#first time drawing the badger hair

[measlyscrapofseafood]

tron/yori doodle as this

[starryjake]

watch, don’t touch | s.j & p.s

in which jake finally lets sunghoon watch him and his girlfriend have sex.

pairing: jake x fem!reader, sunghoon x fem!reader (barely sorry)

includes: oral sex, sunghoon watching, threesome but not really, nipple play, cumming untouched, making out, unprotected sex. (lmk if i missed anything).

wc: 3.4k

"god, this is so weird," you whined, curling your knees into your chest.

"it's not weird," sunghoon defended. "i'm not even doing anything."

"you're sitting there and you're gonna be watching me and jake have sex," you explained bluntly.

the three of you were gathered in yours and jake’s room, all sat together on the bed. it was dark outside with it being nearly midnight, but what better time was there to do what you were about to do?

"it's only weird if you make it weird," sunghoon replied matter-of-factly.

jake watched his girlfriend and his best friend bicker without adding a comment of his own. after months and months of begging from sunghoon, jake finally agreed to allow him to watch. at first, jake immediately said no. he had no interest displaying what he and his girlfriend did to his best friend, but sunghoon just kept badgering.

he insisted he wouldn't do anything except sit there and watch. he wouldn't even touch himself. so, then jake figured it wouldn't be all that bad.

"we don't have to if you don't want to, baby," jake assured, gently rubbing your back.

you guys had already talked about it. you’d already agreed, but now that it was really happening, the nerves were kicking in. you’d never done anything like this before.

"it's okay," you whispered, feeling calmer just by jake's warm presence.

you knew you were okay as long as he was there. however, you were shocked when he brought it up to you the first time. you never imagined your somewhat private boyfriend would be interested in exposing your guys’ sex life to his best friend.

sunghoon sat in the corner of the bed, about a foot of space between him and you guys. he sat with his long legs extended and watched you two closely, hoping silently that they wouldn't back out at the last second. he'd been wanting this for a long time. he’d been wanting to see his best friend fuck you dumb since the moment he first laid eyes on you.

it’s not like he would say he had a crush on you. he knew that jake would go feral if sunghoon had feelings for you, but he couldn’t deny the draw he had towards you. you were stunning with such an innocent, pretty aura, and he was dying to know what you looked like with jake’s cock drilling you into the mattress.

"do you wanna start?" jake asked softly, dragging his slender fingertips through your soft hair.

you turned your head slightly to face his face. you nodded softly and leaned in to meet his lips halfway. sunghoon’s heart rate started to fasten, knowing that it was starting.

he adjusted himself on the bed and focused his attention on the way yours and jake’s lips melded together and the quiet sounds of your lips smacking together. he watched closely, not wanting to miss a thing since he wasn't sure if this opportunity would ever present itself again.

jake caressed your smooth cheek, slowly introducing the tip of his tongue past your lips. you accepted the intrusion happily and rubbed your own tongue against his, lapping at his saliva like it was water. you had your arms wrapped around his neck and dug your fingernails into the skin on the back of his neck.

sunghoon already felt himself twitch in his pants just from watching you two make out. he knew it was going to be a problem. there was no way he was going to sit there, watch his best friend and his girlfriend have sex, and not get a boner. but, the rules were that he couldn't touch himself. that would be too weird, too far.

he would've thought that you guys forgot he was even sitting there, but then jake pulled away from you for a moment and glanced over at him as if to make sure he was just watching and not doing anything else.

jake then reattached his lips to yours and slid his hands up and down your clothed waist. sunghoon watched your tongues rub together, massaging each other with the slippery muscles. what he wouldn’t give to take jake’s spot, to have his tongue inside your mouth instead.

jake slid his hands beneath your t-shirt and you shivered at his cold hands on your supple warm skin. he glided his large hands up your torso and to your covered breasts, which he squeezed and sighed in relief at how good they felt and how perfectly they fit in his hands.

"do you wanna take it off, baby?" he wondered, pinching the bottom of your shirt with his thumb and index finger.

you glanced over at sunghoon for the first time since starting. his gaze was so severe and intimidating, it made you nervous to take your shirt off in front of him, but a part of you wanted to. you wondered what sunghoon would think seeing you without a shirt.

"okay," you whispered.

with your consent, jake slipped your shirt up and over your head, tossing it at the end of the bed. you were left in a mesh pastel pink bra, and both boys nearly collapsed at the sight.

seeing you without a shirt on, sunghoon gulped. your breasts sat perfectly on your chest, nestled neatly in the pretty bra you chose carefully to wear in front of them.

"awh," jake cooed, a smile adorning his blushing face. "you wore my favorite bra."

you looked down shyly. jake was quick to tilt your head back up. he attached himself to your neck and started sucking, kissing, and nibbling on the sensitive skin there. you gasped, holding the back of his head against your body so he couldn’t stop his attack on your neck.

his kisses moved downwards from your neck to your pronounced collarbones, to your chest, and to the areas on your breasts that he could reach without your bra getting in the way. he brought his hands up to your breast and slid the pads of his thumbs over your erect nipples, earning a pleasured gasp from you.

he went back up to your lips and kneaded your breasts in his large hands while kissing you again. sunghoon watched carefully as jake’s fingertips dug into the supple, sensitive skin of your breasts. he watched his thumbs circle your covered nipples which had you humping yourself against his thigh in pathetic desperation.

the sounds you made while jake touched you were so out of the ordinary than the way you normally talked. they were sweet little whimpers that slowly began turning into louder, desperate moans. sunghoon found these sounds heavenly. he twitched each time one quietly escaped your lips.

wordlessly, you placed your hands on top of jake's and guided them to the clasp of your bra behind your back. without you having to tell him, he understood that you were ready for him to take it off.

the longer you were in front of sunghoon, the more comfortable you felt. you were ready to have your tits on display for both men to see.

jake unhooked the clasps and let the flimsy pink bra slide down your arms. you tossed the bra carelessly onto the floor and for whatever reason, looked over at sunghoon, curious to see his expression now that your upper half was bare.

he was staring so hard, so shamelessly. your nipples were pretty and hard, appetizing even, and it took all his strength not to move in closer, not to attach his lips to the erect buds and suck on your tits for hours, until you’d have to practically pry him off.

suddenly, jake did just that, and sunghoon writhed. jake grabbed one of your breasts and latched onto your nipple, using his hand to squeeze and massage the other one, refusing to let one go without his attention.

he sucked on your nipple, swirled his tongue around it, flicked the tip of his tongue up and down on it, then moved onto the next nipple and repeated the process until they were both covered in his saliva. you kept your hand at the back of his head, keeping his head pushed against your breast.

you looked over at sunghoon again while jake was dazed out sucking on your tits. you smiled ever so slightly at the sight of sunghoon looking as fucked out as he did without having done a single thing. your gaze travelled downwards until you were met with a quite obvious erection straining against his gray sweatpants.

he spread his legs slightly, biting his lower lip, showing off more of his painful looking erection.

jake suddenly detached from your breast and planted his hands on your shoulders to lay you down against the pillows. you watched without so much as a blink as jake grabbed your thighs and spread them open, creating enough room for him to lay between.

he laid on his stomach and peeled the waistband of your shorts down, leaving them dangling at your ankle. sunghoon’s breath hitched in his throat, knowing what was to come. he didn't dare spare a blink either.

clad in nothing but a thin pair of white, lacy underwear, you feared that jake and sunghoon could see the wet patch that had formed on the front from being so aroused. if they could, they didn't say anything about it.

jake kissed your clit over your underwear. the action alone had you jutting your hips up into his face, asking for more without actually saying the words. you dug your fingers into his fluffy head of dark hair, whimpering pathetically with need.

he rubbed his thumb over your clothed clit, feeling the wetness seep through the fabric onto his finger. he dragged his thumb down the length of your pussy, pushing the fabric in to emphasize how wet you were.

"c'mon, jake," you urged, growing impatient at his teasing.

he listened luckily. sunghoon thought that he wouldn't listen if it were him. he would take his time and tease you whether you liked it or not. he wanted to wreck you. at the same time, he was grateful jake was so quick to listen to you because he was dying to see your pussy.

jake peeled your underwear down and off your slightly shaky legs. he spread your legs even further and nearly drooled at the sight of your twitching, glistening pussy.

meanwhile, sunghoon nearly passed out. his breathing quickened and he just stared at it, wishing it was him between your legs right now. what he wouldn't give for just one taste.

