, but maybe that’s because you just kept babbling. “It’s just… I have so much going on with school, not to mention grad school applications are due in a few months, and who knows which university I’ll end up going to after graduation…”

You finally had the courage to look at him, and you caught a glimpse of what you would have thought was sadness in his eyes if it hadn’t been blinked away so quickly, soon replaced with that same unreadable smile.

“Whatever you want, Kitten,” he replied, “This doesn’t have to be anything more than what it is.”

You let out a breath of relief.

He walked you home that night (or morning, considering it was 1am), still trying your best to set boundaries even though you pretty much let him thoroughly wreck you.

He didn’t give you a kiss goodbye, instead sheepishly waving when he sees you entering the door to your apartment, saying he’ll shoot you a text tomorrow.

You thought things would be weird between the two of you after that night, but you were happy to find that it wasn’t.

You had managed to rekindle your friendship with Kuroo – meeting up to study, grabbing lunch if you had the time, maybe catching the occasional movie.

Though, you didn’t tell Eri about the added benefits.

(Kuroo Tetsu-hoe) Today: 12:37AM

You up?

[To: Kuroo Tetsu-hoe] Today: 12:49AM

Yeah, doing my Lit. paper.

(Kuroo Tetsu-hoe) Today: 12:50AM

Wanna do me instead?

[To: Kuroo Tetsu-hoe] Today: 12:58AM

Say less.

ou didn’t have to tell Eri about the added benefits – she wasn’t dumb, where else would her roommate be going in the middle of night?

You’ve had other men before, going through your fair share of sexual experiences before climbing into bed with Kuroo.

But he was still managing to show you new things, reaching spots you never even knew existed before, putting his mouth in places that made your eyes water and lungs burn from gasping for air.

You can’t explain the feeling you get when he’s running his hands across your body, and when he stares at you and nothing but you while he’s pumping into you and making you feel so full in more ways than one, it’s something akin to a chemical reaction.

There was one time, when he took a belt, secured it against his head post before he brought your legs up to –

“Earth to Y/N,” Kuroo said, waving a hand in front of your face.

“Sorry,” you said, shrugging your shoulders, “I was having a flashback.”

Kuroo smirked, knowing exactly what you meant.  

The two of you were lying in bed, your back against his chest and a strong arm wrapped around your waist.

You laid your hand on top of his, fiddling with his fingers and reveling in the calm that always came from being with Kuroo.

“What you thinking about?” You ask, and the way he stiffened up in your grip let you know that something really was bothering him.

It took him a little longer than you’d like before he replied.

“Do you ever feel like… you want more?”

This time, it was you that stilled in his arms.

“Be Careful.”

You turned around to face Kuroo.

“I thought we talked about this?”

Kuroo’s eyes searched your face, for what, you have no idea. But you stared back with just as much intensity, hoping that he would find the answer he was looking for.

Fear. That’s what was written all over your face.

Kuroo let out a humorless laugh. “Forget I said anything.”

He stood up to put his boxers on and slipping on a shirt before heading out onto the balcony that was attached to his room.

You gave him a few moments before getting up to gather your clothes from the floor, silently putting them on before you joined him outside.

You find him leaning against the balcony railing on his forearms, a cigarette lit in one hand.

He doesn’t turn his head towards you, but he does offer his cigarette, and you take it quietly.

You bring the white filter to your lips, taking a deep drag, closing your eyes when you feel your head get lighter, and releasing the smoke from your lungs.

“Kuroo,” you started, voice nothing but a soft whisper, “I’m sorry… I didn’t – “

He raised a hand to stop you.

“It’s fine,” he replied. “Like I said, forget I mentioned anything.”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Hey,” he said, taking his cigarette back from you and taking a drag himself, “Kenma’s having a party this weekend. They’re inviting over some old classmates from Nekoma. He says he misses you. You should come.”

Your ears perk up at the invitation, excited at the thought of seeing your old friend and a little happy that he’s moving past the subject.

"Kenma? Is having a party?”

Kuroo laughed. “Alright. Yaku is having a party, but we’re doing it at Kenma’s place. It’s actually not that far from here, just one train ride.”

You chuckled, shaking your head knowingly.

“Yeah, I’ll go,” you agreed, “But, uhm… I’ll just meet you there?”

Kuroo nodded. “Yeah. I’ll just meet you there.”

You didn’t see Kuroo the rest of that week.

You weren’t sure what it was – he wasn’t ignoring you, he replied to your text messages and answered your calls.

But he hadn’t once asked you to come over. And after what happened that night, you were scared to ask him to come over.

The night of Kenma’s party came, and you entered to find way more people than you had expected. You didn’t recognize more than half of the people there, but relief washed over you when Yaku threw an arm around your shoulder.

You didn’t see Kuroo right away when you arrived, but you were too distracted at the joy from seeing some of your old classmates.

You were half way through a game of beer pong with Lev as your partner before Kuroo was able to make an appearance.

He made his rounds, saying his greetings to everyone before stopping at you, giving you a friendly one armed hug.

You didn’t want to admit that you were a bit sad at the generic greeting.

Was it because maybe… you want…. mor –

“Y/N! Shoot the damn ping pong ball,” Lev exclaimed, and you were shook out of your reverie. 

Kuroo excused himself, saying he was going to the kitchen to make himself a drink, but you were too focused on winning your game to notice.

Before you knew it, you lost three to two against Kenma and Yamamoto, cursing at Lev for forcing you to carry the team on your back.

By this point, the alcohol had spread all through your system. You were still able to walk straight, but with considerable effort. The words that came out of your mouth were just a little slurred, and you were kind of having a hard time controlling the volume of your voice.

“Where’s Kuroo?” you asked Yaku, who instantly shot a hand up to rub his ear.

“Jesus, woman, you don’t have to yell, I am /right here,” he grumbled, but he still let you sling an arm around his shoulders for support. “I thought he went into the kitchen to get some drinks?”

That’s right, he said that. But that was hours ago. Where could he be?

You stagger away from Yaku, pushing your way past unfamiliar bodies to get to the kitchen.

The first thing you saw when you tripped into the kitchen was Kuroo, dressed in a fitted black shirt and blue jeans, looking every bit the Greek God he was as he leaned against the counter. His arms were crossed atop his broad chest, a drink in one hand.

He was talking to someone, and you thought you recognized the long black hair that flowed from the back of their head, but were too distracted studying the veins that protruded from Kuroo’s forearms.

You opened your mouth to call out to him when the person in front of him stepped up, pressing their body into his. She uncrossed his arms and snaked two long arms around his neck.

You recognized her in that instant.

It was his ex from high school.

Looking down, you were surprised to see your clothes dry, because it felt like someone poured a bucket of ice water directly on top of your head.

“Be careful,” Eri’s words echoed in your head for the ten millionth time.

Yet here you were

In the same exact place you were a little over three years ago.

You scoffed at yourself.

Well, there’s nothing else for you here now, is there?

You shoot Yaku and Kenma a quick text in a group chat to let them know you were leaving.

The air outside was cold, your breath coming out in puffs. You wrapped your jacket around a little tighter, cursing yourself silently for not wearing a scarf cause it’ll ‘ruin the outfit.’

“Hey, the party’s that way.”

The sudden voice behind you nearly made you jump ten feet in the air.

“Jesus, you really are like a fucking cat.”

Kuroo chuckled.

For some reason, the sound made you angry. You kept walking, following the path of dimmed street lights that led you to the train station.

“Yeah, but home’s this way.”

His heavy footsteps trailed behind you.

“Great, I was getting tired of the party anyway.”

“What are you doing here?” You finally turned your head to him and asked.

Your voice was surprisingly clear and even, despite the unsteadiness of the ground beneath you.

“What do you mean? I’m walking you home.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s late, and you’re my friend.”

‘Friend’. The word made you wince, even though you were the one that drilled the idea into his head.

“I saw you talking to your ex,” you grumbled, crossing your arms and turning the other direction.

You could practically feel his smirk.

“Oya? Is that jealousy I’m hearing in those words?”

You felt your face get hot.

“Of course not!”

- “I thought we were just friends?”

“Will you shut up for once in your life, idiot!”

He wanted to tease you some more, but was stopped by the pensive look on your face.

“Why would you leave the girl that broke your heart behind just to walk me home?”

Kuroo looked at you with a confused expression.

“Girl that broke my heart?”

You nodded. “When I asked you about her, you said she was a big mistake.”

Kuroo stopped walking. You turned your head back to look at him curiously when he doubled over in a full bellied laugh.

“Are you laughing at me?!” You asked incredulously, giving him a glare from where you stood.

“You... you think she’s the one that broke my heart?”

Kuroo wiped a fake tear from his eye.

“Wow. That was a good one.”

“What the hell are you going on about, Kuroo?”

The jovial look on Kuroo’s face slowly faded, the entertained smile on his face shrinking his lips into a thin line.

“Y/N, she didn’t break my heart.”

Now it was your turn to be confused.

“You want to know why I said she was a big mistake?” Kuroo took a step towards you, “It was because of her that I lost you.”

Your jaw dropped.

Kuroo ran his fingers through his hair, ruining the perfectly waxed locks that he had spent thirty minutes styling.

“Please don’t run away when I tell you this.”

You couldn’t move your feet even if you wanted to.

“The only reason I ever brought her up to you in the first place was because I wanted to see your reaction. I wanted to know if you would get jealous. But without hesitation, you told me that I should just go ahead and date her, and you know dumb young men and their pride... then... it just... snowballed into something I didn’t even...”

Kuroo couldn’t finish his sentence.

Your vision begins to shake.

“But... but I confessed to you!”

“Yeah, then you slammed the door in my face and stopped talking to me!”

You couldn’t deny that.

“Do you have any idea how confusing that was for a teenage boy? I had no idea what the hell was going on, one day, I blinked and I was stuck with a girl I didn’t love while I watched my best friend smile and laugh and walk passed me like I never even existed.”

You swallowed the guilty lump that was caught in your throat.

“All I knew was that you weren’t around anymore; you weren’t there to make me laugh with your dumb jokes, you weren’t coming over and leaving your presence all over my room, nothing, it was all gone, and it all felt so fucked up. Being without you felt so fucked up.” 

Had Kuroo always felt this way? Were you really so busy running away from him that you couldn’t even see that he was hurting too?

“Now the universe or the gods or whatever brought me back to you, and it’s like everything makes sense again, and fuck, all I want to do is just show you how much I’ve missed you, how much I care, how much I love you.”

You gasped, and you were waiting for Kuroo to try and take those words back, but the resolve was painted in his eyes.

“But all you do is just keep me at arms length. You wanted to be just friends when I wanted everything.”

You choked back a sob, tears were now steadily streaming down your face.

Kuroo closed the space between you, wrapping one arm around your waist while bring his other head to wipe at your tears with the pad of his thumb.

 “She wasn’t the girl that broke my heart. You were.”

He moved to place his fingers on your chin, tilting your head up to force you to look at his eyes.

He wanted you to see that he meant every single word.

“If this is all you’re willing to give me, I’ll take it. I’ll break my own heart. Every day, over and over again, if that’s what it takes to be with you.”

His voice was in a whisper now, bringing his lips to kiss both sides of your cheeks.

“Because I love you.”

He brought his hands to cup for your face before pulling you in for a kiss.

This wasn’t anything like you’ve ever experienced before.

Every time his tongue brushed against yours, you felt all the love adoration he was trying to convey in this one physical act, hoping he could transfer it all into your lips.

It felt like time stopped just for the two of you, to have this moment in the middle of the sidewalk, bathed in the orange glow of the street light that hung above you.

He pulled away finally, resting his forehead on yours for just a second before he engulfed you with his arms.

His head rested on top of yours, feeling the vibrations as he spoke.

“I’m going to ask you one more time,” he said nervously. “Do you want something more?”

You wiggle out of his grip just so you can move your hands up to caress his cheek.

“Tetsuro... I love you so much.”

Later that night, in the safety of your room and away from Eri’s judgmental eyes at the two of you stumbling in and giggling through the door, you trace small circles on Kuroo’s chest with your fingers while Kuroo had an arm wrapped around you tightly.

“Hey, Tetsu,” you broke the silence with a whisper, “What if I end up going to grad school that was... further away?”

Kuroo couldn’t help but smile and shake his head. You were never going to change.

Not like he would ever want you to.

“Y/N... we didn’t talk for three years, and not once did I stop thinking about you. A little distance isn’t going to get rid of me.”

You try to bury your face in embarrassment.

If he had to spend every day of the rest of his life reassuring you that he’ll be by your side no matter what, well - that’s just too easy.

You find yourself holding onto him a little bit tighter, making a silent vow that never again were you going to push away Kuroo Tetsuro.

[monstersandmaw]

Male vampire x male character (nsfw) Part Four

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Sorry for taking 84yrs to post this. I thought I had shared it. Sorry. Hope you enjoy all the same.

Wordcount: 10,904 (story total: 23,704)

Heads up in this part for continued, but easing, tense familial relations, some angst/heartache (not heartbreak though), and some (consensual) blood drinking.

Part One (sfw), Part Two (nsfw), Part Three (nsfw)

Alec let out a shaky breath and crossed to the sofa, sinking down onto it as his legs finally gave out. “Vampires,” he said, hardly daring to believe the word he was uttering.

“Yes.”

“And you’re one?”

“… Yes.”

“And my family…?”

Sebastien’s voice was tight on the other end of the line as he said, “Hunts my kind. Well, those of us who aren’t registered with the ‘Guild of Hunters’ —” his tone turned acrid as he spat the words out, though he kept his voice low and quiet.

“What does that even mean? I don’t know what any of this means… And did you know about my family? I mean, before? When you started dating me?”

Sebastien took another deep breath. “Yes. I knew. And it was a long time before I fully convinced myself that you did not.”

If Sebastien had thought it was some kind of trap, that would explain his reticence at the beginning for sure.

“And were you planning on telling me any of this?” Alec snarled. God, his chest hurt so much. The deception was like Jeremy cheating on him all over again, only this time the betrayal was coming from two fronts at once: from his love life and from his family. Not that he’d had all that solid a relationship with the latter to start with. Perhaps this explained why.

“I hadn’t planned on becoming your boyfriend at all,” Sebastien snapped.

“So, what, I was just a quick diversion? A casual fuck you kept coming back for because I’m such a fucking chump? Is that it?”

“No,” Sebastien sighed. “Not at all. I fell for you. Like the horrid cliche I am, the vampire fell for the hunter, and by then I had no idea how to tell you. I’ve not been with a human before, so this is all very new to me.”

Alec ran his fingers through his dark hair to buy himself a moment. “You… You haven’t?”

“No.”

“How… How old are you?”

“Do you really want the answer to that?”

“Yes!” His phone was slippery in his fingers now from the sweat on his palm but he couldn’t bring it away from his ear long enough to put it on speaker. He needed answers.

With another cavernous sigh, Sebastien said hurriedly, “Very well. I was born in 1897 and turned on the battlefields of the Great War — World War I, that is. I was dying, and a vampire named Felicity who had been working as a field nurse turned me. My first run-in with your family was not long after I moved from France to America. They were working with the American Hunters’ Guild on a case which had nothing to do with me.” He let out a shaky breath and said, “I got in the way and I nearly died. Those were the days before the treaty, of course, and before I moved to England.”

Despite his still-spinning mind, Alec managed to croak, “What treaty?”

“Those of us who get our blood from sanctioned blood banks and do not live-feed are exempt from being hunted like animals.” He spoke like he was quoting from a law code; cold and clinical; detached.

God, the way he said it made Alec’s skin crawl. It was as if he were being permitted to exist on the grounds of good behaviour and, he supposed, that was exactly the case. Even so, Alec couldn’t help the next words that just fell out of his mouth. “So you weren’t planning on feeding from me?”

“Of course not,” Sebastien retorted but then appeared to rein himself in with yet another steadying inhale. “No. It’s been decades since I’ve fed from a human directly. I didn’t plan on starting with you.”

Alec slumped back into the sofa cushions and stared up at the ceiling of his tiny apartment. “Fuck.”

After a long silence, Sebastien’s gentle tenor sounded in his ear. “Are you alright?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve never been close to my family - my dad was always an arsehole, but… I can’t believe Theo’s involved in all this. He was such a sweet kid, and we were really close until…” he swallowed thickly around the rising lump in his throat.

“Until?” Sebastien prompted when he stalled again.

“I can’t believe this is all real,” he muttered. “Until he turned sixteen and started to ‘work out’ with dad. I was at uni by then, getting my fine art degree, but whenever I came home he was just… different. Harder. Sharper. More focused. Guess it makes sense now… Well, as much as… you know…” he gestured vaguely to the empty apartment with his hands, “… as much as all this can make sense. Fucking… vampires…”

After a heartbeat, Sebastien added softly, “Quite literally.”

Despite himself, Alec snorted. “So… where does this leave us?”

Now it was Sebastien’s turn to feel clearly uncomfortable. Eventually he said, “Alec, I don’t think it’s wise for me to see you currently. Not with your family being what they are.”

His heart twisted, even though he’d been half expecting it. “You still think they’d… what, stake you, or whatever it is that vampire hunters actually do to you lot?”

“There are many ways to kill a vampire,” he said flatly. “And your family knows all of them, probably more. You need to work this out with them first as well. Talk to your brother. He seems the more reasonable…”

“I can’t believe Ellie’s in on it as well. And my mother? Fuck…”

“Talk to them.”

“Will I still see you at work at least?”

The awkward silence told him all he needed to know, even before Sebastien said, “I just sent in my letter of resignation.”

“That was quick,” he hissed, stomach dropping. “You only just left.”

“Supernatural speed,” he replied bitterly. “Comes in useful for typing papers and getting out of awkward situations…”

That sparked another question in him. “Supernatural powers, huh? Can you turn into a bat too?”

“No.”

Then he thought of Sebastien’s Halloween outfit. “Wolf?”

He thought he detected a faint smirk in Sebastien’s response. “No, sadly. No shape-shifting for me. Felicity is not of any extraordinary bloodline, and thus, neither am I.”

“Right,” he grunted. “Of course. Is she… is she still around?”

“Felicity? Yes. We meet every now and again. She and her wife spend most of their time in Venice these days.”

“Her wife? She a vampire too?”

Sebastien swallowed audibly. “Yes.”

“Did Felicity turn her too? Would that make her wife your sister?”

“No.”

He frowned. “Did she know her as a human though?”

“Yes.”

After a moment of spinning thoughts, Alec asked, “Did… you turn her?”

“One doesn’t tend to turn one’s own intended. Between a sire and their turned, there can grow… tension. Not always, but it can be enough to ruin a relationship that was seemingly solid before. Something about exchanging blood changes the soul… or so we think, anyway. It was an honour to be asked to sire her.”

“Right.” Alec felt slightly sick. “Will I at least see you before you leave?”

“I think it best if we don’t. Not while your family is still… ‘investigating’ me.”

“Are you really in danger from them?”

“Quite possibly. My name is on the treaty, but…”

Something twanged painfully again in his chest, swiftly followed by the fizzle of fear through his veins. “But what?”

“But vampires and hunters are not supposed to sleep together, Alec…”

“Don’t bang the enemy? How very Romeo and Juliet,” he snorted. “Fuck. Why does every good relationship I have turn to shit?” he asked, not of Sebastien but of the universe itself. “What did I do?”

“Alec —”

“—Don’t. Don’t make it worse by apologising or something. It’s fine. We were only together a month. I’ll get over it. You’ll move on. Heck, you’ll fucking live forever, right? What’s a month to you anyway? Nothing, right?”

The bitterness in his own voice nearly choked him, and without thinking, or even saying goodbye, he just hung up and let his phone lie in his limp fingers on the sofa cushions. It lit up and rang a moment later, but he didn’t answer it. Six more times Sebastien tried before finally giving up.

Kay was an absolute blessing in the next few days.

He didn’t tell her immediately about the whole vampire thing, but after he’d calmed down enough to be able to look at Theo without immediately busting a vein in his forehead, he hashed the basics out with him, and then told her everything. Alec told her about his newly-discovered, secret family occupation which, apparently, stretched back centuries. He told her about the fact that his eldest sister and younger brother were monster hunters in their spare time, and he told her the real reason Sebastien why had vanished overnight without a trace — yes, Alec had gone to his apartment building, only to be politely informed by the doorman that Dr. Dulac was no longer in residence and did not leave so much as a forwarding address.

That, above almost everything else, shattered Alec’s hopes of seeing him again. Like thistledown in the wind, Sebastien had simply flitted away somewhere else.

She took it about as well as he had to start with, but when she saw the seriousness in his eyes, and when, three weekends later, she came to his apartment for a definitely-not-awkward dinner with Theo, she saw video footage that Theo and his father had captured from various hunts of supernatural creatures beyond only beautiful vampires. Then she believed him. Ghouls, ghosts, reanimated corpses, demons… you name it and Theo could tell you about it.

Alec spent Christmas with Kay’s family, and Theo met him for New Year drinks in the city, joined by Ellie. It wasn’t anything like the family dynamic he’d always longed for, but the new degree of openness between them went some way to mending his still bruised heart. Slowly. Gradually. Piece by tentative, honest piece. He never joined in, but Theo started to tell him a bit about what they did. It still sounded barbaric to him, but at least it was true.

He had no word from Sebastien, and the number he had saved in his phone had been disconnected.

With the arrival of spring, Alec found himself more than usually dissatisfied with his job. He was a good teacher, and he enjoyed seeing his students’ talents evolve and grow, but the ever-increasing admin ground him down, and the politics of the faculty and the university as a whole wore on him.

“Have you seen this?” Kay asked one afternoon as they shared a takeaway coffee beneath the drifting cherry blossoms. Petals spiralled down like pastel pink and white wedding confetti, and he watched with an absent smile as a terrier snapped and sprung around on his hind legs trying to catch them while his owner stood and talked with her friend nearby. “Oi!” Kay asked, digging him in the ribs.

“Hmm?”

“Have you seen this?” she asked, shoving her phone under his nose.

He blinked, refocusing his eyes, and read the article’s headline aloud. “Council offers artists the chance to win a sponsored exhibition in the town hall with this unique competition.” He blinked. “So?”

“So?” she gawped. “You can’t be serious?”

“Send me the link. I’ll forward it to my students. They might like that.” That earned him a smack upside the head, and he scowled. “What was that for?”

“Alec, you might be the dumbest smart guy I know,” she said. “I showed it to you so that you could enter it, you giant idiot.”

He blinked. “Me?”

“I saw those charcoals you did the other week of the cathedral! They were amazing!! And the abstracts too… I still want one, by the way.”

“It’s already wrapped up for your birthday,” he groused. “You really think I should do it?”

She rolled her eyes and drained the last of her coffee without gracing him with an answer. Of course she thought he should.

“When’s the deadline?”

“Next Thursday,” she said without looking at him.

Alec licked his lips and swallowed. “Will you help me pick some images to submit?”

Her answering grin was feral.

In all honesty, Alec forgot about having even entered the competition until the letter dropped through his door six weeks later announcing that, to his utter astonishment, he had been selected as the winner. Tears blurred his eyes and he sat down heavily at the tiny kitchen table. He’d never entered any of his own art into anything like this in his whole life, and the first time he does, he gets a whole fucking public exhibition out of it?

“Maybe this year won’t be so bad after all,” he murmured. “New year, new start…” His chest still ached when he thought about Sebastien, and he hoped he was doing alright, wherever he was.

Theo had been searching for him, probably by way of apology for lying to his big brother for all these years, but he’d turned up very little. Sebastien had gone to Venice first, it seemed, presumably to spend time with Felicity and her wife, but had disappeared completely after that, with only rumours flickering here and there that he was in Paris, St. Petersburg, Prague, and then potentially Florence. Maybe.

“Venice seems like a pretty sunny place for a pair of vampires to live,” Alec commented, but Theo shrugged.

