#fic: duet

[ash-and-starlight]

Sokka splashed a line of water through his path. The fire fizzled. Zuko’s eyebrow raised, then he forged on. The path zigzagged out of the constellation, hopped eastwards through the galaxy’s north. Hiss. Hiss. Sokka met him each time with a streak of water. Zuko pressed on, building rhythm with each star he joined up.

The Mercy of Magpies Chapter 4 out now!!

as always written by thee @ranilla-bean and betaed by @faux-fires

Chapter Post || Cover || Map and Characters || Ch2 || Ch 3.1 || Ch. 3.2

[rivetingrosie4]

Duet

(Part 2/2)

RDR2 | Arthur Morgan x Female Reader | Rating: Explicit (mdni) | Part 1 | tumblr masterlist | Ao3

Summary: Arthur takes you out for a much-needed fancy date. Though you both thoroughly enjoy the whole evening, you’re both eager to get home and make love. When you finally arrive home, Arthur invites you to take a steamy shower with him.

Tags: romantic smut, established relationship, hot date, shower sex, cunnilingus, romantic angst, comfort, loving marriage, parenthood, modern au, post gang

Chapter word count: 7,412

Not sure to whom the credit should go for the Arthur edit above.

𑁦𐂂𑁦

This work is partially inspired by the following song lyrics. It’s been my sincere goal to capture both the spirit of the lyrics and the feel of the song’s music in this work. Please consider giving this beautiful song a listen at the link below.

- Penny and Sparrow, “Duet”

As Arthur lifts a large, roughened hand and barely touches it to your smooth shoulder, he wonders to himself what you might be wearing underneath. Maybe he’ll see a lacy thong, its scrap of fabric tucked neatly between your round ass cheeks and framing them perfectly.

With a glance into your eyes, he thinks on how unspeakably sexy you are to him. Mere thoughts of your body, and he’s nearly slid from a ramp up into the night’s dark and starless sky.

He brings his other hand to your opposite shoulder, and the moment he’s longed for is here. With hardly any movement, his thumbs slip both straps away, and your lovely, tiny silken gown slides to the floor like ripples of lake water from a waterfall.

There you are, wearing no panties.

A powerful flush of desire overtakes and courses through him, quick and hot and merciless. He smothers the involuntary groan that wants to pour from him. All the air is sucked from his lungs anyway, as if he’s withstood a kick to the belly. He’s forced to gulp past the dryness in his throat.

His heavily lidded gaze glides up your form, from your bared sex, over the strapless bra cups that lift your breasts, until he meets your eyes.

The flint-spark look undoes you. He always seems to do just exactly what it takes. So you refocus your gaze to his white shirt and reach up to his chest to release the topmost button. You work downwards, releasing them, one button at a time, their slow undoing a ceremony to mirror his unspooling of all your painful anxieties and insecurities.

At the same time, he reaches around to peel away the strapless cups as you’re tugging his button down from his trousers. It’s hardly fair that you have so little clothing to compare with his journey of undressing. Because he’s thoughtlessly tossing the undergarment away, and now, there you are, completely bare, with him scarcely half-dressed.

Arthur watches you, eyes never leaving the way your breaths come to you deep and slow, gradually lifting and lowering your chest. His gaze rakes over the flecks of life in the forms of scars, stretch marks, and sun-kissed freckles here and there across your skin. He admires your breasts, heavy with milk. The dusty rose blossoms of your areolae, their slightly uneven positions something he’s always loved despite your own chagrin. At the thought, he's nearly brought to an inward laugh, because it seems you never allow yourself the slightest break.

You slowly lift your head and meet his eyes. Before you can think, his lips are just below the corner of your mouth. Their cushion gently recedes as he pulls away.

Without hurrying, you set yourself again to the task of undressing him. You can already feel it—the viscosity of sweet syrup you’re both ensnared by. The perfervid, voracious need to prick oneself to the needle’s sharp tip while at the same time whetting it mercilessly with a nurtured apprehension to press too deeply too quickly, that the red bloom of pleasure may not spread and dissipate and be gone too soon. You both want to savor this. Its every moment.

You unlatch his belt and listen to the jingle of its buckle, letting yourself saturate and shiver with the heady lustiness of the sound. After unsnaking it from the loops of his trousers, it falls to the floor with a clatter. You crumple his crisp shirt as you push it up his body, then pull his white undershirt up from his slacks and over his head, allowing him to slip it from his shoulders himself. It musses his pomaded hair, and he jostles it from one wrist onto the floor, though his attention is on you. He reaches for your jaw and kisses you again, this time landing squarely on the corner of your lips.

When he pulls away, you meet his eyes with a soft smile.

You push his trousers and black boxer briefs together down his trunk and legs in one motion. You hear the unsteady breath he can’t prevent and know that the fabric has necessarily brushed his half-hardened sex. He steps from the heap of his clothing and is now as bare as you are.

Though you’re mere inches apart, the two of you gaze at each other for a few moments, taking in the sights of your bodies. The personage of the only one you know like this. The only one you love like this. And what you can’t know is in the union of your minds, you’re both esteeming the other:

This body that has obeyed him to the uttermost;

this body that has carried her through every day of her life;

that has borne it all;

that has fought so hard.

These bodies that are of the two of you.

There is no Arthur without his body. There is no you without yours. What illimitable comfort to know that you both love all of the other. Not in spite of, but including your bodies. And that all of that love is right here.

The mere nearness of Arthur is enough to send a powerful, heady wave of pleasurable desire through you.

You let your gaze peruse his form. The faint moles on his torso, beneath the bold hair that fans and spreads over his sturdy chest, their whorls of wayward coils unimaginably sexy to you. The wide bulge of his back that veers out from under his arms and narrows towards his waist. Even now, you can see his back in your mind’s eye: the softly rippling dimples of muscle under his pale skin, speckled with dustings of hair.

With lifted palms, you draw closer, until you can rest a hand on each pectoral. One arm slithers over his shoulder, and your softly curled fingers come to rest and drape there now, upon that back you know so well. As your chests are pressed together, your areolae are brushed by his hair, and the meeting of the twain sends deliciously tingling bolts of pleasure through you.

With the other hand, you slide your fingers up his profile and along his temple, letting your fingertips brush lightly into his golden-chestnut hairline.

He is so beautiful, you think almost audibly as you watch his face, just as his eyes shutter at your soft and loving touch.

You’re transported to the first time you ever touched each other as lovers. How thoroughly struck with fright you had been, standing before him, trembling, and quietly heaving to catch your breath. You’d tried to tell him you’d never, ever been touched, did not know how to receive touch, how to be touched.

How did it happen, how did it ever happen to anyone, you had spilled, that they could trust another person to love them enough to touch them in places no one ever had? To meet body to body and trust the other person to go right on loving them, and not throw them away? How could you let his hand be where no other hand had been, let his very body be inside your own, and not fall apart with joy and terror and fulfilled longing and passion and fear? You had been alone so very long, so very, very long, you had sputtered—had always been, and you simply didn’t know how to not be.

And when he saw you, you had groaned your plea through a jaw clenched in near panic, could he please, please not hate you, please?

He’d simply sat on the edge of the bed and had drawn you to him with soulful, cerulean eyes filled with empathy and not a speck of pity, annoyance, or rancor.

You had gasped as you’d let yourself be pulled close, because was it already happening?

You didn’t know anything about what to do for him, you’d explained. You didn’t know anything about this—well—of course, you knew what happens. But you didn’t know anything for yourself. What to do for him, or what it feels like.

In that moment, you’d envisioned his bare chest and belly, both dusted with a fine coat of coarse hair, as you had seen bared many times during outdoor activities. But what could it feel like to touch him there, to feel the warmth of him, to rustle the hair with your fingers, or rest your cheek upon his breathing belly? You could not imagine the feel of any of it. Could only guess or envision it. Because you had never in your life been wanted or welcomed graciously into another’s bared and intimate nearness.

In this way, your rash mouth had gone ahead of you, before your mind could chide it: Didn’t he want someone who knew what to do for him? Who knew what to do because she had been wanted before?

With the last, you had dipped into a whisper to try to hide your breaking voice. But the new runoff upon your cheeks had damned you and could not be hidden.

No, he’d replied, he wanted you.

And your stupid mouth had blurted: Well, you wanted that for him.

No sooner had you said it than you required a shaky breath.

“You— I—” You had struggled to dive into black waters for words to convey to him that you were not interesting, not beautiful, young or fresh or smooth in body, not talented, confident, redeemable, not worth anything. With your trembling chin dimpled in pain, your voice broken and with eyes pleading for understanding, you had come up for air with only a few words in your hands: “I’m just a person.”

His soft, growing smirk had somehow been gentle and kind, and he’d reached up to stroke your jaw with the pad of his thumb. “You’re right,” he’d said. “You’re a person.” His smirk had faded just a little, to something more thoughtful. “Person I love.”

He’d taken your pinked face in his hands and had quietly spoken as he’d kissed your lips, your jaw, and eventually your neck. He’d poured into your heart the words you needed to believe in order to trust, to love, and to find yourself no longer alone: that good love was a choice, and that he would always make it. That your soul overlapped with his. And that if he was right, he knew you could find it in yourself to trust that he’d care for you well, and let him show you his love in each touch, and stay in your life forever after.

And he was right. To this day, you can’t remember removing your clothing. If it had been possible, they’d simply slipped off, as they’ve just done now. Together, you’d proceeded to experience breathtaking intimacy—every moment uncomfortable and new and wonderfully rapturous in its visceral potency. And after your union, he had not left you; and he had not loved you less, but even more, somehow.

Years later, you’re still unable to express all that the meeting of his skin to yours means to you—even something as beguilingly simple as his kiss. What an unfathomable gift, his every touch, after having lived so much life without knowing any at all, without believing you ever, ever would.

Your thoughts return to the present when Arthur brings a hand gently to your profile and cradles your face in his loving fingertips.

Feeling the moment slow, Arthur looks into your eyes. He takes in their shape and shade, the chaff and flagstone flashes in your irises. He even notices that you didn’t don mascara this evening, yet your lashes remain fluffy and feathery, if not fanned and curled. He notes the naturally round glisten to your eyes, blazing with quiet passion and empathy as they are, while returning his gaze.

You feel Arthur’s arms slink around your bare waist, tickling you. His large hands fan out over your back, and the two of you meet in a kiss. It gradually deepens to pulsating, until you’re both on the verge of reeling, both pressing the other closer by the back.

Arthur finally breaks the kiss only to tuck himself into the crook of your neck, enfolding you in a hug.

Your cheek skids against his as you listen to your breathed name from his lips. And, with your eyes faintly ruddled and breathing through an open mouth, you float amidst the hazy, whelming concoction of bliss and arduously tested love in his embrace.

After several moments of holding you, he retreats until his mouth is near your cheek. With a soft smile that you can’t see until after his invitation is quietly spoken, he asks,

“Take a shower with me?”

When you catch a glimpse of that soft grin on his down-tipped face, your mouths hovering near each other, you look up into his eyes. At the thought, you wear your own grin, and it grows as you simply nod.

The next minute’s passage sees him standing inside the stone-tiled, walk-in shower while the hot water streams, holding out a hand to you. He watches with a smile as you take it and step over the shower’s threshold into its balmy warmth. You couldn’t have avoided your own smile at the sweetness of the gesture if you’d tried.

Once inside, he closes the door behind you, and you both wet your hair, hands sluicing back to smooth it. The steamy air is aglow with minuscule orbs of silver, their collected effect coating your nostrils with the same fine sheen that crowns your skin. Their bigger cousins are already congregating on the spangled glass door, shaking and catching the light as though lined with silver foil, until they accumulate and fall one by one like a tear, leaving an empty trail through the veiled layer of mist. A feathery fog rises and envelops you both, until you’re tucked away somewhere celestial, just you two. You smile with lust as your gaze ambles over the shape of Arthur’s body—perfectly plump ass, bold shoulders, strong thighs, and carved hip bones framing his thick manhood—all outlined with slick, glistening light.

Your first impulse is to swing your arms up around his neck and kiss him. As you do, his arms slip into place around your waist, hands resting on your lower back, beneath your wet, darkened tresses. You tip your head to the side and kiss him deeply, pushing your fingers into his wet hair. But you’re quick to briefly tilt your head to the other side, continuing to kiss him.

Arthur can taste the distant remnants of tawny port on your tongue. You notice the day’s-end stubble on his cheeks and dimpled chin as you dip your head back to where you’d started, never breaking the kiss.

You feel him moan a quiet, “Mm,” before the kiss comes to a natural end, and he pulls his lips away from yours.

Your head remains in the position you’d kissed him, stuck in bliss. There is nowhere you would rather be than here, in the shower, wrapped in your love’s arms, your own hooked up around his neck.

He begins to grin as he glances into your eyes and presses another short kiss to your lips. You feel his hands lift from your back and hear them gently turn the bottles and things on the soap ledge behind you.

“Gonna let me bathe you?” he asks.

Your tone is bleary and quiet rather than insolent. “Bathe me?”

“Mm.”

“What about you?” you ask, brushing back a stray clump of wet strands from his forehead.

The first syllable of his answer is a drawled, softly grunted mix of well and yeah. “You can bathe me too.”

You lift your head at the thought, and after a moment, offer, “I get to bathe you first.”

He pauses perusing the items on the ledge and looks into your face with an incredulously annoyed smirk. “You stole my idea.”

“You’ll never get bathed if I don’t bathe you first.”

With a large, open grin, he lifts his head back and chuffs a stuttered laugh. “Ah. I see.” You purse your lips against a burgeoning grin as he gives his head a tip, conceding. “I see.”

His hands return to their home base at your lower back.

Lowering your arms and reaching them past either side of his waist towards the soap ledge behind him in the opposite far corner, you ask, “Which soap?”

Watching your face and fighting the flicker of a smirk, he answers, “River birch.”

Of the two bars on the ledge, you take the one swirled with white and dark green. You pull it under his arm and hold it below his nose.

“Mm-hm,” he mumbles, never taking his eyes from your face, the gravel of his voice warm in his throat.