"holy shit," he muttered, not meaning to have said it out loud.

you looked over at him, eying his bulge again. it was the hardest he'd even been in his life, and he was certain about that.

somehow, you weren’t embarrassed for him to be seeing you like this. you weren’t embarrassed to be the only naked one among two fully clothed men. you liked being the center of attention, both their gazes piercing through you. now you wanted to put on a show and make it enjoyable for both of them, even if sunghoon wasn't allowed to touch himself.

jake finally leaned forward and licked a long stripe up your soaking pussy. a long, drawn out moan came from you. you tugged his hair as he started flicking his tongue up and down your slit, gathering the sticky wetness on his tastebuds and moaning himself at the addictive taste.

sunghoon stared intently at his best friend buried between his girlfriend's legs. he watched his tongue scooping up your arousal and watched him swallow it like a drink. jake's eyes were closed, focused on savoring the feeling of your walls wrapped around his tongue and the sweet taste water-falling down his throat.

"fuck, you taste so good," he mumbled against your pussy.

you smiled to herself proudly as you looked over at sunghoon again to find him harshly biting his bottom lip. he was restraining himself harder than either of you knew. you and jake had no idea how much pre cum was leaking in his boxers and how painfully hard he was, how he was twitching every second. it took all of his self control not to bring his hand down to his cock and jerk himself to relief. he knew it wouldn't take long to finish at all.

jake wrapped his lips around your puffy clit and sucked on the bud, which had you whimpering and pushing your hips up into his mouth. he grabbed your hips and pushed them down, pulling away from your clit with a kiss. he then inserted his tongue into your tight hole, shaking his head back and forth for his nose to stimulate your clit.

you gasped, fingers curling in his hair as he thrusted his tongue in and out of your pussy, lapping up all your arousal. despite how many times jake had eaten you out, and there had been many, many times, it never got old. it always felt other worldly to feel his tongue gliding on your pussy, inhaling your scent and taste like he’d never get to again.

the sound. the fucking sound was driving sunghoon crazy. the sound of your wet pussy against jake's wet tongue, the sound of it as it flicked up and down your slit at a rapid pace. the slurping, the making out with it, the moans, the sound of arousal. it was all so fucking wet. sunghoon was losing his sanity.

he was utterly dying to know what you tasted like. based on the way jake was sucking you up and moaning as he did so, he just knew you had to taste good. jake had said it, but sunghoon wanted to taste it himself. were you sweet? did you taste like honey? like fruit?

"what does she taste like?" he finally blurted out, needing to know.

jake pulled away from your pussy and looked over at his best friend. sunghoon hadn't meant to ask it out loud, but the need to know had taken over. jake laughed to himself.

"she's so sweet," he informed. sunghoon could feel the precum dripping down his cock. "she tastes like strawberries and vanilla. she tastes incredible, don't you, baby?"

you could feel the stickiness between your legs from how wet you were. you were even wetter now knowing that sunghoon wanted to know what you tasted like, and that jake thought you tasted delicious.

jake sat up on his knees and pulled his shirt over his head, revealing his slim abdomen. you eagerly sat up on your knees and pressed your bare bodies together, exchanging the heat to each other. you wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him in closely. he shoved his tongue in your mouth, giving you a taste of yourself. you moaned into his mouth, feeling completely and utterly aroused and feeling your hole clench around nothing with the need to be filled.

you pulled jake’s sweatpants down and your mouth filled with saliva at the sight of his bulge straining against his boxers. you couldn't resist yourself from reaching your hand out to palm him. he was so hard, pulsating in your grasp. he looked down, sighing at the contact.

you didn't bother to take things slow, not when you were as pent up as you were by that point. you tugged on his boxer's waistband and pulled them down until his erect cock sprung out, hitting the bottom of his stomach. he was outrageously hard. his tip was red and glistening with pre-cum.

you let a wad of spit leak out of your mouth and land on his cock. you wrapped her hand around it, using the spit as lubrication to jerk him off. jake sighed, watching your hand glide up and down his length with ease from the excess amount of wetness. the noise was so lewd, but not as lewd as it was about to be when he finally put his cock in you.

he gently pushed you onto your back and spread your legs, holding your thighs around his hips. you looked up at him with big, excited eyes, a smile adorning your blushing face. jake couldn't help but reach out and caress your soft pink cheek, feeling nothing but love for the girl he was about to pound into the mattress.

he gripped his shaft and lined himself up with your drooling entrance. he pushed himself in inch by inch, biting his lip as your warm walls squeezed him so perfectly, the way they always did.

sunghoon couldn't believe his eyes. the only way he could describe it was that he felt like he was dreaming. he was really watching you and jake fuck. he was watching jake bury himself to the hilt inside of you and then pull himself out before pushing back in. he started feeling dizzy as jake's thrusts sped up, wishing that he could be more apart of it than he was.

the sound of jake's pelvis hitting the top of your pussy was loud. sunghoon closed his eyes for just a moment to listen to it, and he could hear it even louder. that plus the sound of you moaning like a shameless slut and jake's softer sounds. it all meshed and sounded so good together.

sunghoon reopened his eyes, sighing. jake's head was thrown back and his hip movements were constant. you were whining, clawing at his abs as your legs locked around his waist.

he was stretching you out so nicely, making your legs shake as he stuffed his cock deep inside of you as far he possibly could. you gasped, feeling like the wind was being knocked out of your lungs with each deep thrust.

"mmm, fuck, jake," you moaned, feeling the sweat gather at your hairline.

jake was zoned out in concentration, focusing solely on how wet and warm you were, and how perfectly you were wrapped around him. he squeezed your thighs to at least acknowledge he was listening, but he was too far gone to utter out any words.

sunghoon wouldn't even let himself blink. he refused to miss a single thing and made sure to witness every detail, like the wetness coating your thighs and the bead of sweat rolling down jake’s neck and down his abs. sunghoon would do just about anything to involve himself.

"fuck, you're clenching so hard," jake finally spoke, lightly slapping the side of your thigh. "can't move if you're clenching around me like that."

"i'm so close," you cried. "i can't help it."

jake snickered, dragging his hands up your sides and squeezing your breasts. his thumbs caressed your hard nipples, something he knew you loved and which would only push you to your orgasm even quicker.

"already?" he teased. "seems like somebody likes being watched. go ahead, baby. i wanna feel you gushing around me."

you turned her head to the side, making direct eye contact with sunghoon. you raised your hips and your eyes rolled back into your head as you started to cum around your boyfriend's dick.

you nearly screamed from the pleasure, reaching out like you wanted to touch sunghoon. sunghoon throbbed watching you cum and how absolutely breathtaking you looked while you did so.

jake was practically dripping sweat as he focused with all his strength on how your pussy was convulsing around his cock. he had a tight grip on your waist but couldn’t think straight enough to relax. he had to cum. he had to cum, he had to cum, he had to—

“oh fuck,” he groaned as he suddenly pulled out and released a spew of white hot liquid all over your torso.

you watched him stroke his dick, pushing out more and more ropes of cum and drenching you in it. you dragged the tip of your finger through the puddle he’d made on your stomach and brought some of his release to your mouth, smiling at the taste.

jake collapsed next to you, catching his breath. you both looked over to sunghoon at the same time, both curious to see what he’d have to say.

but sunghoon didn’t say anything. he just stared at you guys with wide eyes, his chest rising and falling rapidly like he too had to catch his breath after witnessing what just happened.

you frowned at his silence until your eyes flicker downwards, and there you found a dark stain surrounding his crotch, alerting you that he’d cum untouched in his pants just from watching you and jake fuck.

-

thanks for reading! <3

[comatosebunny09]

got me in my leon x ex-assassin reader feels again (thanks, @zozo-01 and @vaaaaaiolet).

Kissing Leon for the first time in his old Wrangler you constantly give him shit for—‘why does it still have a cassette player?’

‘It’s vintage.’

‘You’re vintage, old man.’

‘Bet this old man could still give you a run for your money.’