“They don’t burn up immediately in sunlight, or your professor would never have been able to take a day-job at the university. They’re sensitive to it, some more than others, but it takes a full day of constant sunlight beating down for them to burn properly.” The callousness of his brother’s response shook him, even after all these months, and Theo must have seen it on his face because he sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, and then added, “You really loved him, didn’t you?”

Alec shrugged. Yes, he wanted to say. I thought so. “I only knew him for a month or so,” was what he said carefully instead. “And even then… turned out I didn’t know him anyway.”

Theo, who had been lounging on Alec’s sofa with his legs spread and his head tipped back into the cushions while Alec made supper, asked quietly, “Did he seem… normal to you?”

“Normal?” Alec asked, not sure he’d heard his brother correctly.

“Yeah… like… did you ever suspect he wasn’t… you know…?”

“Human?”

Theo grunted and nodded his head. “Yeah. I guess.”

“No. Obviously not. Never crossed my mind. Why would it have?”

Theo scowled and turned his eyes to regard him. Alec knew that Theo looked like a younger version of himself, if maybe in better shape, and he wondered if he’d have the same steely look in his eyes if he’d been deemed ‘man enough’ to become a hunter, or whatever bullshit criteria their arsehole father had used to select which members of his family were to become soldiers and which would live normal lives.

“What?” Alec demanded.

“But you slept with him, right?”

“I’m not talking about that with you,” he said, briefly brandishing the wooden spoon at him.

Theo pulled a face. “I’m not asking about your sex life. Gross. No, I mean…”

In that moment, Alec spotted a flash of something in his brother’s blue eyes that softened him to the kid. He turned off the gas and went over to where Theo was now sitting hunched over with his elbows on his knees, running his hands through his hair. When he looked up at Alec’s approach, his face showed open vulnerability in a way he’d not seen since they were young children and Theo had got himself into trouble at school.

“What’s going on?” Alec asked, seating himself next to his little brother.

Theo bobbed his knee like a deprived caffeine addict and bit his lip. With glassy eyes, he croaked, “I keep asking myself if we did the right thing…”

“What do you mean?”

The bravado of Theo’s early twenties melted away to become a worried, frightened, guilty little boy again and he said, “I mean… if what we do is right…”

“You mean… hunting?”

“Yeah,” he croaked.

“What set this off?”

His brother quirked him a humourless smirk and said, “You always did know when something was bothering me.”

Alec remained quiet, just watching him.

“We teamed up with some hunters from Edinburgh for a ‘vamp gone rogue’ case and we finally found her yesterday. She… She’d been turning people; trying to amass some kind of small army to take over from another vampire further up north. She was insane… like, completely, sociopathically insane, but… the people she turned… they were just…” he blinked, and Alec saw with a jolt that his eyes were full of unshed tears. “They were still just people.”

He feared he already knew where this was going. Still, he asked, “What happened?”

“Father wanted to put them down. They were terrified, chained up… still on the point of lashing out…”

Bile rose in his throat. “Oh god…”

“One of the hunters said she knew of a vampire who could help rehabilitate them; help them adjust to their new lives. One of them didn’t want to live as a vampire though, so father just…”

Theo didn’t need to finish that for Alec to know that father had ended the newly-turned vampire’s life in a heartbeat. “And the rest?”

“The other three went with the hunter. I don’t know what happened, but… I trust her. It’s just… father taught me and Ellie that vampires are mindless killers when they feed… that you can’t get close to them, that all they want at the end of the day is blood no matter what they tell you…  but…” he looked up at Alec. “You’ve been fucking miserable since the whole Sebastien shit-fest. I know you’ve been trying to hide it, and you’ve got the exhibition coming up next weekend, and that’s great, but… I know you’ve stopped putting yourself out there. And we did that. We fucked it all up for you. I just…” he ran his hands through his hair and sent it into wild disarray. “I just wonder if you could really have been happy with him after all.”

Alec pulled his brother close and hugged him. “I’m not going to lie,” he murmured into his brother’s dark hair. “I’m furious with father for keeping everything from me, and for making you and mum and Ellie lie to me and Angie about it as well, but… if I hadn’t seen Sebastien’s eyes go red — yeah, I thought it was just a reflection or something — and if I hadn’t seen the way he sleeps literally like the dead… I’m not sure I would have believed you anyway. I don’t forgive him for it either, but…” he sighed deeply. “I forgive you, Theo. And Ellie.”

“And mum?”

“I’m still working on that.”

Theo went slack beneath him and snaked his arms around his brother’s waist for a moment. “Thanks,” he mumbled into Alec’s shirt.

“You’re still coming to the exhibition?” Alec asked as he pulled back and went back to the stove, giving Theo a moment of privacy to pull himself together.

In truth, Alec was a little shaken too. Their relationship had been slowly patched over the intervening months, but it still wasn’t particularly close, and the matter of Sebastien had been a permanent, proverbial elephant in the room. That Theo was questioning their father’s teaching came as an immense relief to Alec though. He poured them each a glass of wine, and the two spent the rest of the evening in a quieter kind of closeness than they’d yet shared.

When the evening of the exhibition drew round, Alec was quite frankly, a bit of a mess.

“C’mon,” Theo grinned, patting the lapels of his jacket down for him and grinning up at him. “Where’s that Twayblade hunter courage, huh?”

“Must have skipped me and all gone to you,” he quipped back. “Fuck. I’m so nervous. Why am I so nervous?”

“No fucking clue,” Theo chuckled. “You’re awesome and they’re gonna fucking love you.”

“Language,” Alec said instinctively and Theo’s laughter redoubled.

“You’re a big fucking hypocrite, you know that?” Theo laughed just as Kay sidled up with three glasses of champagne awkwardly held between her hands.

“Help a girl out here, would you, boys?” she asked, proffering the glasses to them.

Alec resisted the urge to down it in one — he’d probably only choke on the bubbles anyway — and filled his lungs instead with a big gulp of air. He tried to send all his nerves into the air and then blow it out of his body in one heaving sigh to leave him calmer, but it just gave him a head rush, so he sipped the wine and turned to look around the gallery from the corner where he’d been lurking.

“What if no one shows up?” he blurted, earning him a scowl from Theo and a pout-and-eyebrow-raise combo from Kay.

He needn't have worried in the end. The marketing team had done their work, and within an hour the place was heaving and all but three of his pieces had been reserved. Scratch that. Two.

The fact that almost all of his students had turned up as well to cheer him on and trade high fives, and scrounge free alcohol and food from the canape trays, warmed him in ways he didn’t know were possible.

Overwhelmed and a little bit tearful, he stepped out of the town hall’s main exhibition space and into the small corridor that led to a fire exit and a grotty back car park beyond, letting the flush die down from his cheeks. This was what he’d really wanted right from the moment he’d graduated all those years ago; to be an artist in his own right, with people buying his work at exhibitions… It almost made him giddy to think that he had a chance to do this full time now. It seemed that Sebastien had been right when he’d said he could really make something of himself.

Ah, there was the crash in his mood that he’d been waiting for. Nothing good lasts forever, right?

Would Sebastien have been proud of him if he knew about this? Would he have been there that night, by his side? Would they even have lasted that long anyway, even without his family’s interference?

The noise in the room was gradually dying down when he gathered enough courage to step back into the echoing hall. The pale wooden floors gleamed in the low light, the white of the temporary exhibition walls almost glowing, in stark contrast to the black and grey of his charcoals. He’d chosen mostly charcoals for the show, with a few acrylic abstracts for flavour, and apparently people loved them. Every single one had a red ‘sold’ dot beneath the label now, he noted as he cast his eyes around the room.

Then his gaze snagged on someone standing with their back to him, hands clasped loosely behind them, a long, silver-blond ponytail hanging down their back. And Alec’ vision slipped sideways.

Sebastien.

It had to be him.

No one else stood with posture like that. No one else was so tall and lean and elegant and god-damned graceful, even when just standing still. And no one else stood quite as still as that.

He let out a ragged breath and swayed slightly, glancing around. There was no sign of Theo or Kay just then, and only one or two couples meandered admiringly around the room. And there, fixated by one piece in particular, stood Sebastien.

Inhaling for courage, Alec approached and came to an unsteady halt a few feet away from him. He didn’t look real, somehow. His beauty had always been striking, but now in the low light he seemed like a mirage, with his warm olive skin and contrastingly pale hair, that cut-glass jawline and —

— He turned and met Alec’s gaze with dark brown eyes alight and glassy.

“You’re here,” Alec breathed, at a loss for anything else.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Sebastien said, and the sound of his voice sent a wild tingling through Alec’s whole nervous system. The man — vampire — looked uncharacteristically shy, uncertain, as he half turned to face him.

“Gotta say,” Alec said, scratching the back of his head, “I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”

“Should I leave?”

He chewed his lower lip for a second and Sebastien’s eyes tracked the movement before he blinked and looked back at the charcoal in front of him. It was of the Lady Chapel of the cathedral; one of the most tranquil places Alec had ever been. A shaft of light lanced down from a Gothic window high on the right, scattering fractured shards of light onto the stone floor, and behind it, just barely visible as a grey, misty outline, sat the small altar.

“You’re religious?” Alec asked.

“Mm,” Sebastien nodded. “Surprising, I know, given my ‘condition’, but there you have it.”

All the smalltalk then suddenly boiled up into thick irritation inside Alec and he scowled. “Where have you been? And why now? Why come back now? What do you want?”

He must have raised his voice fractionally because the couple admiring the seascape to their left shot them slightly scandalised looks, as if he’d started swearing in a sanctuary, and he bit back the wave of anger, halting it in its tracks.

“Shall we step outside for a moment?” Sebastien asked and Alec nodded tersely.

Passing Kay and Theo who were sitting in the chairs near the drinks table, Alec cast his eyes at them and watched Theo tense visibly. Kay laid her hand on his thigh and shook her head, at which Theo nodded and sat back, eyes hard, mouth set, but at least he didn’t appear to be on the point of leaping out and staking Sebastien on the spot.

Alec mouthed a silent ‘thank you’ at them both, and followed Sebastien out on to the street.

“You’ve patched things up with your family then?” Sebastien began, standing perfectly still beside the brick wall of the Victorian building while Alec paced.

“Mostly just with Theo, but yeah. Why are you here?” he asked again.

“Honestly? I missed you. Couldn't get you out of my head. I went all over Europe, and even to Asia briefly, and nothing I did distracted me from you, from leaving you. I had to come back.”

“You could have called,” he said, instantly regretting the way it came out like a petulant teenager’s sulking.

“And what would that have achieved?” Sebastien asked evenly. “I was hundreds of miles away.”

“You could have come back sooner? Talked to me in person?”

Sebastien sighed. “I was afraid that your family would come after me. I needed to disappear.”

“Theo convinced father to let you go. As you said yourself, your name was on the treaty, and you didn’t hurt me or hypnotise me, or whatever… did you?”

“No,” he said, pale brows pinching with evident distaste.

“Could you have?”

Sebastien levelled him with a dark look. “Yes, but… that’s not something I enjoy doing. It’s a survival mechanism — to make people forget what they’ve seen — it’s not something to be used lightly.”

“Ok, but you could have, and you didn’t, so that was another reason to let you go,” he said. God he wanted to kiss him. The realisation hit him like a gut punch and he turned away. Alec ached inside and out for those lips, those hands, those eyes… “Fuck,” he whispered, barely audible. “Are you staying?”

“Do you want me to stay?”

Alec rounded on him, frustration pouring out of him again. “Don’t answer my question with one of your own. Are you staying or not?”

Sebastien remained eerily calm, but a heartbeat later Alec saw that it wasn’t serenity in his eyes but sadness. “If you want me to, I’ll stay. I want to try again, Alec. I want… I want to be with you. I’ve never felt for anyone what I feel for you.”

“Feel? As in… present tense?”

“Yes. It hasn’t faded. Not with all the days and distance between us.”

“God, you sound like a shitty romance novel hero…” he scoffed. “I almost believe it.”

Sebastien spread his hands and said, “I am who — and what — I am. You know me, Alec, in a way that no one else ever has. I was utterly myself with you, except for the fact that I kept my nature from you. I hope you can at least understand why, if not forgive me. Everything else was genuine. I have never done that — been that open, that vulnerable — with anyone.”

“Even knowing what my family are?”

“Even then.”

Alec looked up at him and saw his own reflection in those dark, rich brown eyes. “Show me.”

Sebastien’s angelic face soured into a confused frown. “Show you what?”

“Your eyes. Your fangs. Show me what you are.”

“Now?”

He looked around. The street was empty on either side, with the only people around gathered outside a bar further up the street.

When he turned back to say yes to Sebastien, he found blood red eyes glowing in the man’s face. “Holy fuck,” he hissed. Every already-chiselled line on Sebastien’s face had sharpened somehow, his cheeks hollowing a little, perhaps to account for the additional hardware he now sported in his mouth, and his eyes seemed a touch more sunken. And they glowed as if lit from within.

Heartbeat thrumming out a wild tattoo, he stepped closer and Sebastien went utterly still. His chest ceased to rise and fall, and he didn’t even blink as Alec raised his fingers to his left cheek. “Show me.”

Sebastien swallowed and parted his lips. Angling his jaw a little to one side, he showed Alec the elongated canines, three quarters of an inch long. “Careful,” he murmured as Alec made to touch them. “Vampire venom is potent, even in small doses.”

“Does it really do what the hunters say it does?”

Sebastien’s red eyes glittered almost playfully. “I don’t know,” he smiled, seeming to relax a fraction. “What do they say it does?”

“Drives your victims wild, acts like a date rape drug, makes humans lose their will and their inhibitions…”

At that, a hardness returned to his features and his lip twitched in a lopsided snarl, like a wolf backed into a corner. “That’s certainly one take on it,” he said. “It creates a rush of euphoria. It’s supposed to make feeding a pleasant experience for all concerned. Endorphins in the blood make the taste sweeter, and the human feels no pain or fear.”

“Right. Gotta say I like that one better,” Alec said with a shaky smile. “But I’m not gonna risk it right here… And fuck me, your eyes are incredible.”

“They’re still red, hmm?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Closing his eyes and tilting his face upwards a little more towards the cloudy night sky, he inhaled deeply. His features softened again, and Alec watched, fascinated, as the slight bumps behind his closed upper lip slid away into nothing, presumably as his canines retracted into his gums. When he opened his eyes, they were their usual, endlessly dark brown once more.

“Better?” Sebastien asked, oddly self-conscious.

“No,” he said. “Just different.”

Something prickled on the back of his neck and he turned to find a woman silhouetted against the light of street lamp halfway up the road. “Friend of yours?” he asked, tense.

“Felicity. She came with me.”

“Why? Surely you don’t need a wingman… or, you know, woman.”

With a tiny smile, Sebastien said, “You make me more vulnerable than you realise, in more ways than one. And we weren’t sure if your family would be here.”

“Or whether they’d want to flambé you…”

“Precisely.” He inclined his head and the woman did the same, turning and vanishing even as Alec blinked.

“Can you do that too?” he asked, still gawping after her.

When he turned back, he found that Sebastien had stepped in close to him - close enough that his faint, woody cologne wafted gently around them and he felt his knees wobble slightly. He’d missed this. Oh god, he’d missed this. “Mmhmm,” Sebastien hummed. “I can.”

“Kiss me,” Alec whispered. “Please…”

Sebastien didn’t need telling twice. He took Alec’s face in both his hands and crushed a passionate kiss to his lips so hard that Alec’s mind went perfectly blank for a few beautiful seconds. When he came to, he grabbed Sebastien’s narrow hips and tugged him close, making the vampire grunt as their bodies connected.

This time, he took Sebastien’s ponytail in one hand and began to pull on it gently. Sebastien yielded at the pressure and tipped his face back, exposing the entire column of his throat to Alec without resistance. The gesture left Alec stunned and breathless. In his research with Theo over the past months, he had learned that for a vampire to expose their throat to another implied absolute trust. Overwhelmed, he pressed his lips to the bare skin and felt Sebastien gasp, grabbing at his shoulders suddenly to keep himself upright.

Over and over, the vampire shuddered tangibly beneath his touch and gasped sharply again, panting. As he shifted his hips against him, Alec felt Sebastien’s growing hardness, and at the same time, Sebastien drew back, eyes screwed shut. “Stop,” he laughed. “Not here.”

“I want you,” Alec moaned, one hand on Sebastien’s chest. “Fuck, I’ve missed you so much.”

“I want you too,” Sebastien smiled, opening his eyes. They glowed scarlet again. “And because of that, this —” he said, gesturing to his red eyes, “— isn’t going to go away quickly this time.”

“This too?” Alec said, boldly cupping the obvious bulge in Sebastien’s smart black trousers gently with his hand and making the vampire groan.

“Yeah, that too.”

“Your place or mine?” Alec asked with a dizzy grin.

“You decide. I’m booked into a hotel one street over for the next two days,” he said. “If that affects your decision in any way.”

“Yours,” he said. “I… I’ll just…” he looked over his shoulder and caught sight of the exhibition banner dangling by the door. “I should…”

Sebastien nodded slowly. “I’ll be here.”

“You’d better be,” he snarled as he adjusted himself and prayed no one would notice. He took a few steadying breaths on the threshold of the town hall and then disappeared inside.

Kay raised her eyebrows at him when he reappeared.

“Not a word,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Your hair’s a mess,” she said conversationally. “Is it windy outside?”

“Fuck off,” he grimaced and she laughed. “Where’s Theo?”

“He left out the back way,” she said. “But he told me to tell you to enjoy yourself tonight, and that he’ll stand by whatever makes you happy.”

Unexpected tears prickled his eyes and he tugged her into a hug that was probably meant for his brother.

“You can thank us later,” she said, shoving him off her. “Go be with your Prince of Darkness…”

“I’m not sure how much he’d like you calling him that,” he said as he stepped back. “I’ll have to wrap things up here first…”

It seemed to take forever, but he finally found the events coordinator and after an interminable conversation full of congratulations, agreed to stop by the next day to take down the exhibition and sort the sales out. His heart was thudding when he stepped back outside, but he let out a huge sigh when he saw Sebastien leaning against the brick building, face tilted towards the moon that was just peeking out from behind a bank of cloud.

“It’s like one of your charcoals,” Sebastien said without tearing his eyes from the sky.

Alec crossed to him and smiled when Sebastien met his gaze, red meeting blue. Alec slid his fingers into Sebastien’s where his hand hung quietly by his side.

“Ready?” the vampire asked.

Alec nodded, and let Sebastien lead him back to his hotel.

They barely made it into the lift before Alec was kissing him, backing him into the mirrored sides of the lift with a thud before the doors had even closed. He stopped suddenly, drew back and laughed, and Sebastien — who looked like he’d just got whiplash — asked, “What?”

“Vampires do have reflections after all…”

Sebastien rolled his eyes and gave an indecorous snort-laugh. The sound was rich and warm and it filled Alec’s whole consciousness for a moment. “It’s only the antique ones with genuine silver backing that don’t show our reflections. Technology has evolved, thank goodness. Now, if you don’t mind, you were kissing me senseless…”

“Sorry,” he laughed, grabbing Sebastien’s white shirt collar and tugging him down again. They nearly didn’t get out of the lift at Sebastien’s floor, but as the doors began to close again, Sebastien slid his foot into the path of the doors and dragged Alec out.

Clothes landed in a steady line on the carpet between the door of his hotel room and Sebastien’s bed, ending with them both in only their boxer-briefs on the pristine white surface of the bed. Alec was tipped back onto the duvet and lay there staring up at Sebastien who was now no longer hiding his nature from him at all. Red eyes blazed in his face and as he opened his mouth to breath heavily, the tips of his fangs were just visible. There was no denying that he was a vampire.

“Was it like this before?” Alec asked hoarsely. “I mean… did I just not see it?”

“I had to work very hard to rein all this in,” he said, kneeling on the bed and crawling a little way up it. His own boxer briefs strained at the crotch where his erection tented the fabric, and Alec’s own black ones were stained with a little spot of wetness where his cock twitched with eager interest. “I only let it slip once or twice, but you were distracted at the time.”

Alec smirked and then moaned as Sebastien’s palm skimmed up over his groin and over his stomach. He’d always been a bit self-conscious about the softer parts of him, but Sebastien worshipped him like he was some kind of immortal god, lavishing attention on him over and over until he was shaking and gasping and sweating. “Please!” he begged after what felt like hours. “Oh god, please…”

Sebastien slid off the bed and deftly removed his own underwear before encouraging Alec to lift his hips for him and drawing his boxer-briefs down too. Before Alec could think or process what was happening, Sebastien was between his legs again and had swallowed the entire length of his cock to the back of his throat in one.

“Oh fuck,” he hissed, mind whiting out.

Sparks of pleasure shot up his spine as Sebastien worked him alternately with his mouth and his hand.

He teased him, licking the slit at the tip where pre-come beaded profusely now, teasing the delicate folds of skin until Alec thought he was going to shatter apart with want. Just before it got too much to bear, Sebastien would take him back into the wet heat of his mouth and work the underside of his cock with his tongue, swallowing occasionally and making Alec’s head spin all over again.

His balls tightened and he spread his legs wider, instinctively opening himself to Sebastien.

The vampire moaned against his cock and Alec whimpered. Pulling off him, an obscenely inviting thread of saliva and pre-come connecting them briefly, Sebastien sat up and reached for the top drawer of the bedside table. “Vampires neither catch nor transmit diseases,” he said, “But if you still wish to use protection —”

“— I haven’t been with anyone since you,” he rasped. “And I’m clean anyway…”

“As you wish,” Sebastien smiled, withdrawing an almost-new bottle of lube and sitting back down between his legs. Alec eyed it and Sebastien laughed shyly. “I opened it last night…” he admitted and Alec grinned.

That smirk shattered into an open-mouthed groan as Sebastien’s finger slid inside him and he began to prepare him. There was nothing perfunctory about it either. Sebastien took his time to work him open, his fingers fucking into him slowly, almost reverently, until he crooked them and Alec yelled as white-hot pleasure shot through him.

“Still so sensitive,” Sebastien crooned and Alec just shivered in response. His thighs were quivering too now from the effort of not bucking upwards into the empty air, his cock drooling freely over his slightly soft stomach with each futile twitch. He knew he was a wanton mess, and he couldn’t quite find it within himself to care. It seem to drive Sebastien wild anyway.

When Sebastien added a third finger, still stroking up and down his thigh with his other hand, Alec broke.

“Please, please, please,” he whimpered, out of breath and desperate. He cracked his eyes open and looked down at Sebastien to find that his red eyes had been almost eclipsed by his blown pupils. He gave a weak buck of his hips to try and encourage Sebastien to get on with it, but the vampire seemed utterly transfixed by him. He worked his fingers over Alec’s prostate gently but with absolute precision, and it was going to make Alec lose his mind altogether.

“Pleasepleaseplease, I need you, please…” he wailed as Sebastien’s mercifully short and blunt fingernail caught him just so and sent another jolt through him.

Finally the vampire moved, but as he withdrew completely, the loss almost shattered him. “Shh,” he smiled, stroking a soothing circle at Alec’s hipbone. “I’m still here…”

Alec whimpered like a wounded animal but his foggy brain accepted that the loss was only temporary, and he watched as Sebastien took his own flushed cock in his hands and slicked lube up the length of it in a couple of efficient strokes, head bowing under the attention it was receiving at last. He’d focused solely, completely, on Alec’s pleasure for all that time, and the realisation sent a fresh wave of lust rolling through Alec’s entire body.

He spread his legs, but Sebastien caught Alec under his left thigh and raised his leg easily, exposing Alec completely. Before Alec could process anything, his tip was nudging at Alec’s entrance, and then he had sunk all the way in to the hilt.

Sebastien froze then, bowed forwards over Alec like a supplicant, canines openly bared, eyes screwed shut, not even breathing.