Gratified, your eyes flit down to the soap, and you take it in a swirling motion through his chest hair. “Have to get a lather.”

His smirk widens to a bright grin, and when he laughs, you smile with him. He’s mesmerized by your beautifully dark, clumped, wet lashes radiating from both your eyes as you begin your work.

You take the bubbly bar up over his shoulder, admiring its striated bulk. You swirl the bar across his large back and pass it to your other hand, then bring it forward over his opposite shoulder.

After passing the bar through the hair under both his arms, you slowly bring it down his gently scored abdomen. You lower yourself to a squat in time with your hands, letting yourself savor the beautiful sight and sensation of his belly—the form of its strong, firm plane, while the skin itself is simultaneously plump and healthy; the smattering of dark hair half-hiding the small mole below his ribs; the soft buoyancy beneath your fingers that bespeaks the natural lack of bone beneath the surface; and the dulcet rim of his perfect navel.

Without thinking, you lean forward forward and kiss that navel—initially a chaste, clicked kiss, then you open your mouth and dip your tongue to sweep the water droplets from its crater.

An airy, broken moan escapes him, and you smile to yourself.

Drawing back, you gaze at the long, taut span of his lower abdomen, just above his pubic bone, that stretches from his navel to his sex. It’s a portion of him that often lowers itself to meet the same portion of you in all your soulful lovemaking, each brushing the other with every lithe undulation of your torsos.

With alternating hands, you let your featherlight fingers dance upwards through his trail of hair there. You lean forward and kiss a path down his lower abdomen, savoring the taut, sloping incline of his pubis.

Giving him a moment to gather himself, you spare him any touch of the soap bar to his erection, swiping it instead through his pubic hair. But you make sure to pass it beneath his testes before finally taking the suds in your palm and gently cupping the base of his erection, its surface like a wooden staff in your hand.

He stiffens and grinds out a windy huff, trying hard to avoid sounding as though he’s been beaten senseless.

“Got frisky hands there,” he says.

“Gotta get you clean,” you almost sing.

“Just remember, your time will come,” he says, smirking at you. “Just remember.”

Your smile flashes wider. “I’m counting on it.”

You stand and draw your body closer to his as you return the bar to his back and reach to swipe it down over his firm ass cheeks. You dip your fingertips into his cleft and swirl the bar in a circle down and around each cheek. You avoid his intent eyes as you let your fingers linger there, clearly taking your time to savor the smoothness of his skin and the gloriously, perfectly round shape of each cheek.

You swipe the bar around both his thighs and squat again to begin gently scrubbing his hairy calves. With your face again so near his tightly erect sex, you can’t help but place a kiss sweetly to the side of its tip.

He hisses and catches himself upon the tile wall. “Baby, don’t, you’ll fell me.”

“I won’t,” you respond, continuing to bathe his calf. “You got plans, huh?”

He nods, his clenched expression still recovering. “I got plans.”

“I think I’ll like ‘em.”

“You will,” he assures. And after another few moments, decides to add in quiet tones, “Ain’t only about me. Not tonight.”

Though you continue to swipe the soap over his leg, the spoken words have you inwardly considering them.

You stand and return the soap to the far ledge as he steps under the water to rinse.

“There,” you sigh as you resume your place before him, slip your arms around his neck again, and kiss him. You feel his hands return to your back and hold you. “Did I do a good job?”

“A very good job,” he says between kisses. When you slip your mouth up his jaw and nibble his slick earlobe, his eyes roll back into his head, and he chuffs an open-mouthed laugh. After taking a moment to recover, he reaches for the items on the ledge behind you, mumbling quietly near your ear, “Come an’ pick one a’ these,”

You turn between his outstretched arms, suddenly feeling as nude and as cherished as a babe when your slick breasts brush against him. Facing forward with him, you smile and nibble your lip, relishing the warmth of his cheek tucked beside yours.

“The almond.”

He mumbles satisfactorily, “Good choice,” and kisses you pertly on the cheek as he reaches for your bottle of almond wash, an oil that turns to a fine, milky lather when met with water.

You watch him pop the back of the cap and pour the amber oil into his wet palm. He sets the bottle back and rubs his hands together, creating the fine white suds.

“Here we are,” he says, his low voice laced with grit.

Arthur wastes no time, flattening his hand against your sternum and slowly taking it straight down, between your breasts, over your belly, and further to the triangle of hair between your legs.

“Gotta get you clean,” he says as he runs his sudsy fingers through the coarse hair between your legs, and the blatant cheekiness is not lost on you.

You sigh, lean slightly back into him, and hook one arm up around his neck, giving him a full, unhindered view to the front of your body.

Bringing his hands to your chest, he cups and kneads your breasts, savoring their silken texture and making sure to flick his thumbs across your beaded nipples. You take a half-step forward, letting the water rinse the suds he’s placed down the front of you.

He leans down and kisses the point where your neck and shoulder meet. You lower your arm from around his neck, though you continue to keep your arm back and grasp the side of his thigh. He swipes the lather over your shoulder and down the length of your arm.

With the residual suds left in his palm, he stretches his hand out across your side, fitting you snugly into the web between his finger and thumb. He slowly brings it down your form, past your waist and over the curve of your hip and sumptuous body. As he does, he watches your shimmering, plump flesh continuously squeeze out from under the web of his hand.

“Goddamn,” he breathes.

After several moments, you feel the rim of his open mouth along the curve of your shoulder. You glance back to find him practically slumped to you with cupidity, his drowsy eyes glazed with longing, upper lip curling as it skids across your skin, ready to mouth any point on you he can get to.

And he does. He abandons the bathing, as you thought he would. With a moan, he takes the round corner of your shoulder into his mouth. His tongue is eager to rake over you, and you watch as he begins to suckle your skin as though it were the sweetest of honey to him, and all he needs.

The far gone look in his eyes does something more to you than merely tell you he’s been given into the arms of desire. At once, it both feeds a previously frail flicker in your chest and melts you entirely.

Without warning, you turn to him and take his jaw in your hand, promptly kissing him deeply. He pours a moan into your mouth. Your tongues meld as he brings a hand to the back of your neck, propping your jaw up with his thumb.

While maintaining the kiss, he backs you to the cold tile wall, gently pinning you there with his body. At the chill, you briefly gasp and break the kiss, but you’re quick with penance, hurriedly seeking his mouth again. You feel the lovely cage of his forearms on either side of you where he braces himself against the wall.

He braces the other side of your throat with his hand and thumb as his mouth traverses your jaw and downward, where he kisses your neck. Such a simple act of loving-kindness as this has you smiling dazedly with a sigh, has your eyes rolling back at the sensation of his sweetly sucking kisses, at the perfect fit of the plane of his cheek tucked flush to the underside of your jaw.

He pecks a trail along your collarbone and licks the soft space between your breasts. He trails further towards the curved swell of one breast and its pursed bead. There he takes you in his mouth and laves you, feeling your slipknot leak warmth, tasting your droplets of sweet milk.

Each drag of his tongue over the face of your nipple sends tiny sparks of pleasure through you, some reaching your belly and causing it to lurch and flip inside you. Letting your head loll back against the shower wall, you sigh and caress the back of Arthur’s head, weaving your fingers through his wet hair.

When he releases your breast and ventures lower as his hair slips from your fingers, your eyes flutter open, and you lift your head from the wall.

“A-Arthur,” you sigh. “What about… I thought you said—”

“Shh-shhh…” he mutters between kisses to your skin as his hands slide down your hips.

Surely he must know you mean to refer to his sentiment, that tonight was supposed to not be about one or the other, but both of you.

“Does this fit into your plan?” you ask.

In the middle of kissing your lower belly, he pulls back. With lifted brows and a flat affect, he answers, “Perfectly,” before hungrily returning his lips and tongue to your skin.

Smiling dazedly, you take liberty to reach both hands back into his hair as he goes on kissing you.

Arthur pauses above your pubic bone, beneath which he knows rests the central, womanly parts of you that will respond to all his loving touch, will coil with the heat of your climaxes, and will be relied upon to radiate pleasure to the rest of you. And he blesses it with a kiss.

As the shower’s stream falls steadily at his back, he stoops ever lower. He peppers your mons and vulva with kisses and parts you with his fingers.

At the first hot flick of his tongue, your breath catches. As you shut your eyes, your lashes saturate amidst the shower’s dew collecting atop your cheeks. He licks up your labia, and you keen, nearly sobbing when you rest your head back against the tile wall and whine, “Oh my God.”

You narrowly avoid squirming when you feel the heated slip of his tongue running against you, delving between your pillowy folds, feel his breath in a sigh of his own pleasure.

Arthur lifts your left thigh until your foot comes to rest on the stone shower seat and hears a growly moan seep from your chest as he dips his chin forward to take you with his tongue, entering you slowly, diligently. He sips at your abundant arousal, then slides his tongue up towards the apex of your sex. He finds your sweet, tender bud beautifully swollen and nearly thrumming with need for him. He swirls his tongue there and relishes in the outcry it elicits from you. It’s better than any music to him, and he can’t restrain his groan against your sex.

He brings the tips of his fingers to your margin, eager to feel each new rush of wetness—one of the best signs from your body that he’s pleasuring you well. He’s further aroused by your canal’s every flicker, by the tightening of your fingers in his hair, and your whimpered gasps. They nearly send him over, and he hurriedly pulls away and stands to his feet.

In a state of desperation and honed purpose, the two of you clamber for each other, hands scrambling and ragged breaths running away like stallions at a gallop. You come off the wall for him, and he turns you to stand before him, facing the shower head. You feel his chest at your back between your shoulder blades, feel the insistent stiffness of his length near your soft rear.

Taking a blessed moment for tenderness, you force yourself to slow and lean back into his solid form amidst the shower’s steam. You rest your head all the way back onto his shoulder, hoping for his mouth to meet yours. You swallow and gasp, your tongue clicking dryly as you hook an arm up around his neck.

“Arthur,” you whine, trying to press all your love and need for him into the simultaneously feeble and glorious shapes of words. “Oh, God, Arthur!”

Before you can say any more, his mouth fully covers yours. “I’m here, baby,” he says between kisses, though his lips never completely draw away from yours. “I’m right here with you.”

A cascade of moaned devotednesses falls from your mouths, each syllable overlied by the return of the other.

“Won’t ever leave me?”

“Never.”

“So good to me.”

“Mother of my child.”

“You’re my home.”

“My soul. ‘Ve told you that before.”

As your kisses halt, you simply nod, gazing into his eyes.

His head dips down again, and he begins to suckle your neck. When you next catch a glimpse of his mountain melt eyes, there’s a shimmer of wry, smiling light to them.

“You my baby?” he hums into your neck, a new playfulness in his tone.

“Yes,” you breath.

He trails his fingers to your side and digs them into a spot he knows very well is ticklish. A grin widens his mouth when your brief, squealed giggle doesn’t fail him.

“You were a downright woman tonight,” he says, his large hand beginning to slide more slowly than a stubborn, clinging water droplet down your chest, over the heavy swell of your breast, and down the front of your body.

“Proper vixen,” he says, his voice husky in your ear. “Had to dig my nails into my palms to keep from gettin’ hard all through dinner.”

You release a low, unctuous moan at the revelation, feeling all inhibitions leaving you completely and the pool of slick between your thighs warming deeply.

“Somethin’…ain’t quite fair about that… Doin’ that to a man,” he says, his ambling voice growing gruff and laden thickly with lust. “‘Specially one who loves you.”

Ever conscious of the torturously-paced lowering of his hand, you struggle to heed his words. You gulp as his hand finally, finally begins to reach your pubis.

“You know I need you, hm?”

You nod.

“Gonna let me show you?” As Arthur takes your mons into the pocket of his palm, he watches you from over your shoulder—watches the way your lips quiver when enraptured. And he is stricken by the gentle sincerity of your trust him, by the mere thought of having your body, sweetly warm and swollen with need, in his hands. He lowers his mouth closer to your ear and nearly growls, “Gonna let me take you?”

You nod hurriedly, chest heaving. Your hissed breath hitches at the sensation of his other hand reaching beneath your buttocks and lower, to the folds of your femininity, heated and tender and swollen, slick with arousal, and more than ready—famished with need for him.

“I just—” you huff and swallow, trying to collect your thoughts amidst the haze of passionate desire just enough to voice your concern for him as you begin to straighten. “Just want to make sure to take care of you too.”

You hear him chuckle with affection behind you. “You are, darlin’.”

Exhaling a soft, bleary whimper, you lower your head and shift your feet to stand with parted legs.

With one hand below your ass, he spreads your labia and dips his fingers into you, and with his other hand, he begins to stroke your clit in loving, syrupy circles. For a moment, the fingers of both hands brush each other between your legs. You shiver and mewl at his masterful handling.

His chest presses snugly against your back, and you feel him languidly enter you. A loud, feral groan escapes you both. You lean forward and reach one hand to the tile wall before you to brace yourself.

He clutches you to him, outstretched fingers pressing into the soft flesh of your lower belly. You both begin to slowly rock and jut, taking your time to delight in devouring every part of each other. Arthur’s hand that isn’t stroking your clit comes up to knead your breast. He kisses your shoulder, now covered with beads of dew. Before long, you’re both moaning and shouting in a sultry duet.

He fills you and reaches deeper with each undulating thrust. Together, one. In that reaching press of a joining, a voice. One without words, inarticulate and formless and spectral, yet communicating to your soul. Yes, I love you here, it says. In the depths of you. And, with each slaking heave: Yes, you mean something to me. Everything.

The overwhelming, intoxicating pleasure begins to reach your brain in a misty stupor. You lift your eyes and notice your hand upon the tile wall, splayed fingers squished tightly against the diamond-shaped inlay of smaller, transparent glass tiles, a shade of dark maple. Their shine winks at you mischievously from under your hand. On any other day, you would have hardly noticed them as you went about your mundane hygiene routine. But today they have become a naughty, scandalized witness to your steamy lovemaking.

With a glance to the glass door, you find scattered swipes through the tiny beads of mist clinging there—another evidence of your heated, rapacious coupling.