—and he reminds you of bonfires and drive-in movies and cotton candy at the carnival and slipping into your favorite old bomber jacket at the first crack of winter.

He’s all the things you didn’t get to experience growing up. Your life was fast-paced, and you knew how to bring a man to his knees—how to sever a carotid without so much as a sound by the time you were sixteen—before you knew what it was like to be human.

With him, you don’t have to be a weapon. You don’t have to analyze everything about him, pull him apart at the seams, and reconstruct him in a way that benefits you. You don’t have to put up this seductive front and look for every way possible out of a sticky situation in case things with him get dicey.

He’s disarming in a way that’s both refreshing and terrifying. He’s real and raw, and he throws all his cards on the table upfront, so you know what you’re working with. But it’s scary because you’re not used to someone liking you out loud. Someone who isn’t in it for what you can give versus what you already present.

He doesn’t push you further than where you’re ready to go. Infuriatingly patient, never intentionally rekindling the past you ran from. Never asking why your back’s all marked up, why your smile doesn’t quite reach your eyes, why your head’s always on a swivel, and why you always sit in the furthest booth with a good view of the restaurant whenever he takes you out.

He never badgers you on why you know so much about guns. Why you took down an armed robber on your own like it was easy as breathing. Why you’re so good at reading people, talking people down, or why your heart’s encased in stone.

No.

He doesn’t shield you. Doesn’t selfishly bottle you up like fireflies. He doesn’t kiss your booboo when you skid your knee, promising vengeance on the pavement for hurting you. Though he is there with a playful hand ruffling your hair, some antiseptic, and a smart mouth to admonish you for falling in the first place. Dummy.

He coddles the freedom you never knew you longed for. Offers you an outlet from the cacophony of your mind without adding to your turmoil. The definition of ‘be her peace’ encouraging you to try the soft-girl life out while also allowing that spitfire to shine when needed.

He disrupts your ruminations when he draws away from your lips with a sticky, languid click, and he looks as surprised as you feel over the center console of his dusty Jeep.

“I’m sorry,” Leon rasps, lips kiss-swollen, cheeks brushed peach. Still has those fingers buried in your hair, and his eyes fall to your lips like he doesn’t regret kissing you in the slightest. “I—did I take it too far?”

Your heart pulls. Warmth washes over your insides like the spread of the afternoon sun against your skin. He’s so considerate, it hurts. No one’s ever cared this much. Checked on you as much as he has—he doesn’t make you feel like you’re not worth fretting over because “you know how to handle yourself.”

You laugh despite yourself, and the way his brows furrow with a pout pulling his lips down like a confused puppy, makes you laugh even harder.

Instead of words, you let the motion of your mouth do the talking. Pan in for another sample of his lips, and he pours a confused, gruff sound into your mouth, trading it out for something more pleased. Needy.

He holds the back of your head firm enough to keep you in place, yet lax enough for you to pull back in case the pacing isn’t right. And you’re even more appreciative because this man thinks of everything, like he’s never kissed a woman before, and like he doesn’t want his first time to be a total fuck up.

He doesn’t protest when your fingers curl into the slack of his shirt, tugging him awkwardly over the center console so you can acquaint your tongue with every wet seam and divot of his mouth. Your lip-lock grows more ravenous by the second, mouths slanting possessively over one another’s, hands stroking, pulling, kneading whatever flesh they can get a hold of.

Kissing him is almost like being an adolescent, kissing their crush for the first time on the beach, swallowed up by the comforting breeze and the lazy drag of the tide and the stars aligning just right in the sky. You’re warm and prickly and breathless, and you’re throbbing in places that haven’t been touched in months, your nipples knotting beneath the frail drag of your t-shirt.

You burn for him in a way you haven’t burned in a while—like wet logs mercifully sparking a fire amid a cruel winter. But you don’t want to get too ahead of yourself. You don’t want to chase him away with your forwardness. Sure, he plays all cocky sometimes like he knows his way around a woman’s body, but you don’t think he’s ready for the level of expertise you’ve amassed throughout your years as a stone-cold manipulator.

So, you reluctantly pull away from him. And he’s chasing your lips, nipping at them, trying to get another taste. Never enough, and he’s so cute with his glacial eyes all hooded like that. With his hair all mussed—courtesy of your fingers—lips stained from your gloss, and panting.

It takes all of you not to laugh. Not to coo as you release his shirt, leaning back against the passenger seat to gather your purse and jacket.

He gives you a perturbed look. Something heartbroken when you clasp your hand around the door handle and pour yourself out of his Jeep onto your driveway with a sly smile on your face.

“Gotta get home before my parents start asking where I’m at,” you tease, winking, and shutting the door behind you.

He tracks your every move to your door, still breathless, but smiling like the cat that got the cream, one hand propped on the steering wheel, the other covering his lips that still tingle from the aftermath of your kiss like he dreamed the whole ordeal.

And when he takes off the parking brake after you’ve slipped into your house, he realizes you played him as he studies his disheveled features in the rearview mirror.

“She doesn’t have parents here,” he says to himself. Snorts, slowly pulling out of your driveway. “Does she even…have parents?”

Of the many puzzles he’s been forced to navigate throughout his lifetime, you’re the one most worth the effort of solving.

[on-a-lucky-tide]

Price prepares for his first date with Nik. 141 rib him.

CW: none.

Price stared into the mirror above his sink and wondered when the fuck all those lines on his face had arrived. Last time he’d looked, he could have sworn there were fewer, and there had been no grey either, but now he saw traces of his old man in the reflection and that made his stomach twist unpleasantly.

In all fairness, he didn’t really have much reason to look–really look–at his own face. Even when he was smearing camo around his eyes and down his cheeks, he was only looking for areas of shine that might draw an enemy’s eye. He never really considered why else someone might be lookin’.

Why Nik might be lookin’.

“Bloody hell,” he breathed as he began gathering up his shaving bowl and the badger-fur brush he only got out on special occasions; medal ceremonies, weddings, funerals and now, apparently, bloody dates. Why the fuck he had even agreed to it in the first place he had no idea, but Nik was surprisingly romantic given what Price knew about the rest of his life, and it was difficult to say no when he turned on those eyes. The word ‘no’ felt like booting a Labrador in the face.

Price stashed his shaving kit away and turned back to the mirror to check the rest. He had been pretty sure the shirt he had scrounged from the bottom of his paltry wardrobe hadn’t seen the light of day since the early noughties, and that had been confirmed when he’d pulled it around his shoulders and the buttons had gaped over his chest. Twenty years ago he’d been a lot leaner, but two decades of focused gym sessions, hard graft and being battered in the field had left him with a lot more heft. He’d pulled on a white t-shirt underneath and left it open, hoping he didn't look too much like someone's dad trying to look ten years younger.

Hair waxed into place, beard conditioned, aftershave and cologne–but not enough to register as chemical warfare–and he was as good as he was gonna get. He had never been asked on a date, only ever done the asking, and even then the sum total of his dating efforts as a young man had ended in disaster. Cold fish and chips on the riverfront and getting your leg over in the nearby park, only to fumble that too, wasn’t exactly peak romance, even at fifteen years old, and somehow he didn't think Nik had anything similar in mind.

Fifteen years old. That had been--

Oh, fuck. He was not equipped for this in the slightest.

Price’s phone beeped and a glance at the message confirmed Nik had arrived on base to pick him up. Bang on time too. Price took one final look in the mirror, grimaced, shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. Fuck it. It would have to do. Nik had seen him looking like the arse end of a donkey, so this… jitter in Price’s chest felt bloody stupid.

“Get a fuckin’ grip,” he murmured to himself as he snatched his wallet and keys from his bed and shut the door behind him. Unfortunately for Price, the rest of 141 were eagerly awaiting his appearance in the rec room and all looked up when he closed the door. He immediately regretted not exiting through the open window in his room.

“Well, well, cap, don’ ye brush up nice. G’ies a twirl,” Soap said, leaning forward with a wide grin that informed Price he was about to endure a good five to ten minutes of focused ribbing.

“Watch it, MacTavish,” Price replied, but without heat. He felt like a prize twat and this was Soap’s roundabout way of helping.