“Sebastien… please…” Alec grunted. He’d never felt as full and whole as he had with Sebastien inside him, and yet this wasn’t enough. He’d ached for this. For months, he’d ached for it, and still it wasn’t enough. “Bast, please…”

Finally, the vampire opened his searing red eyes and began to move.

Slowly at first, he picked up his pace until Alec’s back was arching and his fingers clawed great furrows in the sheet beneath him. With each thrust, Alec saw stars at let out little fractured, broken gasps. Sebastien was quiet, almost silent, while Alec himself was unable to stop the sounds from tumbling out of him. He moaned and whimpered, gasped and cursed and begged until Sebastien yanked him further down the bed and lifted his hips a little way off the mattress entirely.

From this new angle, it was so blindingly good that Alec went alternately taut and limp with ecstasy. “I’m close,” he gasped over the slap of Sebastien’s hips meeting his skin.

The vampire snarled then; an inhuman sound that sent the hairs prickling all down Alec’s body.

“Come for me,” Alec begged in a whisper, opening his eyes and watching as Sebastien chased his release with a ferocity he’d never shown before. He wasn’t careless with his strength, but he was certainly forceful. Had Alec wanted to grunt ‘stop’, he knew the vampire would halt, but that was the furthest thing from his mind as he watched the flawless perfection of this man above him. “God you’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “Come for me, Bast…”

And at the sound of his name, uttered in little more than an abbreviated wheeze, Sebastien went still, hips spasming as his spine arched back like a bow at full draw, mouth open, head thrown back, fangs bared, eyes rammed shut, a sheen of sweat covering his perfect, bronze chest, his silver hair falling around him like a veil.

The sight of him like that wrenched Alec’s orgasm from him with such sudden force that he almost blacked out, and he clenched around Sebastien’s still-twitching cock as he spilled all over himself. Vaguely, he felt Sebastien trying to withdraw, but he grunted, “Don't… not yet… please… I… unngghh…” Unable to finish the sentence as the last shock waves fluttered through him, Alec went limp against the bed, breathing hard, his blood roaring in his ears.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed before Sebastien did finally move, but eventually he slid his softening cock out of him and Alec grunted at the cool slide of the vampire’s release down his thigh. He was too spent and exhausted to care about the mess though, and as Sebastien collapsed onto the bed beside him, he cracked one eye open.

Sebastien lay on his left side with his cheek pillowed on his bicep, facing Alec with his eyes closed, and he didn’t seem to be breathing. Tentatively, clumsily in the daze of his recent, mind-blowing orgasm, Alec reached out and touched the delicate skin on the inside of his arm. Sebastien jolted like he’d received an electric shock, and opened his eyes. They still burned bright red, but the rest of his face seemed a little softer somehow.

“You alright?” Alec asked.

Sebastien nodded.

“Been a while too, huh?” Alec grinned, flopping back down to stare at the ceiling where little points of light still sparkled across his vision every now and again.

“Not since that last night with you,” he said, words slurred with exhaustion. “Unless you count my rather pathetic climax alone last night, which I certainly don’t.”

“Not at all?”

He shook his head but didn’t speak again. The vampire lay perfectly still — perfectly undead — and perfectly vulnerable beside him without even a sheet to cover him. His cock now lay soft across the top of his right thigh, still drooling a little and making a mess on his olive skin. Not half as much mess as Alec was currently sporting over his torso, he mused with another smile.

With Sebastien showing no sign of stirring, Alec rolled carefully off the bed and headed on shaky legs to the shower. When he returned, Sebastien hadn’t moved, and he slid in beside him, drawing the sheets up around them and lying there to stare at him in the dimness of the unlit room, processing everything. Sebastien was back, and apparently wanted to stay. He could hardly believe how well that day had gone.

Waking the next morning with a cool, lean body pressed against him, Alec sighed, relieved that it hadn’t all been some kind of fever dream brought on by the stress of the exhibition.

The fact that the man next to him was an undead vampire who didn’t breathe in his sleep was a bit unnerving, and the way he had his cheek now resting on Alec’s collarbone and his nose pressed against his neck should also probably have been a bit of a warning, but Alec couldn’t bring himself to move, except to place a soft kiss on his forehead.

Suddenly, as if surfacing from boundless depths, Sebastien’s body heaved and he drew in a great, sucking, rasping inhale through his mouth. His lips brushed against Alec’s pulse and Sebastien began breathing heavily there for a moment.

“That will never not be weird,” Alec murmured.

“Apologies,” Sebastien muttered, trying to roll away. He paused, freezing, and then whispered, “I fell asleep…” as if that was something miraculous.

“Yeah, you passed out almost as soon as we both finished,” he snickered.

Sebastien turned his big, dark, doe eyes on Alec and said, “No, you don’t understand. Vampires don’t just shut down like that the way humans do. We only sleep somewhere we know is secure and safe…”

“Oh,” Alec said significantly as the realisation plunged through him. He tucked his arm under Sebastien’s head and tugged him closer so that their bodies were once again flush with one another. “I’m glad you felt safe…”

Sebastien sighed, trailing his fingertips across Alec’s chest in absent circles. His cock twitched too, and Alec shot him a look.

With a bashful smile, Sebastien said, “I can’t help that I find you attractive, Alec…”

“Wasn't complaining,” he grinned.

It was a long time before they rolled off each other that morning, with the sun well up and the sheets damp with sweat and tangled around their ankles. Vampires, it seemed, had a longer refractory period than humans, but Sebastien also came so big when he did that Alec wasn’t surprised. He gave everything to Alec when he came that Alec could quite happily lie there all day just staring at him as he came down afterwards.

The room was chilly, however, and when Sebastien seemed to have dozed off again around ten o’clock, he headed to clean up. Again.

As the steam billowed around him, he tipped his head back into the stream of searing water and nearly yelped as the shower door opened and let in a rush of cold air as Sebastien stepped into the stall as well. Cool hands found his waist and then strong fingers kneaded his arse appreciatively before Sebastien kissed and nibbled up his shoulder and traps to his neck. Instinctively, Alec tilted his head to one side and Sebastien moaned, pressing open-mouthed kisses there over and over as the hot water coursed around his lips.

The sensation must have been too much for him because he pulled back sharply with a hiss and Alec turned to face him, water still streaming down around them. Sebastien stood frozen, eyes red, staring at Alec’s neck. “I shouldn’t…” he began. “That was stupid of me… I…”

“What happens to the treaty if the human is willing?” Alec found himself asking. He’d thought about it a lot before drifting off the previous night. If Sebastien had wanted to drink from him, to feed on him, what would happen to the tenuous peace between hunters and vampires like him.

“Don’t,” Sebastien said through gritted teeth. His canines were elongated, Alec noted.

“What happens?”

“The only way it’s permitted is if the human agrees by written contract to become the vampire’s source.”

“‘Source’?” he asked. “That sounds like an official title.”

“It is,” Sebastien said, relaxing a fraction and putting his hands back on Alec’s hips. His cock stirred with interest and Sebastien smiled. He leaned back in, as if proving to both of them that he could do this, and kissed down Alec’s neck again from the junction of his jaw all the way to his collarbones. He ground his hips against Alec and they both began to harden again.

Alec’s hand went to Sebastien’s cock and he started to stroke him gently, knowing he was still sensitive from their last round. Sebastien let out a ragged exhale, the cool breath making Alec shiver slightly in the heat of the water.

“So…” Alec pressed gently, thumbing across the top of Sebastien’s flushed cock.

“Hmm?” he asked, a little stunned.

“What is a source?”

“A human becoming a vampire’s source means that the vampire drinks only from that human. It’s… an ancient - ah - custom,” he said, gripping Alec’s shoulders as Alec upped the speed and adjusted his grip to tighten just a little around his now fully hard cock. “Rarely used today, but still… nngh…”

“Mmm?” Alec grinned, loving that the vampire’s thoughts were unravelling under his touch. “Go on.”

“You’re a menace,” he laughed breathily, nipping playfully at his neck and then kissing him hard. Alec’s back suddenly hit the icy tiles behind him and he yelped, rearing into Sebastien who wasn’t all that much warmer, though the heat of the water was raising his body temperature from the ambient temperature of the room.

“So if…” Alec began, somewhat distracted as Sebastien’s kisses continued and the vampire raked his fingers through Alec’s wet hair, scraping luxuriantly across his scalp hard enough to make him break off and groan. “If… if I wanted to become your…”

“Don’t,” Sebastien whispered. “Not yet. Not so soon after… all this time.”

The subtext was clear. Let’s see if this is going to last before I risk my life with the hunters guild and your family, shall we?

“Fair enough. Nothing to say I can’t suck you off now though, right?”

“Nothing at all,” he whispered and then immediately cursed as Alec sank to his knees and did just that.

It was only as he was handing in his own letter of resignation that the truth really sank in for Alec. He’d gone from post-grad assistant in the department to a full lecturer, where he’d stayed for six years, and now he was moving a little way out of the city, and moving in with his boyfriend of a year. A vampire, nonetheless. His life had gone from miserable to wonderful in that relatively short time.

Sebastien met him at the edge of campus after he’d handed the letter personally to the head of department. Standing under the verdant cherry trees, Sebastien looked like a vision. He wore tight, dark jeans and a loose shirt, half untucked, with his long hair tied back in a loose plait, fly-aways wisping around his head like mist. Alec walked straight up to him as the vampire opened his arms, flung his own arms around Sebastien’s neck, and hugged him.

“All done?” Sebastien asked without pulling back.

He nodded and popped back down from his toes. They were both tall men, but Sebastien had a few inches on him still. With a slightly doe-eyed expression, Sebastien smiled and kissed him gently. “I love you,” he said softly between kisses.

“Come on, you big sap,” Alec said. “I’ve got to be out of my apartment at four.”

“Such a romantic,” Sebastien sighed melodramatically.

With Sebastien’s supernatural strength, loading up the little van they’d hired for his stuff didn’t take long, and after giving his keys back to the landlord and signing the final bits and bobs, they were on the road.

The old farmhouse had been a find of Sebastien’s, and it needed some work. “Well, what else am I going to do on long, impossibly sunny summer days while you’re running your own business from the little art studio at the bottom of the garden?” Sebastien had laughed when they’d first viewed it, the back of his hand pressed to his forehead in a terribly ‘put upon’ gesture. “I might as well spruce the place up.”

“It needs more than a light ‘sprucing up’,” Alec had said, brows raised at the rotten wooden beam and the tired 1950’s kitchen. “And don’t tell me you made your wealth flipping houses back in the day.”

“Would you rather I told you I robbed the Bank of England and they still haven’t noticed?” he replied archly before planting a kiss squarely on Alec’s scratchy, stubble-darkened cheek.

With a scowl, Alec had shot him a look. “I honestly don’t know whether that’s a lie or not…”

“It’s a lie,” Sebastien snorted. “I can’t believe you think I’m a criminal.”

“You’re a vampire,” he’d retorted. “You could probably have just walked in there and demanded a small fortune in gold ingots and they wouldn’t have objected…”

“Please. I do have some scruples. And besides, I only use my charms on poor, miserable artists to get into their pants…”

“And their hearts too, apparently,” he’d scoffed as they’d left the dilapidated house with Sebastien’s hand in Alec’s back pocket, fingers firmly cupped around his arse.

It took another six months for the work to be completed, and even with Sebastien’s not inconsiderable talents in the DIY and home improvement departments, they still had to call in a team of builders to fix the pointing in one wall and to sort out a few other structural issues. But by the end of the work, the farmhouse was quite frankly the most stunning place Alec could ever have dreamed of living. Exposed oak beams and a fireplace big enough to park a tractor in were only half of the best features of the place.

One clear, frosty evening in late October, the pair sat outside on the recently finished patio, a small cast iron fire-pit crackling away and sending sparks and heat twisting up into the night sky, a glass of wine each in one hand and their free hand clasped around the other’s.

“Bastien…?” Alec said, not taking his eyes from the mother-of-pearl points of light in the sky above.

“Mmm?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about… about becoming your source.” He didn’t miss the sharp inhale from his partner, nor the way Sebastien went completely still in the wooden chair beside him. He also didn’t say anything. “I’d… I’d like to ask how often you’d need to feed from me, and… what the repercussions would be for me as the human…”

Still Sebastien didn’t speak for a long time, and Alec worried he’d spoilt the serenity of their evening with the sensitive question. Finally, the vampire cleared his throat and Alec realised with a jolt that he was near tears.

“Bast?”

At the sound of the pet-name, Sebastien blinked rapidly and two mirroring tears tracked down his cheeks in perfect synchrony. “I thought you’d forgotten all about it,” he said in a hoarse croak. “I didn’t want to bring it up again.”

“You should have done, silly,” Alec groused, and he was met with a watery smile that didn’t meet his eyes at all.

“Well, to answer your questions,” he said, trying to sound unaffected even if he clearly was. “Every three months is safe enough, so long as you take an iron supplement. If you don’t, you might feel a little more tired right afterwards. We generally take slightly less than a person would give at a blood donation, if that helps put it into context.”

Alec turned and frowned at him.

“What?”

“You’ve gone all clinical,” he said, shuffling a little and setting his wine glass down on the edge of the stone fire pit. “Do you not want this anymore?”

Sebastien swallowed thickly and looked away. In the ochre and copper flicker of the flames before them, his suddenly red eyes seemed to glow like coals. “More than you know…” he rasped.

“Then what’s the problem?”

He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment before turning back to face Alec with glassy eyes. “I’m frightened.”

Alec’s scowl deepened and he rose from his chair to straddle and sink down into Sebastien’s lap. Settled in his new position, he kissed Bast’s lips and stroked his loose, white-blond hair out of his eyes. “Of what?”

“Losing control. It’s been… decades since… If I hurt you, Alec… it would break me.”

“How about we start small? Just a taste?”

Sebastien looked so young then in the firelight. He suddenly looked like the twenty year old man he had been when he’d been conscripted into the army and sent out to battle to die, only to be turned at the eleventh hour by a nurse in a field hospital who’d seen something special in him. Thank god she had, Alec mused.

Alec leaned back a little and brought his index finger slowly to Sebastien’s lips. The vampire swallowed, red gaze drifting down to watch its approach before looking back at Alec’s face, searching, questioning, doubting.

Alec nodded and slid his fingertip a few millimetres into Sebastien’s mouth. The vampire inhaled, closed his eyes, and then opened his mouth properly. Alec brought the pad of his fingertip to the underside of his right canine, and pressed.

After a moment, the pressure gave way and a prick of pain like a needle pierced his skin. A bead of blood welled there instantly and he withdrew to let it swell. Sebastien clearly smelled the blood because his pupils dilated and he sucked in a sharp breath.

“Easy,” Alec said. “It’s only a drop.” And with that, he turned his finger over and held it above the tip of Sebastien’s tongue.

Paralysed in a heartbeat of terror, Sebastien sat rigid, frozen, wide eyed, but Alec lowered his finger to meet the slight roughness of his tongue, and Sebastien’s eyes rolled. He moaned and let his tongue play across the tiny pinprick wound, fingers digging into Alec’s hips. The tiny wound had already stopped bleeding, but he sucked gently, drawing a little taste more. Then he released Alec and stared at him, a look of stunned awe on his beautiful face.

“How was that?” Alec asked, briefly thumbing a fond arc across Sebastien’s cheekbone before dropping his hand.

“Manageable,” Sebastien murmured.

“Ok, I have to ask, do I taste good?”

The tense spell that encapsulated both of them broke and Sebastien cracked a smile, fangs and all. “Yes,” he rasped.

“So… I can become your source?”

“If you wish it, yes. You can withdraw the honour at any time. I won’t hold you to it.”

“Good to know,” he said, only half laughing. A moment later, he said, “When… When do you want to start… you know… properly. Formally?”

Sebastien’s eyes had drifted to the rabbiting pulse in his neck.

“Now?” he asked. “It’s only been a few weeks since you went to the blood bank though…”

“That’s…” he said, hands finding Alec’s waist and holding him gently. “That probably works in my favour this time. Are you sure you want this?”

“To be ‘yours’ on your terms as well as mine? Of course,” he smiled, and watched as another tear rolled down his perfect olive cheek. He tilted his head to one side, feeling a little sheepish, and said in barely a whisper, “Whenever you like.”

“Really? Now?” Sebastien hissed, chest suddenly heaving. “Just like that?”

Alec laughed quietly. “It’s not as if we’ve just met. I know you, Bast. I trust you. I wouldn’t offer this to just any old vampire, you know?”

Unable to stop the smile from twisting his lips, Sebastien finally relented with a nod. “Alright. But not here. You’re going to want to be more comfortable.”

“But I’m already comfortable here,” he whined playfully, wiggling his hips in Sebastien’s lap, eliciting a deep, rumbling groan.

With a roll of his red eyes, Sebastien sighed. “Stubborn arse,” he grumbled without sting.

“You love my arse.”

“Yes, you’re right. I do,” he said.

Tenderly he ran his thumb down the line of Alec’s carotid and inhaled deeply. “I love you,” he whispered. And then he leaned close. He took his time kissing Alec’s neck until he was gasping and rocking his hips against Sebastien.

“Please…”

“Last chance,” Sebastien said against the skin of his throat.

Alec shook his head. “I want this. I’m yours.”

So the vampire sank his fangs into the artery. After the initial surprise and sting, Alec’s whole body lit up as the venom hit his bloodstream, and he bucked into Sebastien who held him still with what should have been frightening ease. There was no fear behind the gesture, only longing and love and sweet, aching, rolling, unending pleasure.

“Oh fuck,” Alec moaned, going limp in his arms as Sebastien began to feed, withdrawing his fangs to draw more deeply on him while he held him easily in his arms. The vampire moaned, lips locked against his skin so as not to spill anything. The motion of his throat suddenly fascinated Alec as he swallowed down his own life-force, but before he could raise his hand to touch fingertips to his Adam’s apple, pleasure exploded in his mind and he forgot everything.

When he came back to himself, he was inside, lying on their bed, with a small, soft dressing over his neck, and Sebastien sitting quietly on the bed beside him, staring down at him and holding his hand. As he blinked his eyes, he frowned. “What…?”

“It’s intense the first time,” Sebastien murmured fondly. “I did say you’d want to be somewhere more comfortable.”

“ S’perfect,” he slurred. “Fuck me…” he added, more curse than command.

“Maybe later, hmm?” Sebastien smiled. There was a flush to his cheeks that Alec had never seen before, and a brightness to his eyes.

“C’mere,” Alec said, patting the bed beside him. With Sebastien lying silently next to him, Alec rolled over and hooked one leg over Bast’s thigh. “Love you,” he mumbled, sinking into a deep and exhausted sleep, even as Sebastien’s hand came up to cradle his head.

The vampire smiled, kissing his forehead. “I love you too.”

___

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[morganas-pendragons]

fools in love

prompt: that trope where character a just woke up after going through a near death experience and they see character b sitting on a chair beside their bed peacefully sleeping and another character appears and says "oh good you're awake character b has never left your side ever since"

song: fools in love by inara george

tag: @obiorbenkenobi​ @karasong​ @anakinsahsoka​ @dressed-up-heartbreak​ @icanbringyouincold​ @kaminobiwan​

***

Glaring fluorescent lights blur your vision as you lean against the wall adjacent to the bacta tank, eyes narrowing as you try to blink the stars from your vision. You’ve lost count of how long you’ve been standing here. There was something stirring in you that kept you from leaving the room and going to your quarters to sleep.

That something had auburn hair, piercing eyes, and had nearly gotten himself killed - what a wonder, that one, considering he never took care of himself anyway - since the five of you had come back from Kadavo.

How did you get here? Both of you? You weren’t supposed to be in the slaver’s camp, much less subjugate to the methodical torture of the Zygerrian’s as they worked to break you, and you weren’t supposed to have killed so many of them in retaliation for the way they’d hurt him you.

Hurting you was one thing.

Hurting him though.. You’d let the forces of the galaxy rip you apart if it meant he’d be safe.

There’s a coping mechanism that the mind uses in order to spare you from your trauma. It takes the memories of your traumatic time, locks them away, and keeps you from remembering them. You would give anything to have the memories of your time on Kadavo repressed if it meant you could forget the way Obi-Wan screamed when they used the whips again and again and again until blood rushed down his back and he was thrown into the rocks beside you and forced to continue to work.  

“You shouldn’t have done that, Kenobi.” You whisper late in the bunks one night, careful not to wake your fellow slaves as your hands hover over the weeping sores that cover his back. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

 “Contrary to popular belief, my dear-” He took a hand in his own and brushed his lips against the inflamed and cracked skin of your knuckles. “It would be quite a relief to my self conscious to be the one injured instead of you.”

Which was why you stood here, right now, eyes glued to the bacta tank that currently holds Obi-Wan Kenobi. Your mind cannot seem to comprehend what should be a very simple question: How did you get here?

What kind of twist did fate have to drag the two of you together?

 “Oh, Obi-Wan Kenobi.” You whisper, swallowing the knot in your throat as you approach the bacta tank and brush your fingers over the glass. There’s an apprehensiveness to your movements, like your subconscious is trying to urge you to flee before you can be hurt any further. Some wounds are internal. They’re the ones you can’t see. “I always thought you were the fool for never allowing yourself to love.” Which was a lie, one you had blissfully ignored, but Obi-Wan was one of the model Jedi of the Order and one you highly respected. “But I pity the fool who acknowledges the depths of their own affection for a man like yourself.” You pause at the precipice to the hallway and turn to look over your shoulder.  “And the fool was me. What a pity.”

Fools in love, is there any other kind of lover?

Fools in love, is there any other kind of pain?

I should know...

I should know this fools in love again

***

Then.

The first one was when Obi-Wan threw himself in front of you to keep your form from the eyes of Keeper Arguss. Rex had flashed him a warning look almost immediately and stiffened when two Zygerrians came forward to flank Obi-Wan as he was forcefully thrown away from you.

 “Kenobi! I admire your determination in protecting your fellow Jedi, but you should know,” The lever at his side falls forward, and a dozen Torgrutans scream as they fall into the abyss. “Your Jedi morals will have dire consequences.”

You close your eyes as the screams of those helpless Torgrutans - most of which remind you so much of Ahsoka - ring in your ears. You’ll be carrying those ghosts with you for the rest of your life.

***

Then.

It becomes hard to keep track of time once you’re in the cave. The Zygerrian’s set you and the Togrutas to a grueling schedule that lasts for hours. Stale bread and warm water are your only sustenance, and your thoughts are your only company.

Sweetling.. look down at me.

The familiar nickname echoes in your bond with Obi-Wan as you peer to the other side of Rex where Obi-Wan stands. He sees you through his peripheral vision, flashes a smile, and continues in the process of transferring rocks to the transportation carts in front of you. Your muscles ache, your eyes burn, but you carry on.

You have to.

It’s nearing the end of the shift when you feel Rex’s hand on your arm, and the clone captain pulls you nearer to him so you don’t have to see what’s occurring on his opposite side. Obi-Wan, in the midst of his shift, had come to the defense of two Togrutan children who’d been whipped and burnt by their electro collars after having fallen due to the lack of strength. He’d thrown himself into the line of fire and suffered direly for it.

Obi-Wan-

No. His voice is sharp but clearly wavering with the amount of pain he’s in. Do not fret over me when your own life is at stake, sweet one.

You furrow your brow and breathe a small sigh of relief when you and Rex are shoved forward to the room of pallets they’ve distributed for the slaves opposite of the cavern. There’s not enough for all of you, but Rex has offered to take watch - he defends this with his unnatural ability to go hours without sleep - and you sit down with your knees drawn to your chest as sleep evades you.

Obi-Wan curls up in the spot in front of you and attempts to fall asleep. He keeps shifting uncomfortably, and it’s not until the sliver of light coming from the opposite wall shines upon you both that you see why he’s so uncomfortable.

 “You fool. You absolute fool. Why do you keep doing this?” You whisper urgently, lightly pressing your hands against his arm to draw his attention to you. You don’t understand why he’s so careless with his own life. You want to throttle him. To shove every piece of evidence in his direction to show him why his existence is a light, why he’s a flaring glow of Light and joy and beauty in an otherwise dark world that is this galaxy in the midst of a war.