You moan and squeal in impassioned delight, each new outcry more desperate than the last. Shutting your eyes, you lift your face to feel the stray flecks of water on your skin. You listen to Arthur’s breathy moans, disbelieving expletives, and unconstrained mumbles of pleasure.

The thought briefly flutters through your mind—what you must sound like together, hidden in such an innocent place as the master bath shower, moans and cries slightly muffled amidst the soft sound of a steadily running stream—and your arousal heightens further. You mewl unintelligible endearments and encouragements to him, calling his name.

“Nah,” you suddenly hear him grind out in a breathy whisper. “Cm’ere.”

In one swift move, he indelicately turns you to stand with your back against the wall, facing him. There’s hardly any time lost as you gasp for breath and he wedges himself between your thighs, quickly sliding forward to bury himself inside you again.

Shuddering, you desperately reach for him, gripping the hair at the back of his head by the root and searching his mouth feverishly, keen to breath his every breath and hold him and feel his smothering love, his nearness bound tightly all around you. It’s in the midst of this fever that you come to realize he’d needed the very same.

With your mouth dropped open and chest heaving wildly, you let your eyes close and feel the warmth of his skin between your thighs, feel his flesh inside you. With roaming hands, you chart a course over the dips of muscle in his back, smooth a path down the dimples above his rear, savor the slick sheen over the pronounced curves of his plump, firm ass—the same ass that flexes and contracts with each sweet, rolling thrust into you.

Somehow, even in this moment, something inside your heart and mind, some niggling frailty, seems to still wish you could be all to him that he is to you—set apart, miraculous in your world, adored. Love of your life.

But maybe there are no such things in the real world.

“I love you,” he breathes with a moan, face hidden in your neck. The bulk of his chest expands, and he exhales it again.

Your face nearly crumples with the sheer force of emotions that crash over you like a surging whitecap. With a strangled, stuttered laugh, you confess it in return to him.

He lifts his face and cradles the top of your wet head in his large hand. “Love of my life,” he whispers before covering your mouth with his own.

The next minutes are a sweltering fit of rolling, jutting hips and clasped fists as you both enter a near frenzy to bring the other to climax. Who will be filled with a leaden plume of delight, will die first, and be revived to shepherd the other?

Your heart thrums a fiery, spasmodic beat. The sounds of your ragged gasps and Arthur’s moans fill the shower. It’s not long and your whole body is clutching tightly to his, clenching with the immediate demand of ecstasy, gripped by the throes of some violently inversive vacuum, desperate to house a proffered portion of his soul within yours. Two vessels pouring back and forth into each other, the smoky incense of life breathed from mouth to nostrils.

Arthur jerks and convulses, and there it is: starlight. That splintered smear of luminosity he’d missed in the murky penumbra of the city tonight, he’s found here with you.

You’re reeling with the massive flood of pleasure that overtakes and saturates you, contracting and groaning with it, and Arthur is almost hiccupping and whining at the tail end of each gasped breath as he releases himself inside you.

Cemented together, you hold him secure as he quivers and trembles against you. Panting hard, bodies a mirror to the other as parts of you both unfurl, one piece at a time, like petals. You stroke his back and feel the rush of his breath against your collarbone. With open hands, you press the pads at the base of your fingers to his cheekbones and gently lift his face from its hiding place. As he emerges, you pull your chin back to look at him and find that his eyelids are lowered. But his eyes are clear and bright, a sated glimmer resting in the irises as a smile—small, but confident and strong—begins to tug at the corners of his mouth. You feel your chest effervesce with quiet rejoicing at the sight, and you press several kisses to his cheeks and the corners of his lips.

When he receives your mouth to his, the grinning kiss is messy and shining with saliva, lips and tongues knitted by a soft, rested laziness.

After a few minutes, Arthur twists the shower’s nozzle. He admires the darkened tendrils of hair stuck to the curve of your neck in beautifully slender waves as the water sluices down the curves of your form in hastened rivulets. As the stream dissipates, you remain clasped together, arms around each other and body to body. When Arthur steps from the shower, you step with him, one leg at a time. You’re held fast to him, letting no space come between you. The thought occurs to him then that the way you cling to each other is both very childlike, and very adult, somehow.

Taking a towel from the rack, Arthur makes measly efforts to dry you both while you remain in each other’s tight embrace. Still holding onto each other, you clunkily walk together to the bed and flop down.

For a long time, you remain quiet, feeling the dew of leftover water droplets gradually cool atop your skin and dry against the sheets. He’s on his back, and you’re lying belly down, halfway overtop of him, chin perched on his chest, one arm curled up with its hand resting on his pectoral, one leg woven between his. One of his arms cradles you, pressed between you and the mattress, hand limp at the small of your back, fingers thoughtlessly tracing patterns into your velvety skin.

A moment of perfect slowness, peace. Love.

Arthur reaches up to brush the hair away from your forehead, closing his eyes and opening them to simply look at you.

He folds his free arm up behind his head, and you watch as his eyes venture away for a few moments, up at the ceiling. A few minutes pass, and you listen to his breathing, his swallowing.

“I wonder…” he suddenly begins, his voice quiet.

“What Grace is doing,” you say together, and you both chuckle when you glance into each other’s knowing eyes.

Your head bobs where your chin rests on his chest as you speak. “Think she’s sleeping?”

“Yeah,” he responds softly, tenderly. “Yeah, I do.”

At once, you’re seized by a depth of something raw and incalculable, even fearsome in its size, and you gulp it enough to scoot up just a bit, until you can gaze down into his face. He shifts and looks back into your squinting eyes. You reach up and run your fingertips over his crows’ feet, down his cheek bone, over the outermost borders of his mouth, and across his plump bottom lip.

“I love you,” you breathe, and your voice around the confession is small and hoarse.

A clearness, a staidness, filters over his features. “I love you more than life,” he says, addressing you by name. There is no duplicity or hesitation in his firm voice, and his arresting gaze is sure.

You lean down for his waiting mouth, and he reaches to brush a thumb across your cheek during the gently lissome kiss.

You nestle back down into the sure cleft of his embrace, resting your cheek on his chest. He strokes his big fingers over your temple, attempting to swipe your hair behind your ear, or otherwise dually caress and assure you in his funnily insouciant and sweetly masculine way.

After a few more minutes of quiet, a wry smirk begins to creep onto your mouth at the return of a certain thought, and you venture it aloud. “That was really good, by the way.”

Your smirk blooms into a shimmering grin at the rumble of the chest beneath you in response.

“That was damn good, is what that was,” chortles your lecherous lothario, his deep voice lined thickly with gratified gravel.

Still beaming, you glance up at him as he laughs, because you’re more than thrilled to be debauched by your debonair husband, who clearly still loves you and still wants you every day.

When you return your cheek to his chest, you add mischievously in an intentionally sultry and groggy tone, “My new favorite place.”

The laugh in his chest rattles you again.

“Shower,” he hisses with a snicker.

After a few minutes of stillness, he begins to shift underneath you.

“Well then,” he mumbles saucily, producing the beginnings of a low giggle in you as he tumbles and rotates the two of you until you’re beneath him and he’s splayed over you, kissing your lips and neck. “I’ll just have to remind you how good a place the bed can be.”

His spirit is more exultant than those of the richest of kings at the way your giggle trills, loud and sweeter than any honey, at his quipped tease and at the love that flows through all his sugared, caressing touches.

a/n: Comments are genuinely always welcome, and re-blogs are very, very much appreciated. A sincere thank-you for taking the time to read and for your gracious support.

Taglist: @shootybangbang @photo1030 @appalachiancowboy99 @clevergirl74 @cookiesandcreaminthetardis @subpopizzy @cassietrn

[targaryenrealnessdarling]

A Duet of Fire and Fate

Part Two | Series Masterlist

Summary: the monotonous days of practice are starting to grate, but made more complicated by the pianist's lingering words | Word Count: 4.3k~ | Warnings: sexual tension 😘

“Aemond, darling, please…” Alicent pleaded behind the closed door of his bedroom, her worried, motherly voice muffled through the thick frame, “it's not the end of the world, love, okay?”

He'd been in the exact same spot for several hours, his knee bouncing irritably and impatiently. He closed his eyes, as if trying to put on the image of being completely calm. But his hands were clasped painfully, fingertips sore from practice, and he could barely hear his mother through the door anyway, with the large headphones pressed to his ears, with the uncomfortable sting of the cello raking into his brain.

His heart was racing with stress, playing the same bit of ‘Cello Concerto' over and over again, trying to find the part where Otto had incessantly pressured him to perfect it. Wrong timing. Wrong tune. Incorrect finger placement.

Each time he stumbled over the same tricky passage, his frustration mounted. The melody was supposed to soar, but all he could feel was the grinding pressure to not mess up, to not let Otto down, to not disappoint his mother who believed so fervently in his talent.

Where in others, he witnessed nurture in the form of pride, loving gestures and unconditional support. He could see no merit in it. Love to Aemond was tight and oppressive, and weighty on his shoulders.

The door to his room creaked open slightly, and his mother’s voice, muffled and distant through the noise-canceling headphones, attempted to break through the barrier of sound. "Aemond, dinner," she called, her tone gentle yet persistent.

He barely glanced up, giving a slight shake of his head. The outside world, even the simple call to dinner, felt like an unwelcome intrusion.

"Aemond, please," she tried again, her voice firmer now. A choice of tone usually reserved solely for Aegon. "You need to eat. You’ve been at this for hours.”

Aemond cradled his cello gently between his knees, the hum of the ensemble drifted in the air, each musician fine-tuned to perfection with scales and snippets of melodies to practice. But despite this, Aemond found his thoughts elsewhere, his memories blurring into his current reality, where a new challenge in the form of the pianist had emerged.

With every draw of his bow across the strings as if he were an artist gliding a paint-slick brush over canvas, Aemond found his concentration fragmenting. His thoughts were pulled back to the pianist’s effortless expression, her ability to blend technical mastery with palpable emotion. A stark contrast to his own methodical, disciplined approach.

She irked him. She intrigued him. Two feelings which should not hold hands in Aemond's black and white reality. Every single thing his musical education had deemed secondary, she challenged. In the brief moments where he could witness her artistry himself, her performances always lingered, whereas his own, for all its precision, rarely achieved.

“Focus, Aemond.”

Otto's chide was soft and yet audible to everyone. It echoed a long and tired reminder of years past. And he found himself unable to pull back the glare that his own grandfather shot first down the bridge of his nose.

Practice ended how it often had, disappointed and dejected. He could no longer think of her or the words she'd said in their last encounter without feeling the frustration thud in his heart. After all, could the skills she so easily spoke about even be learned?

He longed to see what she saw, how she felt when she played.

The route back to Aemond's apartment was mentally tiring, and the frustration that usually ebbed away with every step, somehow lingered, and permeated throughout his body. For some time, playing the cello had not been met with accomplishment, now more often than not, met with a long and exhausting sense that he could be better.

That is what Alys had said as well, a few weeks ago, when she'd packed up the rest of her things, still pink in the face from Aemond's lips and tongue having pleasured her between her thighs to completion. The difference between her attitude and her parting words almost gave him emotional whiplash.

“I can't be the one to distract you. Not when you need to focus. Not when you have the opportunity to be great.”

Her voice was firm. And there was no room for argument or rebuttal. When Alys said something had to be how it was, that was it. Aemond had watched silently, scrubbing a hand over his face at the closed door of his apartment. He wanted to argue that if Alys had in fact cared that she'd be distracting him, her lack of presence would be just that.

How often now had he been sinking between her thighs, just to think of something else?

He never thought himself a sex addict, and yet the idea of going so long without it, with the show yet months away, made him angry to think how affected he was by it. This was hypocrisy the likes of his brother, Aegon, would love to shove in his face, he just knew it.

The stone square that choked the Grand Sept was speckled with light through the trees, rustling in a manner some would have found comforting. Couples kissed near the fountain, artists drew for money, set up with a view of the Sept while onlookers watched with joy, and children tripped and squabbled through the various nooks that had once marked the spot of a great dynasty.

This was where he waited, taking in the view and the gentle, somewhat melancholic lull of people's lives go past him without a blink. It was an hour before he'd have to traverse back the way he came for his personal booking, to practice the pieces he so desperately wanted to perfect. 

During the day, his phone was off. Nothing was more important than what he deemed his life's work.

With a soft sigh, he sat on the wall, watching the square empty as afternoons drew in, his seeing eye following longingly at a brother and sister, who must have had the same age gap he and Aegon had, chasing one another on the cobbled path. Their squeals of glee and bright, happy faces stirred something heavy in his chest.

Had he ever felt as carefree as that. Had he ever felt like a child. Or had he been a grown man for so long.

His thoughts drifted to his own childhood. He would stand stiff and rigid at recitals, looking out to the expectant gaze of his mother, her burning pride gazing into him. There, there was no room for carefree joy akin to the brother sister chasing each other through the square. His childhood, if it could be called that, was dominated by routine and scales, not play and abandon.

He glances at the golden ticking hands of his watch and with a heaved sigh, lifts his cello case to trudge back along the cobblestones to the music school, feeling the familiar pull of responsibilities. Yet, something about the moment nagged at him, a sense of loss for experiences never had, for a childhood spent in service to a future that demanded everything.

With a heaved sigh and another trudge through the now darkened halls of his music college, Aemond pushed open the door, expecting a deep, sullen and wooden silence. Only to be greeted, or rather, whatever the negative version to being ‘greeted’ is, by the sound of the delicate, light twinkle of piano keys. 

He watched at first with a sense of both unease and interest as she played, her face partly hidden by the locks of hair that had fallen between her concentrated brows. He couldn’t even really see her playing, but could feel the sensitivity of her fingers on the black and white keys, the piece melancholic. 

Aemond willed the crease between his brows, attempting to feign disappointment between his awe. 

“You’re in the room I booked.”

Her eyes pierced the darkness between the opening of the grand piano, searing a memory into his mind through her vibrant gaze. At first, she seemed surprised at not being alone, and then her features settled, and he saw the wrinkles at the corner of one of them that made it clear that she smirked at seeing his annoyance.