“Och, c’mon noow,” Soap spread his hands and turned to Garrick for support, “Gaz, back me up…”

Garrick looked up from his phone and tilted his head to the side, clearly evaluating just how much he wanted to chance Price putting him on the worst details for the next week. Apparently, he was feeling pretty fucking lucky that evening. “Pretty sure my dad owns that shirt, Tav. Very… uh, early noughties chic. What d’ya think, Ghost?”

Price could count on Simon to fight his corner against these two reprobates. Or so he thought. Simon leaned back, arms folded across his chest, and examined Price for a beat before choosing violence. “Pretty sure I saw it last about ten years ago,” Simon said, and then shook his head. “Happy to drop a pony on a new striker xt gen 2 so you can have the ranger green as well as the steel grey, but couldn’t cough up a few quid on a new shirt, sir.”

“You’re all bastards, and I you’ll be shovelling the shit next week once I get back to my desk,” Price growled.

A round of groans followed, and Soap rolled up to his feet. “C’mon, sir, we’re just jossin’. As my ol’ nan used tae say: a pritty face suits the dish-cloot.”

“Dish cloth chic,” Gaz said, grinning.

“Ah mean he looks bonnie, right? ‘Side, we need to cut the ol’ man some slack. When was th’ last time ye got tae let yer hair doon, sir?”

“Not long enough,” Price said, pinching the bridge of his nose and planning to beast the trooper delaying Nik at the checkpoint.

“I reckon the last time was when Usher was in the charts. What was the song? Ooh-whoop ooh-whoop, ooh-whoop ooh-whoop, shit, what was it called?”

Price decided that Garrick would be organising a mock dawn raid for the freshest batch of recruits. He would make sure the weather forecast was grim.

“Wait, wait, lemme get it up on Spotify. We c'n get cap in the mood tae drop tha’ thang. Reckon Nik’s an animal on the dancefloor, aye? Ha! Found it. ‘Yeah’ by Usher.”

Soap would be joining Garrick. Full weighted kit.

Price watched as the two sergeants bounced around enthusiastically to a song from 2004 that was, by Price’s estimations, only a year older than the shirt he was currently wearing. Fucking disaster. He looked at Simon, who was watching Johnny with that far away look he always did when he thought no one else would notice.

“You have started the party without me, I see,” said a familiar voice at the door. Price looked over and nearly choked on his own tongue. Nik looked fucking good. White button down open at the collar, black slacks, polished shoes, with his hair freshly cut. Simple, but classy. Price tugged at his sleeve and rubbed the back of his neck, hoping the heat he felt under his skin hadn't translated into a flush.

Nik appraised Price with those same soft eyes that had implored him from the cockpit of his damn helicopter for a date. Price cleared his throat. “You scrub up good, Nik.”

“I could say the same. But you are always the prettiest thing in any room to me, captain.”

Price’s face burned to the very tips of his ears.

“Ah, Nik! Watcha mate, how're you doin’?” Garrick bounded over and threw his arm around Nik’s shoulders for a half hug.

“Ye better have him home by ten!” Soap called from where he stayed slouched on the sofa.

“Of course, sergeant.”

“Nik, let's go, and you lot, get an early night. Pay back's a bitch.”

Nik smiled and stepped aside with what was definitely a bloody half bow to let Price out of the rec room first to a chorus of groans and entreaties for mercy from the two sergeants. Price and Nik emerged into the night air and had almost reached the car before Nik took Price's hand and drew him to a stop. “You are nervous.”

Price cleared his throat, sniffed, and did his best to come off as nonchalant. “Nah, I'm grand, just realised I’ve not got the clobber for this kind of thing, or the, uh… expertise. I'm worried you'll be disappointed.”

Nik looked at him blankly.

“Ah, sorry, my… clothes. It's been a long time since–”

Nik took his chin and lifted his eyes from where they had drifted to the ground. The kiss he placed on Price’s lips was tender, fleeting compared to their first shared under the downdraft of spinning helicopter blades, but it made Price's heart stutter just the same.

“You look good…” Nik released his chin to push both hands into Price’s hair, mussing it out of its careful arrangement. Next, he reached around the back of Price’s belt and tugged his t-shirt free. “Hm, now better.” Price swallowed hard, trying not to be too obvious about inhaling Nik’s scent as he pressed in close.

“Scruffy more like.” Price was still getting over the feeling of Nik’s fingers in his hair, brushing the skin on his back. Nerves had been replaced by the soft thrum of something warm in his chest.

“Nyet. English country boy with rough edges and blue eyes. You are honest, John Price. And a good man. It is what I have always loved most.” Nik opened the car door as Price gawped at him with wide eyes. When his senses had returned, Price realised Nik had rented a nondescript BMW for his stay, with leather interior and a fully digital media system. Plush. “After you.”

“Where’re we goin’?” Price asked as he slid into the passenger seat.

“Is surprise.”

“Bloody hell, and here I was thinkin' we’d go out for a movie and a pint.”

Nik grinned, tapping the beemer into ‘Drive’. “I will have the captain back before he turns into pumpkin, or the lieutenant mounts a rescue mission.”

Price chuckled as Nik pulled away into the night. Thankfully, Usher didn't feature in the evening‘s itinerary.

[sonnet-of-skalitz]

The Whole World Turns Around Henry (Part IV)

(Henry and women, through Hans Capon's eyes. Just what is it about that blacksmith’s son that drives the noblewomen mad with lust...?)

Hans found Henry in the Ruthard manor courtyard, where he’d expected, feeding that grey mare of his an apple and crooning sweetly at her with his free hand in her mane. She looked freshly groomed, no doubt by Henry’s own hand—didn’t the poor fool know he could browbeat any servant in the palace into doing that kind of dirty work for him now?

The sight made Hans inexplicably sour. When was someone going to feed him an apple and sing him a sweet song while they ran their fingers through his hair? Fuck, it had been too long since he’d visited a bathhouse—a real one, with actual walls, and pretty wenches who’d do anything for a flattering word from the future Lord of Rattay.

“So!” Hans clapped his hands, startling the horse and drawing a disapproving frown from Henry—which he handily ignored. “I hear you and the fair Lady Rosa had quite the adventure. To hear her tell it, the two of you laid bloody siege, fighting back-to-back against the occupying horde.”

“Well, I did have to kill some looters.” Henry responded to his ribbing with a simple sincerity. “Hardly a horde.”

“Ah, well, there you go,” Hans spread his arms. “Perhaps sweet Rosa has been reading too many of those adventurous books of hers and fancied herself the hero. Poor thing.”

“Oh, no, she did help me,” Henry said. “She shot one of them with a crossbow all the way from the window. It was quite impressive.”

“Hm.” Hans’s teasing smile fell away for a moment before lifting right back up. “And then the two of you spent the night together—Henry, you devil.”

Apple all gone, Henry gave the old nag one last pat on the neck and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Nothing happened,” he said.

“Oh, come now.” Hans waved him off. “I understand protecting a lady’s honour from the likes of Dry Devil and those other louts—but you can be honest with your liege lord.”

“Radzig’s my liege lord,” Henry reminded him.

“Well, if you’re going to be all proper about it.” Hans scoffed, though he felt a little chastened. It was so easy to forget that Henry had never officially sworn himself into Hans’s service—more that he had been badgered into it by circumstance and the unstoppable force that was Hans’s uncle.

Was it… Had Hans been naïve all this time, to believe that Henry would choose to remain thus, when given the opportunity to leave? Why had he never given a thought to that?

Feeling sourer than ever, Hans returned to the matter at hand and pressed, “Come on, Hal—the two of you, all alone in this big, lonely castle. You, the gallant protector. Her, the grateful maiden. One bed in a cold room. We both know how this bawdy tale goes.”

“You’re wrong.” Henry shook his head, taking some oil and applying it to his saddle. “I slept in the servants’ quarters.”

Hans peered in close. Bloody hell, but the poor bastard wasn’t lying—truly, nothing had happened.

Feeling suddenly light as a feather, Hans let out a giddy laugh and clapped him on the shoulder. “Oh, well—chin up, my good fellow. It can’t be the first time you’ve met a woman impervious to your rustic charms.”