 “You know.” He replies softly.

You shake your head. You really don’t. “Sit up.” He complies with ease and settles in between your parted legs, chest deflating as you trace your hands over the dirtied and torn fabric of his Jedi tunic to curl your fingers along the inside of his forearms. “Relax for me, Obi-Wan. Breathe.”

1..2...3...4...

Obi-Wan gasps as he feels your Force-Presence lingering inside of his mind, surveying his injuries and ascertaining the depths of which ones needs to be treated first and foremost before continuing any further. Had it been the Healers at the Jedi Temple, he would’ve torn himself away and insisted he was fine.

He could never resist your spirit.

 “Sweetling-”

You can feel the skin stitching back together, the muscles loosening and the ache that’s deep in his bones abating as you focus. You can’t expend all of your energy. Not tonight. Not now, not when you’ll be repeating this in the morning.

 “Come to bed with me, Obi.” The plea breaks past your lips before you can stop yourself, and he flashes a questioning look over his shoulder before you lay down and he follows by laying in the curve of your body. Your fingers graze over the column of his neck and curl around his shoulder. “Be at peace.”

You both fall into a fitful sleep.

No peace is found.

***

Now.

Obi-Wan is in the bacta-tank for another week. His burns had been severe, as Kix had recorded in his chart upon having watched you drag his limp body into the medbay, and that didn’t even begin to cover the obvious dehydration and malnutrition. Cracked ribs.. burns.. lack of sleep. Too much to record on one data pad.

He’d treated what he was able, and he’d put Obi-Wan Kenobi into the bacta tank with the hopes that it would do the job it was created to do. What doesn’t surprise him is the fact that you’re there for all of it. The descent, the treatment, the waiting. All of it. 

  “So are you going to tell him?” 

He’s supposed to come out of the bacta today. You’ve been stuck in your memories ever since your return, trying to figure out what you could’ve done differently to maybe have prevented the pain that had been inflicted upon him. While Obi-Wan might’ve been physically harmed, listening to the way he screamed as he was burned to nearly the bone and whipped for a transgression not his own would haunt you forever. 

  “Tell him what?” 

If you allowed yourself to love Obi-Wan Kenobi, he would be the victim of your transgressions and your burdens for as long as you both lived. He’s already suffered enough. You don’t want to be the reason he suffers more. 

  “Don’t play stupid.” Kix chides lightly as he moves to set his data pad on the table and lift the lever to begin lifting Obi-Wan from the bacta tank. ‘’You know exactly what I mean. Are you going to tell him how you feel?” 

The machine hums as you and Kix stand opposite one another on each side of the tank while two junior medics prepare the hover-stretcher beneath you to take Obi-Wan to the medbay for the rest of his recovery. 

Your stomach clenches at the sight of the pale scars that line his back. They look like electro-whip marks. He’ll forever be reminded of how he nearly died for you. 

Shame. 

  “He doesn’t need more suffering on top of what I already gave him.” You murmur, taking the upper half of Obi-Wan’s body into your arms. His head lolls aimlessly on your shoulder, breathing shallow as his lungs prepare themselves for the intake of air after being immersed in the bacta for so long. “He needs to heal. He can’t do that with me.” 

  “I think you’re wrong.” Kix replies as the two of you and the two junior medics lay Obi-Wan down on the hover-stretcher. You pause at the side of the stretcher and take his limp hand into your own before brushing your lips across the back of softened knuckles. “And I think you’re going to regret it.” 

Fools in love Are there any creatures more pathetic Fools in love Never knowing when they've lost again *** 

Then. 

You cannot taste anything. You have lost all sense of time, all sense of direction, and right now you only have one purpose. It’s not keeping yourself alive. It’s keeping Obi-Wan alive. 

Your hands find purchase on his back at night. They heal him. They keep him alive, and Rex keeps you alive. 

Until the Zygerrians use a Togrutan child no older then six years old against you for being unable to do work. It was the lack of sustenance. You snuck your food to Rex who needed the strength more then you did and the Force could only aid you so long. 

It seemed even The Light had abandoned you. 

  “JEDI!” The cold, sharp tone of the Zygerrian supervising the slaves today activates your collar and draws you to your knees. Your desperation turns into a frigid, feral anger that bubbles low in your belly as you defiantly lift your chin. “Get up.” 

  “I’m sorry,” You snarl mockingly. “The lack of food and water is preventing me from being able to work. Forgive me.” 

  “I’ll forgive you when you get back up and get back to work,” Your eyes narrow as he grasps the soiled tunics of the nearest child and presses her against him, fingers digging into her montrals as she whimpers in his embrace. “Get. Up.” 

Obi-Wan draws inward on himself from behind Rex when he watches you stand to your feet and everything moves in slow motion. 

The Togrutan child falls to the floor and doesn't move. You scream -raw and bloody and fierce- as lightning explodes from your fingers and incapacitates the Zygerrian who falls to the floor and seizes from the electric shocks running through his body. Something aids you, fuels you, as more guards run into the room. 

It is you against six other fully grown Zygerrian guards. 

Kenobi stiffens at the sight of you. You don’t have the strength to do this. You don't have the strength to do much of anything, and neither does he, but he absolutely refuses to let you be injured because they exploited your weakness: your compassion. 

Obi-Wan moves away from Rex, braces himself, and before you can do anything, the Jedi Master is throwing himself right into the line of fire. He’s barely wearing anything. He has no strength. No will. No endurance. Not after all of this. 

Kadavo had been designed to break you. Seems it did. 

  “Obi-Wan!” 

Something is burning. Skin. It’s skin. Upon seeing Obi-Wan at your feet, you throw all caution to the wind and grimace as you throw yourself atop him and shield his body with your own. After taking the brunt of the electro-whips and the collar being activated, The Force is leaving you with every movement and you just want to scream at how unfair this is. 

And then the head guard says something about Argus, and then you and Rex and Obi-Wan are being dragged into the main facility. You’re concerned about the fact that Force lightning shot from your fingers. You’re concerned about the way Obi-Wan is writhing and there’s weeping wounds on his arms and his back is raw from the burns, and you want to keel over right there and vomit on the floor. 

Luck is not on your side. Nothing is on your side. 

Nothing but the dark. 

By the end of it all, Anakin and Ahsoka are the ones to come and retrieve you. When you finally see your most beloved is when you allow yourself to succumb to what has happened by falling unconscious in Ahsoka’s arms. 

***  Now. 

You trace the white scars on the inside of your arms, evidence of your time on Kadavo, before returning your attention to his bedside. Obi-Wan now lays supine in the medbay bed, eyes closed and blankets pulled up to his chin as he sleeps. He’s only woken up one time. 

You’re grateful for the silence. It’s given you a lot of time to think. 

  “Ah, there she is.” Anakin muses as he takes a seat beside you and pulls your legs into his lap. “You gonna tell me why Rex said you shot Force lightning at the zygerrian guards? Or why Obi-Wan threw himself into the jaws of death by nearly being burned to the bone because of your outburst? Sounds like something I’d do.

You pause and pull your lip between your teeth. 

  “You don’t have to talk. Just listen. I know that he’s not easy to love. I mean, why would you? He’s a walking disaster. Just the fact that you had to drag him down here tells me enough. Here’s what you need to remember.. When Obi-Wan loves, he loves with everything he has. Why else would he suffer so harshly? Why else would he go to such an effort to keep you safe?” Anakin places your feet back on the ground, stands to his feet, and places a kiss upon your palm, “We all know. When he wakes up... you should tell him.” 

You smile softly at the Jedi Knight as you draw your knees to your chest. “Maybe.” You whisper into the silence. Anakin flashes a smile in reply and moves to the opposite side of the room to talk to Kix in hushed tones about Obi-Wan’s condition. “Kenobi, Kenobi... You’ll be the death of me.” 

You draw your chair closer to his bed and take his hand in your own, linking your fingers through his own before you press your forehead against the mattress and fall asleep. 

Fools in love Gently hold each other's hands forever Fools in love Gently tear each others limb from limb

*** 

Now. 

When Obi-Wan wakes, he’s expecting to be greeted by the auburn aura of fire and the smell of charcoal. Instead he’s greeted by the cold white walls of the medbay on The Resolute. 

The warmth of skin on skin radiates against his hand as his eyes slowly flutter open and he takes in his surroundings. Kix is standing on the other side of his bed when he finally comes to consciousness, and he’s smiling as he takes Obi-Wan’s chin in his hands and slowly rolls it to his opposite shoulder. 

  “I’m glad you’re awake. She’s been there since I brought you in here.” 

You lay awkwardly curled up, hair mussed and lips slightly parted as you sleep soundly at his side. 

Tears brim his eyes as his gaze falls back to the ceiling. Force... Force, does that mean-

  “Yeah, Kenobi. You already know.” Kix murmurs as he reapplies the sedative while checking Obi-Wan’s bandages. “Should’ve realized.” 

He falls back into a painless sleep with your eyes on his mind. 

Fools in love they think they're heroes Because they get to feel no pain I say fools in love are zeros, I should know, I should know because this fool's in love again

bonus: 

Your scars heal, obi-wan’s wounds close over, and before you’re sent back onto the front lines of the war.. you have a moment of peace that you’d so desperately craved after kadavo. 

  “Obi-Wan-” 

He pulls you into a darkened corner of the negotiator, eyelashes fluttering and chest constricting as he leans inward inward inward force help him- “I should know,” he whispers. It’s been too long of denying himself of his desires, too long of yearning to speak to you about his heart and about how fearful he was when you’d fought the Zygerrian guards. “I should know because this fool’s in love again.” 

As he captured your mouth in his own, you made a mental note to yourself for later: Reminder, thank Kix. 

You did. 

[alkaysani-archived]

The Old Guard Fanfic Master List

*updated* 15 Oct 2020

MAIN SERIES

AS OUR LOVE SHAPES OUR UNIVERSE  (Nicky x Joe - Princess Diaries AU)

to love is to sacrifice, to sacrifice is to love 

“Prince Yusuf Al-Kaysani,” Charlotte says, and she’s sighing dreamily again and Yusuf definitely has that effect on people. “That young man gets my vote,” Joseph says from behind him. “He goes by Joe sometimes, so he’s definitely of good stock,” he says, and Nicky snorts. “A brilliant one, amazing artist, charismatic. He’s dedicated himself as the right-hand and advisor to his queen mother, and has fully supported his younger sister taking the throne instead of him. He’s friends with Nicolo,” he says, and Nicky blinks, shrugging a little, and his heart starts to go wild in his chest in a way he doesn’t want to understand. “We spent two years of secondary together,” he whispers, glancing at Mia. “Uh…just before they passed, he had to move back home, and I…” he trails off, sighing. --- or the Princess Diaries II AU where Prince Nicolo will do anything for Genovia. And if that means introducing his cousin Princess Mia to Prince Yusuf Al-Kaysani to be her future king, then his heart just has to deal with it. He just wished that it didn’t hurt so much.

i will hold your heart together in mine 

“You love me now, right?” “Forever more, my darling,” Joe chokes out, and it takes on a whole new meaning that makes his own ache. “Then my heart will heal,” Nicolo says, and his voice is firm, and fierce, under the exhaustion. “The symptoms will fade, in time. They will,” he adds, his voice muffled against his shoulder. He pulls away and looks up at Joe with wide, glassy eyes. “The universe won’t be so cruel to me to take me away now, when I am finally happy, right?” he says, and Joe burst into tears then, shaking his head, grabbing Nicolo’s face and kissing him, deeply. No. No. He won’t think of it. He won’t think of losing Nicolo. Not again. Not like this. *** or where Prince Yusuf learns the physical extents of Nicolo’s heartbreak, months after they were meant to be fine. But regardless of how much it ails him, his beloved Nicolo continues to have faith that he will be alright. So he must brave through his fears and his worries, as they grow, and build a life and a family, together. Even if it breaks their hearts again. And again. And again.

black cats and lopsided hearts (Joe x Nicky) - 30 Oct 2020

“Permission to keep killing your fiancé with cuteness due to Halloween costumes, please?” Mia asks, and she’s giving Nicolo those eyes again, and this time, Nicolo bites his lip, glancing at Joe. “It might be fun, beloved. It’ll only be for a night,” he reasons, and Nicolo sighs then, nodding his head. “For you, heart.” *** or The Old Guard Princess Diaries AU – Halloween Special where Mia convinces Nicolo and Yusuf to let her dress up one and a half-year old twins Elio and Ayla for this very American holiday.

ONE-SHOTS & STAND-ALONES

JOE x NICKY

not that i need reminding 

“You look in love.” Joe blinks, looking up at the voice. There’s a woman, a little younger than Nile, or maybe just her age, sitting beside him on the bench now. She’s smiling at him, and he gives her what he hopes is an equal one, before nodding softly, gently tapping his pencil on his sketchbook. He knows the answer, of course he does. Yes. He is in love. Truly, madly, deeply, or however they say it. He knows all of this already. But he’s willing to play. “And how does that look?” --- or joe gets a vibe check from the universe.

to know those among us 

“Mommy, angel! Angel, mommy!” Nicky blinks, putting down the produce he had in his hand. He zeros in on the voice and a little boy staring up at him, jaw dropped and staring, his eyes wide and curious. Then he looks up to find a woman, blushing red, looking absolutely mortified. Even with her darker tone, the flush is clear, making her glow. She looks ready to run, so Nicky just gives her a smile, and then crouches in front of the child, before looking around, humming curiously. “Where, little one?” he asks, putting his hands over his eyes as he continues his search. “Where is the angel?” he asks, and the little boy giggles. It’s a beautiful sound amongst the low bustle of the early farmer’s market. --- or nicky gets mistaken for an angel by a child, so he tells them about real ones

in parts, i fall, i love

Joe needs to finish this portfolio if he wants something to propose to the showcase. And he does. He really does. But someone just sat at his table because the coffee shop is so busy, and their profile is gorgeous, and yep, he’s definitely trashed the outline again because this man is definitely going to be a part of it. “Is there something on my face?” he hears, and Joe pauses. Shit. Joe breathes out so heavily that his glasses fog up, and he looks up to find the man giving him a hint of a smile, tilting his head slightly to the side. “You’re staring,” the man states and honestly, yeah, Joe is. “I’m not.” Idiot. --- or joe is an artist, and he falls in love. and nicky is along for the ride.

with your hands, your whispers 

Come on love, that’s it.” “I can’t, Yusuf, please.” He’s gasping, breathless. His Yusuf always leaves him so breathless. It’s too much. And of course, Yusuf knows that it’s too much. He knows exactly what Nicky needs, and what makes him overflow, and it seems like his adoring heart wants him to spill over, again and again in every sense of the word. *** or a take on what nicolo and yusuf were doing before booker and andy got to the hotel in marrakesh

let’s right, these wrongs, together (see accompanying edit here)

If he concentrates hard enough, he can still smell Yusuf on the scarf, and it brings immediate tears to his eyes. Because it’s only been nearly a year, and he’s yearned for the man for longer, way before they got together. And even with all the odds, with all the numbers combined, Nicky doesn’t believe that there’ll be enough time that can pass to heal the pain that’s clawing on his chest at that moment. That has been since Yusuf said it was over.   Nile’s legs move from his lap, and suddenly there are arms around him, pulling him close and Nicky closes his eyes, pressing his face on Nile’s neck. “You’re allowed to hurt as long as you have to, Nicky,” Nile says to him, and it’s so, so kind. “You can tell me as much or as little as you can. I didn’t mean to push.” Nicky sniffles. “I still love him,” he croaks out, like it needed to be heard, like his desperation is a call out for his heart. His heart that let him go, that told him that it’s over. *** or the one where Nicky is housemates with Nile after Yusuf breaks up with him. And when he finally opens up about it, Nicky realizes that his current predicament was brought on by misunderstandings and good intentions with ill results. But it’s too late. It’s been nearly a year; it doesn’t matter now. Right? Not if your housemate is Nile Freeman.

hand-shaped bruise (see accompanying edit here)

Prince Nicolò spends most of his days alone. He lives with no one, after all, ever since his parents died. Ever since he was killed by Sr. Merrick and Lady Kozak, his screams ringing out throughout the night until his final breath, only to show up the next day at the farmer’s market. *** or my halloween take on our beloved characters.

BOOKER x COPLEY

when time dictates love 

"So not ugly,” Sebastien says, and Aidan looks at Mr. Copley, who just shrugs, smiling. “He is insufferable. Does he know this?” he says, and the man just smiles, both of them ignoring how Sebastien says ‘hey!’. “He does,” Mr. Copley whispers, and he says, and Sebastien’s fingers intertwine with his atop his knee, and Aidan looks away. “But you like him anyway,” he says instead. Mr. Copley chuckles, and he leans to press a kiss on Sebastien’s forehead, who’s no longer laughing. “Yes, but I like him anyway.” --- or a home-care worker witnesses Booker and Copley’s last year together, as time catches up on them

MULTIPLE RELATIONSHIPS

there is no timeline when it comes to this (Booker x Copley; Joe x Nicky - also featuring Joe & Booker bffs and Nicky really giving a damn about Booker)

“I’m happy for you, Yusuf,” Booker says, because he means it despite the ache, and Joe smiles, nodding, and he’s smiling in a way that makes his heart hurt even more. “We love you, Booker,” Joe says because he’s just that person, before driving off as Booker makes his way up to his apartment, steps feeling like lead. He makes the point to check the mail, and he’s not even sure why. He’s never checked mail before, Joe usually did. Booker pauses then, looking at the different ads he pulled out of the box after twisting the key. So many changes already. When he finally gets to his unit, he finds someone standing at the door. They turn when he pauses, and greets him with a smile. “Hello Booker,” James Copley says, giving him a two-finger salute. “You haven’t aged a day.” *** or where Booker’s best friend Yusuf moves out to be with his Nicolo, and he makes the choice to live alone for the first time in years. Booker tells himself he’ll be fine, tells everyone that he’ll be fine, even though the weight in his chest tells him otherwise. but he really has no choice. this is his life now. then James Copley comes home.

OTHER SHIPS & FRIENDSHIPS & NO SHIPS

little things, for the heart (Nile and Joe)

“Are you…baking bread?” Joe looks up at her then, and Nile snorts, walking over to the counter and reaching up to tug on the man’s stray curls, dark tight ringlets dusted with white flour. “Maybe,” Joe says, in a sing-song tone. *** or Nile takes a lesson she learned from her mother and applies it to her new life.

OTHER SERIES

THE NILE FREEMAN COLLECTION (Written for Nile Freeman Week 2020)

nile + love or where Nile meets another queen 

nile + sadness or where Nile keeps it real with Booker

nile + alone time or where Nile gets of ice cream and thinks of dying

nile + comfort or where Nile makes Joe feel better, the best way she knows how

MY LOVE, WE STILL HAVE MUCH TO LEARN (Post-Canon Take)

do not let me awake alone (Nicky x Joe)

After Booker’s betrayal, Joe is angry and Nicky suffers through the fallout. And for the the first time in a long time, Nicky understands what it's like to be alone in his grief.And something inside him breaks.

my love for him kills any anger (Nicky x Joe; Joe & Andy)

A month later, Andy finds out that Nicky is talking to Booker.But it doesn’t mean that Joe forgives him. Far from it. They've been through so much for him to just let it go.

a blessing from above (Nile & Nicky; Nile & Joe; Nicky x Joe) 

Nile gets used to a few things, three months into her new life. But the one thing that wracks her brain the most is how they deal with loss and suffering.Thankfully, she has a lifetime to figure it out. Because they’re family, and she wants to help them. At least, start them on the right path. They are grown people, after all. Because her Mama raised her right.

[ashleysitalianlitblog]

My Brilliant Friend (HBO Tie-in Edition): Book 1: Childhood and Adolescence

From the famous Italian author Elena Ferrante, the story is about a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Elena Ferrante’s four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its main characters, the fiery and unforgettable Lila and the bookish narrator, Elena, become women, wives, mothers, and leaders, all the while maintaining a complex and at times conflicted friendship. This first novel in the series follows Lila and Elena from their fateful meeting as ten-year-olds through their school years and adolescence. This book is now turning into an HBO MAX show and it’s a young adult classic in modern-day Italy

The Story of a New Name (HBO Tie-in Edition): Book 2: Youth

The follow-up to My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name continues the epic New York Times–bestselling literary quartet that has inspired an HBO series and returns us to the world of Lila and Elena, who grew up together in post-WWII Naples, Italy. 

In The Story of a New Name, Lila has recently married and made her entrée into the family business; Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the neighborhood that she so often finds stifling. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times too much for Elena. Yet the two young women share a complex and evolving bond that is central to their emotional lives and a source of strength in the face of life’s challenges. In these Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante, “one of the great novelists of our time” (The New York Times), gives us a poignant and universal story about friendship and belonging, a meditation on love and jealousy, freedom and commitment—at once a masterfully plotted page-turner and an intense, generous-hearted family saga. 

Adua

The book Adua is by lgiaba Scego has historical references and looks into the life of an immigrant. The story is about Adua, an immigrant from Somalia to Italy who has lived in Rome for nearly forty years. She came seeking freedom from a strict father and an oppressive regime, but her dreams of becoming a film star ended in shame. Now that the civil war in Somalia is over, her homeland beckons. Yet Adua has a husband who needs her, a young man, also an immigrant, who braved a dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea. When her father, who worked as an interpreter for Mussolini's fascist regime,  dies, Adua inherits the family home. She must decide whether to make the journey back to reclaim her material inheritance, but also how to take charge of her own story and build a future. From the choices of being an adult to a wife, the book gives us a look of the hard choices life gives us in a heartbreaking story. 

100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed

An instant blockbuster in Italy that went on to become an international literary phenomenon, 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed is the fictionalized memoir of Melissa P., a Sicilian teenager whose quest for love rapidly devolves into a shocking journey of sexual discovery.

Melissa begins her diary a virgin, but a stormy affair at the age of fourteen leads her to regard sex as a means of self-discovery, and for the next two years she plunges into a succession of encounters with various partners, male and female, her age and much older, some met through schoolmates, others through newspaper ads and Internet chat rooms. In graphic detail, she describes her journey through a Dante-Esque underworld of eroticism, where she willingly participates in group sex and sadomasochism, as well as casual pickup

The Scent of Your Breath

Melissa P.’s fictionalized memoir, 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed, became an international literary phenomenon, selling over two million copies worldwide and provoking a warning from the pope. The Scent of Your Breath, the second installment in her series of confessions, is a tale of obsessive love and destructive passion.

Melissa is now a successful writer in Rome, living with her new lover, Thomas. With his soft body and feminine eyelashes, he is sensual, patient, and comforting—the antithesis of all the men who came before. But as soon as she meets Viola, a young woman from Thomas’s past, Melissa is consumed with jealousy. Written as a confessional letter to her mother, the story that follows is one of dark obsession, violent lust, and soul-destroying talent, teeming with the ghosts and dragonfly-women Melissa is convinced are trying to steal her man and bring about her ruin. The Scent of Your Breath blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy and delves deep into the disturbing yet strangely familiar mind of a teenage girl terrorized by love.

Three O'Clock in the Morning Is by Italian author Gianrico Carofiglio the contemporary heart-waring piece is about Antonio is eighteen years old and on the cusp of adulthood. His father, a brilliant mathematician, hasn’t played a large part in his life since divorcing Antonio’s mother but when Antonio is diagnosed with epilepsy, they travel to Marseille to visit a doctor who may hold the hope for an effective treatment. It is there, in a foreign city, under strained circumstances, that they will get to know each other and connect for the first time. A beautiful, gritty, and charming port city where French old-world charm meets modern bohemia, father and son stroll the streets sharing strained small talk. But as the hours pass and day give way tonight, the two find themselves caught in a series of caffeine-imbued adventures involving unexpected people (and unforeseen trysts) that connect father and son for the first time. As the two discuss poetry, family, sex, math, death, and dreams, their experience becomes a mesmerizing 48-hour microcosm of a lifetime relationship. Both learn much about illusions and regret, about talent and redemption, and, most of all, about love. This heartwarming story has captured the modern Italian audience. 