She stood and closed the lid with a soft thud, pulling her bag over her shoulder, “yeah well unless you want to try moving a grand piano?” she smirks, raising one eyebrow as if daring him to reply.

Aemond exhaled sharply through his nose, setting his cello case against a nearby chair, conceding the point without words.

 “Didn’t think so,” she replied in a jokey manner, smiling down as she organised her sheet music into a neat satchel bag at her side.

While she wasn't looking, he found himself watching her, for no particular reason. There was something about the way she moved, the confidence she exuded even in the simplest of actions, that intrigued him. It wasn’t just curiosity about her attire or a superficial interest, he found himself wondering about the depth of her character, about the source of her fearless demeanour. If his stolen looks were not to see what she was wearing today, then perhaps to see if he could glimpse into her soul for just a moment, to see where she got her fucking audacity from. 

He sat to prepare his cello, running his middle finger over the bow strings, the density of them feeling somewhat satisfying against his calloused tips.

“You’re not going to lecture me about how I need to… ‘make love to my music’, or some shit like that?”

She chuckled softly, a sound that seemed to resonate a little too deeply within him. “What you do with your cello in your alone time is none of my business,” she quipped without looking up, her voice light yet laden with a hint of mischief.

“Hmm.”

The air between them was charged with an unspoken tension, a dance of mutual curiosity and veiled interest. As she packed up her things, Aemond found himself unwilling to break the moment, his usual reserve shaken by her presence. There was something about her, a boldness, an unapologetic embrace of her own talent and identity, that challenged him, that made him question his own guarded nature.

As she slung her bag over her shoulder, ready to leave, she paused, glancing back at Aemond who was methodically preparing his cello. A thought seemed to strike her, and her eyes lingered on him, curious and considering.

"Actually, do you mind if I stay a bit longer to listen?" she asked, her tone casual but with an underlying sincerity that caught Aemond off guard.

Aemond felt a mixture of apprehension and pride swell within him. He was used to accolades and audiences, but her request felt different, more personal, more significant. His initial instinct was to guard his practice, a time he usually kept private, a sacred space where he perfected his art away from prying eyes. Yet, something about her frank interest, devoid of any apparent ulterior motive, piqued his own curiosity about how she might perceive his music.

He was so taken off guard, as he was so often by her, that he forgot to say anything and simply nodded. He positioned his cello, settling it between his knees, his back straightening as he prepared to play. The invitation was extended on his terms, yet internally, he acknowledged a desire to impress her, to validate his approach and perhaps, to challenge her own musical opinions.

Her posture was relaxed, but attentive, as if she at least wanted to offer him the respect of knowing she was listening wholeheartedly. As Aemond drew the bow across the strings, the first notes resonated through the room, rich and precise. He chose a piece that showcased his technical prowess, a complex Bach suite that required meticulous control and deep concentration.

As he played, he found himself increasingly aware of her presence in the room. Each note was not just played for the sake of practice but as a demonstration of his skill and dedication to his craft. He watched her reaction out of the corner of his eye, her expressions subtle yet revealing. She seemed genuinely absorbed in the music, her earlier playful demeanour replaced by a focused seriousness that matched his own when he played.

The last draw of his bow brought those guarded walls back up again, the same ones that usually came tumbling down when he felt that in the throes of playing, feeling as if he was alone, were so easily crumbled. When the last note vibrated into silence, Aemond allowed himself a moment to gauge her reaction fully. She had leaned forward in her chair, as if she wanted to see his technique closer.

“You play with such precision,” she almost whispered, so quietly he strained to hear them. As if the words hadn’t been for him at all. 

He wasn’t certain how to place her review, negative or positive. And it aggravated him that even in her criticism, she was aggressively neutral. 

"Precision is crucial," he responded, his voice steady but his mind racing. He ached to say more, but alongside fearing he would appear defensive, he was unsure whether he wanted to invite criticism from her.

She paused, considering his question, her eyes locking with his. "Precision is your strength, no doubt," she began, her voice gaining confidence as she spoke. "But music, at least to me, also needs to breathe, to have a life of its own beyond the notes on the page. Your playing is impeccable, but it feels tightly controlled, almost constrained."

He quashed the rising irritation, or at least as much as he could, forcing himself to consider her words from a place of growth rather than confrontation. "So, you're suggesting I let go a little?" he asked, watching as she smiled at his confusion. 

“Maybe,” she said lightly, “allow it the freedom to surprise you. Control you. You might find you like it.”

He couldn’t help but dissect the slight flirtatiousness in her voice. And yet it was almost gentle, a stark contrast to the sharpness he was accustomed to in such discussions.

She broke the silence that seemed to bulge between them, “do you like it?”

His mother watched him eat, her gaze laden with a mix of pride and concern. The clink of cutlery filled the brief silences as she finally found the words.

"Do you enjoy it, Aemond?" she asked, her voice soft yet carrying weight. "The cello, I mean. Do you actually enjoy playing?"

Aemond paused, his fork suspended in mid-air. It was a question that had lingered at the edge of his consciousness, unvoiced and unanswered. Did he enjoy it, truly? Or had it become merely a vehicle for his ambition, a pathway that he had been set upon rather than one he had chosen?

"It sometimes feels like the only thing I know how to do," he admitted, and for someone so often so sure, his voice wavered. 

His mother’s hand reached across the table, her touch warm against his. "Music should be a source of joy, not just a pursuit of perfection," she reminded him gently. "It’s a gift, Aemond, meant to be cherished as much as honed."

Aemond paused, the question catching him off-guard. "Do I like what?" he asked, unsure if she was referring to her suggestion or something more implicit.

She bit back a small smile, and yet it still wormed its way onto her face, “losing control.”

Her question, laced with a hint of playfulness, hung in the air, and Aemond found himself momentarily lost for words. He was unaccustomed to such directness wrapped in…flirtation?

“Losing control?” he repeated, his mouth feeling a little dry. 

“Mmhm,” she hummed, “you hold the reins so tightly. Might be liberating to loosen…or even let go, once in a while?”

The atmosphere between them seemed to thicken, the words ‘losing control’ echoing not just through the room but through Aemond’s thoughts, disrupting his usual composure.

Aemond shifted slightly, the concept of loosening his grip, both metaphorically on his music and literally in his life, seemed to resonate deeper than he anticipated. "And you think that's something I need?" he asked, his voice lower, the hint of a challenge lacing his words.

She didn’t move an inch, but her presence seemed more pronounced. The subtle scent of her perfume mixed with the mustiness of the old practice room created a contrast that was oddly intoxicating. "Isn't it?" she countered softly, her gaze steady on his.

The air between them was palpable now, her every word pulling at something he usually kept well guarded. His heart beat a rhythm almost too pronounced, mirroring the tension that seemed to pulse through the space.

Clasping her bag closed, she stood, "Music is about feeling, about passion. It’s not just the notes, but the spaces between them, the breaths, the moments of surrender.”

Aemond’s response was caught in his throat as he absorbed her words, her proximity, the undeniable tension that seemed to dance around them like the very music she spoke of. How the hell did she do that?

She allowed herself a cheeky smile, one that reached her eyes so quickly that with those alone he would know she was amused, ��maybe you should surrender to it sometimes.”

A part of him wanted to dismiss her words, to reinforce the walls he had built around his methods and beliefs. After all, she was the face of his competition, a symbol of the school he had been conditioned to outperform. Yet, the way she spoke about music, with such a raw, inviting passion, made it impossible to ignore the pull he felt towards her ideas, towards her. The rivalry was supposed to be clear-cut, a battle of schools and skills. But with her, it blurred into something messier, charged with an undercurrent of something he couldn’t quite name but felt all too powerfully.

It was a dangerous mix. 

To admit she affected him would mean opening a door he was adamant to firmly keep shut tight. One that could lead to complications. Not even in terms of the competition. But for his prized discipline. She watched his expression to her words closely, her eyes reflecting a glint of knowing. He desperately wanted to hate her for it. To remind her that she was no better than him simply because she wasn’t plagued with the need for perfection like he was. That she, beyond the walls of the music school she seemed to haunt, could leave her instrument within them. Whereas Aemond was forced to carry his cello on his shoulders, to support its heavy toll on him, and that every step he took, it took more. 

It seemed like she was going to say more, as her lips parted. But as quickly as they did, they closed softly again, and that enigmatic smile returned. 

Fuck her. 

When Aegon had been in his early twenties, he’d moaned and groaned on the sofa, his phone slobbed to one side, complaining that the girl he was currently texting was verbally edging him. Aemond had merely grimaced, finding his brother's frustration more amusing than relatable.

But now he felt that aggravation of it. The fact that she knew he was hanging on every word, and still chose not to say anything, to leave thoughts dangling in the charged air between them.

She gave him a final nod, a silent acknowledgment of the unspoken words and tensions that lingered, then turned and walked away. It was only when she was halfway down the hallway that the perfect response sprang to his mind, but by then it was too late. All he could do was watch her retreating form disappear into the dim, wooden corridor. 

In that moment, Aemond felt like a modern-day Eurydice, fading into the shadows, but with a twist, this time, Eurydice longed for Orpheus to look back. Aemond knew that if she turned, if she offered him one last look, it would mean stepping back into a narrative filled with complexities and perhaps inevitable loss. Yet, he craved that backward glance, a sign that their fleeting connection meant as much to her as it did to him, even if it meant returning to the shadows.

Aemond tried to refocus on his practice as he returned to the solitude of the music room. He played mechanically, his usual precision present but the soul of the music notably absent. The strings didn't sing; they just spoke in monotonous tones. With more than half of his allotted practice time remaining, he packed up his cello, and resisted the urge to hurl it across the room.

Driven by a need for something more tangible, more human than the cold wood and strings of his cello, Aemond left the practice room abruptly.

No more than 15 minutes later, he stood at the smirking figure of Alys Rivers, leaning against her door frame, arms crossed and wearing delicate lacy sleepwear, as if she could supernaturally anticipate that he would come to her.

Her eyes gleamed with a mix of amusement and satisfaction, seeing him slightly dishevelled, a rare break in his usually composed demeanour.

“I don't want to fucking hear it.” 

Alys, unfazed by his sharpness, raised an eyebrow and smiled wryly, stepping aside to let him in. Her reaction was more teasing than concerned, her amusement clear in her casual posture. 

"Where?" Aemond's voice was blunt, his usual grace undercut by a barely contained frustration.

"The bed," Alys responded with a flick of her head toward the bedroom, her smirk deepening as she watched him stride ahead.

As he passed her, she couldn't resist adding, "Need some instructions, or do you remember the way?"

Aemond didn't respond, his back to her as he moved into the bedroom. Alys followed at a leisurely pace, her demeanour confident, almost cocky. She leaned against the doorframe, watching as he shed his jacket with quick, jerky movements.

Alys pushed off from the doorframe and walked over to him, her steps deliberate. "Something's happened-," she said, reaching out to smooth the crease between his brows with her thumb, her touch light but insistent.

He caught her wrist, his grip firm. "I said I don't want to fucking hear it," he retorted, his voice low and strained.

Alys met his gaze, her expression partly unreadable. "Okay," she conceded, pulling her hand back gently. She gestured towards the bed. "Show me what you need.”

As Alys led him toward the bed, Aemond followed mechanically. His movements were automatic, driven by habit more than desire. Pulling her hips towards him and slinging her legs over his shoulders was like second nature at this point. Alys was warm beneath him, her body responding in all the familiar ways, her breaths, her touches, her sighs all scripted from past encounters. Yet, as Aemond moved with her, his mind was elsewhere, disengaged from the act. 

The room was silent except for the soft rustle of sheets and the muted sounds of their closeness, but inside Aemond, a storm was brewing. The physical motions were all correct, but the emotional undercurrents were misaligned, leaving him feeling even more isolated as they moved together. Alys seemed not to notice, or if she did, she chose not to address it, caught up perhaps in her own interpretation of their actions.

Afterward, as Alys settled beside him, her breathing even and content, Aemond lay awake, staring at the ceiling. She was close, yet he felt miles away, trapped in a cycle that provided physical release but no real solace.

Sensing his detachment, Alys’ voice broke through the silence, “you okay?”

Aemond didn't answer. Instead, he gently disentangled himself from her and slid off the bed. His movements were smooth but distant, as if he was pulling away from more than just the physical proximity, leaving the bedroom without so much of a backward glance at Alys, barely wounded from his dismissal, naked in bed. Alys watched him go, her expression resigned. She remained silent, making no move to follow him or press him further.

In the living room, Aemond walked straight to the mini-bar and poured himself a drink, his hands mechanically tilting the bottle, the familiar clink of ice soothing his frayed nerves. He took a deep sip, letting the liquid burn down his throat, hoping it would wash away the disquiet clinging to him.

As he turned, his gaze fell on the grand piano sitting under the low light in the corner of the room. It was an elegant piece, one that Alys had long forgotten, now sitting idly and out of tune. The dust gathered in its crevices spoke volumes of its neglect, a stark contrast to the careful maintenance of instruments at his own school.

The piano, much like himself tonight, felt abandoned, left to stand as a mere piece of furniture rather than the vibrant instrument it was intended to be. Compelled by a sudden urge, he approached it, his fingers running along the cool, smooth surface of its keys, each one silent and stiff from disuse. Aemond pressed a key tentatively, listening to the dull thud that echoed back, as if to taunt him. 

For a brief moment, he considered the task of tuning it, of bringing it back to life. It seemed a fitting metaphor for what he needed himself, a realignment, a correction of the discord that had crept into his own life and art.

As Aemond's fingers wandered across the piano keys, his thoughts meandered back to the pianist from the opposing school. She had described music as a living entity, one that breathed and moved, pulsating with the emotions of its player. This concept lingered in his mind as he contemplated the neglected piano before him. He wondered how she would react to such a forlorn instrument. Would she feel compelled to restore it, to draw breath back into its worn frame and let it sing once more? 

Just as he secretly hoped she might rekindle something within him, a spark long subdued under the weight of discipline and expectation.