“Oh, no—I got the feeling she would’ve gone for it, had I kissed her,” Henry said simply—and from anyone else it would be the most boorish of boasts. From him, though, it sounded frustratingly earnest. “But I didn’t, and she didn’t. So, we didn’t.”

He topped it with a little shrug. Hans wanted to strangle him.

“Christ, that sea monster between your legs is wasted on you,” he said, instead. “Might as well be a eunuch.”

Henry scoffed, though he did so through a smile, and kept working the leather. Hans lingered.

Chewing on a thought, he eventually ventured, “You know that you could trust me, to keep your confidence—if you had bedded a noble lady, no matter how high above your station. Even should the matter produce… consequences. I would not betray you—I’d only hope you’d trust me enough to tell me the truth.”

Hands ceasing their work, Henry looked at him. “What are you getting at?”

“Word is Lady Stephanie of Talmberg is with child,” Hans said.

“Aye.” Henry squinted at him, crossing his arms. “So I’d heard.”

“Anyone with half the sense they were born with—including Divish, himself—knows her husband can’t possibly be the father.” Hans watched him closely.

Henry shrugged. “I don’t see why he couldn’t be.”

“Oh, come off it!” Hans sputtered. “The man’s 8,000 years old!”

 “Stranger things have happened.”

“Why so stiff, hm?” Hans needled him. “Does the topic make you uncomfortable?”

“It does, if you must know.” Henry was frowning now—a real frown, not just the way his face always looked. “Sir Divish has been very kind to me. I don’t enjoy talking about him in this way.”

“His wife was very kind to you too, as I heard it.” Hans refused to let it go. “Gave you lots of… personal attention.”

“I was an injured lad who’d just lost his home,” Henry said through gritted teeth. “She felt pity for me. And, aye, she was lonely.”

“Lonely, eh?” Hans smirked, though there was a roiling in his gut. Well, if that didn’t cinch it. “Look, you might as well know—I’m not the only one talking about this. You’re at the top of a lot of people’s list of suspects.”

“Look, maybe she—” Henry stopped himself and rethought whatever he was about to say. “Whatever Lady Stephanie felt, or wanted, or any of that—it doesn’t matter. I am telling you, the child isn’t mine.”

Hans’s reply was cut off as Henry faced him squarely and took his shoulders in those strong blacksmith’s hands of his.

“Hans,” he said, squeezing, looking him in the eye. “I never touched her.”

Hans found himself swallowing, throat strangely dry. With a nod, he acquiesced, “Alright, Henry. I believe you.”

Slumping a little in relief, Henry gave Hans’s shoulders a pat before releasing them. He smiled, and Hans found himself smiling, too. Business concluded, there was really no reason to dawdle in the courtyard. Hans unhurriedly began to peel himself away.

“Can I really trust you?” Henry’s words stopped him just as he had turned his back. “Would you keep my confidence?”

“Of course,” Hans said, spinning back to face him with sincerity. “Always.”

Henry, who had himself turned back to oiling tack, spoke with his expression hidden from Hans. “There was someone. A noble lady I took to bed. Shagged her good and proper, I did. We went all night.”

“Who was it?” Hans asked, breath caught in his throat.

Slowly, Henry turned his face so Hans could see the serious set of his brow as he confessed, “Your mum.”

There was a beat of silence. Henry’s lips quirked up just the tiniest bit as Hans let out a howl and grabbed him by the hair.

“You impudent little arsehole!” They both laughed as Hans tugged his head. “You’re so revolting, Henry! I should have you stripped naked and flogged!”

“Like mother like son, eh?” Henry only brayed harder as Hans sputtered and pulled him rougher. “Oof! Ow, you’re not as tender as your mother, that’s for sure.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Hans managed through breathless laughter. “Jesus fucking Christ, you’re a madman. What if I said I’d had your mother, hm? You’d cry!”

“Ah, what would my mother want with that skinny noble arse?” Henry tried to pry Hans’s fingers loose, then gave up. “She likes beef, not chicken—agh!”

It felt good—Hans knew Henry felt it, too. To laugh. To use the present tense. To smile around the word ‘mother’ once again.

When they both eventually came in from the courtyard, no one even bothered to ask why Henry’s hair had been half pulled out and Hans was wearing a grin that simply wouldn’t shift. Lady Rosa was the only one to spare them more than a glance, her gaze lingering on the ruddy cheer on Henry’s cheeks.

There, you see? She missed the smug look Hans sent her in turn. I suppose you weren’t that good a shot, after all.

[i-am-church-the-cat]

I have a flower shop/tattoo parlor maxiel + loscar AU building from a tropical storm into a hurricane in my head so here are some thoughts

+ When Max hires him, this is what he says to Logan’s arrangement: “It is not the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I can make it better.” What he really meant was that Max could make Logan better, but he wouldn’t come to understand that until later.

+ There’s a phone that sits on the back wall of Max’s shop. The first time it rang while Logan was working, he’d mistakenly answered it. He’d watched Max’s face go bleach white from across the shop as Logan answered “Hello, this is Verstappen’s Floral, how can I help you?” The barrage of angry Dutch he’d gotten back in return had shocked Logan into silence, making it easier for Max to steal the receiver from his hand. Now, Logan knows to just let it ring.

+ Oscar is pretty sure Daniel only gave him an interview because their moms are in a book club together. The owner of Honey Badger Tattoos was always friendly and outgoing but he was notoriously possessive about his art. In the ten years the shop has been open, it’s had four employees. Daniel Ricciardo, the founder, Daniel Kvyat, Daniel’s partner who he bought out after the first year, Lando Norris who worked part-time at the front desk, and now Oscar.

“I’ve never had an apprentice before, I probably wouldn’t be very good at it,” Daniel says during his interview. He’d said he liked Oscar’s work and already showed an interest in teaching Oscar more of his signature American style. But the guy was still hesitant, fidgeting with excess nerves. “Just ask Lando.

Lando nods from his seat at the front desk which Oscar can see from the open door of Daniel’s office. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time, I wouldn’t trust him to teach other people.”

Daniel does not look like that’s the support he was going for, wincing at the dry criticism but not arguing.

“That’s fine,” Oscar confirms with a shrug. He’s already done the majority of his apprenticeship under Mark Webber. But when the man decided he’d had enough of the South of France and was selling the shop and moving back to Australia, Oscar had to look for somewhere else to work. “I only have six months left before I can get my certification.”

Daniel doesn’t look very reassured. Oscar can take a hint so he decides to get out before he’s kicked out.

“Hey, it’s cool, mate, thanks for meeting with me anyway-”

“Can you start next week?” Daniel asks, leg bouncing up and down and rocking the desk he’s sitting behind. He sees Oscar’s confused expression and sighs. “I really need more help here.”

“Yeah,” Oscar decides, not looking a gift horse in the mouth. “I’ll text you my schedule.”

And that’s how he starts working for the Honey Badger.

+ “This is a tulip,” Max is saying in French, word draw out and pointing at the multi-colored bulbs. Logan has tried telling him that he’s lived in Europe for the majority of his life at this point and can do his job in English, French, and Spanish but Max doesn’t believe him. At least Logan’s starting to pick up more Dutch.

Logan is rescued from his impromptu language lesson by the bell on the door ringing. He turns towards the sound, customer service smile already in place.

“Hi, welcome to Verstappen Floral, how can I-”

“Oh, it is you again.”

Logan stops and looks at Max who is frowning at the guy who just came in. The man is curly-haired and tanned, with tattoos scrawled over the majority of visible skin. His grin is big and toothy when he shoots it at Max.

“Hey, Maxy, aren’t you happy to see me?”

Logan blinks in shock at the nickname. Even their regular customers don’t get to act that familiar with Max. Logan doesn’t get to act that familiar with Max.

Max crosses his arms, lips pursing. “For the last time, I do not know what these flowers mean. I speak four languages and plant is not one of them.”

“Always a ray of sunshine, aren’t you, Max?” The man asks, unphased by Max’s grouchy demeanor. He leans forward onto the glass counter, certainly leaving smudges behind, but Max surprisingly doesn’t yell at him about it. “Lando sent me to pick up his order.”

Lando is someone Logan knows. He comes in about every other week and talks to Max about streaming and video games that partly goes over Logan’s head. He always leaves with a red and white bouquet, though the flowers change each time.