Lost Words

Winner of the Viareggio Prize, a vivid portrait of Italy on the brink of social upheaval in the 1970s.The author Nicola Gardini, writes about the Inside an apartment building on the outskirts of Milan, the working-class residents gossip, quarrel, and conspire against each other. Viewed through the eyes of Chino, an impressionable thirteen-year-old boy whose mother is the doorwoman of the building, the world contained within these walls is tiny, hypocritical, and mean-spirited: a constant struggle. Chino finds escape in reading. One day, a new resident, Amelia Lynd, moves in and quickly becomes an unlikely companion and a formative influence on Chino. Ms. Lynd—an elderly, erudite British woman—comes to nurture his taste in literature, introduces him to the life of the mind, and offers a counterpoint to the only version of reality that he’s known. On one level, Lost Words is an engrossing coming-of-age tale set in the seventies, when Italy was going through tumultuous social changes, and on another, it is a powerful meditation on language, literature, and culture.

Things That Happened Before the Earthquake

The book by Chiara Barzini describes a story about Mere weeks after the 1992 riots that laid waste to Los Angeles, Eugenia, a typical Italian teenager, is rudely yanked from her privileged Roman milieu by her hippie-ish filmmaker parents and transplanted to the strange suburban world of the San Fernando Valley. With only the Virgin Mary to call on for guidance as her parents struggle to make it big, Hollywood fashion, she must navigate her huge new public high school, complete with Crips and Bloods and Persian gang members, and a car-based environment of 99-cent stores and obscure fast-food franchises and all-night raves. She forges friendships with Henry, who runs his mother's movie memorabilia store, and the bewitching Deva, who introduces her to the alternate cultural universe that is Topanga Canyon. And then the 1994 earthquake rocks the foundations not only of Eugenia's home but of the future she'd been imagining for herself.

I'll Steal You Away

Italian literary superstar Niccolò Ammaniti’s novel, I’m Not Scared, prompted gushing praise, hit international bestseller lists, and was made into a smash indie film. In I’ll Steal You Away, Ammaniti takes his unparalleled empathy for children, his scythe-sharp observations, and his knack for building tension to a whole new level. In a tiny Italian village, a young boy named Pietro is growing up tormented by bullies and ignored by his parents. When an aging playboy, Graziano Biglia, returns to town, a change is in the air: Pietro decides to take on the bullies, his lonely teacher Flora finds romance with the town’s prodigal son, and the inept janitor at the school proclaims his love for his favorite prostitute. But the village isn’t ready for such change, and when Graziano seduces and forgets Flora, both she and Pietro’s tentative hopes seem crushed forever. With great tenderness, Ammaniti shines light on the heart-wrenching failures and quiet redemptions of ordinary people trying to live extraordinary lives.

Heaven and Earth: A Novel Every summer Teresa follows her father to his childhood home in Puglia, down in the heel of Italy, a land of relentless, shimmering heat, centuries-old olive groves and families who have lived there for generations. She spends long afternoons enveloped in a sunstruck stupor, reading her grandmother's paperbacks.

Everything changes the summer she meets the three boys who live on the farm next door: Nicola, Tommaso and Bern—the man Teresa will love for the rest of her life. Raised like brothers on a farm that feels to Teresa almost suspended in time, the three boys share a complex, intimate, and seemingly unassailable bond.But no bond is unbreakable and no summer truly endless, as Teresa soon discovers.Because there is resentment underneath the surface of that strange brotherhood, a twisted kind of love that protects a dark secret. And when Bern—the enigmatic, restless gravitational center of the group—commits a brutal act of revenge, not even a final pilgrimage to the edge of the world will be enough to bring back those perfect, golden hours in the shadow of the olive trees.

An unforgettable story of enduring love, the bonds between men, and the all-too-human search for meaning, Heaven and Earth is Paolo Giordano at his best: an author capable of unveiling the depths of the human soul, who has now given us the old-fashioned pleasure of a big, sprawling novel in which to lose ourselves

[ashintheairlikesnow]

The Night Oliver Branch Died

CW: Drowning, threats with a gun, discussed/referenced noncon of a minor, discussed pet whump/dehumanization, oliver branch is gross but hey he dies in this one so, related note: character death

Tagging Chris’s crew just because I feel like you’ll all appreciate this:  @burtlederp , @finder-of-rings , @endless-whump , @whumpfigure , @stxckfxck , @slaintetowhump

READERS: Tell me if you guessed it before reading this!

TIMELINE: Takes place in the future of Chris’s timeline, when he has been free for years and has enrolled in college.

The night Oliver Branch died was absolutely ordinary.

He spent some time going over the notes for the trial, sitting in his nicely appointed but perfectly modest three-bedroom home, scanning his handwritten planned remarks for the press while he ate a light dinner of soup and salad. The cook left for the night, and Oliver was the only one in the house.

Well, or so he thought.

It used to bother him, but honestly he didn’t mind the solitude any longer. Years spent with a full staff, worries he had to constantly consider at all hours of the day and night, natural disasters and economic downturns and everything else. It was nice just to take a deep breath, smell the candle burning in the center of the table, a soft sweet magnolia smell that reminded him of his childhood home.

After the trial, perhaps he would move back home. He’d lived in this state for twenty-four years, was its governor for eight of them, but he felt… a bit tired of it all. He wanted to go back to a place where people moved more slowly, wandered the streets after church in pale linen suits in the summer with the ocean air a constant truth of everyday life.

They would know, of course, about his disgrace. But they would be polite about it, keep it to themselves. He had the sense that while the scandal would follow him, it would be easier to ignore in a place where people keep their secrets safely behind closed, locked doors.

Oliver had done the same, once upon a time, only to have the secret simply walk away when someone else opened the door. 

He sighed, sitting back, looking at his half-finished soup with a wistful sort of sadness. 

Honestly, he couldn’t complain. He was just grateful to be out of prison, living in his own house with his own cook and the cleaning woman who comes by twice per week. Almost back to normal. Once this trial was over, of course, he’d sell the house and move back home, and it would all be just fine.

He took a deep breath and picked up his notes, handwritten in a series of different ink colors to differentiate which part of the speech he was in. It helped him to memorize if he thought of the colors. The only one he didn’t like, but used, anyway, was a deep teal ink in the paragraph where he admitted to what he did to his beautiful boy.

His beautiful boy, who had ruined himself with freedom, just as Oliver had always known he would. Some people were meant to be kept, they could not be trusted to keep themselves. His Baldur had been one of those, he had known the moment he’d been shown the intake photo, of the pretty boy curled up in a corner of a plain white room, hands up over his face in some attempt to protect himself.

We believe this will suit your specifications, the email from Ms. Renfod had stated in flat, clean prose that could never have encompassed the perfect leap in Oliver’s heart at the sight, the excitement that ran through him from scalp to toes at the fear and tears in big green eyes. We have recently acquired this individual as a result of a deal involving a family member. No inconvenient missing persons report, Mr. Branch. Perfect confidentiality, no complications. We believe he will require three and one-half months of training, plus two weeks extra for final preparations. I have attached a price list for added fees.

God, what a sight, the pretty thing before they’d taken him from himself, before he’d been delivered smiling and silent and still in the dead of night to Oliver’s door.

Honestly, what a loss that he was roaming around like some wild animal now.

Some people needed a keeper, and every time he had seen his beautiful boy since his liberation it had only emphasized to Oliver how badly Baldur needed the right sort of keeper. This new one, the tall young man with his threats and curses, clearly wasn’t doing a very good job.

Well. That was fine. Not his problem any longer, and soon enough Oliver would stand up at a podium before the press, looking at all their little recorders, and he would tell everyone exactly who Christopher Stanton was and what he had been. Oliver’s disgrace would be total, but if he played this right, Baldur would never go anywhere again without no longer being able to hide behind his earrings and awful hair and the patch of scarred skin where his barcode once had been.

Baldur might have gotten away from him, all those years ago, but Oliver intended to ensure he could not get away from what he had been made to do, to be. One did not stop being a pet, once they were made into a thing to be used for pleasure, there was nothing else for them to be.

Baldur might have delusions otherwise, but Oliver could ruin those, for him, just like his boy had ruined himself.

Kicked out of his fancy little college for his fake identity, maybe even charged with it. All his new little friends would know who he was. It was the last bit of pettiness Oliver intended to allow himself to indulge in before he returned back to his hometown and let Baldur’s fragile new life come down around his ears.

Oliver smiled, trailing fingertips over the teal ink, the exact shade of Baldur’s hideous dye job. He still had a PI on retainer, taking pictures of his pretty boy out living his life. Oliver liked to keep tabs on his old flames, just to ensure they were keeping quiet, keeping to themselves, living nice respectable lives. 

Lately, with his reduced income, he’d had to cut that down to tracking Baldur alone.

Christopher Stanton. Oliver snorted. Awful name. Hardly did any justice to the perfect line of his cheekbones, the still-gentle curve of his jaw, the nicely full lips that would no doubt still part just so with a press of the right fingertips-

“Daydreamin’, are we?” A strange male voice asked, and Oliver looked up to stare down the barrel of a gun. 

His heart stopped, eyes caught by that circle of infinite black surrounded by unfeeling metal, and then he raised his eyes to see a man he had never seen before. He wasn’t very tall, draped in heavy clothing that disguised his body type, though he seemed a bit on the muscular side. Perfectly average face, difficult to describe to any law enforcement, blondish-red hair cut in a flattop, narrowed eyes, smattering of freckles. Too far to see the eye color.

Robbers, really? Tonight, of all nights?

Oliver put both palms carefully down on the table as his heart began to pound. “Can I help you?”

His voice was admirably steady, and he was more than a bit proud of himself for that. He did not visibly tremble or shake, but he was deeply, deeply aware of that gun. He could see the safety was off, the man’s finger resting lightly around the trigger.

“You can,” The man said, with a hint of amusement in the blocky lines of his face. It came out more like ye can, an accent Oliver couldn’t quite place. Irish, maybe? “Hearing some rumors, about someone planning to testify next week. I was hoping’ you’d be able to disabuse me of such a disturbin’ notion.”

Oliver blinked, caught off-guard by the man’s friendly, personable tone even as the gun never faltered but it’s position held pointed directly at him. “If you work for WRU-”

“Oh, I don’t. No, as heartbreaking as it is, lad, Rossi’s group got the WRU rejects pipeline all sewn up, don’t he? Clever fuck. And I am a good many things, but I’m not a man stupid enough to cross Giovanni Rossi. You don’t put that man in a bad mood and walk out alive, do you?” Once again, the word slipped into ye, and Oliver was sure now that the accent was Irish. Faded, with the local accent flattening the vowels and roughing up the consonants, but the Irish was there nonetheless.

It occurred to him that it didn’t really matter if he identified his accent, because he almost certainly wasn’t going to walk out of this alive if the man was so easily dropping names.

“I wouldn’t know. If you’re not with WRU, I don’t see why there’s-... there needs to be a problem,” Oliver said, without moving, barely even letting his lips form the wounds. His heart still pounded in his chest. His dreams of moving back home by the coast, to Charleston’s beauty and grandeur and age, were rapidly feeling like scraps of tissue paper dissolving in water.

“You’re not just testifyin’ about the company, now, are you?” The man sighed, pulling a chair out on the other end of the table, sitting down without lowering the gun, keeping it trained on Oliver, just shifting it slightly to aim directly into his chest.

Oliver had taken a few courses in self-defense, back in the day. Aim for the center mass, the easiest thing to hit. People in movies can nail an arm or a leg with accuracy but in real life it’s rarely so easy. Aim for something lethal.

“The trial is about the company,” Oliver said, voice shaking, his own genteel accent thickening the more the fear settled in.

“It is, at that,” The man said, nodding. “But it’s not only about that, either, is it?” He snapped the fingers on his other hand, and Oliver jumped nearly a foot in the air as he realized there were two other men standing behind him he hadn’t even noticed. They appeared on either side of him, one of them picking up the papers on the table and moving them over to the man, who gave a soft, polite thanks and looked them over.

Suddenly, Oliver’s different ink colors for different aspects of his speech seemed… superfluous. He was never going to give that speech.

“What else is it about?” Oliver asked, breathy. He was going to die, and he’d always hoped for one more chance to visit his parents’ graves. Spit on them once or twice, leave flowers, and go. He’d always hoped…

Something occurred to him.

“Is this about my Baldur?”

The man’s face twisted in an expression of utter, absolute disgust.

“Is that it? Did his new keeper send you to-”

“No. Oh no, fucknuts, no.” The man laughed, looking over the papers, flipping through them idly with one hand as his associate stepped back, one of them lurking on either side of Oliver, hands pressing steadily into his shoulders to keep him right where he was. “No, no. I’ve nothin’ to do with that young lib boy. Know of ‘im, though. We keep an eye out, on our own. It’s been a long, long time, but… I owe a debt.”

“A… A debt?” Oliver’s voice caught in his throat. 

“Indeed.” The man set the papers down, and for a moment, Oliver could have sworn there were tears in his eyes, emotions that played openly across the man’s utterly nondescript face. Grief, anger, sadness all warred there. 

The hands on his shoulders tightened. 

“Long time ago now, but I don’t forget, do I? Ah, look, here ‘tis.” The man tapped his finger in the teal paragraph so carefully written on the third page of the speech. “Here’s our lad. Tristan.”

“Tristan-... are you talking about Baldur?”

The man snarled, and Oliver flinched back against the back of his chair, waiting for the burst of sound and the bullet and his own death. Nothing came, and after a moment he opened his eyes. The man had settled his expression, but it was with effort - the anger was still clearly visible. “I’m not talkin’ about your bullshite pet name in the slightest, you sack of shit. No, I’m talkin’ about my friend’s boy Tristan.”

Oliver swallowed, and offered, “I believe… I believe he goes by Christopher now. I could give you his address-”

“We know where he lives, gobshite.”

“Then why are you here-”

“I told you, my debt. You’re an awful thick, aren’t you? We’re not the type to abduct a wean, although that never gave your like a pause, did it?” The man tapped his gun on the table, the first time it had truly lowered since Oliver had first realized he was here. Oliver let out a breath of relief.

“What is your debt, exactly?” His voice was still airy, but he tried to sound calm, in control. Never moved his hands. “I still have some funds the courts are not aware of, perhaps we could work out a deal-.. I have a safe upstairs-”

“Not that kind of debt. I had to stand by when my mucker and his wife got his face shot in by our own boss, no less, but I’m the boss, now. Took a while, took too long. I’ve had to wait and wait and wait, but me and my lads here, we’ve all owed Paul Higgs a debt since, Lord, has it been nearly a decade now? And I intend to pay it tonight.”

The man smiled, briefly, at Oliver.

“Couldn’t stop Paul’s boy from the sufferin’ already inflicted, but I can ensure you don’t say a word about him ever again, can’t I? Ah, no, we can’t have that. He’s got a good life now. Nice boy, all grown up. Hair’s a bit bollocked but who are we to judge, hm? He’s got himself a nice life goin’ and I intend to ensure he does his da proud, just like he would’ve if he weren’t forced to fuck you, you depraved bit of dogshit on my shoe. Fucking a child. A boy. What’ve you got to say for yourself?”

Oliver didn’t even bother to open his mouth. He understood that any attempt at self-defense wasn’t needed or even wanted. He understood that probably there was absolutely nothing he needed to say, ever again. He closed his eyes, lips moving in some dim form of prayer.

“Ah. A man of God, then?” Oliver looked to see the man pull a rosary from underneath his shirt. “That’s a fuckin’ laugh, considering what you’ve done. But, hey, He’s forgiven worse, I imagine. Tristan might even forgive you, too, he was always too good a boy for it all. Too bad for you that I don’t forgive shite.”

“If you’re going to shoot me,” Oliver said, barely able to get his voice above a whisper, “then do it.”

“We’re not going to shoot you, idjit.” The man rolled his eyes, giving his companions an exasperated can you believe this? look. One of the men, the one on Oliver’s right, laughed. “They’d trace it, we’d have to deal with the law, and honestly I am just not in the mood to pay any cops off this week. I’ve already paid Rossi off to keep him from gettin’ pissed at me, although he’s a man who understands the value of family, I think he’d have let us anyway. Still, never hurts to grease a palm, does it? What we’re going to do, Mr. Branch, is drown you. Your bathtub’s chock full of river water.”

“What?” Oliver swallowed, jerking forward as if to push himself up, but the hands on his shoulders pushed him back down. “H-how-... why-”

“When we dump you in the Trelawney,” The man said, calm and easy, “your lungs’ll already be chock full of its water. Nothing unusual about that, hm? Just another child molester dumped in that chemical swamp where he belongs. My mucker’s boy-... I couldn’t help him. I’ve owed Paul for that, we all have. This is my organization, now, and I will ensure Paul’s boy’s name never leaves your lips again.” The man snapped his fingers and Oliver shouted as he was dragged to his feet by the other two, kicking out, knocking his chair over with a clatter.

Just beyond the window were a hundred other houses, lights on in some, families laughing in front of their televisions. Utterly unknowing as their neighbor was dragged upstairs to his own master bathroom, to a custom-made clawfoot tub absolutely full of disgusting, muddy river water dredged up and brought here and Oliver had never even known they were in the house. 

They held his head over the water as he screamed for help.

The leader leaned back against the sink, lit a cigarette, took a long drag and let the smoke float over his face. His eyes were green, Oliver realized with a kind of hysterical panicked giggle. His eyes were green. 

Like Baldur’s.

“W-wait-, wait-... one question, just one, one question-”

The leader held up his hand. They kept Oliver’s head a few inches above the brackish water in the tub. 

“Paul Higgs-... Baldur’s-... the boy’s father.” Oliver could barely breathe, barely get out the words. He was going to die, why was this question so important? Still, he couldn’t stop himself from asking it. “The boy’s-... just a friend?”

The leader snorted, flicked his cigarette onto the bedroom carpet through the bathroom door. A trail of thin smoke began to rise. “Paul was my best friend, yes,” He said flatly. “His da and mine were cousins. The looks run in the family, don’t they?”

“Why… why now? Why not before? When he was-... why only now?”

The man’s lip pulled to the side in a sneer. “Had to wait ‘til the company couldn’t protect you, didn’t I? You’re not a client now, Mr. Branch. Just a bit of blood on Karen Renford’s shoes. Loose thread. You’re not the only one keeps tabs on runaways, you know.”

“What?” Oliver’s eyes widened, the muddy water giving him a strange, distorted, half-transparent view of his own reflection. “What, what are y-you-”

“Ah, it’s not worth explaining this shite to him, is it?” The man rolled his eyes. “Renford knew where he was. She knows where all the runners are. She’s not going to let you fuck the company just to get your fifteen minutes, gobshite. I hate that insufferable bitch and she’s the one who made Paul’s boy into a pet, but I know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth even if the one given’ it should probably be shot herself.”

“Wh-why-”

“Shut your feckin’ hole. We may not have the pleasure of a regular contract, but I was happy to accept this little job free of charge. Everyone gets what they want, don’t they? Paul’s boy gets his nice little life for keeping, Renford gets the blood out, and I get to make up to Paul what I couldn’t do back then. Ah, Tristan was a sweet boy. Bit of a wild thing, but…” The man sighed mournfully. “Well. We all lose people, in this business, Mr. Branch. I’m sorry to’ve lost him but I’d never think to take him from what he’s got. I’m no monster.”

Laughter bubbled in Oliver’s throat, and he barely held it back. No monster, but you’ll kill me, will you?

“Tonight, everyone gets what they want.”

“I wanted Charleston,” Oliver said, staring into the brownish silt-soaked water, thinking of the blue of the ocean, the waves battering the shore, white-capped on rougher days, the salt-smell of the sea. His mother’s hands holding him, sitting on his father’s shoulders, before it had all changed. “I, I wanted Charleston.”

The words were more plaintive than he intended them to be.

“Sad for you,” The leader said without sympathy. “The heart bleeds. Perhaps you should’ve kept your wee dick in your pants and not touched our friend’s boy, then, hm? Bit late for that, though. Hope the Good Lord’s feelin’ His mercy today, pervy fuck, ‘cause you’ll see none from us.”

He snapped his calloused fingers, and Oliver’s head went under the water. He’d jerked in a final breath just before, and as he held it - lungs burning, time running out - Oliver had only a single remaining defiance. His last thought, before he had to pull water into his lungs, before the thrashing and the choking and the final blackness that pulled him under, wasn’t of Baldur at all.

He was found in the Trelawney River, the water in his lungs a perfect match for the water around him. His bathtub had been recently cleaned, but that wasn’t suspicious, as his cleaner had been there only the day before and Oliver rarely took baths. His dinner table was clean of any sign of his final meal. 

There were no papers on the table, or anywhere in the house, detailing his intended speech to the press. Those papers were burned and the ashes spread on the graves of Paul and Veronica Higgs, along with a fresh spray of daisies, Ronnie’s favorite flower. 

Oliver Branch’s testimony could no longer be given, due to his untimely death.

The suggestion that he had killed himself because of the shame of his own actions made the rounds in the press, followed by certainty in certain spaces that he had been murdered to protect WRU on Karen’s orders. 

Perhaps a handler had done it, the rumors went, sent by the strange emotionless Karen Renford, who sat on the stand and spoke with perfect diction and a total lack of feeling on the particulars of her job, and who had never once set off a lie detector in her life. Perhaps a pet liberation member had finally snapped - there had been an incident years ago with someone who had beaten Oliver nearly to unconsciousness, maybe that person had hunted him down again.

Maybe Karen had killed him herself.

The rumors went in circles, but no one ever guessed the truth. 

Oliver’s final defiance was known only to him, and went with him to the grave he was eventually buried in. His final thought was simply of the crash of a white-capped wave against the shore. 

Oliver Branch died thinking not of his crimes, but with the ocean behind his eyes. 

[bittersweethue]

The best of the best yet (well for me anyways). Seventeen AU recommendations.

Notes

Of course all of this has smut. I won’t be me if this did not have smut. 

The titles also contain the links. Idk why I felt the need to say that. 

CHEOLSOO ( Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups / Hong Jisoo | Joshua)

Call me an amenity

By: brightlight

Summary:

Seungcheol typically doesn't form relationships when he's travelling on business. (But then again, most people aren't Joshua Hong.)

Feels: 

Wow. This just. WOW. 

I’ve never read a cheolsoo fic this good and raw and emotionally straining. Pining. Of course there’s pining. Their emotions will consume you and leave you sobbing. 

This is just a long distance ‘relationship’  esque fic basically. That will make you sad and yearn for the same thing too. (Pinagtagpo pero di tidahana sht)

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11891772

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JICHEOL (Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups / Lee Jihoon | Woozi )

Busan 112 

By: Hakovftw

Summary: 

Jihoon’s been at Busan Police station for three years, and he still gets mistaken as a kid dressing up for Halloween. 

It’s so fucking unfair. 

Jihoon’s not jealous. He’s just angry that the meritocracy is failing him. 

And what makes this worse, what makes this harder to bear, is that Seungcheol is hot as hell ans looks fucking amazing in his police uniform.

It’s his only saving grace, Jihoon thinks. 

Feels: 

Absolutely love it. There is so much pining and slow burn and pINING I COULD YEET MYSELF OFF A CLIFF. 

I always love AUs wherein the author doesn’t rush the pining process? It makes everything flow and feel real. The slow burn is absolutely amazing and WORTH IT. 

Link: (It’s not up anymore, but hoping that the author will put it up again in their other account, wtfkovah)

We were two before our time

By: wtfkovah

Summary:

Jihoon, an Omega, with little social standing, poor familial associations and hardly a tuppence to his name finds honest work as a teacher. His break with the norm results in a broken courtship, and the heartache and financial strain that follow send him south for the summer season, to teach Hansol, the youngest son of the Choi family.