General Taglist: @aemondsfavouritebastard @bellstwd @blackswxnn @blairfox04 @buckybarnesb-tch

@castellomargot @emmaisafictionwhore @hb8301 @jamespotterismydaddy @justbelljust

@minholy223 @mochi-rose @natty2017 @nenelysian @primonizzutto

@qyburnsghost @randomdragonfires @risefallrise @thelittleswanao3 @theoneeyedprince

[feroluce]

Lucid Dreamer (1/2)

part 2

Gepard notices that it's been. Quiet lately. Like weirdly quiet. TOO quiet. He hasn't seen Sampo Koski in almost a week, which is about the longest he's ever been absent. And he is NOT worried. He's not! So what if they've been getting along more lately! So what if Gepard sometimes looks for him in his favorite hiding places! So what if he's been dreaming about blue hair and green eyes! It's nothing!!

But they're….strange, these dreams. Gepard doesn't usually remember what he's dreamt. It's out of his mind seconds within waking up. But these stick with him, they won't leave him be, they feel different somehow.

He dreams of Sampo bringing food to the frontlines and eating breakfast in his tent with him. Sampo always sneaks him extras. He dreams of chasing Sampo through the alleyways, Sampo sometimes letting himself be caught, Gepard sometimes catching him, and trying to ignore how it feels more like a game now more than anything else. He even dreams that Sampo tags along with him on one of his few civilian days. Sampo runs errands with him, prattles about inane bullshit while Gepard picks out groceries for the week, drags Gepard into some bakery he's never been to but he thinks Serval mentioned once.

And sometimes, it feels so close to reality, that Gepard half expects to see Sampo, shamelessly swaggering into the frontlines with all the guards' breakfast like his wanted poster wasn't only recently taken off the walls of Belobog. He's disappointed when it's always someone else instead. He tells himself his disappointment is ridiculous and if Sampo wants to go prowl around the Snow Plains or wherever he is, then fine. It's not any of his business.

…But it IS his job to investigate any unusual criminal activity relating to the frontlines. And the frontlines are Sampo's usual haunting grounds, and this is unusual activity, and Sampo IS technically a criminal, so it is absolutely part of his duty to look into this - is what Gepard tells himself the entire tram ride down into the Underground.

Natasha tells him he's gone, and Gepard has to steel himself. He knew Sampo made enemies wherever he went, there are a lot of people who would love his head on a platter, but he didn't think-

Natasha corrects him that she means literally gone. As in off-planet. Sampo always leaves her a note before he goes anywhere, so she knows not to expect any supply runs from him. He should be back in exactly two weeks. Thank the Preservation.

Gepard goes back home. He waits.

The uneasiness doesn't leave him.

"Where did you go?" Sampo stops dead in the middle of some story about Seele, and how you'd think someone with as blunt a mouth as her wouldn't have so much trouble asking a woman out, even if that woman IS the Supreme Guardian, and stares at him. He nearly fumbles his cigarette.

"Ahaha, what do you mean, I'm right here?" Sampo smiles at him the same way he always does. Gepard has no idea why he asked. It just popped out. He can never tell when Sampo is lying, anyway.

"I don't know. I feel like I haven't seen you in a long time." Gepard idly mouths at his own cigarette. He almost never smokes, but he wants to ration their stocks of Blizzard Immunity, and it helps with the cold. It's seemed colder lately, for some reason.

Gepard flicks his lighter once, twice, sighs at the third time because a metal prosthetic and thick gloves make the damn things so difficult. Sampo reaches over and wordlessly kisses the end of his cigarette to Gepard's, lighting it. "Thank you."

Nothing happens for almost a full 30 seconds. Something churns behind Gepard's ribcage. Because Sampo never leaves a "thank you" hanging. This is the part where he gives his spiel about how helpful and kind he is and Gepard either brings up how long his rap sheet was before Bronya helped clear his name, or just stares deadpan because seeing Sampo squirm is weirdly satisfying.

"…I'll be back in one more week."

Gepard jolts awake in his cot, mouth dry and eyes bleary.

The hell.

The next dream he has, Sampo looks tired. Sometimes he seems normal. Sometimes he says strange things, like how he wishes he'd gone to some restaurant in Belobog. Ate his favorite food more recently. Brought something with him. Gepard asks why he can't do that now. Where would he bring something? Sampo only shrugs. His rebuttals have less energy.

Gepard doesn't know if he wants to dream more, or less.

He ticks down the days on his calendar. Natasha hasn't told him any different. She promised she would if she got any kind of message. Sampo returns tomorrow, from whatever vacation or seedy business dealings he's been off having. He is not excited about it. He is not looking forward to it. He's not!!

Gepard falls asleep late that night, unable to settle. He dreams again.

He's alone. There are tons of people everywhere, the frontlines are always crowded. But he's alone. They all pass right by him as though he were a ghost. Gepard starts to walk before he realizes his feet are even moving.

He checks the trashcans in the dead end alley. He checks the supply crates that someone always stacks too high because they don't feel like finding more space for them. He pauses to check the soldiers that march past him, watching their footprints in the snow.

He finally finds Sampo on the rooftop along the northernmost wall, the one that looks out over the plains, towards Everwinter Hill, towards where the Stellaron had once been kept. With a full moon and an entire land of white snow, Gepard can almost see clear out to the horizon.

"Found you." Sampo stiffens, and Gepard is almost prepared for him to sprint off the roof. He doesn't. But he doesn't relax either. Gepard sits down next to him and stares out at the wastelands.

"…I fucked up." It wasn't what Gepard had been expecting. Sampo never 'fucks up,' Sampo just gets into incidents that are entirely, supposedly, not his fault and that he just happens to always be within the vicinity of.

"What did you do now?" It must be really bad if Sampo is coming to the Silvermanes for protection.

Instead, Sampo ignores his question completely. "See out over there? Right on the other side of that mountain. There's a safe house that way. It's hidden under a lot of snow and dead trees, but it's there. And in that safe house is a box full of letters. I need you to deliver those letters for me."

Gepard's brow furrows. It's a weird favor to ask. Sampo would never tell anyone where his hidden safehouses were. It defeated the whole purpose of a hidden safe house.

Something is wrong, something is really really wrong.

Gepard turns back to look at him again and startles, all of his questions dying in his throat, because the entire left side of Sampo's head is suddenly matted down, dark and sticky, his skin is dyed red red red-

"In three more months, there's gonna be something big happening." Gepard grabs Sampo's hand and it feels slick and warm against his palm. "I won't be here. So I need you to do my end of things for me." Gepard tries to keep hold, but something is fading, something is slowing, the sun is coming up but the colors are all wrong, everything feels like encroaching fog, Sampo's hand slides right through his. "I was gonna come back with my mask to finish setting the stage, but…" Gepard makes a frantic grab for Sampo's wrist, the air twists, he comes back empty-handed. "They have you. And you're the Iron Wall of Belobog. So it'll be ok."

Gepard finally manages to find his grip, snatches the front of Sampo's dark wet jacket and yanks him forward to hold onto him, and this close up, he can see it better, his colors are bleaching out, leaking outside the lines as if Sampo will become part of the background, as if he's fading into the strange fog that's been closing in on them. His fingers are already starting to feel empty again.

"Wake up."

Gepard jolts awake, uncurls his hands from where they're fisted in the blanket, scrubs the dampness off his face. Breathes. Breathes. Breathes. Today is supposed to be the day.

He throws on his civilian clothes, and he goes down to the shipyard the IPC had built. He finds a spot where he can see every person that returns to Belobog, and he waits.

And he waits and he waits and he waits.

No one he recognizes appears.

[maenecoon]

loose idea but kimchay fucking in a music studio

chay who's a small aspiring musician who does mainly pop/bright cute songs. he also fucking hates wik's guts, sneaking into wik's recording studio to snoop around. he swears, wik's voice cannot sound that good, it has to be the work of extreme auto tune or a ghost singer he's had shackled in the basement of his studio or something.

of course, wik finds him. or, wik is already there.

crowds chay into the recording booth, whispers into his ears, all breathy and sultry - chay gathers that it's hotter irl, somehow. chay, moaning and panting into the microphone as wik pounds into him.

and then, a few months later, when chay's finally convinced his company of an image change, wik publishes a new collaboration single. the recording, with chay's pants and heavy breathing, starting the song.

so many more shenanigans to ensue, like cockwarming wik while he writes his songs/finishes up producing, them having song camps/producing songs together, fucking in the studio some more, pop idol chay trying to teach wik tiktok challenges, having beef on twitter, etc 😂 would be funny!!

[abyssalmermaiden]

"Thank you..."

(with Odette of @ahollowgrave <3)

copying over my tags on Pigeon's post:

ghost Viola has been lonely for thousands of years-getting all dressed up for a fancy date with a woman as beautiful kind and genuine as Odette is something she would have enjoyed while she was alive- and it means even more to her now. Viola rarely gets truly nice things in any version of her story and this among the best and sweetest TTuTT <3 her ghost outfit would normally be what she died in but I'm saying that Odette's abilities and the love and care she offers allows Viola to view herself differently and that affects her appearance, even though she's dead Odette is helping her to have a present not just a past

[sheepiemc]

Seven Stupid Reasons to Summon a Demon

Reason #1: lonely

It was a day that started like any other. 

Your alarm went off (like always). 

You got ready for work (like always). 

You commuted (like always). 

You did your job for four hours (like always). 

Then, it was time for lunch. 

Normally, you opt to stay inside “the office” (or wherever it is that you work) and bring something from home to save money. But looking at your lunch — the same thing you eat almost every day — makes you sigh. 

You look out the window to the city down below. It was a gloomy morning, but now that it is midday, the sun is starting to shine through the clouds. A beam of sunlight lands on your skin and you enjoy the warmth. The ring on your finger catches the light and you look down at it. 

How ridiculous would it be to summon a demon to have lunch with you because you don’t want to eat alone? You banish the thought from your mind. You don’t want to disturb the demon you were thinking of; you are certain he has a lot on his plate (like always) and he wouldn’t appreciate being  bothered with something so trivial (like always). 

You sigh and look outside again. Maybe the fresh air will do you some good. You decide to spend your lunch break walking around downtown just because you can. Honestly, you don’t know why you don’t do this more often. You can find a lot of hidden gems this way. 

You wander around aimlessly before you happen upon a record store. It's just a little hole-in-the-wall place, mostly unassuming. When you step in, however, you're greeted by a music-lover's paradise. Multi-colored vinyl records, signed band posters, and album covers decorate the walls. The atmosphere is groovy and retro, speaking to a bygone era of funk and flower power. There’s even a disco ball hanging from the ceiling! You take in the scenery for a moment as you stand in the doorway. 

“‘Sup.” The guy behind the counter greets you without looking up. “If there’s anything you need help with or want to listen to let me know.” You nod, even though he isn’t looking at you, and go to explore the stacks. 

Your fingertips brush past rows and rows of records. You search all your favorite genres, looking out for your favorite bands, and find some gems. You don’t have a lot of money right now, so you can’t go crazy. You twist the ring on your finger as you contemplate what to get.

Actually, now that you think about it…

Maybe you can find something to add to your “special collection”. 

See, you were inspired by a certain demon to develop a “cursed” record collection of your own. Since cursed magical items are hard to come by on earth, whenever you find yourself in a place that sells records, you like to check out the classical music section for albums that feature, or are inspired by the devil. It's something you like to share with him and only him. After shuffling through the stacks, you find something you think will work. You smile impishly to yourself, proud of your new purchase.  

You make it through the rest of the workday thinking about the record. You aren't going to listen to it just yet; you like to share the experience with the devil himself. It's a good excuse to summon him from the Devildom — well, good enough for you anyway. You like to have a few more albums to listen to before you call him, so you don't feel as guilty for asking him to stay a bit longer. 

You take a deep breath when you finally arrive in your quiet room, in your now-still apartment. You place the record on top of the others and take a look around — empty, except for your cat, sleeping peacefully on your bed. You could invite friends over to fill the silence, but your friends are notoriously terrible at last-minute plans. You absentmindedly twist the ring on your finger. 

You need something to fill this oppressive quiet, your fingers itch and ache, you have to DO something. 

You have to play the piano. 

You go out to your living room, where you keep a digital piano. It’s a little fancier than a regular old keyboard but you live in a small apartment and you're not exactly rolling in it so it's the best you can do. 

The room is dark. 

You hate the silence. 

You sit at the bench and flex your fingers, hovering above the black and white keys. No sheet music, right now you just need to play your emotions. You play a low note and listen to it reverberate. 

Then a chord. 

Then another. 

You close your eyes and start improvising a melancholic melody over a haunting chord progression. You are so lost in what you’re creating you don't notice the blue light flooding the dark room. It’s gone almost as soon as it arrived and it brings with it a figure covered in shadow, a figure you also don’t notice. He stands tall in the center of your room, tilting his head to the side as he listens. Once he gathers what happened intuitively, he stands over you, proudly watching you pour your potent emotions into your playing. 

You strike a final chord and exhale loudly, ruminating on the final note. You gasp lightly when a teardrop you didn't notice falls from your face onto the keys. 

You nearly jump out of your skin when another chord is struck up the piano. The shadow figure reveals himself to be the very demon you were thinking about while playing. Lucifer doesn't look at you as he continues to play a lighter melody. Your hands jump away from the keys and press against the rapidly beating heart in your chest.

He continues to play, not yet sitting. His sketch sounds hopeful, almost as if to say, "I'm glad to have you with me again." He sneaks a glance at you and smirks, finally taking a seat on the bench next to you. You just watch him, absolutely mesmerized, still in shock that he's really in front of you. 

He stops playing and looks at the keys closest to you, a signal — it's your turn again. Your melody is more playful than moody this time, there's a lightness now that wasn’t there before. Lucifer responds with something firm and grounded. When it's your turn, you tickle your way closer to his side. He gets lower, too. You scoot closer. From the corner of your eye, you see him smile a little bit wider. In the middle of his turn, you start playing again and together you improvise a beautiful, colorful piece of music together, full of happiness and longing, celebrating each other. 