“Why could he not come get them himself?” Max grumbles, heading in the direction of the cooler where they kept to-go orders. Daniel shrugs and wraps his knuckles against the glass.

"He was late for a meeting or something, you know I don’t ask about his other job,” Daniel supplies. He changes his focus to Logan and the blond is met with the full force of the man’s mega-watt smile. Logan blames his mom’s genes for how easily he blushes. “Hey, you’re the new guy, right?”

Logan opens his mouth to answer but Max is suddenly im between them, Lando’s bouquet in his hands.

“Yes, this is Logan, no, he does not want any of your garish tattoos.”

Daniel pouts at Logan’s boss. He wonders how it doesn’t look strange for a guy who’s at least 30 to be pouting.

“Don’t be mean, Maxy. I wasn’t even going to mention the tattoos.”

Logan racks his brain for tattoo shops nearby. They obviously have a close relationship outside of just Lando. And Lando did say he worked for an artist…

“Oh hey, are you the Honey Badger?” Logan asks, moving his head to be seen around Max’s wider frame. Daniel jerks his eyes away from Max’s, as if he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. “I pass by there all the time. Not a lot of shops do American style out here.”

Daniel’s face lights up, looking between Logan and Max. “Max, you hired an American?”

Max sighs, more long-suffering than Logan thinks is necessary. “This is why I did not want you to speak with him. I knew you were going to be weird about it.”

“I’m not being weird!” Daniel argues. “I’m just surprised!”

Max and Daniel have another weird silent staring contest. Logan clears his throat reluctantly and they both snap to him.

“Um, where’d you learn to do that style?”

Daniel looks ready to excitedly burst into the story of his tattooing style and his interest in America, but Max cuts him off by pushing the bouquet into his chest.

“We do not have time for that, these are going to wilt. Take these to Lando.”

“Bossy, bossy,” Daniel murmurs, picking up the bouquet gently. He doesn’t sound annoyed by Max’s demands. Rather amused, actually. He shoots Logan another grin over Max’s shoulder. “I don’t envy you, mate. But hey if you want to talk tattoos, come by the shop sometime.”

“Definitely!” Logan agrees before Max can say anything else on his behalf. Daniel shoots him a one-handed finger gun before turning back to Max. His smile becomes a lot less joking and more sincere.

“See you later, Maximus”

Max loses some of his prickliness, voice soft when he says, “Goodbye, Daniel.”

+ There’s a man talking to Lando at the front desk when Oscar comes in that day. It’s neither of the two Oscar is used to seeing who come talk to Lando pretty regularly. Oscar’s pretty sure one of them’s his boyfriend and the other is his business partner but he can never tell which is which.

“Did you leave Logan alone at the shop?” Lando is asking while Oscar sets his station up.

“Well, I had to do it at some point,” the guy says, his accent reminiscent of German or Dutch. “What is the point of hiring another employee if I cannot leave for a few minutes?"

“Daniel never leaves me alone here,” Lando points out, a tad resentful. Oscar snorts.

“That’s because he has control issues,” Oscar claims. Both of the men look at him, one in amusement and one in confusion.

“Who are you?” The mystery guy asks. Weird, Oscar was going to ask him the same thing. He looks to Lando who makes the introductions.

"Max, this is Oscar, Daniel's new apprentice. Oscar, this is Max, one of our neighbors."

Oscar frowns. "I thought Max was your..." he trails off, leaving space for Lando to fill in the blank. He waves his hand.

"Different Max. This is Max Verstappen, he run's Verstappen Floral."

The new Max is still looking at him strangely. "Daniel does not take apprentices. He says he is a bad teacher."

Oscar shrugs, not sure what to tell him. He doesn't know how he got the job either. Luckily, he's saved from having to respond by Daniel coming out of the back office.

"Oscar, good, you're here, I wanted to talk about-" Daniel stops abruptly when he sees Max standing in the lobby. His entire demeanor shifts when he says, "Max, hey! What are you doing here?"

Daniel is normally a friendly guy, sometimes too much in Oscar's opinion, but he's practically glowing as he bounds over to Max. While Max's expression doesn't shift, his body language opens up to Daniel like one of his blooming flowers.

"I am talking to Lando about our stream tonight," Max answers. "He has not been very forthcoming with the details."

Lando tries to protest but even Oscar can see that it's a lost cause. This new guy showed up and suddenly it's like nothing else exists to Daniel. His boss giggles at nothing and that's when Oscar decides to get back to work.

[honeytabbies]

OKAY. HERE WE GO. my black bulls doggies!!!! :D

there's definitely a noticeable difference in style/quality of some of these just due to time between each design and/or how i was feeling at the time of drawing them (these hot and rainy summer months have been super rough on me)

ALSO they were all done symmetrically so that i wouldn't burn out and could actually finish them LOL . OK EVERYBODY BELOW

starting off with asta, a husky/coyote mutt!! :D in my au, devil users end up becoming hybrids of whatever their devil is. so since liebe is a coyote, that's what asta is too!! (also, i haven't drawn him yet, but yuno is a malamute :D similar looking breeds but different since they're not actually related!)

(here's liebe too hehe, scrappy lil coyote!!)

then of course, noelle, who's a saluki!! a very regal breed for a very royal gal!! i thought making her pigtails into her ears was a fun idea HEHEHE

(+ an alternate design version!)

here's finral, he's a shetland sheepdog!! gentle and sweet and always trying to herd his people together :) you might notice that with some of my designs, i end up doing extra scarring; that's usually just personal headcanons, as i think some injuries would be too grievous to fully heal. though some (for instance, gauche) don't have a canon story behind them, i just think they're fitting

vanessa, who's a cavalier king charles spaniel!! her ears sorta blend into her hair lol, i had an alternate version where they were the same darker brown as her fur but i decided that them blending in looked better and fit the breed standard as well.

gauche, the ever wary american akita!! being a fiercely loyal and protective breed, but aloof and suspicious of strangers.

then there's grey, who's a long-haired chihuahua!! sweet and skittish HEHE, also i haven't drawn it yet but i've always imagined her big transformation disguise that she's first introduced as to be a rottweiler LOL

next up is luck, a jack russell terrier!! i've always thought this was a very fitting breed pick, intelligent but highly energetic and a little mischievous !!!

and of course, magna is never far behind luck; he's a dobermann pinscher!! similar to luck in energy and intelligence, but even more fiercely protective of his loved ones.

GORDON!!! actually one of my favourite black clover characters, he's a dalmatian not only because of the fitting aesthetic, but also because of his kind and sensitive personality!

the masked supermage zora, a german shepherd! watchful and sometimes stubborn but loyal nonetheless made this pick fairly easy to come to. though, before getting to see more of him, my initial pick was actually a kai ken!

charmy's design is one that i'm the most proud of for sure; i mentioned in an earlier post that the different peoples are different species of animals. well charmy is a half toy poodle, half american badger!! i thought a badger was a VERY fitting pick, as they are generally unbothered by much unless their food is threatened LOL

and finally, lastly (for now) is nero!! she's a bull terrier, but i really wanted to keep her twin tails from her anti-bird form! her outfit is definitely the one i edited the most, i just wanted to give her something more practical out of personal preference.

additionally, henry is an old english sheepdog, nacht is a black norwegian elkhound/fox, and yami is a wolfdog!

I HAVE SOME OTHER CHARACTERS DOODLED HERE AND THERE but nothing else really finished yet. if there's a specific character anyone would like to see i would be SO happy to draw/doodle them to show off!! i honestly have a huge list of dog/cat breeds picked out for every character i could think of; i just am hellishly indecisive and can never pick who to start on next AHDSJAGDJSDK

THE POSITIVE RECEPTION TO MY ART SO FAR HAS MADE ME SO HAPPY BTW AUAGGHHH i have no idea how/if im able to reply to people directly but just know that i keep reading over everyone's reblog tags and stimming like crazy IM SO HAPPY THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH AUHGHFEHGGRH

[qwerty019283ytrewq]

Before I pull my hair out because I can't find a fic, I can take a break and share my ideas with you.

This story was supposed to be the second part, but I love Max and Daniel too much, so I rewrote it a bit.