Feels:

I am absolutely so so in love with this. A very very dear favorite? It’s a historical au and I have always loved those. And it being an ABO fic is just *chef’s kiss*. The way it was written is very historical-y too, the words and flow and all. 

The pining is spot on, and Ji is so damn relatable in all situations. Cheol’s wooing is so adorable. Everything is so steamy and full of want holy sh-

JUST READ IT, PLEASE PLEASE. 

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24308842

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JUNHAO (Wen Jun Hui | Jun / Xu Ming Hao | The8)

every chance I get (I'll turn you on)

By: xumyuho

Summary: 

Minghao is a kid with miserable talents at choice making and a lot of feelings. Wen Junhui is the hot graduate who he's sleeping with and has most of those feelings for.

Everything about his life is confusing, but at least the sex is great.

Feels: 

One of the first fics that I have read. Dunno why I had to mention that. 

The way it was written was so realistic, like you forget that you are actually reading. It’s like the words just fly off and you see everything so clearly with how it was written. 

The pining? Perfection. The feels? YES. Can’t say more because I might end up spoiling it. Fuck buddy pining perfection. 

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5359739

you must have been very far

By: jeosheo

Summary: 

Junhui isn’t nearly as drunk as his friends; unfortunately, they’re the ones selecting his punishment for having lost miserably at this party game.

“Kiss someone,” Seokmin slurrily suggests.

“Hook up with someone!” Jeonghan corrects.

“With Minghao!”

Feels: 

Nothing has beat this yet. NOTHING. My absolute favorite fic about Seventeen. 

The writing style confused me at first, but you’ll get the hang of it. Jun basically does not know what he feels and just chalk’s up everything to awkwardness. This is a fic where someone pines after someone without knowing it. 

Idk why but it broke me. All I know is I read this at midnight and fell asleep crying. I was an emotional mess for days after it. 

(Ah maybe it’s because of how precious someone could be when they get what they deserve, even if they think they don’t deserve it.)

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6880459

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WONHUI (Jeon Wonwoo / Wen Jun Hui | Jun)

No Amount of Words (Mother Tongue)

By:  rapgodwoozi

Summary:

The last thing Junhui is expecting when he boards a train bound for Amsterdam is to fall in love.

Feels: 

This is what love feels like in the movies but also not like in the movies. Willing to risk it all, questioning yourself, thinking if you deserve to be happy. 

I really love how everything is emotionally straining. Main thought here is “so-this-is-what-it-feels-like-to-fall-in-love-slowly-but-also-all-at-once”.

Couldn’t read it all at once because of how consuming the emotions are. It’s that straining and the amount of uncertainty and flowery sappy sht will choke you. 

GyuHao is also an adorable side pairing here. 

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20018710

Sweet Devotion

By:  Swanny_Writer

Summary:

Wonwoo meets his soulmate at a party, but the omega disappears the following morning.

Junhui meets his soulmate at a party, but holding a huge secret, he can't let the alpha claim him.

(Or the one where WonHui meet at another masquerade ball. They also have a kid and eat lots of cakes)

Feels:

Soft Junhui. Cute Junhui. Baby Junhui with a babie. FLUFF JUNHUIII!

Idk wonu is so adorable here, so cute and so caring. A feel good fic + smut. 

But its more than the smut okay? Read it if you want to feel uwu. 

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22283092

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GYUHAO ( Kim Mingyu / Xu Ming Hao | The8 )

Actually both fics belong into the same series entitled we, as fruitful youth and I only realized this after months, what in the heck. 

(may the sun kiss you) unconditional

By: xumyuho

Summary:  

Mingyu doesn't need to be right, he just wants to win. Or, more specifically, he just wants Minghao to say "I lose."

Feels: 

Forgot the title and all due to reading so many fics but I have always remembered the flower giving part. That made me cri in fluff. 

Another ‘so-this-is-what-love-feels-like’ + ‘finding-home-in-a-person’ kind of fic. That kind of uwu. 

Trying to learn so much about the other and loving them more and more throughout the process. This is so beautiful and real, imma cri. 

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9167740

Just need one night (slightly more if it's done right)

By:  xumyuho

Summary:

“I like it like this, even without the slow-dancing and flowers.”

“Good. I’m never doing slow-dancing or flowers.”

Feels:

Holy sht this is so awkward and real and it made me realize that all relationships are like this, awkward and weird yet still full of talking, and emotions and fuck ups and IDKKK I love how realistic everything was. 

It’s not the typical ‘he-is-the-moon-and-perfect-and-I-would-die-for-him-if-I-could’ type of story and that makes it so refreshing. 

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6448174

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JEONGCHEOL ( Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups / Yoon Jeonghan) 

Gay Chicken

By:  twinklingpaopufruit 

Summary:

Jisoo explains to Seungcheol and Jeonghan the concept of gay chicken.

Feels:

Is this a novel??? It’s just that kind of fic. 

Jeongcheol want + uncertainty + fluff + smut goodness. This is so so good. 

You can actually imagine all this pining and amazingness happening because of how close to their own known characters Jeongcheol is here. Like all the details we know of them, how they think, how they move, how they feel and act, this fic is faithful to it. 

The kind of fic also where you realize that Jeongcheol is the king of ships, and how all of us want to either date them, or be them. THERE IS NO IN BETWEEN.  

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6675838

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JOSHUA + Everyone 

Good Things (Are Supposed To) Come In Threes

By: SandyRoses

Summary:

In a world where being away from your mates for too long causes physical and emotional pain, Joshua doesn't think he has it easy. He can't remember the last time he, Jeonghan, and Seungcheol just sat and cuddled. It's beginning to hurt, and he doesn't know how much longer he can handle being alone. He doesn't want to be alone.

All he wants to do is be held and loved. Slowly, he begins to think he isn't worth loving.

His friends love him, and they just want to take care of him. Slowly, they start to do both in more ways than one.

Feels:

It’s basically  OT12 loving Joshuji. ABO. JeongCheol are irresponsible jerks to their mate and a shtshow ensues.  

Glorious. Very emotional and heartbreaking but it get’s better in the end I promise.

Could not read it all at once. It’s that draining and consuming. It will consume you to the point that you will feel all the feelings of Shua, all the self doubt and yearning for something that you think you don’t deserve. 

But Shua deserves all the damn love and happiness in the world. 

Read this is you want to feel empty right after and if you are okay with the warning. 

Warnings: Talks about rape (reliving a rape scene). Slight dubious consent. 

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17302151

[charliejrogers]

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) - Review & Analysis

Here’s a non-controversial statement: 2017’s Wonder Woman is a legitimately great film (if you discount the last act’s boring battle). A fun, yet emotional anti-war tale with a great period aesthetic. What elevated it from greatness was its starkly bleak reveal that Ares does not start man’s wars, but he merely gives humans ideas for how to instigate them. Ultimately, it is Man who holds responsibility for our own destruction, and despite this Wonder Woman still chooses to help us poor creatures. Cool themes, cool hero, cool movie.

Wonder Woman 1984 shares the main character from its 2017 forerunner, as well as its dedication to recreating a particular period aesthetic (here the 1980s), but the brilliant writing from the first film is gone. The main themes are essentially… “be careful what you wish for” and “winners never cheat; cheaters never win.” Not the most grand and interesting follow-up to the prior film’s genuine insight into human nature.

But that’s OK. I’m really not sure why this movie is getting so much flak online. If DC’s recent prior history with filmmaking should have taught us anything, it’s that 2017’s Wonder Woman was a fluke. Remember that this is the same studio that brought us the outstanding climax to Batman vs. Superman where one grown man learns that another grown man’s mother is also named Martha. Oh, and did we all just forget that Justice League is one of the worst movies we have all collectively ever seen?

So let’s not be too hard on WW84 for not meeting the quality of 2017’s Wonder Woman. Few comic book movies can. In the more fair comparison to other movies in the DCEU, it sits below Shazam! and Aquaman, and just a smidge below Birds of Prey, but certainly above Suicide Squad, and then literally leaps and bounds over every other movie they’ve made.

Let’s start with the good. Honestly, despite my gripes about the themes of the movie not being very profound, I found the story to be interesting. The movie centers around Diana Prince (Gal Gadot in her role as an archaeologist for the Smithsonian and not as Wonder Woman) stumbling upon an ancient stone whose inscription invites people who hold the stone to make a wish. No one takes it really seriously at first, so two people make wishes without thinking they could come true. The first person is Diana herself who wishes to bring her boyfriend (whom she only knew for about a week, mind you) from the dead. As a reminder from the first film, her boyfriend Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) had died nearly 70 years prior to the start of this film in a dramatic, sacrificial, world-saving act. Apparently, Diana hasn’t moved on at all from the 1910s and still considers her short-time lover to be her forever lover. She’s not really a human and did not grow up a human, so I think we can forgive her for not moving on… but it is weird to imagine that Diana somehow works at the Smithsonian (without going to college? Or did she?) without developing any friends or interest in life. Wouldn’t she have moved on... like a little bit?

Anyways, she wants her boyfriend back, and that’s wish #1. Wish #2 comes from new character Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig… who I am shocked to find is 47 years old! She looks fantastic and far younger in this film). Were Barbara a man, the way she is treated by her colleagues would put them in the stereotypical role of a future school shooter. Barbara is a brilliant gemologist for the Smithsonian, but goes completely unrecognized for her brilliance. She is shy and unconfident, and subsequently people frequently forget that they have even met her. Add on to that the fact that she has to work in the same office as Wonder Woman, and her loneliness and subjective feelings of unattractiveness increase as male employees drool over Diana while they ignore and mock Barbara. Therefore, we would forgive her for having a chip on her shoulder. Yet, for all this, Wiig avoids playing her as an angry, emo goth. Barbara kinda has this air about her of “Well, this is just how life is, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.” Given the character’s lack of self-confidence and lack of social grace, it at times seemed like Wiig was just reprising her old SNL character, Penelope, the socially awkward one-upper. But that’s not fair to her character. Wiig portrays Barbara with an earnest goodness to her. She’s one of those people who when allowed to talk one-on-one proves to be more eloquent and interesting than you could have imagine. Far from being angrily envious of Diana’s confidence and beauty, she’s more sadly jealous. Naturally, then, she wishes on the stone to be more like Diana… unaware that this wish might have some unintended benefits.

But then, there’s a third key character to the film (and a third wishmaker), the main villain Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal). I cannot tell you if this was a good character or not… and I cannot tell you whether the imperfections of the character are more due to the film’s writing or Pascal’s performance. Lord is another loser, and like Barbara, his “loser” status is the result of being a victim of America’s prejudicial attitudes. But whereas Barbara fell victim to sexism, Lord falls victim to racism. Hispanic in origin, Lord grew up in America with an abusive father at home and racist classmates at school. Beaten down from an early age, all he wants in life is to make a name for himself, to prove he’s not a loser. In a clever twist, Lord (the person who originally ordered the wish stone to come to America before it was confiscated by the FBI and sent to the Smithsonian for analysis) does not simply use the stone to wish for riches and power… he wishes to BECOME the stone. That way, he can get nearly infinite wishes so long as he can con the people around him to wish things for him.

The scenes of Max Lord as a flawed human who just wants to not be a loser show Pascal giving a great performance as a human being at the ends of desperation. The scenes of Max Lord the supervillain are… not good. In a long string of over-the-top, eccentric, hyperconfident supervillains in countless superhero movies, Pascal’s Lord is just not interesting. In fact, he is literally a weak character. He cannot fight for himself as his body is crumbling (a side effect of wishing to become a stone). Furthermore, his initially grounded motivations to finally be respected and successful seem to be just utterly lost by the end of the film when he just wishes for world chaos… only then to turn around and declare undying love for his son. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Failure to understand a character’s motivations casts a shadow over Barbara’s character arc as well. It is explained that the wish stone takes something in return for granting someone their wish. So as payment for bringing Steve Trevor back to life, Diana loses some of her strength. Still… this strains to fully explain why Barbara, after gaining Wonder Woman-like strength, turns into a walking humanoid cheetah (complete with bad CGI like she walked straight out of the cast of 2019’s Cats.) Like I get that she lost some of her humanity and morality in exchange for strength… but Cheetah girl seems like a little much. And though initially it is fun to see Wiig get to play Barbara as a confident and sexy woman who fights back against the patriarchy, the movie (I think) unfairly pushes her into the villain role. In my opinion, she should be treated as a tragic character, something akin to a Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, as her villainous tendencies are not really her fault. She literally had the part of her that cares about other humans taken away from her when she naively and innocently wished to be like Diana. Instead, the movie has Diana lecture her that she shouldn’t be so evil. She literally can’t, lady! Stop being so hard on her! In any case, it seems like a failed opportunity to generate sympathy for a genuinely likable character who tragically becomes a villain not through her own accord.

That failure to create genuine emotions extends to Diana’s story as well. As soon as Steve is resurrected, you know by the movie’s end he will be dead again. There’s no other way this movie ends. Yet, the fact that Diana is so stubborn in refusing to give up Steve makes it hard to sympathize with her. She is simply being selfish, making her eventual decision to say goodbye to Steve feel more like her finally doing the right (and obvious) thing, and not some heartbreaking decision. Also the fact that seemingly Diana hasn’t even tried to move on in the last seventy years doesn’t help matters for me: it more just feels like a lazy way to write in Chris Pine’s popular character into the second movie. The move certainly weakens the idea of Diana as a strong, independent woman by making her emotionally stunted and crippled for the last 70 years. It would have been a much more satisfying (and daring) choice if Diana had moved on from Steve emotionally and had to deal with the guilt of having brought him back by accident, particularly if he didn’t want to go back to being dead. Instead... Steve knows he has to go back and Diana feels no guilt keeping him around. It’s weak character writing.

These poor choices I contrast with two of my favorite TV shows that demonstrate perfectly how former lovers who miraculously reunite eventually have to say goodbye for good: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Jane the Virgin. For risk of spoilers to those still watching Jane, I’ll stick to the Buffy example. There’s an episode of Buffy (though technically an episode of the spin-off show Angel) where Buffy and her vampire lover Angel are fresh off their recent and tumultuous break-up, but through some dark magic that neither seeks out, they are given the opportunity to live a life where Angel isn’t actually a vampire and their love can be fully expressed. Yet, in the end, Angel opts to give up his life as a human and return to being a vampire. The choice is so moving precisely because (due to circumstances I cannot begin to explain) in choosing to give up his life with Buffy, he saves her life as well. Whereas in this movie, Diana choosing to let Steve go is really just her choosing to undo her choice to essentially cheat death. Angel, however, is actively choosing to give up a life of happiness he never wished for but was just given on a silver platter, and will now live in a world where his lover will never know his selfless act and will go on hating him. It’s heartbreaking in a way Wonder Woman dreams it could be.

And not to get too Buffy-heavy… but that show also deals with the emotional consequences of being ripped out of the afterlife much better than this movie. Steve just kinda unrealistically adapts to being alive again in all of five minutes. If, perhaps, from the start he questioned why he was there and hinted to Diana that something was wrong, the emotional aspect of this story, the doomed nature, the feeling of “this is the last chance we’ll have together” could have made this a stronger movie. I wanted to find myself crying when Diana finally says bye to Steve, and I was no where close to that. Gal Gadot shares at least part of the blame. She’s a pretty wooden actress. It’s something I noticed in 2017’s Wonder Woman, but in that movie she was supposed to be a fish out of water so her stilted presence seemed appropriate. Here, where she’s supposedly become an assimilated American for 70 years… it is just bad acting.

Anyways, another aspect of this film that was lacking were the visuals. The bad CGI of Barbara as Cheetah is just scratching the surface here. The opening flashback to Diana as a girl performing in the Amazonian Olympics just… looks fake. I don’t know. The reliance on CGI over practical effects is clear and distracting. It’s only worse in the subsequent scene where Wonder Woman stops a theft from occurring in a mall. The effects are just bad. Like passable for a film in the 1990s or early 2000s. But for a 2020 blockbuster, it’s noticeably bad. And already the scene where Wonder Woman is running towards the camera with a weird green screen behind her seems to have become a meme given just how weird it looks.

And yet, for all the negatives I’ve listed, this is a decent action flick. There’s even some nice set pieces like the one in the White House. As little as I liked Max Lord as a supervillain, I found figuring out the other half of each of his various Monkey Paw wishes (i.e. the downside of each wish) to be clever. unfortunately, each of the main three characters fails to have a story line that takes full advantage of their emotional potential, or they are just poorly acted. With few exceptions, the film eschews “fun” in favor of “seriousness.” Really the only exception is, as in the first film, the chemistry between Pine and Gadot. Their chemistry makes for some of the movie’s best moments, like when Wonder Woman makes the plane they’re flying in invisible and the pair flies over fireworks on the fourth of July. But that sense of whimsy in their scenes is largely absent from the rest of the film. This is particularly true of the action sequences, especially those at the climax. The seriousness makes them rather boring. Really, I’m comparing these action scenes with the last half hour or so of Birds of Prey which really set the bar for superhero movie fight choreography. So in the end, it’s overall an OK movie. It certainly isn’t as bad as others make it out to be, but I cannot believe I’m saying this… in 2020 if you’re in the mood for a fun superhero movie, you’re better off with the Suicide Squad sequel than the Wonder Woman sequel.

**/ (Two and a half stars out of 4)

[monstersandmaw]

Male vampire x male character - Part Four (final) (nsfw)

Wow. This part is 10,904 words, people. And in total this story now reaches 23,704 words in length!!

I hope you enjoy this part! Obviously, mlm exo(ish in this case) stories always flop on here no matter what, but some folks at least seemed to like it once it got going, and my Patrons seemed to enjoy it too. I really enjoyed getting to know these two boys, and their personalities, so at the end of the day I guess that’s what matters.

Last time, Alec learned that a few members of his immediate family are in fact vampire hunters, and he found out the truth about Sebastien too.

Heads up in this part for continued, but easing, tense familial relations, some angst/heartache (not heartbreak though), and some (consensual) blood drinking.

Thanks to those of you who have engaged with this story! And for being so supportive in general. You've been an absolute pleasure to write for.

Tumblr links to previous parts: Part One (sfw), Part Two (nsfw), Part Three (nsfw)

Alec let out a shaky breath and crossed to the sofa, sinking down onto it as his legs finally gave out. “Vampires,” he said, hardly daring to believe the word he was uttering.

“Yes.”

“And you’re one?”

“… Yes.”

“And my family…?”

Sebastien’s voice was tight on the other end of the line as he said, “Hunts my kind. Well, those of us who aren’t registered with the ‘Guild of Hunters’ —” his tone turned acrid as he spat the words out, though he kept his voice low and quiet.

“What does that even mean? I don’t know what any of this means… And did you know about my family? I mean, before? When you started dating me?”

Sebastien took another deep breath. “Yes. I knew. And it was a long time before I fully convinced myself that you did not.”

If Sebastien had thought it was some kind of trap, that would explain his reticence at the beginning for sure.

“And were you planning on telling me any of this?” Alec snarled. God, his chest hurt so much. The deception was like Jeremy cheating on him all over again, only this time the betrayal was coming from two fronts at once: from his love life and from his family. Not that he’d had all that solid a relationship with the latter to start with. Perhaps this explained why.

“I hadn’t planned on becoming your boyfriend at all,” Sebastien snapped.

“So, what, I was just a quick diversion? A casual fuck you kept coming back for because I’m such a fucking chump? Is that it?”

“No,” Sebastien sighed. “Not at all. I fell for you. Like the horrid cliche I am, the vampire fell for the hunter, and by then I had no idea how to tell you. I’ve not been with a human before, so this is all very new to me.”

Alec ran his fingers through his dark hair to buy himself a moment. “You… You haven’t?”

“No.”

“How… How old are you?”

“Do you really want the answer to that?”

“Yes!” His phone was slippery in his fingers now from the sweat on his palm but he couldn’t bring it away from his ear long enough to put it on speaker. He needed answers.

With another cavernous sigh, Sebastien said hurriedly, “Very well. I was born in 1897 and turned on the battlefields of the Great War — World War I, that is. I was dying, and a vampire named Felicity who had been working as a field nurse turned me. My first run-in with your family was not long after I moved from France to America. They were working with the American Hunters’ Guild on a case which had nothing to do with me.” He let out a shaky breath and said, “I got in the way and I nearly died. Those were the days before the treaty, of course, and before I moved to England.”

Despite his still-spinning mind, Alec managed to croak, “What treaty?”

“Those of us who get our blood from sanctioned blood banks and do not live-feed are exempt from being hunted like animals.” He spoke like he was quoting from a law code; cold and clinical; detached.

God, the way he said it made Alec’s skin crawl. It was as if he were being permitted to exist on the grounds of good behaviour and, he supposed, that was exactly the case. Even so, Alec couldn’t help the next words that just fell out of his mouth. “So you weren’t planning on feeding from me?”

“Of course not,” Sebastien retorted but then appeared to rein himself in with yet another steadying inhale. “No. It’s been decades since I’ve fed from a human directly. I didn’t plan on starting with you.”

Alec slumped back into the sofa cushions and stared up at the ceiling of his tiny apartment. “Fuck.”

After a long silence, Sebastien’s gentle tenor sounded in his ear. “Are you alright?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve never been close to my family - my dad was always an arsehole, but… I can’t believe Theo’s involved in all this. He was such a sweet kid, and we were really close until…” he swallowed thickly around the rising lump in his throat.

“Until?” Sebastien prompted when he stalled again.

“I can’t believe this is all real,” he muttered. “Until he turned sixteen and started to ‘work out’ with dad. I was at uni by then, getting my fine art degree, but whenever I came home he was just… different. Harder. Sharper. More focused. Guess it makes sense now… Well, as much as… you know…” he gestured vaguely to the empty apartment with his hands, “… as much as all this can make sense. Fucking… vampires…”

After a heartbeat, Sebastien added softly, “Quite literally.”

Despite himself, Alec snorted. “So… where does this leave us?”

Now it was Sebastien’s turn to feel clearly uncomfortable. Eventually he said, “Alec, I don’t think it’s wise for me to see you currently. Not with your family being what they are.”

His heart twisted, even though he’d been half expecting it. “You still think they’d… what, stake you, or whatever it is that vampire hunters actually do to you lot?”

“There are many ways to kill a vampire,” he said flatly. “And your family knows all of them, probably more. You need to work this out with them first as well. Talk to your brother. He seems the more reasonable…”

“I can’t believe Ellie’s in on it as well. And my mother? Fuck…”

“Talk to them.”

“Will I still see you at work at least?”

The awkward silence told him all he needed to know, even before Sebastien said, “I just sent in my letter of resignation.”

“That was quick,” he hissed, stomach dropping. “You only just left.”

“Supernatural speed,” he replied bitterly. “Comes in useful for typing papers and getting out of awkward situations…”

That sparked another question in him. “Supernatural powers, huh? Can you turn into a bat too?”

“No.”

Then he thought of Sebastien’s Halloween outfit. “Wolf?”

He thought he detected a faint smirk in Sebastien’s response. “No, sadly. No shape-shifting for me. Felicity is not of any extraordinary bloodline, and thus, neither am I.”

“Right,” he grunted. “Of course. Is she… is she still around?”

“Felicity? Yes. We meet every now and again. She and her wife spend most of their time in Venice these days.”

“Her wife? She a vampire too?”

Sebastien swallowed audibly. “Yes.”

“Did Felicity turn her too? Would that make her wife your sister?”

“No.”

He frowned. “Did she know her as a human though?”

“Yes.”

After a moment of spinning thoughts, Alec asked, “Did… you turn her?”

“One doesn’t tend to turn one’s own intended. Between a sire and their turned, there can grow… tension. Not always, but it can be enough to ruin a relationship that was seemingly solid before. Something about exchanging blood changes the soul… or so we think, anyway. It was an honour to be asked to sire her.”