When you can’t contain your excitement any longer, you interrupt the song and throw your arms around him. The force of you throwing your entire body weight at him only pushes him over slightly — he’s quick to catch you in his arms, twisting his torso to face you. 

“I can’t believe you’re here,” you say into his neck. It comes out as barely a whisper. 

You feel more than hear the chuckle rumble in his chest. “You’re the one who summoned me here.” 

You pull back just enough to look at him. “Would you believe me if I said I didn’t do it on purpose?” 

He looks at the keys on the digital piano. “Something was calling out to me.” 

“I guess I’ve been kinda lonely today… And I was thinking about you… A lot…” 

Lucifer hums contentedly, stern lines on his face smoothing out. Obviously, he likes it when you stroke his ego. 

You roll your eyes playfully and bury your face in his neck again. “I’m sorry for summoning you by accident, I know you're very busy but…” You play with his tie. “Can you stay here a bit, with me?” 

Lucifer sighs softly. You steel yourself for the words you're sure will come out of his mouth, “I can’t” or “Not right now”. 

“MC, I don’t think you realize that I want to see you just as much as, if not more so than, you want to see me.” He traces his finger along your jaw and lifts your chin so that you're looking at him. “If I’ve made you think I feel otherwise, that is my fault and I must apologize.” 

You feel your heart skip a beat when the Avatar of Pride apologizes to you, a lowly human. You’re in such a state of shock, you don’t know what to say so Lucifer continues to fill the silence. “If I had the ability to summon you to my side whenever I wanted, I can’t say I wouldn’t abuse that power greatly.” 

His hand rests at the side of your face, thumb wiping another tear you didn’t even know fell. You got so used to that rowdy house in the Devildom, so full of people and chaos, that coming home to your quiet, little one-bedroom apartment in the human world every day has been wearing you down. More tears start to flow as the weight of your loneliness comes crashing down on you.

You hold him tighter and press your face into his shoulder, hiding in embarrassment. “I’m sorry, I’m such a mess,” you say, laughing.  

He chuckles. “Don’t apologize. I appreciate all aspects of you. Even when you are a mess.” 

You sit on the piano bench for what you wish was all eternity but is likely only about 10 minutes before you reluctantly untangle yourself from the demon you unwittingly called to this realm. 

“Well, since you're here…” You stand, pull him from the bench, and lead him to your bedroom… where you keep your records! You present him with the newest addition to your collection with a wide smile. 

He takes it from your hands and looks at the cover thoughtfully. He reads the title out loud, “The Mephisto Waltz & Other 'Satanic' Piano Music Of Franz Liszt - John Ogdon”. 

He looks back at you. “Interesting,” he says in the most uninterested tone. You laugh out loud, you thought he might like that. 

“Well, if you don’t want to listen to it, I can just-” You reach for the record but he pulls it out of your reach. 

“I never said that.” 

He walks over to your record player and carefully sets it up while you sit on the edge of your bed. When the music starts up, you're surprised by how fast-paced it is but you're still into it. Luci looks at your desk chair meaningfully then back at you. You scowl and shake your head slightly, tapping the edge of the bed next to you. He smiles and sits down beside you.

You lean against him, sneakily snaking your arms around his middle, and play with one of his hands. 

You feel him relax, almost imperceptibly, leaning into your touch. He chuckles, and softly says under his breath, “This brings back memories.” 

He closes his eyes and you lift your head to stare at him, left wondering whatever the hell he meant by that. You would ask, but he loves to be intentionally vague whenever you bring up his involvement in the lives of humans from the past. 

"This isn't what I thought this song would be," you quietly admit as you play with his gloved fingers. 

"Oh?" 

"It's called a waltz, so I thought, you know, we would be able to dance to it…"

"You wish to dance with me?" He says in a teasing tone, one that makes your face feel hot. 

"WELL, I JUST THOUGHT-"

"That would be fairly amusing…" He says, almost more to himself than to you.

He uses his free hand to lift your chin up so that you're looking at him. If your face wasn't red before, it definitely is now. 

"It was a silly idea, we don't-" 

"No, no. I believe I would like to dance with you as well." 

His smile is rather wolfish as he stands from your bed and pulls you up along with him. The next song on the record starts and it isn't very apt for a dance, either.

"The music-" You begin to protest before Lucifer snaps his finger and the record begins to glow with a blue light. A record scratch abruptly interrupts the music when Chopin's Waltz in A minor, B. 150 starts to flow through the speaker. 

He pulls your body to the proper position, one hand on your waist, the other cradling yours. Of course, he'll lead. You roll your eyes playfully. 

"Do you remember how to do this?" He asks, amused. 

"Pshh, of course I do," you say right before accidentally stepping on his foot. "Oop, sorry." 

He chuckles. "Follow my lead." 

And you do. You dance around your little room, only stepping on him a few more times before you get the hang of it again. ("It's been a long time, okay??") You twirl and pivot, avoiding tiny obstacles around your room, laughing when you attempt to take the lead by spinning him out and back into your arms. 

He finishes the dance by lifting you by the waist and spinning around. You giggle uncontrollably, feeling lighter than you have in months. When he brings you back down, you lace your hands together behind his neck and put your head on his shoulder. The music shifts to something soft that you can slow dance to. His arms tighten around your waist, holding you close as you sway together. 

“I really needed this,” you say. “I’ve missed you guys so much.”

You feel him stiffen slightly at the remark. You smile to yourself, delighted that something so small could affect him. 

You look up at him, “I’ve missed you most, of course.”

He smiles down at you and the affection you see in his eyes is so genuine, it embarrasses you. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, MC.”

You look down to hide your quickly reddening face. “I wish I could summon you more often but I know you’re very busy. I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important.”

“Oh, yes,” Lucifer hums, as if he has to think hard about what he was doing before this, “I believe I was in a meeting with Lord Diavolo.”

“Lord Diavolo!?” Your eyes widen with panic. You push yourself away to look him straight in his face, hoping he’s just teasing you. 

His wolfish grin returns as he smooths down a lock of hair that is out of place on your head. “Yes, but it was one of those frivolous meetings he likes to trick me into. ‘Oh, Lucifer, you must try this bottle of Demonus I found in the depths of the labyrinthine cellar.’ Nothing truly important, I promise.”

Relief quickly washes over you and you relax back into his embrace. “So... I get to keep you a little longer?” 

“Tonight?” His hold around you tightens. “You may keep me as long as you wish.”

[buggreawlthys]

Kawoshin week day 1, prompt "Duet"

[also illustration for my fic "Asuka & Kaworu: Angel Catchers": https://archiveofourown.org/works/54422578/chapters/137860021 ]

[pummedraws]

Commission done for Mdmevastra on AO3 for their fic! <3 It took me quite a while to finish it but I am finally done! :D Fang and her OC Builder!

[wrongcaitlyn]

i sent this to @wronghuntress earlier but just decided i should share this here too bc i've been having a very specific tyt scenario in my head all day

kayla posts a tiktok to please please please at the "i beg you don't embarrass me motherfucker" with the caption of "me when introducing literally anyone to my brother's friends"

and then nico duets it with like half his face showing with the caption "what does this mean kayla phoebe knowles"

and yes i did literally come up with her middle name just for this specific scenario

[justcallmesakira]

"Bittersweet lovebites"

Sypnosis: In which two people who were meant to be enemies, are deeply engraved in each other's hearts....

Dazai x pm!reader

Warnings: lots of suggestive jokes, half teaspoon of angst

Genre: heavily suggestive, romance

A/N: this is a fic heavily inspired by "cigarettes out the windows" and dangerously yours, the movie. The angst will come but for now it will be sweet romance stuff

Listen to! : Lovers rock -TV girl, Always forever -Cults, I wanna be yours -The arctic monkeys, Not allowed -TV girl, Better in the dark -Jordan, TV girl etc.

Dazai didn't thought he'd have to wait this long in the torture chambers for this long if anything he can always plan an easy escape. However this time it's different he was waiting for a certain someone.

A clack of heavy boots could be heard from that empty room of terror and long forgotten screams, not that it bothered the former executive. "What a place to meet up, isn't it" the husky voice teases "Dazai". The man's face lit up slightly with a smirk at the call of his name "Well well, belladonna! You really took the time to meet with your one and only love of your life!" he teasingly jokes with a small grin on his face as the silhouette of your body finally walked in the room where dazai was chained up to the wall. You stood in front of him with your hefty coat dangling on your shoulders.

"Love of my life? Oh please as if!" the woman in front of him laughs out, whether she meant it as a joke or whether they were words half from the heart, it really was a mystery since the remark was ignored. "Say say, do you enjoy seeing me in such a helpless way?" Dazai ultimately ignores your remark while grinning cheekily at your approach upon him. You were quite used to his dirty jokes, that's was one of the things anyone should get accustomed to if they really wanna be a part of this man's life. You snickered "I wonder if I do like seeing my dearest in such a way" you smirked with slight malice in which the man in front you just smiled. He was always like this--mysterious, one might say he's a simple cheery man but what goes on his mind stays there.

"It would be much much better if we switch places don't you think?" Dazai spurted out with a dirty look on his face which slightly shocked you but you kept it in with yourself. "The real question is if you can catch an executive like me. You may always have plans but I am an executive for a reason you know?" you said in contrast to his flirt or what you counted as one, right now it seemed like a competition on who can flirt the most."The let's try it here then!" you almost choked "Dazai, what the heck?! Absolutely not, being executed today for dating someone from an enemy organization is not on my schedule today!!" you were slightly paranoid about this which only made dazai laugh lightheartedly."Would you do it if you didn't have your 'precious title' and was just a simple mafio-" before he could go further you shouted but a bit quietly so no one knows about this dirty talk between you two "NO!"

You sighed and turned around to leave "I am sure you can leave without my help" you said with your back turned against the former executive.

"Boss will probably come here to persuade you to join back" you said with a more serious tone, you never knew why mori had such an obesesion with the brown haired man but you always tried keeping him away from mori,it was the last thing you persnally wanted to do. Dazai had a small smile on his face "I remember your teary face from the night I left,," memories flash through your mind for a second, those bittersweet flashbacks of you, Dazai and chuuya back in the mafia when you were teens "I barely cried that time you know, though I won't deny it did quite made me distraught,,," you say the last word quietly even though he was right.

"That's okay, I got to see your teary face on that specific night" you choked on your spit by his words, he really had to ruin those memories by his dirty jokes. The executive turn around with a face mixed with disgust and embarrassment. "Dazai I swear to god-anyways I have work to do" you uttered out to him, turning your head around him again to the staircase as you heard a click from the back your eyes glanced back, of course he unlocked the chains bounding him against the wall, those chains were nothing to the chains you bounded in his heart in those 2 empty years of his life.

As the man rotates his wrists you only sigh in his antics but then walk toward him with a darkened expression. "Hm? Already mis--"

Before he could tease further your lips clash against his, the tension which was in the room before now replacing with the astonished man melting in your sweet kiss, oh god he could taste a nice arousing smell in your mouth, something sweeter then chocolate.

You only grinned at his shocked face, you loved it when you caught him off guard. Dazai's face returned to normal instantly, he can't be vulnerable In front his lovely `enemy' can he?

"Now come on, I know a passage which leads all the way to the outside" you break the mini silence between the two of you as time was running short. Mori could come any time now.

Dazai ran with you while looking at you with a cheeky smile which you suddenly realized "Hey what's with t-that smile" laugh "No reason" you only sighed as you showed him the tunnel, looking here and there to check if there's anyone.

"Oh! by the way,, belladonna, remember once I make a remark I always accomplish it. So be careful when you enter home today!"

A/N: This will be a long FANFIC!! Hurray get down all comfy! guys bcs the next chaps will be long with slight suggestive themes and oh hohoho LOADS of Cigarettes out the windows angst!

Divider crds: @v6que , @chachachannah on Tumblr!

Reblogs and like are very much appreciated!

[rivetingrosie4]

Duet

(Part 1/2)

RDR2 | Arthur Morgan x Female Reader | Rating: Explicit | Part 2 | tumblr masterlist | Ao3

Summary: Arthur takes you out for a much-needed fancy date. Though you both thoroughly enjoy the whole evening, you’re both eager to get home and make love. When you finally arrive home, Arthur invites you to take a steamy shower with him.

Tags: modern au, post gang, romantic angst, romantic smut, loving marriage, hot date, parenthood, eventual shower sex

Chapter word count: 6,097

𑁦𐂂𑁦

This work is partially inspired by the following song lyrics. It’s been my sincere goal to capture both the spirit of the lyrics and the feel of the song's music in this work. Please consider giving this beautiful song a listen at the link below.

- Penny and Sparrow, “Duet”

It’s a starless night in the city. Arthur pulls the steering wheel to the right, and the city’s bright lights, stark in their atmospheric places, reflect in a swirling mirage off the black hood of his pickup.

There you are beside him, your still form a steady breath of soundness amidst the rushing streams of blurred people along each side of the vehicle.

He sits back in his seat and breathes it in deeply—your presence. He’s always hated coming to the city. Where the buildings grow taller and tighter together. Where the voice of the stars is hushed to muted, then silenced by the blaring insistence of humanity’s crush. Where strangers are forced into each other’s spaces. But with you, he feels none of it. Feels only that breath of soundness that floods and fills the inside of the truck cabin, here and now. That follows the two of you wherever you go.

So, what was once a loathsome chore to be avoided is a pleasure, with you. And he’d been eager to carry it out.

It had been long past due anyway. He can hardly remember the last time the two of you had gone out for a date. Which is a sin in itself. It must’ve been before the baby. Had to have been after the private little wedding. Too long ago, either way. He’s always wanted to keep the feelings of excitement and specialness alive anyway, to repel any atrophy that could creep into your relationship over time if either of you failed to notice. To make you know that he hasn’t tired of you. Never could. And enough has happened since then. So he’d made a point to finally take you out, and to make it a thing both easy and sure. Not to let it slip from the calendar. To assure you the baby would be taken care of, that everything would be.