Christmas troubles

✨️Imagine ✨️

Daniel works at the school, and so does Max. Something happens in Daniel's life, now he is a single father, his adopted son is 5.

For the first two weeks Dan tried to cope on his own, but he almost had a nervous breakdown. Now, his friends, namely Blake and Max, help him. They are also teachers.

It's a week before Christmas. Daniel was so busy that they only installed the Christmas tree yesterday, and they didn't have time to decorate the apartment at all.

Right now, he is discussing with Max which stores they will go to tomorrow and what they need to buy. Jack (no, it's not because of THAT Jack at all...well, maybe a little bit) sitting in the living room and diligently drawing something. Blake is watching a TV series and glances at Jack. If the boy draws even harder, then he might bite his tongue off..

"Hey buddy, what are you drawing?"

"It's for Santa. My letter."

"I think you sent one a week ago."

"Yes, but I changed my mind."

Damn it, - Blake thought...Dan will have to run tomorrow..."

"Can I see it?"

Jack looks at Blake very carefully, as if deciding whether to trust him. The kid hands him the drawing and looks back towards the kitchen, where Daniel has made Max laugh again.

The picture shows two people holding hands. One has blonde hair, the other seems to have springs sticking out of his head. The funny thing is their eyes. Both men have cartoon hearts instead of eyes.

Blake sighs. Even a child can understand what's going on here, but the two idiots in the kitchen don't notice anything at all.

"Come on, Maxie..."

Blake rubs the bridge of his nose. If he thinks harder about what kind of idiots his friends are in love with, he'll get a headache.

"I don't think Santa is capable of that, Jack."

"Well, maybe he'll at least get Max to move in with us. And then I'll figure something out."

Blake grins and invites the boy to watch TV, before promising that he won't tell anything. God knows, Blake tried to talk, but Max told him not to talk nonsense, and Daniel said that Blake was a fool and that old Daniel and the baby were not needed by such a young, handsome, smart, funny blah blah blah Max.

A mistletoe story suddenly appears in the series. A typical Christmas story with a kiss. Jack begs him to secretly buy and hang mistletoe so that Daddy and Max can kiss. Blake tried to resist, but those cute puppy dog eyes...He can usually resist, but now he has an ally working as a matchmaker.

Blake orders Christmas wreath and mistletoe, gets distracted by Jack fidgeting on his lap, then by Daniel, who wanted to feed his "little badger," then by Max, who looks at Dan with a baby in his arms like a God descended from heaven, and..

Fifty. The next day, Blake received fifty Christmas wreaths and so much mistletoe that he could open his own shop selling Christmas decorations. Jack was squealing with happiness. He jumped around the boxes, opening them while Blake tried to figure out how to get it all back.

"Come on, we won't have time to put everything up until they come back!"

"To hell with it."

Daniel enters his apartment laughing, Max protests with a serious expression on his face that "They should be red. The color of Christmas is red, not ultramarine." Dan stops abruptly when he sees Christmas wreaths under the tree, in the kitchen, in the corner, next to the TV. Everywhere. And about the mistletoe in all the corners and, it seems, around the perimeter of the room, he is generally silent. His apartment turned into an old witch's shop with all these bunches of grass hanging from the ceiling.

"What the hell?"

"Dad, you have to kiss Max, you're standing under the mistletoe!"

Max blushes sharply, Dan opens and closes his mouth, trying to say something. Blake understands that Jack's abrupt approach can scare off the whole moment, so he explains how it all turned out. Of course he doesn't mention Jack's drawing.

"Well...Probably... um...It's a tradition..."

"Yes...of course..."

As soon as Daniel and Max are about to lean towards each other, Max abruptly puts his finger in front of Dan's face and sneezes into the sleeve of his other hand. Daniel bursts out laughing, Max's ears turn red.

"You know, there's so much mistletoe here, I think we can keep up the tradition a little later. We need to unpack the bags." Dan speaks softly, looking at the confused Max, and walks away towards the kitchen.

Blake thinks he sees disappointment in Max's eyes.

The more time passes since Max and Dan return home from the store, the more Max sneezes. Daniel begins to worry.

"I should probably go home. I don't want to infect you."

"Come on, Maxie, we could survive a little cold. But I don't think it's a cold. Let me take you to the doctor."

"No, no, Daniel, it's a cold. You, Jack, and Blake still need to decorate the apartment..."

"Yeah, hah, Blake and Jack have already tried..."

"I really..." Blake hears a wheeze as Max takes a breath to begin his next excuses.

"You're going to the hospital right now, I'll stay with Jack."

And they leave. Daniel quickly escorts Max to the car and tries to contain his panic. Max is breathing like Darth Vader, starting to panic. Daniel grabs his left arm.

"Hey, Maxie, everything's going to be fine, we'll get to the hospital quickly, and they'll help you. I know it's hard for you right now, but try to breathe slowly, okay. I'm right here, I'm holding you, it's going to be okay."

Daniel doesn't know how much time has passed, it seems too much to him. Max's hoarse sighs and exhalations, the way he squeezed Daniel's hand tightly, can still be heard in his head. Or it's the sounds of a hospital air conditioner.

Finally, the nurse says that Max is fine and he can visit him.

His Maxie is lying in a hospital bed, tired and pale. His eyes are barely open, and a small tired smile appears on his lips, but it doesn't last long.

"Hey," Daniel says softly and sits down next to Max.

"Hey. You look like shit."

Dan remembers how many times he pulled his hair, he's sure there's still a fright on his face.

"But you seem fine."

"I want to sleep. But they say I can go home if someone looks after me tonight and tomorrow."

"What was that?"

"The doctor says it was a sudden allergy attack. Apparently, I was in an "aggressive environment" where there were a lot of allergens."

"There was nothing like that in the store. We didn't even go into the perfume shops. You've been to my house a thousand times alrea..."

"Remove all the mistletoe and wreaths right now!!!"

Daniel lays Max down on the couch and covers him with a blanket.

"Why did they remove all the decorations? It looked cute and funny."

At the end of the sentence Max yawns.

"Because Max, you're the most unromantic person in the world..."

"What?"

"And you're allergic to mistletoe...or pine needles...or something else from those wreaths and bundles."

"I'm the Grinch, Daniel, I stole your Christmas. Jack looked so happy under all those..."

Dan loves him. From Max's first days at their school, from the first stupid conversation about how to properly navigate through the school mazes, which ended with Max's lecture on cartography and geography. This wonderful man helped him when Daniel took on too much. This wonderful man helped him raise a child and almost died because of some component of the Christmas decorations, but he worries that he could upset Jack.

"Maxie, if you don't shut up now, I swear, I'll kiss you..."

"Why do you think this can stop me?"

In the morning, Daniel finds on his bedside table a drawing of Jack with two men who have cartoon hearts instead of eyes. There's a note sticker on it, in Blake's handwriting.

"You don't have to pack this gift."

[hrizantemy]

If you don't mind, could you share some of your thought process on creating Taryn as a character and your favorite aspects of writing her so far? (Can you also give a physical description? I would like to draw her and nesta together and Ive been imagining her as cruel princes' Taryn; which is a little funny to think about)

This is so sweet—and so funny! I’ve read the first Cruel Prince book but didn’t even make the connection to Taryn from that series! That’s hilarious and kind of fitting in its own way, but yes, let me give you more details!

So, Taryn as a character actually came about unexpectedly. She wasn’t someone I initially planned to write; it was going to be just Nesta on her own, focusing on her healing journey. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Nesta has never really had someone wholly in her corner—a person who supports her without judgment or an agenda. That gap in her life is what inspired Taryn’s creation.

I wanted someone who could stand alongside Nesta, not to “fix” her, but to offer her unconditional support and the space to be herself. Taryn’s character grew from that idea, and I started with her name, which has so many layered meanings.

• In Irish and Gaelic, it’s tied to “the land of Eoghan” or “people’s ruler,” which felt fitting for someone who would hold her own and guide by example rather than force.

• The connection to rivers and flooding, as in “the trespasser,” reminded me of someone who defies expectations and carves out a path that may disrupt, but ultimately creates growth.