“Right.” Alec felt slightly sick. “Will I at least see you before you leave?”

“I think it best if we don’t. Not while your family is still… ‘investigating’ me.”

“Are you really in danger from them?”

“Quite possibly. My name is on the treaty, but…”

Something twanged painfully again in his chest, swiftly followed by the fizzle of fear through his veins. “But what?”

“But vampires and hunters are not supposed to sleep together, Alec…”

“Don’t bang the enemy? How very Romeo and Juliet,” he snorted. “Fuck. Why does every good relationship I have turn to shit?” he asked, not of Sebastien but of the universe itself. “What did I do?”

“Alec —”

“—Don’t. Don’t make it worse by apologising or something. It’s fine. We were only together a month. I’ll get over it. You’ll move on. Heck, you’ll fucking live forever, right? What’s a month to you anyway? Nothing, right?”

The bitterness in his own voice nearly choked him, and without thinking, or even saying goodbye, he just hung up and let his phone lie in his limp fingers on the sofa cushions. It lit up and rang a moment later, but he didn’t answer it. Six more times Sebastien tried before finally giving up.

Kay was an absolute blessing in the next few days.

He didn’t tell her immediately about the whole vampire thing, but after he’d calmed down enough to be able to look at Theo without immediately busting a vein in his forehead, he hashed the basics out with him, and then told her everything. Alec told her about his newly-discovered, secret family occupation which, apparently, stretched back centuries. He told her about the fact that his eldest sister and younger brother were monster hunters in their spare time, and he told her the real reason Sebastien why had vanished overnight without a trace — yes, Alec had gone to his apartment building, only to be politely informed by the doorman that Dr. Dulac was no longer in residence and did not leave so much as a forwarding address.

That, above almost everything else, shattered Alec’s hopes of seeing him again. Like thistledown in the wind, Sebastien had simply flitted away somewhere else.

She took it about as well as he had to start with, but when she saw the seriousness in his eyes, and when, three weekends later, she came to his apartment for a definitely-not-awkward dinner with Theo, she saw video footage that Theo and his father had captured from various hunts of supernatural creatures beyond only beautiful vampires. Then she believed him. Ghouls, ghosts, reanimated corpses, demons… you name it and Theo could tell you about it.

Alec spent Christmas with Kay’s family, and Theo met him for New Year drinks in the city, joined by Ellie. It wasn’t anything like the family dynamic he’d always longed for, but the new degree of openness between them went some way to mending his still bruised heart. Slowly. Gradually. Piece by tentative, honest piece. He never joined in, but Theo started to tell him a bit about what they did. It still sounded barbaric to him, but at least it was true.

He had no word from Sebastien, and the number he had saved in his phone had been disconnected.

With the arrival of spring, Alec found himself more than usually dissatisfied with his job. He was a good teacher, and he enjoyed seeing his students’ talents evolve and grow, but the ever-increasing admin ground him down, and the politics of the faculty and the university as a whole wore on him.

“Have you seen this?” Kay asked one afternoon as they shared a takeaway coffee beneath the drifting cherry blossoms. Petals spiralled down like pastel pink and white wedding confetti, and he watched with an absent smile as a terrier snapped and sprung around on his hind legs trying to catch them while his owner stood and talked with her friend nearby. “Oi!” Kay asked, digging him in the ribs.

“Hmm?”

“Have you seen this?” she asked, shoving her phone under his nose.

He blinked, refocusing his eyes, and read the article’s headline aloud. “Council offers artists the chance to win a sponsored exhibition in the town hall with this unique competition.” He blinked. “So?”

“So?” she gawped. “You can’t be serious?”

“Send me the link. I’ll forward it to my students. They might like that.” That earned him a smack upside the head, and he scowled. “What was that for?”

“Alec, you might be the dumbest smart guy I know,” she said. “I showed it to you so that you could enter it, you giant idiot.”

He blinked. “Me?”

“I saw those charcoals you did the other week of the cathedral! They were amazing!! And the abstracts too… I still want one, by the way.”

“It’s already wrapped up for your birthday,” he groused. “You really think I should do it?”

She rolled her eyes and drained the last of her coffee without gracing him with an answer. Of course she thought he should.

“When’s the deadline?”

“Next Thursday,” she said without looking at him.

Alec licked his lips and swallowed. “Will you help me pick some images to submit?”

Her answering grin was feral.

In all honesty, Alec forgot about having even entered the competition until the letter dropped through his door six weeks later announcing that, to his utter astonishment, he had been selected as the winner. Tears blurred his eyes and he sat down heavily at the tiny kitchen table. He’d never entered any of his own art into anything like this in his whole life, and the first time he does, he gets a whole fucking public exhibition out of it?

“Maybe this year won’t be so bad after all,” he murmured. “New year, new start…” His chest still ached when he thought about Sebastien, and he hoped he was doing alright, wherever he was.

Theo had been searching for him, probably by way of apology for lying to his big brother for all these years, but he’d turned up very little. Sebastien had gone to Venice first, it seemed, presumably to spend time with Felicity and her wife, but had disappeared completely after that, with only rumours flickering here and there that he was in Paris, St. Petersburg, Prague, and then potentially Florence. Maybe.

“Venice seems like a pretty sunny place for a pair of vampires to live,” Alec commented, but Theo shrugged.

“They don’t burn up immediately in sunlight, or your professor would never have been able to take a day-job at the university. They’re sensitive to it, some more than others, but it takes a full day of constant sunlight beating down for them to burn properly.” The callousness of his brother’s response shook him, even after all these months, and Theo must have seen it on his face because he sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, and then added, “You really loved him, didn’t you?”

Alec shrugged. Yes, he wanted to say. I thought so. “I only knew him for a month or so,” was what he said carefully instead. “And even then… turned out I didn’t know him anyway.”

Theo, who had been lounging on Alec’s sofa with his legs spread and his head tipped back into the cushions while Alec made supper, asked quietly, “Did he seem… normal to you?”

“Normal?” Alec asked, not sure he’d heard his brother correctly.

“Yeah… like… did you ever suspect he wasn’t… you know…?”

“Human?”

Theo grunted and nodded his head. “Yeah. I guess.”

“No. Obviously not. Never crossed my mind. Why would it have?”

Theo scowled and turned his eyes to regard him. Alec knew that Theo looked like a younger version of himself, if maybe in better shape, and he wondered if he’d have the same steely look in his eyes if he’d been deemed ‘man enough’ to become a hunter, or whatever bullshit criteria their arsehole father had used to select which members of his family were to become soldiers and which would live normal lives.

“What?” Alec demanded.

“But you slept with him, right?”

“I’m not talking about that with you,” he said, briefly brandishing the wooden spoon at him.

Theo pulled a face. “I’m not asking about your sex life. Gross. No, I mean…”

In that moment, Alec spotted a flash of something in his brother’s blue eyes that softened him to the kid. He turned off the gas and went over to where Theo was now sitting hunched over with his elbows on his knees, running his hands through his hair. When he looked up at Alec’s approach, his face showed open vulnerability in a way he’d not seen since they were young children and Theo had got himself into trouble at school.

“What’s going on?” Alec asked, seating himself next to his little brother.

Theo bobbed his knee like a deprived caffeine addict and bit his lip. With glassy eyes, he croaked, “I keep asking myself if we did the right thing…”

“What do you mean?”

The bravado of Theo’s early twenties melted away to become a worried, frightened, guilty little boy again and he said, “I mean… if what we do is right…”

“You mean… hunting?”

“Yeah,” he croaked.

“What set this off?”

His brother quirked him a humourless smirk and said, “You always did know when something was bothering me.”

Alec remained quiet, just watching him.

“We teamed up with some hunters from Edinburgh for a ‘vamp gone rogue’ case and we finally found her yesterday. She… She’d been turning people; trying to amass some kind of small army to take over from another vampire further up north. She was insane… like, completely, sociopathically insane, but… the people she turned… they were just…” he blinked, and Alec saw with a jolt that his eyes were full of unshed tears. “They were still just people.”

He feared he already knew where this was going. Still, he asked, “What happened?”

“Father wanted to put them down. They were terrified, chained up… still on the point of lashing out…”

Bile rose in his throat. “Oh god…”

“One of the hunters said she knew of a vampire who could help rehabilitate them; help them adjust to their new lives. One of them didn’t want to live as a vampire though, so father just…”

Theo didn’t need to finish that for Alec to know that father had ended the newly-turned vampire’s life in a heartbeat. “And the rest?”

“The other three went with the hunter. I don’t know what happened, but… I trust her. It’s just… father taught me and Ellie that vampires are mindless killers when they feed… that you can’t get close to them, that all they want at the end of the day is blood no matter what they tell you…  but…” he looked up at Alec. “You’ve been fucking miserable since the whole Sebastien shit-fest. I know you’ve been trying to hide it, and you’ve got the exhibition coming up next weekend, and that’s great, but… I know you’ve stopped putting yourself out there. And we did that. We fucked it all up for you. I just…” he ran his hands through his hair and sent it into wild disarray. “I just wonder if you could really have been happy with him after all.”

Alec pulled his brother close and hugged him. “I’m not going to lie,” he murmured into his brother’s dark hair. “I’m furious with father for keeping everything from me, and for making you and mum and Ellie lie to me and Angie about it as well, but… if I hadn’t seen Sebastien’s eyes go red — yeah, I thought it was just a reflection or something — and if I hadn’t seen the way he sleeps literally like the dead… I’m not sure I would have believed you anyway. I don’t forgive him for it either, but…” he sighed deeply. “I forgive you, Theo. And Ellie.”

“And mum?”

“I’m still working on that.”

Theo went slack beneath him and snaked his arms around his brother’s waist for a moment. “Thanks,” he mumbled into Alec’s shirt.

“You’re still coming to the exhibition?” Alec asked as he pulled back and went back to the stove, giving Theo a moment of privacy to pull himself together.

In truth, Alec was a little shaken too. Their relationship had been slowly patched over the intervening months, but it still wasn’t particularly close, and the matter of Sebastien had been a permanent, proverbial elephant in the room. That Theo was questioning their father’s teaching came as an immense relief to Alec though. He poured them each a glass of wine, and the two spent the rest of the evening in a quieter kind of closeness than they’d yet shared.

When the evening of the exhibition drew round, Alec was quite frankly, a bit of a mess.

“C’mon,” Theo grinned, patting the lapels of his jacket down for him and grinning up at him. “Where’s that Twayblade hunter courage, huh?”

“Must have skipped me and all gone to you,” he quipped back. “Fuck. I’m so nervous. Why am I so nervous?”

“No fucking clue,” Theo chuckled. “You’re awesome and they’re gonna fucking love you.”

“Language,” Alec said instinctively and Theo’s laughter redoubled.

“You’re a big fucking hypocrite, you know that?” Theo laughed just as Kay sidled up with three glasses of champagne awkwardly held between her hands.

“Help a girl out here, would you, boys?” she asked, proffering the glasses to them.

Alec resisted the urge to down it in one — he’d probably only choke on the bubbles anyway — and filled his lungs instead with a big gulp of air. He tried to send all his nerves into the air and then blow it out of his body in one heaving sigh to leave him calmer, but it just gave him a head rush, so he sipped the wine and turned to look around the gallery from the corner where he’d been lurking.

“What if no one shows up?” he blurted, earning him a scowl from Theo and a pout-and-eyebrow-raise combo from Kay.

He needn't have worried in the end. The marketing team had done their work, and within an hour the place was heaving and all but three of his pieces had been reserved. Scratch that. Two.

The fact that almost all of his students had turned up as well to cheer him on and trade high fives, and scrounge free alcohol and food from the canape trays, warmed him in ways he didn’t know were possible.

Overwhelmed and a little bit tearful, he stepped out of the town hall’s main exhibition space and into the small corridor that led to a fire exit and a grotty back car park beyond, letting the flush die down from his cheeks. This was what he’d really wanted right from the moment he’d graduated all those years ago; to be an artist in his own right, with people buying his work at exhibitions… It almost made him giddy to think that he had a chance to do this full time now. It seemed that Sebastien had been right when he’d said he could really make something of himself.

Ah, there was the crash in his mood that he’d been waiting for. Nothing good lasts forever, right?

Would Sebastien have been proud of him if he knew about this? Would he have been there that night, by his side? Would they even have lasted that long anyway, even without his family’s interference?

The noise in the room was gradually dying down when he gathered enough courage to step back into the echoing hall. The pale wooden floors gleamed in the low light, the white of the temporary exhibition walls almost glowing, in stark contrast to the black and grey of his charcoals. He’d chosen mostly charcoals for the show, with a few acrylic abstracts for flavour, and apparently people loved them. Every single one had a red ‘sold’ dot beneath the label now, he noted as he cast his eyes around the room.

Then his gaze snagged on someone standing with their back to him, hands clasped loosely behind them, a long, silver-blond ponytail hanging down their back. And Alec’ vision slipped sideways.

Sebastien.

It had to be him.

No one else stood with posture like that. No one else was so tall and lean and elegant and god-damned graceful, even when just standing still. And no one else stood quite as still as that.

He let out a ragged breath and swayed slightly, glancing around. There was no sign of Theo or Kay just then, and only one or two couples meandered admiringly around the room. And there, fixated by one piece in particular, stood Sebastien.

Inhaling for courage, Alec approached and came to an unsteady halt a few feet away from him. He didn’t look real, somehow. His beauty had always been striking, but now in the low light he seemed like a mirage, with his warm olive skin and contrastingly pale hair, that cut-glass jawline and —

— He turned and met Alec’s gaze with dark brown eyes alight and glassy.

“You’re here,” Alec breathed, at a loss for anything else.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Sebastien said, and the sound of his voice sent a wild tingling through Alec’s whole nervous system. The man — vampire — looked uncharacteristically shy, uncertain, as he half turned to face him.

“Gotta say,” Alec said, scratching the back of his head, “I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”

“Should I leave?”

He chewed his lower lip for a second and Sebastien’s eyes tracked the movement before he blinked and looked back at the charcoal in front of him. It was of the Lady Chapel of the cathedral; one of the most tranquil places Alec had ever been. A shaft of light lanced down from a Gothic window high on the right, scattering fractured shards of light onto the stone floor, and behind it, just barely visible as a grey, misty outline, sat the small altar.

“You’re religious?” Alec asked.

“Mm,” Sebastien nodded. “Surprising, I know, given my ‘condition’, but there you have it.”

All the smalltalk then suddenly boiled up into thick irritation inside Alec and he scowled. “Where have you been? And why now? Why come back now? What do you want?”

He must have raised his voice fractionally because the couple admiring the seascape to their left shot them slightly scandalised looks, as if he’d started swearing in a sanctuary, and he bit back the wave of anger, halting it in its tracks.

“Shall we step outside for a moment?” Sebastien asked and Alec nodded tersely.

Passing Kay and Theo who were sitting in the chairs near the drinks table, Alec cast his eyes at them and watched Theo tense visibly. Kay laid her hand on his thigh and shook her head, at which Theo nodded and sat back, eyes hard, mouth set, but at least he didn’t appear to be on the point of leaping out and staking Sebastien on the spot.

Alec mouthed a silent ‘thank you’ at them both, and followed Sebastien out on to the street.

“You’ve patched things up with your family then?” Sebastien began, standing perfectly still beside the brick wall of the Victorian building while Alec paced.

“Mostly just with Theo, but yeah. Why are you here?” he asked again.

“Honestly? I missed you. Couldn't get you out of my head. I went all over Europe, and even to Asia briefly, and nothing I did distracted me from you, from leaving you. I had to come back.”

“You could have called,” he said, instantly regretting the way it came out like a petulant teenager’s sulking.

“And what would that have achieved?” Sebastien asked evenly. “I was hundreds of miles away.”

“You could have come back sooner? Talked to me in person?”

Sebastien sighed. “I was afraid that your family would come after me. I needed to disappear.”

“Theo convinced father to let you go. As you said yourself, your name was on the treaty, and you didn’t hurt me or hypnotise me, or whatever… did you?”

“No,” he said, pale brows pinching with evident distaste.

“Could you have?”

Sebastien levelled him with a dark look. “Yes, but… that’s not something I enjoy doing. It’s a survival mechanism — to make people forget what they’ve seen — it’s not something to be used lightly.”

“Ok, but you could have, and you didn’t, so that was another reason to let you go,” he said. God he wanted to kiss him. The realisation hit him like a gut punch and he turned away. Alec ached inside and out for those lips, those hands, those eyes… “Fuck,” he whispered, barely audible. “Are you staying?”

“Do you want me to stay?”

Alec rounded on him, frustration pouring out of him again. “Don’t answer my question with one of your own. Are you staying or not?”

Sebastien remained eerily calm, but a heartbeat later Alec saw that it wasn’t serenity in his eyes but sadness. “If you want me to, I’ll stay. I want to try again, Alec. I want… I want to be with you. I’ve never felt for anyone what I feel for you.”

“Feel? As in… present tense?”

“Yes. It hasn’t faded. Not with all the days and distance between us.”

“God, you sound like a shitty romance novel hero…” he scoffed. “I almost believe it.”

Sebastien spread his hands and said, “I am who — and what — I am. You know me, Alec, in a way that no one else ever has. I was utterly myself with you, except for the fact that I kept my nature from you. I hope you can at least understand why, if not forgive me. Everything else was genuine. I have never done that — been that open, that vulnerable — with anyone.”

“Even knowing what my family are?”

“Even then.”

Alec looked up at him and saw his own reflection in those dark, rich brown eyes. “Show me.”

Sebastien’s angelic face soured into a confused frown. “Show you what?”

“Your eyes. Your fangs. Show me what you are.”

“Now?”

He looked around. The street was empty on either side, with the only people around gathered outside a bar further up the street.

When he turned back to say yes to Sebastien, he found blood red eyes glowing in the man’s face. “Holy fuck,” he hissed. Every already-chiselled line on Sebastien’s face had sharpened somehow, his cheeks hollowing a little, perhaps to account for the additional hardware he now sported in his mouth, and his eyes seemed a touch more sunken. And they glowed as if lit from within.

Heartbeat thrumming out a wild tattoo, he stepped closer and Sebastien went utterly still. His chest ceased to rise and fall, and he didn’t even blink as Alec raised his fingers to his left cheek. “Show me.”

Sebastien swallowed and parted his lips. Angling his jaw a little to one side, he showed Alec the elongated canines, three quarters of an inch long. “Careful,” he murmured as Alec made to touch them. “Vampire venom is potent, even in small doses.”

“Does it really do what the hunters say it does?”

Sebastien’s red eyes glittered almost playfully. “I don’t know,” he smiled, seeming to relax a fraction. “What do they say it does?”

“Drives your victims wild, acts like a date rape drug, makes humans lose their will and their inhibitions…”

At that, a hardness returned to his features and his lip twitched in a lopsided snarl, like a wolf backed into a corner. “That’s certainly one take on it,” he said. “It creates a rush of euphoria. It’s supposed to make feeding a pleasant experience for all concerned. Endorphins in the blood make the taste sweeter, and the human feels no pain or fear.”

“Right. Gotta say I like that one better,” Alec said with a shaky smile. “But I’m not gonna risk it right here… And fuck me, your eyes are incredible.”

“They’re still red, hmm?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Closing his eyes and tilting his face upwards a little more towards the cloudy night sky, he inhaled deeply. His features softened again, and Alec watched, fascinated, as the slight bumps behind his closed upper lip slid away into nothing, presumably as his canines retracted into his gums. When he opened his eyes, they were their usual, endlessly dark brown once more.

“Better?” Sebastien asked, oddly self-conscious.

“No,” he said. “Just different.”

Something prickled on the back of his neck and he turned to find a woman silhouetted against the light of street lamp halfway up the road. “Friend of yours?” he asked, tense.

“Felicity. She came with me.”

“Why? Surely you don’t need a wingman… or, you know, woman.”

With a tiny smile, Sebastien said, “You make me more vulnerable than you realise, in more ways than one. And we weren’t sure if your family would be here.”

“Or whether they’d want to flambé you…”

“Precisely.” He inclined his head and the woman did the same, turning and vanishing even as Alec blinked.

“Can you do that too?” he asked, still gawping after her.

When he turned back, he found that Sebastien had stepped in close to him - close enough that his faint, woody cologne wafted gently around them and he felt his knees wobble slightly. He’d missed this. Oh god, he’d missed this. “Mmhmm,” Sebastien hummed. “I can.”

“Kiss me,” Alec whispered. “Please…”

Sebastien didn’t need telling twice. He took Alec’s face in both his hands and crushed a passionate kiss to his lips so hard that Alec’s mind went perfectly blank for a few beautiful seconds. When he came to, he grabbed Sebastien’s narrow hips and tugged him close, making the vampire grunt as their bodies connected.

This time, he took Sebastien’s ponytail in one hand and began to pull on it gently. Sebastien yielded at the pressure and tipped his face back, exposing the entire column of his throat to Alec without resistance. The gesture left Alec stunned and breathless. In his research with Theo over the past months, he had learned that for a vampire to expose their throat to another implied absolute trust. Overwhelmed, he pressed his lips to the bare skin and felt Sebastien gasp, grabbing at his shoulders suddenly to keep himself upright.

Over and over, the vampire shuddered tangibly beneath his touch and gasped sharply again, panting. As he shifted his hips against him, Alec felt Sebastien’s growing hardness, and at the same time, Sebastien drew back, eyes screwed shut. “Stop,” he laughed. “Not here.”

“I want you,” Alec moaned, one hand on Sebastien’s chest. “Fuck, I’ve missed you so much.”

“I want you too,” Sebastien smiled, opening his eyes. They glowed scarlet again. “And because of that, this —” he said, gesturing to his red eyes, “— isn’t going to go away quickly this time.”

“This too?” Alec said, boldly cupping the obvious bulge in Sebastien’s smart black trousers gently with his hand and making the vampire groan.

“Yeah, that too.”

“Your place or mine?” Alec asked with a dizzy grin.

“You decide. I’m booked into a hotel one street over for the next two days,” he said. “If that affects your decision in any way.”

“Yours,” he said. “I… I’ll just…” he looked over his shoulder and caught sight of the exhibition banner dangling by the door. “I should…”

Sebastien nodded slowly. “I’ll be here.”

“You’d better be,” he snarled as he adjusted himself and prayed no one would notice. He took a few steadying breaths on the threshold of the town hall and then disappeared inside.

Kay raised her eyebrows at him when he reappeared.

“Not a word,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Your hair’s a mess,” she said conversationally. “Is it windy outside?”

“Fuck off,” he grimaced and she laughed. “Where’s Theo?”

“He left out the back way,” she said. “But he told me to tell you to enjoy yourself tonight, and that he’ll stand by whatever makes you happy.”

Unexpected tears prickled his eyes and he tugged her into a hug that was probably meant for his brother.

“You can thank us later,” she said, shoving him off her. “Go be with your Prince of Darkness…”

“I’m not sure how much he’d like you calling him that,” he said as he stepped back. “I’ll have to wrap things up here first…”

It seemed to take forever, but he finally found the events coordinator and after an interminable conversation full of congratulations, agreed to stop by the next day to take down the exhibition and sort the sales out. His heart was thudding when he stepped back outside, but he let out a huge sigh when he saw Sebastien leaning against the brick building, face tilted towards the moon that was just peeking out from behind a bank of cloud.

“It’s like one of your charcoals,” Sebastien said without tearing his eyes from the sky.

Alec crossed to him and smiled when Sebastien met his gaze, red meeting blue. Alec slid his fingers into Sebastien’s where his hand hung quietly by his side.

“Ready?” the vampire asked.

Alec nodded, and let Sebastien lead him back to his hotel.

They barely made it into the lift before Alec was kissing him, backing him into the mirrored sides of the lift with a thud before the doors had even closed. He stopped suddenly, drew back and laughed, and Sebastien — who looked like he’d just got whiplash — asked, “What?”