He’d even enjoyed the easy familiarity of getting ready in the same rooms. The sounds and smells of your preparation. Your heady, sensuous perfume that so easily undid him like the tail of an old, ragged 3-ply strand of yarn. The sight of you leaning toward the mirror to clasp the sparkling black pearl and diamond cluster earrings that he’d gifted to you moons ago to your lobes before turning to him.

God, had you shown out. A tiny slip of a number. Black silk that drapes along your form like shimmering river water, its bias cut showing your every bodily curve and setting his nerves aflame. The straps that display your dogwood petal-soft skin and highlight the elegant outlines of your shoulders, straps that are sure to be slid away when he gets you home and secreted away, alone in the quiet. He’s only too eager help them off and to see the gown fall in one moment to the floor around your feet, transformed to nothing more than a heap of rippling satin without you to fill it.

It was something—not a wonder to him, but something—that you could still so easily make him so crazy. Inside, like a wild dog with his tongue hanging from his head. How you knew just what to do, to make him so. And did it with quiet simplicity.

Because the reality is he knows you. He knows more about you than he knows about anyone, things he couldn’t put into words if he tried, maybe even knows you better than yourself. And one thing he knows is how deeply, how painfully difficult it’s always been for you to let anyone see your skin and body. Knows the reasons, what you’ve lived through, both in yourself and from others. Knows the pressure put on you by the world and by yourself to be some form of perfection. Knows how you like to cover up with covert layers, with sleeves and baggy, flowing frills.

But without asking if he’d like it, without even a single word, you’d done it. Worn a dress this evening that makes his own knees and body turn to mountain lake melt. Shown off your scars and stretch marks and rolls. Put your deep trust in him and unyielding love for him on bright neon display, in a way only he could know.

Christ alive, the mere thought of your trust swells his heart full of love and sends him wild with pulsating desire and need. And there won’t be anything to keep him from you tonight.

Silent in your seat beside him, you watch the show of neon lights on the hood of the pickup as it rolls down the city streets.

It had gladdened you heartily when Arthur had invited you out on a date of his own volition, unprompted. You’d gotten to a place where such things weren’t remotely on your radar anymore. And the invitation alone had quickened things inside you, like the sparked flicker of an incipient flame. You’d smiled and agreed, and he’d smiled, and the moment had been like widened lungs amidst the ruddy, laborious muss of daily life.

And you’d so wanted to be good for him. In your own mind, had wanted to be something less messily human and more put together. To be something with its unsightly bits tucked away, something easily and naturally suave and gracefully sexy. Wanted to remind him that you still cherish him so deeply and still so dearly long to be and feel cherished by him, though behind your fears, you always already know you are.

But you’d seen a black silken slip dress in the back of your closet with the tag still on it. And you didn’t have any other reason to wear such a garment than for an imaginary sexy date, by which time you would have magically become a different person—one without gnarled scars on the backs of your shoulders left by body acne in years passed, or flab hanging from under your arms, or silvery stretch marks from gaining weight and losing it and gaining it and losing it again, or rolls of fat above your pubic bone.

You’d pulled it from the rack and run the pads of your fingers over its shine, knowing it would never see the light of day—or dark of night—if not now. Hoping that Arthur could still feel something physical for you in it. Finding in yourself ample trust in him, that even if he didn’t, he’d never, ever hurt you, and would only behave in a way to make you feel special.

So you’d tried it on and decided to leap.

And from the master bathroom, you’d stolen peeks to watch Arthur dress in the connected master bedroom. With his hair already pomaded and already dressed in his black slacks and white ribbed undershirt, he’d slid his arm into the sleeve of his crisp white button down, then the other arm, then had stood before the full-length cheval mirror and had tugged and straightened the collar before looking down and slipping each button into its hole, working upwards. Then he’d tucked his shirt neatly into his slacks and had snaked his black leather belt through the loops, finally buckling it closed with a faint jingle. Each movement, each sound, had unraveled you from warp and weft to mere fibers.

You’d told yourself you needed all this intel. Because you’d also seen when he’d turned away and flipped his wrist to unbutton each cuff, rolled his sleeves to the elbows, and checked his antique 1899 pocket watch before slipping it into his pocket. And then you’d heard the low, deep clacks of his brightly shining black dress shoes against the hardwood floor, and you’d seen the faintly pronounced ripple of a few muscles in his back through the white fabric and the way it was stretched by his broad shoulders, hard arms, and tapered waist when he moved. And you’d known you would be the one to undo each button and remove each article when you both returned home tonight.

Though after years, you know well the order of all the garments and undergarments he wears, as he knows yours.

And when you’d turned towards each other, him entering the bathroom to dab on cologne, you entering the bedroom to slip on your shoes, the expression on his face had been a memory you will cling to and wear like a jewel until the reaper calls to fetch you. It had turned your spine and knees to oil and had heated your chest and face as if with steam.

He wanted you. Good God, did he want you. One fractioned moment of a glimpse had been all it’d taken. And it had silently stolen your breath. He’d said something like how stunningly beautiful you are, though you can’t recall the exact words. Because his eyes and face had said much more, and you hadn’t wanted to miss it. Nor had you missed when he’d fought to softly smile and not appear so ready to have you.

How deeply and fully you’d wanted him too, just the same. Like a guttural pull to his physical form in your belly, in your throat. Its inexorable urgency would only prove to continue to snowball steadily throughout the night.

Then you’d toed past each other, and he’d donned the bay rum cologne that always makes you weak and wet and delivers you into his arms, until you’re finally arching your back.

Sometimes, in your life now, a few moments catch you. Snare you. And you think. Of all the things you’ve been over the course of your life thus far, at turns. Young and stupid; an awkward whelp; a reckless thief; then a sly con; and, briefly, a friend among friends. A wife, and now a mother as well. But alone was the thing you had been for most of your life. Much more alone than the average person, for longer, and alone in every way that mattered.

Then Arthur had come and made you a woman that a man wants. A woman who knows a man’s body. A woman who has carried a part of him inside you. Things that had been so other—so distantly removed from what you were and had always, always been—that you’d never been able to conceive of such an existence or its experience. To be one—to actually be one. Now you are one. A woman that a man wants. A woman who knows a man’s body.

Then Arthur had come and taught you things about life and love you couldn’t possibly have ever known on your own. Things no one could have ever told you. That love could have such a brutally frightening quality and texture to it—what if the one you loved came to harm? That to be united with someone meant risking yourself—that if he or she died, part of you would decay with them. That love isn’t always something one must do, as is often with blood. That love could be just as strong a tie or stronger when one chooses to love. That the absence of shared blood dulls and fades nothing. That two may share one heart, and therein is the strongest of bloods. That the decision of love itself is not merely a flippant fancy, but a fixed rock of reality. Then Arthur had come and given it all to you.

Who would have ever thought? Who could have? Certainly not you.

The drive into the city and to the restaurant had been punctuated with quiet coos to each other for directions through the tight streets. He’d opened every door for you, from the car to the inside of the restaurant. Had rested his large, calloused outlaw-turned-rancher hand very gently on the bared, dimpled skin of your lower back, to show you through each of the doors.

Holy God, did it switch every nerve inside you to electric, flipped the fluttery animals inside your chest into a swarming frenzy. The considerate gestures had put you into the pocket of his palm like warmed, dripping honey. But just as moving for you, it also plainly told the whole wide world: you were his.

Once inside the ritzy restaurant he’d chosen, he’d even pulled your chair out for you. Your shared supper had featured smiles and genuine, familiar laughter over the white linen tablecloth. And even that had been his gift to you, that you’d felt in your body. Laughter’s soothing, comforting effects flooding and lulling you as the tightness of stress left you. And the thought had occurred to you—how grateful you are for a spouse who can make you laugh, who wants to, and whose ability to do so has never faded with time. He’s never even seemed to shy away from sharing in moments of laughter, not when it comes to you.

It was his marked attention that—for reasons you couldn’t quite explain—had brought you close to tears behind your blithe smile. He’d hardly ever taken his eyes off of you. It was truly like you were the only woman in the room. And rather than it being a possessiveness that had made that so special for you, it had been the fact that he didn’t need to see any other woman. That you were the only one who did anything for him. That he was spoken for. Then there was the fact that if anyone had gawked and ogled him or flirted with him, you could glory in the simple truth that a man with his heart and his body would be going home with you tonight. No one else.

But more than any of that, his generously given attention had filled and satiated your soul. Things you never—or hardly ever—received from any other human: sincerely absorbed and thoughtful conversation, the clearly apparent desires to hear your inner life and thoughts and to smile and laugh with you. The fulfilled longing to just be with you. It welled inside you, because it was everything you craved from him and everything you wanted to give him as well.

You’d been completely relaxed and at ease all through your date. Every time you’d released a rested breath, you’d noticed some lovely new thing about your surroundings. Dimly glowing light from the scrolling sconces and the faint clinks of several types of silver cutlery on fine china. Classical piano, violin, and bass played live in the corner and the brush of luscious velvet on your skin from the seat back. A divine yet light meal of delicately crafted scallops and the finest fresh oysters. You’d reveled in the briefest sensation of the oyster filling your throat and slipping down, each time you’d swallowed one.

For dessert, chocolate ganache and a mound of macerated strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries, tossed with mint and Grand Marnier, topped with scratch-made whipped cream, and dusted with fine honeycomb sugar. Sparse sips of bourbon barrel-aged Cabernet for him, and for you, a glass each of Chardonnay and later ruby port, from stemmed glasses. Undivided attention and meeting each other’s eyes with a wellspring of affection.

It had been just what your soul had needed, and he’d known it.

Arthur slows to a stop at a red light, inwardly groaning at the obstacle drawing out your journey home. He quietly sighs through his nostrils and taps his thumb against the wheel. He glances to you at his right side, and you exchange sincere smiles.

Facing forward again, he glances down at his left ring finger. A simple ring—a rounded silver band inset by a much narrower black one—rests upon it.

In a blink, he’s taken back to those early days, before the whelming thrum of daily life, before the visceral clutch of those terrifying days in the hospital, before Grace, before you’d even become pregnant.

How he’d loved you, in a raring, aflutter, dithery way; in a way that engulfed himself sweepingly, wolfishly; in the natural way, it often seems, of new love. Though he’d kept himself tempered and even, until he’d known with surety you’d felt the same.

Then had come the quiet little ceremony, and you’d spent over a year in honeymoon bliss. Trying all the while to become pregnant, knowing you only had so much time. Then you had. And effervescent couldn’t begin to describe the two of you. Your very body, your miraculous and wondrous body, had caressed and carried all those other dreams Arthur hadn’t been fully aware that he’d still had.

Then Grace had come. A month and a half early, and earthshakingly beautiful. But her lungs had wanted to fail her, when she’d only just had a chance to greet and grace the world with herself. And in one swoop, that same beautiful new world had threatened to shatter and crumble in on itself. The blistering maelstrom of vicissitudes had nearly spun his head off his shoulders. At the time, he could only imagine all that you were going through.

Together you’d watched her every ragged breath, every labored rise of her tiny, ruddy chest, from morning until night, in days that blended and stretched to insanity. Had been forced to remain on the other side of a glass cocoon that smacked too familiarly of a coffin to him. A tiny coffin.

It had nearly killed him, your loving protector, to have to watch you go through such intense heartache and not be able to do a single thing to inoculate you against it. To watch his new infant daughter struggle to hold onto life, when he could do nothing. It had been a sort of pain concocted especially for him.

Still, the two of you had clung to each other for strength.

But hadn’t you been the bearer of all the strength? Because when turmoil and uncertainty had crushed and clamped in on him, the very worst of his hideous fears had come pouring out of him. Instead of stalwartness and fortitude, he’d proven a source of splitting chaos and weakness. After a life with some seasons of swindling and criminality, spans of cool violence and masked cavalierness towards tenderness and endearment, it had been a tiny, helpless babe that had shredded him and turned him inside out. Coming apart at the seams; bloodying his knuckles with the trunk of an oak outside the hospital; in the culmination of his inner storm, whispering insidious, nonsensical fears through the pale, eerie, hospital-room gloam that the recompense for his life was to blame and that you’d be better off without him.

With seeming great effort and a quietly tremulous voice, you’d told him, without turning, that he was the only thing keeping either of the two of you alive. That such thinking was preposterous. And that you both loved and needed him now. And forever.

Of course, his special brand of fear and self-loathing had turned out to be the very last goddamn thing you’d needed to hear, and once he’d remembered your own anxieties and insecurities, he’d been flooded with remorse.

When he’d been coming apart, you’d been holding together. When he’d left his family to beat against the tree, you’d been the one to remain at Grace’s side. And when he’d whispered the lies his mind had convinced him of, you’d quietly, though quaveringly, spoken the truth aloud to right him.

It was you who was the strong one. You who had borne the immense weight of his fears. You.

And you’d continued to prove it when the two of you had finally been able to take Grace home. She’d been so frail. So helpless. But together—just as you had been to see her struggle—the two of you had been witness to the unfathomable mystery of the simultaneous fragility and resiliency of…life. Because she’d strengthened and flourished and breathed.

He recalls somewhere in the days afterward, when you’d sought to bathe her in the tub on your own, without the aid of a plastic doodad. You’d hastily offered promises he hadn’t asked for: that you’d be sure to keep alert and wouldn’t let her drift below the water’s surface.

It had been then that he’d noticed the faint, receding shadows beneath your eyes. He’d had to ask himself if he could remember whether they’d previously been darker than they were in that moment, and whether they were beginning to brighten. Either way, he’d realized the toll the ordeal had taken on you, that you’d never voluntarily alluded to��the fullness of which he’d somehow missed, having been caught in what he deems his own silly, self-focused storm.

In memory, he can still see you from his secreted place behind the threshold, seated nude in the tub with the naked babe on your arm, skin to skin. Can still make out the tinkle of the water droplets falling from your fingertips onto her tender crown and the soft babbling of Grace’s healthy coos. Can still hear your quiet, broken plea—

“Wouldn’t you like to stay with Mama, baby? Won’t you stay? Stay with me? Please-” you’d whispered, and had sniffled when you’d wept, “Stay.”