“Vampires do have reflections after all…”

Sebastien rolled his eyes and gave an indecorous snort-laugh. The sound was rich and warm and it filled Alec’s whole consciousness for a moment. “It’s only the antique ones with genuine silver backing that don’t show our reflections. Technology has evolved, thank goodness. Now, if you don’t mind, you were kissing me senseless…”

“Sorry,” he laughed, grabbing Sebastien’s white shirt collar and tugging him down again. They nearly didn’t get out of the lift at Sebastien’s floor, but as the doors began to close again, Sebastien slid his foot into the path of the doors and dragged Alec out.

Clothes landed in a steady line on the carpet between the door of his hotel room and Sebastien’s bed, ending with them both in only their boxer-briefs on the pristine white surface of the bed. Alec was tipped back onto the duvet and lay there staring up at Sebastien who was now no longer hiding his nature from him at all. Red eyes blazed in his face and as he opened his mouth to breath heavily, the tips of his fangs were just visible. There was no denying that he was a vampire.

“Was it like this before?” Alec asked hoarsely. “I mean… did I just not see it?”

“I had to work very hard to rein all this in,” he said, kneeling on the bed and crawling a little way up it. His own boxer briefs strained at the crotch where his erection tented the fabric, and Alec’s own black ones were stained with a little spot of wetness where his cock twitched with eager interest. “I only let it slip once or twice, but you were distracted at the time.”

Alec smirked and then moaned as Sebastien’s palm skimmed up over his groin and over his stomach. He’d always been a bit self-conscious about the softer parts of him, but Sebastien worshipped him like he was some kind of immortal god, lavishing attention on him over and over until he was shaking and gasping and sweating. “Please!” he begged after what felt like hours. “Oh god, please…”

Sebastien slid off the bed and deftly removed his own underwear before encouraging Alec to lift his hips for him and drawing his boxer-briefs down too. Before Alec could think or process what was happening, Sebastien was between his legs again and had swallowed the entire length of his cock to the back of his throat in one.

“Oh fuck,” he hissed, mind whiting out.

Sparks of pleasure shot up his spine as Sebastien worked him alternately with his mouth and his hand.

He teased him, licking the slit at the tip where pre-come beaded profusely now, teasing the delicate folds of skin until Alec thought he was going to shatter apart with want. Just before it got too much to bear, Sebastien would take him back into the wet heat of his mouth and work the underside of his cock with his tongue, swallowing occasionally and making Alec’s head spin all over again.

His balls tightened and he spread his legs wider, instinctively opening himself to Sebastien.

The vampire moaned against his cock and Alec whimpered. Pulling off him, an obscenely inviting thread of saliva and pre-come connecting them briefly, Sebastien sat up and reached for the top drawer of the bedside table. “Vampires neither catch nor transmit diseases,” he said, “But if you still wish to use protection —”

“— I haven’t been with anyone since you,” he rasped. “And I’m clean anyway…”

“As you wish,” Sebastien smiled, withdrawing an almost-new bottle of lube and sitting back down between his legs. Alec eyed it and Sebastien laughed shyly. “I opened it last night…” he admitted and Alec grinned.

That smirk shattered into an open-mouthed groan as Sebastien’s finger slid inside him and he began to prepare him. There was nothing perfunctory about it either. Sebastien took his time to work him open, his fingers fucking into him slowly, almost reverently, until he crooked them and Alec yelled as white-hot pleasure shot through him.

“Still so sensitive,” Sebastien crooned and Alec just shivered in response. His thighs were quivering too now from the effort of not bucking upwards into the empty air, his cock drooling freely over his slightly soft stomach with each futile twitch. He knew he was a wanton mess, and he couldn’t quite find it within himself to care. It seem to drive Sebastien wild anyway.

When Sebastien added a third finger, still stroking up and down his thigh with his other hand, Alec broke.

“Please, please, please,” he whimpered, out of breath and desperate. He cracked his eyes open and looked down at Sebastien to find that his red eyes had been almost eclipsed by his blown pupils. He gave a weak buck of his hips to try and encourage Sebastien to get on with it, but the vampire seemed utterly transfixed by him. He worked his fingers over Alec’s prostate gently but with absolute precision, and it was going to make Alec lose his mind altogether.

“Pleasepleaseplease, I need you, please…” he wailed as Sebastien’s mercifully short and blunt fingernail caught him just so and sent another jolt through him.

Finally the vampire moved, but as he withdrew completely, the loss almost shattered him. “Shh,” he smiled, stroking a soothing circle at Alec’s hipbone. “I’m still here…”

Alec whimpered like a wounded animal but his foggy brain accepted that the loss was only temporary, and he watched as Sebastien took his own flushed cock in his hands and slicked lube up the length of it in a couple of efficient strokes, head bowing under the attention it was receiving at last. He’d focused solely, completely, on Alec’s pleasure for all that time, and the realisation sent a fresh wave of lust rolling through Alec’s entire body.

He spread his legs, but Sebastien caught Alec under his left thigh and raised his leg easily, exposing Alec completely. Before Alec could process anything, his tip was nudging at Alec’s entrance, and then he had sunk all the way in to the hilt.

Sebastien froze then, bowed forwards over Alec like a supplicant, canines openly bared, eyes screwed shut, not even breathing.

“Sebastien… please…” Alec grunted. He’d never felt as full and whole as he had with Sebastien inside him, and yet this wasn’t enough. He’d ached for this. For months, he’d ached for it, and still it wasn’t enough. “Bast, please…”

Finally, the vampire opened his searing red eyes and began to move.

Slowly at first, he picked up his pace until Alec’s back was arching and his fingers clawed great furrows in the sheet beneath him. With each thrust, Alec saw stars at let out little fractured, broken gasps. Sebastien was quiet, almost silent, while Alec himself was unable to stop the sounds from tumbling out of him. He moaned and whimpered, gasped and cursed and begged until Sebastien yanked him further down the bed and lifted his hips a little way off the mattress entirely.

From this new angle, it was so blindingly good that Alec went alternately taut and limp with ecstasy. “I’m close,” he gasped over the slap of Sebastien’s hips meeting his skin.

The vampire snarled then; an inhuman sound that sent the hairs prickling all down Alec’s body.

“Come for me,” Alec begged in a whisper, opening his eyes and watching as Sebastien chased his release with a ferocity he’d never shown before. He wasn’t careless with his strength, but he was certainly forceful. Had Alec wanted to grunt ‘stop’, he knew the vampire would halt, but that was the furthest thing from his mind as he watched the flawless perfection of this man above him. “God you’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “Come for me, Bast…”

And at the sound of his name, uttered in little more than an abbreviated wheeze, Sebastien went still, hips spasming as his spine arched back like a bow at full draw, mouth open, head thrown back, fangs bared, eyes rammed shut, a sheen of sweat covering his perfect, bronze chest, his silver hair falling around him like a veil.

The sight of him like that wrenched Alec’s orgasm from him with such sudden force that he almost blacked out, and he clenched around Sebastien’s still-twitching cock as he spilled all over himself. Vaguely, he felt Sebastien trying to withdraw, but he grunted, “Don't… not yet… please… I… unngghh…” Unable to finish the sentence as the last shock waves fluttered through him, Alec went limp against the bed, breathing hard, his blood roaring in his ears.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed before Sebastien did finally move, but eventually he slid his softening cock out of him and Alec grunted at the cool slide of the vampire’s release down his thigh. He was too spent and exhausted to care about the mess though, and as Sebastien collapsed onto the bed beside him, he cracked one eye open.

Sebastien lay on his left side with his cheek pillowed on his bicep, facing Alec with his eyes closed, and he didn’t seem to be breathing. Tentatively, clumsily in the daze of his recent, mind-blowing orgasm, Alec reached out and touched the delicate skin on the inside of his arm. Sebastien jolted like he’d received an electric shock, and opened his eyes. They still burned bright red, but the rest of his face seemed a little softer somehow.

“You alright?” Alec asked.

Sebastien nodded.

“Been a while too, huh?” Alec grinned, flopping back down to stare at the ceiling where little points of light still sparkled across his vision every now and again.

“Not since that last night with you,” he said, words slurred with exhaustion. “Unless you count my rather pathetic climax alone last night, which I certainly don’t.”

“Not at all?”

He shook his head but didn’t speak again. The vampire lay perfectly still — perfectly undead — and perfectly vulnerable beside him without even a sheet to cover him. His cock now lay soft across the top of his right thigh, still drooling a little and making a mess on his olive skin. Not half as much mess as Alec was currently sporting over his torso, he mused with another smile.

With Sebastien showing no sign of stirring, Alec rolled carefully off the bed and headed on shaky legs to the shower. When he returned, Sebastien hadn’t moved, and he slid in beside him, drawing the sheets up around them and lying there to stare at him in the dimness of the unlit room, processing everything. Sebastien was back, and apparently wanted to stay. He could hardly believe how well that day had gone.

Waking the next morning with a cool, lean body pressed against him, Alec sighed, relieved that it hadn’t all been some kind of fever dream brought on by the stress of the exhibition.

The fact that the man next to him was an undead vampire who didn’t breathe in his sleep was a bit unnerving, and the way he had his cheek now resting on Alec’s collarbone and his nose pressed against his neck should also probably have been a bit of a warning, but Alec couldn’t bring himself to move, except to place a soft kiss on his forehead.

Suddenly, as if surfacing from boundless depths, Sebastien’s body heaved and he drew in a great, sucking, rasping inhale through his mouth. His lips brushed against Alec’s pulse and Sebastien began breathing heavily there for a moment.

“That will never not be weird,” Alec murmured.

“Apologies,” Sebastien muttered, trying to roll away. He paused, freezing, and then whispered, “I fell asleep…” as if that was something miraculous.

“Yeah, you passed out almost as soon as we both finished,” he snickered.

Sebastien turned his big, dark, doe eyes on Alec and said, “No, you don’t understand. Vampires don’t just shut down like that the way humans do. We only sleep somewhere we know is secure and safe…”

“Oh,” Alec said significantly as the realisation plunged through him. He tucked his arm under Sebastien’s head and tugged him closer so that their bodies were once again flush with one another. “I’m glad you felt safe…”

Sebastien sighed, trailing his fingertips across Alec’s chest in absent circles. His cock twitched too, and Alec shot him a look.

With a bashful smile, Sebastien said, “I can’t help that I find you attractive, Alec…”

“Wasn't complaining,” he grinned.

It was a long time before they rolled off each other that morning, with the sun well up and the sheets damp with sweat and tangled around their ankles. Vampires, it seemed, had a longer refractory period than humans, but Sebastien also came so big when he did that Alec wasn’t surprised. He gave everything to Alec when he came that Alec could quite happily lie there all day just staring at him as he came down afterwards.

The room was chilly, however, and when Sebastien seemed to have dozed off again around ten o’clock, he headed to clean up. Again.

As the steam billowed around him, he tipped his head back into the stream of searing water and nearly yelped as the shower door opened and let in a rush of cold air as Sebastien stepped into the stall as well. Cool hands found his waist and then strong fingers kneaded his arse appreciatively before Sebastien kissed and nibbled up his shoulder and traps to his neck. Instinctively, Alec tilted his head to one side and Sebastien moaned, pressing open-mouthed kisses there over and over as the hot water coursed around his lips.

The sensation must have been too much for him because he pulled back sharply with a hiss and Alec turned to face him, water still streaming down around them. Sebastien stood frozen, eyes red, staring at Alec’s neck. “I shouldn’t…” he began. “That was stupid of me… I…”

“What happens to the treaty if the human is willing?” Alec found himself asking. He’d thought about it a lot before drifting off the previous night. If Sebastien had wanted to drink from him, to feed on him, what would happen to the tenuous peace between hunters and vampires like him.

“Don’t,” Sebastien said through gritted teeth. His canines were elongated, Alec noted.

“What happens?”

“The only way it’s permitted is if the human agrees by written contract to become the vampire’s source.”

“‘Source’?” he asked. “That sounds like an official title.”

“It is,” Sebastien said, relaxing a fraction and putting his hands back on Alec’s hips. His cock stirred with interest and Sebastien smiled. He leaned back in, as if proving to both of them that he could do this, and kissed down Alec’s neck again from the junction of his jaw all the way to his collarbones. He ground his hips against Alec and they both began to harden again.

Alec’s hand went to Sebastien’s cock and he started to stroke him gently, knowing he was still sensitive from their last round. Sebastien let out a ragged exhale, the cool breath making Alec shiver slightly in the heat of the water.

“So…” Alec pressed gently, thumbing across the top of Sebastien’s flushed cock.

“Hmm?” he asked, a little stunned.

“What is a source?”

“A human becoming a vampire’s source means that the vampire drinks only from that human. It’s… an ancient - ah - custom,” he said, gripping Alec’s shoulders as Alec upped the speed and adjusted his grip to tighten just a little around his now fully hard cock. “Rarely used today, but still… nngh…”

“Mmm?” Alec grinned, loving that the vampire’s thoughts were unravelling under his touch. “Go on.”

“You’re a menace,” he laughed breathily, nipping playfully at his neck and then kissing him hard. Alec’s back suddenly hit the icy tiles behind him and he yelped, rearing into Sebastien who wasn’t all that much warmer, though the heat of the water was raising his body temperature from the ambient temperature of the room.

“So if…” Alec began, somewhat distracted as Sebastien’s kisses continued and the vampire raked his fingers through Alec’s wet hair, scraping luxuriantly across his scalp hard enough to make him break off and groan. “If… if I wanted to become your…”

“Don’t,” Sebastien whispered. “Not yet. Not so soon after… all this time.”

The subtext was clear. Let’s see if this is going to last before I risk my life with the hunters guild and your family, shall we?

“Fair enough. Nothing to say I can’t suck you off now though, right?”

“Nothing at all,” he whispered and then immediately cursed as Alec sank to his knees and did just that.

It was only as he was handing in his own letter of resignation that the truth really sank in for Alec. He’d gone from post-grad assistant in the department to a full lecturer, where he’d stayed for six years, and now he was moving a little way out of the city, and moving in with his boyfriend of a year. A vampire, nonetheless. His life had gone from miserable to wonderful in that relatively short time.

Sebastien met him at the edge of campus after he’d handed the letter personally to the head of department. Standing under the verdant cherry trees, Sebastien looked like a vision. He wore tight, dark jeans and a loose shirt, half untucked, with his long hair tied back in a loose plait, fly-aways wisping around his head like mist. Alec walked straight up to him as the vampire opened his arms, flung his own arms around Sebastien’s neck, and hugged him.

“All done?” Sebastien asked without pulling back.

He nodded and popped back down from his toes. They were both tall men, but Sebastien had a few inches on him still. With a slightly doe-eyed expression, Sebastien smiled and kissed him gently. “I love you,” he said softly between kisses.

“Come on, you big sap,” Alec said. “I’ve got to be out of my apartment at four.”

“Such a romantic,” Sebastien sighed melodramatically.

With Sebastien’s supernatural strength, loading up the little van they’d hired for his stuff didn’t take long, and after giving his keys back to the landlord and signing the final bits and bobs, they were on the road.

The old farmhouse had been a find of Sebastien’s, and it needed some work. “Well, what else am I going to do on long, impossibly sunny summer days while you’re running your own business from the little art studio at the bottom of the garden?” Sebastien had laughed when they’d first viewed it, the back of his hand pressed to his forehead in a terribly ‘put upon’ gesture. “I might as well spruce the place up.”

“It needs more than a light ‘sprucing up’,” Alec had said, brows raised at the rotten wooden beam and the tired 1950’s kitchen. “And don’t tell me you made your wealth flipping houses back in the day.”

“Would you rather I told you I robbed the Bank of England and they still haven’t noticed?” he replied archly before planting a kiss squarely on Alec’s scratchy, stubble-darkened cheek.

With a scowl, Alec had shot him a look. “I honestly don’t know whether that’s a lie or not…”

“It’s a lie,” Sebastien snorted. “I can’t believe you think I’m a criminal.”

“You’re a vampire,” he’d retorted. “You could probably have just walked in there and demanded a small fortune in gold ingots and they wouldn’t have objected…”

“Please. I do have some scruples. And besides, I only use my charms on poor, miserable artists to get into their pants…”

“And their hearts too, apparently,” he’d scoffed as they’d left the dilapidated house with Sebastien’s hand in Alec’s back pocket, fingers firmly cupped around his arse.

It took another six months for the work to be completed, and even with Sebastien’s not inconsiderable talents in the DIY and home improvement departments, they still had to call in a team of builders to fix the pointing in one wall and to sort out a few other structural issues. But by the end of the work, the farmhouse was quite frankly the most stunning place Alec could ever have dreamed of living. Exposed oak beams and a fireplace big enough to park a tractor in were only half of the best features of the place.

One clear, frosty evening in late October, the pair sat outside on the recently finished patio, a small cast iron fire-pit crackling away and sending sparks and heat twisting up into the night sky, a glass of wine each in one hand and their free hand clasped around the other’s.

“Bastien…?” Alec said, not taking his eyes from the mother-of-pearl points of light in the sky above.

“Mmm?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about… about becoming your source.” He didn’t miss the sharp inhale from his partner, nor the way Sebastien went completely still in the wooden chair beside him. He also didn’t say anything. “I’d… I’d like to ask how often you’d need to feed from me, and… what the repercussions would be for me as the human…”

Still Sebastien didn’t speak for a long time, and Alec worried he’d spoilt the serenity of their evening with the sensitive question. Finally, the vampire cleared his throat and Alec realised with a jolt that he was near tears.

“Bast?”

At the sound of the pet-name, Sebastien blinked rapidly and two mirroring tears tracked down his cheeks in perfect synchrony. “I thought you’d forgotten all about it,” he said in a hoarse croak. “I didn’t want to bring it up again.”

“You should have done, silly,” Alec groused, and he was met with a watery smile that didn’t meet his eyes at all.

“Well, to answer your questions,” he said, trying to sound unaffected even if he clearly was. “Every three months is safe enough, so long as you take an iron supplement. If you don’t, you might feel a little more tired right afterwards. We generally take slightly less than a person would give at a blood donation, if that helps put it into context.”

Alec turned and frowned at him.

“What?”

“You’ve gone all clinical,” he said, shuffling a little and setting his wine glass down on the edge of the stone fire pit. “Do you not want this anymore?”

Sebastien swallowed thickly and looked away. In the ochre and copper flicker of the flames before them, his suddenly red eyes seemed to glow like coals. “More than you know…” he rasped.

“Then what’s the problem?”

He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment before turning back to face Alec with glassy eyes. “I’m frightened.”

Alec’s scowl deepened and he rose from his chair to straddle and sink down into Sebastien’s lap. Settled in his new position, he kissed Bast’s lips and stroked his loose, white-blond hair out of his eyes. “Of what?”

“Losing control. It’s been… decades since… If I hurt you, Alec… it would break me.”

“How about we start small? Just a taste?”

Sebastien looked so young then in the firelight. He suddenly looked like the twenty year old man he had been when he’d been conscripted into the army and sent out to battle to die, only to be turned at the eleventh hour by a nurse in a field hospital who’d seen something special in him. Thank god she had, Alec mused.

Alec leaned back a little and brought his index finger slowly to Sebastien’s lips. The vampire swallowed, red gaze drifting down to watch its approach before looking back at Alec’s face, searching, questioning, doubting.

Alec nodded and slid his fingertip a few millimetres into Sebastien’s mouth. The vampire inhaled, closed his eyes, and then opened his mouth properly. Alec brought the pad of his fingertip to the underside of his right canine, and pressed.

After a moment, the pressure gave way and a prick of pain like a needle pierced his skin. A bead of blood welled there instantly and he withdrew to let it swell. Sebastien clearly smelled the blood because his pupils dilated and he sucked in a sharp breath.

“Easy,” Alec said. “It’s only a drop.” And with that, he turned his finger over and held it above the tip of Sebastien’s tongue.

Paralysed in a heartbeat of terror, Sebastien sat rigid, frozen, wide eyed, but Alec lowered his finger to meet the slight roughness of his tongue, and Sebastien’s eyes rolled. He moaned and let his tongue play across the tiny pinprick wound, fingers digging into Alec’s hips. The tiny wound had already stopped bleeding, but he sucked gently, drawing a little taste more. Then he released Alec and stared at him, a look of stunned awe on his beautiful face.

“How was that?” Alec asked, briefly thumbing a fond arc across Sebastien’s cheekbone before dropping his hand.

“Manageable,” Sebastien murmured.

“Ok, I have to ask, do I taste good?”

The tense spell that encapsulated both of them broke and Sebastien cracked a smile, fangs and all. “Yes,” he rasped.

“So… I can become your source?”

“If you wish it, yes. You can withdraw the honour at any time. I won’t hold you to it.”

“Good to know,” he said, only half laughing. A moment later, he said, “When… When do you want to start… you know… properly. Formally?”

Sebastien’s eyes had drifted to the rabbiting pulse in his neck.

“Now?” he asked. “It’s only been a few weeks since you went to the blood bank though…”

“That’s…” he said, hands finding Alec’s waist and holding him gently. “That probably works in my favour this time. Are you sure you want this?”

“To be ‘yours’ on your terms as well as mine? Of course,” he smiled, and watched as another tear rolled down his perfect olive cheek. He tilted his head to one side, feeling a little sheepish, and said in barely a whisper, “Whenever you like.”

“Really? Now?” Sebastien hissed, chest suddenly heaving. “Just like that?”

Alec laughed quietly. “It’s not as if we’ve just met. I know you, Bast. I trust you. I wouldn’t offer this to just any old vampire, you know?”

Unable to stop the smile from twisting his lips, Sebastien finally relented with a nod. “Alright. But not here. You’re going to want to be more comfortable.”

“But I’m already comfortable here,” he whined playfully, wiggling his hips in Sebastien’s lap, eliciting a deep, rumbling groan.

With a roll of his red eyes, Sebastien sighed. “Stubborn arse,” he grumbled without sting.

“You love my arse.”

“Yes, you’re right. I do,” he said.

Tenderly he ran his thumb down the line of Alec’s carotid and inhaled deeply. “I love you,” he whispered. And then he leaned close. He took his time kissing Alec’s neck until he was gasping and rocking his hips against Sebastien.

“Please…”

“Last chance,” Sebastien said against the skin of his throat.

Alec shook his head. “I want this. I’m yours.”

So the vampire sank his fangs into the artery. After the initial surprise and sting, Alec’s whole body lit up as the venom hit his bloodstream, and he bucked into Sebastien who held him still with what should have been frightening ease. There was no fear behind the gesture, only longing and love and sweet, aching, rolling, unending pleasure.

“Oh fuck,” Alec moaned, going limp in his arms as Sebastien began to feed, withdrawing his fangs to draw more deeply on him while he held him easily in his arms. The vampire moaned, lips locked against his skin so as not to spill anything. The motion of his throat suddenly fascinated Alec as he swallowed down his own life-force, but before he could raise his hand to touch fingertips to his Adam’s apple, pleasure exploded in his mind and he forgot everything.

When he came back to himself, he was inside, lying on their bed, with a small, soft dressing over his neck, and Sebastien sitting quietly on the bed beside him, staring down at him and holding his hand. As he blinked his eyes, he frowned. “What…?”

“It’s intense the first time,” Sebastien murmured fondly. “I did say you’d want to be somewhere more comfortable.”

“ S’perfect,” he slurred. “Fuck me…” he added, more curse than command.

“Maybe later, hmm?” Sebastien smiled. There was a flush to his cheeks that Alec had never seen before, and a brightness to his eyes.

“C’mere,” Alec said, patting the bed beside him. With Sebastien lying silently next to him, Alec rolled over and hooked one leg over Bast’s thigh. “Love you,” he mumbled, sinking into a deep and exhausted sleep, even as Sebastien’s hand came up to cradle his head.

The vampire smiled, kissing his forehead. “I love you too.”

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