It had put his heart and soul through a sieve. Thoroughly riven, he’d silently leaned his crumpled face into the wall, resting his forehead and eye socket against the doorjamb. He had reached up and felt wetness upon his cheek.

It had been you who had been the strong one.

He remembered being forced to ponder: how close had he come? Had he been a cobweb’s thread away from losing Grace? From losing you? He’d never know. Didn’t want to. And in those moments, shadowed in the bedroom, he’d been thrust into the experience of how it could’ve been: what would he do? How when, in search of an answer, his head had poked through a firmamental membrane to find the black mist of—nothingness.

Willing himself back to the present moment just in time, he swallows thickly, and gives attention again to the onyx light of evening.

Such shoulders, he thinks, envisioning that elegant outline of your neck exposed by your black silken gown without needing to turn and look at you. They’ve surely borne more than just those thin straps.

You watch placidly as Arthur takes the truck to the left, and the traffic ebbs and flows as you roll through the night.

Somehow, it’s enjoyable to simply sit here with him. His passenger seat princess, sharing in the sweet, silent glances and smiles. Needing no words to know that he’s on pins and needles to get home and make love to you. And ruminating in the knowledge that you feel exactly the same way.

It had taken no convincing for you to agree when he’d invited you out, though he’d been ready anyway with explanations of the provisions he’d planned, having foreseen your thought for Grace. He’d spoken them before you’d even fully opened your mouth to form the question. And you’d had to smile, because Arthur didn’t normally tip his hand to show—well, much of anything; but of all things, certainly not eagerness.

Your current train of thought flits to Grace, and though you know you should try to remain in the present with him, you can’t help but wonder if she’s cooing and smiling, enjoying time on her belly or struggling with it, or maybe drifting off to well-fed sleep.

Four months ago, you’d been so caged with guttural worry, you hadn’t been in a position to imagine time away from her for a romantic evening. Four months ago, when you’d pushed her from your body too early, and her little lungs betrayed her.

An unmooring. That was what it had felt like. Snagged and suspended in a strange, amorphous abysm with no corners, no boundaries. Hovering somewhere in life that looked on fate.

You’d tried to be steady for her. Remained there, in her room, beside her glass case. With your body still wracked by the huge task of childbirth, you’d clawed to hang on by a wisped fiber. You’d held yourself and slightly swayed by the waist at times, to cope. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. You weren’t ready for her to become nothing more than a lifeless shell. Weren’t ready to see these newly sprung fears become reality. Weren’t ready.

Arthur had held you up. He’d been the only witness to the crystalline dew of your tears in the early hours as they teetered and finally rolled down your skin. Had been there every moment of every morning, every afternoon, evening, and early dawn. Right at both your sides.

When your weak, poisonous mind had told you all the worst—that you were to blame, that your despicable body had failed her when she’d needed you most—he’d held you and poured into your ears the antidote: that all of it was beyond your control, that your amazing body had been a loving home to her, and that both he and Grace loved you.

And when you’d finally required sleep, he’d forced himself to keep awake. And you’d discovered him in the same place when you’d blinked awake. But that was when you’d noticed the stark rim of red all the way around his eyes, from more than just fatigue. And he’d quietly told you he needed to step outside.

When he’d returned, he’d looked worse than when he’d left. As you’d been watching Grace sleep, he’d walked up, arms hanging haggardly at his sides, and uttered the poison in his own mind with a sheer, ragged breath.

Hearing it had split a rift in your heart, and you’d fought not to let it feed the fear wanting to grow inside you. For so long you’d fought your own anxieties that you weren’t enough to keep Arthur from leaving you. He couldn’t have known that during those days and nights of worrying for Grace, this fear of yours had been exacerbated and magnified by thoughts you couldn’t seem to keep at bay: what you’d heard once somewhere, that even the most loving, devoted couples often part after the death of a beloved child. Surely, for him to leave you after such a loss would be too selfish, too cruel. But he had been cruel. Hadn’t he? He had, to others. Why not you? It would only be a different incarnation of cruelty, for him to leave you. Was it enough that he’d changed, that you’d seen it in him, that he loved you?

Roiling and scattered and warring against fears that seemed to leap to others like lily pads, you’d tried to work it all out inside, without a word across your tongue. You’d even inwardly berated yourself for such thoughts over your relationship with Arthur, while Grace was right there, fighting for life. But you couldn’t help it. You loved them both. So it was that the fear had grown to monstrous inside you. And to hear him speak nourishment to that beast… But he couldn’t have known. And in that moment, you’d had to consciously choose to use all your might to force yourself to believe it was only his extreme fatigue and worry talking.

But after you’d gently spoken the fruits of that internal fight aloud to him, you’d known he would be reminded of the history of your personal anxieties, like a clap of thunder to the back of his head.

You’d caught sight of his weary back hunching as he succumbed to all of it—the truth, the memories, the remorse, the renewed constancy, the overwhelming drain.

As he’d resumed his place at your side, you’d quickly fallen to sleep again, without having realized it. And when you’d awoke that time, you’d found his body had given out. Slumped back in his padded chair, head hanging to the side and mouth open, the fabric of his shirt rumpled to a wad. The journal left open and hanging haphazardly on his lap, his pencil limp in the pocket of his curled hand upon the armrest.

It was only then that you’d noticed the bloody damage to his knuckles, what looked like tiny fragments of tree bark left in his wounds. He hadn’t merely pounded a tree; he had hit it and dragged his fist through the jagged, toothy bark.

You’d called a nurse into the room and asked her to fetch you a first aid kit, planning to tend to him yourself. While she was gone, your eyes returned to the journal.

Since you’d been together, he’d voluntarily made it your shared journal, a place only the two of you could go. A haven. Nevertheless, since it’d been his custom for so many years beforehand, he always seemed to use it a little more than you did. There he was again, retreating to that sacred, secret, communal place.

You took the journal from its sliding perch on his thigh and saw the messy sketches of Grace in her cocoon, of you in your sleep. And you read in his beautifully old-fashioned hand, though it now bore a touch of needling worry to its scrawl, .

Grace Ada Morgan~

For a moment, I forgot. It was this insanity gettin’ into my head. I’m so exhausted, sweet babygirl. I forgot that leavin’ doesn’t ever fix anything. Please forgive me. I promise I didn’t forget that your mother and you are everything to me. Just forgot the right way to show it. Forgot that you both need me too. But I’m not goin’ anywhere. I swear it. I ain’t ever leavin’ you. Either of you. So please, don’t ask me to go into the ground. .

It had broken loose something inside you, and you had wept until, when you’d started cleaning his wounds with soapy water, he’d begun to wake. You’d quickly brushed your tears away, tried to smile, and kissed him, though you’d known he couldn’t miss the puffy redness of your eyes and nose.

Jointly, the two of you had renewed your commitment to never let Grace go without the knowledge of your love. You’d both affirmed the reality that you already had been loving her and would continue to love her through every moment of her life, short or long, including the moments of pain or difficulty.

Arthur had been your strength, even when he hadn’t realized it. He’d unwittingly been the catalyst to processing things you’d needed to, and had spoken aloud things you’d desperately required to hear. And before then, his broad back had carried the cumulative load of the fraught situation, his own fears, and your anxieties. He’d been much stronger than he’d known.

Having left city borders several minutes ago, the black truck’s headlights slice through the indigo night as Arthur begins the pickup’s slow ascent to your mountain home. He’s given the familiar sights of stately pines and dancing moths and a craggy dirt path. Ensigns of the home he’s made with you.

He can’t keep his mind from ambling again to all the times he’s been alone in these woods with you. Night fishing, skinny dipping. How often, even in the midst of such pleasures, his doubts and fears would surface. He would warn you of them, that to be with him would only bring you some sort of pain or cause you irreparable harm.

You’d always reply something to the contrary; different variations, but always the same meaning. That he couldn’t know that. That you loved him. And that to be without him would do you a deep pain you were certain of.

He pulls onto the winding road hidden by thick foliage that begins your shared property and leads to the homestead. Further down, he stops at the metal gate, hops out to open it, drives the truck through, exits again to close it behind you, and continues up the road.

Once he’s parked at the house, you’re happy to let Arthur hurry around to your truck door and open it for you one last time.

Out of habit, you try to hide the roll of your belly with your forearm as he leads you from your seat. You’ve never felt the urge to do so more strongly than you feel it now, after carrying your baby and acquiring even more flab and stretch marks than you’d had before. But it occurs to you that he’s told you numerous times there isn’t any need for such things. That he loves you and craves your body, just exactly the way you are.

Internally, your mind has always warred to believe that it isn’t too good to be true, that such spoken words are not only pitying sentiments and niceties. You’ve told him multiple times, even early on, that he deserved better, could easily get better, and that you harbored fears he would realize it all too soon for your heart. Fears that he would leave you all together, throwing you away like you just might deserve.

But he’s sworn himself to you, in heart and in body, over and over again. It’s as if you are shattered potsherds, scattered upon the floor, unable. Presumed by yourself to be worthless. He gathers you—every discarded splinter—dressing and filling the cracks of you with his own love, not hiding your history but honoring it. And binding you, until you’re stronger than before.

And in this way, he joins himself to you.

Have you done enough of the same for him? You think on it all through entering the empty house, hardly noticing the moon’s glimmering cast that strikes his wedding band as he unlocks the door before you, hardly hearing him toss his keys on the counter. You think on it as you both slip from your shoes and quietly pad into the bedroom, and you’re finally cognizant of your surroundings. You think on it as you turn and watch him walk into the room.

What his love and loving him felt like, at the beginning.

Like the sharp tip of a jagged pane of glass thrust up into your belly, channeling through your ribcage, pausing when it reaches your heart, and slicing slowly with a surgeon’s motion into the organ. Never had anyone but you seen the inside. Fear wouldn’t have captured what you’d felt. Because there would be no earth that could withstand the force of your knees when they hit, if when he saw the inside he tossed it aside, and turned away to depart.

But when he had seen, the moment of his seeing had imprinted you with the inside of his own splayed heart—a thing more primal than a name—on the inner walls of the atriums and ventricles, on the abdominal aorta, on the pulmonary valve. On dredged parts of you that you’d never thought another human would glimpse.

And now, you think on what that same love feels like, after all these years.

Seeing him, all of him, as he is. Being known so thoroughly by him. Splayed heart meeting splayed heart, clotted that way, the bloody cells fusing and knitting themselves anew. Grown over and healed to a scar. But healed. Forever one flesh and one blood. The mess of a deepening, steadfast, stronger love.

A love that stays. That chooses to. There was never anything more romantic to you.

Arthur flips on the bedroom light and gazes at you where you stand removing your earrings and setting them aside, waiting for him. All he can think as he ventures towards you is loving you, and feeling your love. The full scope of it, in its history, and in this moment. How it had started, so heady and engulfing, it had swallowed him whole; though it had hardly been ready for life’s travails. How it’s still those things, but much more. How he knows you. Better than he’s known anyone. How he’s seen you in your every form, in every turn of life’s capricious road, and loves you the more for it. How your heart understands his.

This love has long drawn a rich burgundy, like the Cabernet he’d sipped tonight. This love that has long taken anchored grasp, its taproot reaching down into the core of him. It has flowered and fruited several times over. And like any goodly, fragrant fruit, it refreshes and sustains him. Gives him life.

He takes his time gazing over the exposed skin of your shoulders, doing what he can to ready himself to show it to you. This shared love that has matured and sweetened and ripened to something devastatingly deep and forever lasting.

a/n: Part 2 will pick up with the very next moment in the story. Comments always welcome! Reblogs always greatly appreciated! Thank you so much for your gracious support.

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[furashuban]

God it feels so good to be making Hilda fansongs again <333

For @sketchbookweek Day 7: Free Day, I wanted to give you all a surprise and compose a new Sketchbook Ship song! :D The last song I made about these two was meant to be vaguely in Johanna's perspective, so this time I wrote Bewitching with Kaisa's pov in mind.

I poured my entire heart into this song 'cause this pairing really just does that kinda thing to me I guess sdfgdsfwf and I'm really happy with how it turned out :D Really hope that everyone enjoys listening <3

Soundcloud Link

Lyrics down below:

My love, my love, whoever you may be

I'm asking for you to talk here with me

'Cause I know it's hard to be as lonely as me

But I promise we'll take as long as we need

My love, my love, who I know to be

Who I kiss behind the shelves in the library

Why is it easy to let go off the past like it's a dream

Whenever I'm with you, my bewitching mystery

The pages of sketches

and the books that I keep

Amount to the days that've gone

Without you seen with me

[scenearcee]

me promising more neuvifuri content: yeah I’m gonna make more stuff to feed y’all soon I promise

the fic that I’ve barely started writing sitting pretty at 4,778 words: 👁️

[serendipnpipity]

augh you know that one line in “Stick Season” by Noah Kahan where it goes

“I’ll dream each night of some version of you that I might not have but I did not lose.”

it makes me think of these two fics (x) & (x) and now my heart hurts 😫

[extralively]

Extraaaaa, a thought has possessed me~ Given how Gege said in one of the pages in the manga that Satoru has no hobbies, because he's good at anything he tries (or something along those lines, correct me if I'm wrong please)...

Does that mean Satoru has a good singing voice? But the real question is... If he has a good singing voice, has Yura ever heard it during karaoke? 🤭 Or does he sing off-key intentionally to try and be funny. 🥹

Satoru definitely likes to be funny and sing off key in order to get a laugh lol, I imagine he's hardly serious when singing karaoke! But he does have a nice singing voice, and Yura has definitely heard it before.

.....And now that you bring this up, I mentioned before about Lee Sung Kyung being the main inspiration for Yura, and she herself actually has a nice voice (here's a song of hers!), so now I'm picturing Satoru and Yura doing a duet together (✿◠‿◠)

.....Maybe possibly using Satoru's karaoke machine in his apartment.... maybe possibly while also cuddling. Just maybe not while Yura is drunk, because I think she would be the one going (unintentionally) off key if that were the case lol