• Then there’s the Latin meaning tied to “earth” or an “elevated place,” which gave her a grounded, steady quality.

One of my favorite aspects of writing Taryn so far is how she knows when to step back and respect Nesta’s autonomy. A perfect example of this is during the Solstice and Nesta’s interactions with the IC—Taryn doesn’t try to insert herself or take over. Instead, she lets Nesta handle things in her own way, at her own pace, without any interference. That respect for boundaries is a cornerstone of who Taryn is, and it’s a deliberate contrast to how other characters have behaved.

For instance, take Rhysand. Even when Feyre explicitly tells him to leave her relationship with Nesta alone, he still tries to control it, inserting his own ideas of what should happen. Or Cassian, who has a pattern of badgering Nesta, pushing her even when it’s clear she’s uncomfortable or not ready to engage with him on his terms. These moments can feel suffocating for Nesta, and I wanted Taryn to be the opposite of that.

Taryn highlights what it truly means to give someone the space to heal and make their own choices. She supports Nesta without demanding anything in return. There’s no pressure to act a certain way, no need to meet someone else’s expectations or timelines. If Nesta decides to set boundaries or push back, Taryn respects that instead of trying to guilt or force her into compliance.

I think that dynamic is so important for Nesta because it offers her something she’s never really had: a connection where she feels safe to be herself without fear of judgment or consequence. And, more than that, it allows her to grow on her own terms. Taryn is there to back her up when needed, but she also knows when to step back and let Nesta lead.

It’s a refreshing contrast to the characters who think they’re helping but end up reinforcing unhealthy patterns instead. Writing Taryn as someone who embodies that quiet, unwavering support has been incredibly rewarding.

Now, onto Taryn’s physical description! She has dark hair—by dark, I mean black—and striking green eyes that stand out against her complexion. Her features are sharp, with high cheekbones.

Taryn’s complexion is on the darker side, with warm, rich undertones that speak to her heritage. Her skin carries a sun-kissed glow, as if she’s spent a significant amount of time under a different sun than Velaris or even the Night Court could provide. It’s a deeper shade, almost like burnished bronze, with a natural radiance that contrasts beautifully against her black hair and sharp features. I’ve hinted at it before, but Taryn isn’t from Velaris or the Night Court.

Taryn typically wears dresses that balance simplicity, emphasizing her. She prefers flowing silhouettes that allow her to move with ease, often crafted from rich fabrics like velvet, silk, or fine linen. Her dresses are usually in deep, earthy tones such as forest green, burnt orange, midnight blue, or warm gold, complementing her complexion and hair.

The designs of her dresses are practical yet stylish—long sleeves for cooler weather or sleeveless options for warmer climates, always tailored to fit her perfectly. High necklines and subtle embroidery along the hems or cuffs add an air of refinement, while the occasional slit in the skirt gives her freedom of movement without being overly revealing.

I think I’ve covered all your questions, but feel free to let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to know or dive deeper into! I’ve enjoyed answering these and exploring Taryn and Nesta’s dynamic—it’s always exciting to share more about their story and development. So if there’s anything you’re curious about, don’t hesitate to ask!

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

Finale time. Y'all, I am so not ready for this one to be over. I'm going to get big sad when I'm done, I just know it. I still can't believe how lucky we are to get all this.

Ok, unhinged beautiful chaos once more, let's go!

How dare someone else try to koala Bison.

Someone should probably warn this dude he's picking a fight with a badger. Looks adorable, can fuck you up mightily.

Arrgh, the cuteness!

But also the way it's shot through the fence, to make us feel the frustration of the barrier between them.

Oh, please tell me the landlord sold the restaurant to Style!

Haha, love that KantBison are all sweetness and FadelStyle are eyefucking.

Life lessons from Bison

That's one way to hammer home a lesson about consent.

Style is running on 100% pure horniness right now.

Lol, was Prison Break big in Thailand?

Love this. Of course Bison will pick drawing, to feel closer to Kant, and Fadel will pick fixing cars, so he can feel close to Style.

Oh, Bison is going to need some very personal tutoring for sure.

Lots of one-on-one instruction.

I'm going to need someone to break down the porn references for us, because there's no way there aren't any in this!!!

And Style is still wearing green, as Fadel's safe space in this sea of beige!

Um, I don't think that guard is fooled. Better be paying some of these guys off.

Woof, these illicit makeout sessions are hot.

So I assume Bison is reading Shawshank Redemption? That's two prison break references so far!

Lolol, the creaking noise for the sex is killing me. Also the watch guy seems kinda sweet. He needs a boyfie.

Why am I always so weak for the tummy kissing?

Look at First's snatched little waist.

Nevermind, I bet now is when Style is working to buy the restaurant. Gotta get it ready for Fadel's release!

Aww, Fadel's mental health just nose-dived at the thought Style of having a full and busy life on the outside. He's such a sensitive baby, however he tries to hide it.

Jojo cameo!!

Oh this is sweet.

I do wish we had gotten a few more Kant & Babe scenes, to really highlight their importance to one another.

No, Fadel! Still trying to build that wall back up, because you still expect to lose him.

It does make sense, the closer he gets to being free, the more afraid he is of his expectations being dashed, and being hurt again.

But also Style has definitely earned some trust, it's been four years of this!

Lol, Bison's reaction.

But also we need to get Fadel his color back. Bison has his already!

Hand straight to ass, well done.

It's the little details.

Haha, yay, knew it! Who knew a scene all about a burger joint could be so romantic...

I was going to say, I'm pretty sure Babe should be in college now? But I do appreciate that Bison wants to prove he can be independent, when he's never had that chance before.

Cuteness

Love moments where you can really appreciate the size difference.

Oh, this is some unexpected drama... oh no, is Lilly back for revenge?

Since she is rich, makes sense she would have only gotten a slap on the wrist.

Damn, they all look so good.

Lol, and of course Fadel and Bison have already managed to acquire new guns after being out of prison for less than a day.

Style's dad is having a very confusing day, poor guy.

Jojo not holding back at calling the entire legal system corrupt, love to see it.

This was not a great plan Lilly. Bye!

Khao's hair is so cute all mussed up.

Lol, poor First just got real life bodied by Khaotung.

I love that Style has become the one who holds Fadel, as his soft space.

And Fadel is so cuddly now, my heart.

Ha, you liar Fadel, you are insane for this man.

Style is gonna get 100% out of his man by hook or by crook.

Oh our boys are feasting.

I'm sure I will rewatch that scene a very reasonable number of times.

Aw, yay, our boys found their lights!

I'm surprised Fadel is letting Style use the phone in the car.

Lolol, of course Style's dad is all "yeah, you need to be capable of murder to handle my son".

Oooh, wedding bells! Special episode?

Fadel! Car safety!

Noooo, it's over. Waaaaah.

Gonna be doing some processing still, but damn, this was so much fun.

[bliss-wily]

king cold as a grandpa please. headcanons or drawing.

Headcanons for now, simply because I’ll only draw when I’m home alone because I’m weird like that.

King Cold as a grandad, so I’m framing this as King Cold and Kuriza mostly but with a side of Cooler and Frieza, so King Cold as a parent too? Anyway~

•I imagine this begins with King Cold badgering Cooler about when he’s getting grandchildren or whatever, while needing successors or whatever.

•In reality he wants more kids to spoil rotten seeing as his two sons are adults.

•I think he would be more shocked that Frieza is having a child first, insert concerned father mode - his little princess is becoming a father!

•More concerned than he lets on due to Frieza’s lack of maturity, probably expects that the elites and advisors would be watching the baby more often than not.

•Once warmed up to the idea he would be coddling Frieza the entire time as his youngest goes through early parenthood.

•Takes a massive shine to Kuriza, the little boy with his pointy head.

•Would be the grandpa who’s constantly wanting the baby to stay with him, imagine glass of wine in one hand, tiny Kuriza in the other.

•Cue Frieza getting super jealous of Kuriza…Cooler being highly amused.

•Kuriza would be spoilt rotten by King Cold, I think. The kind of gramps who would do ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner if that’s what the young Prince wants. Kuriza would have everything new from any planet desired.

“My boy wants a hooded vulture?”, cue someone being sent to earth to go find one.

•Hooded vulture is totally called Kevin, for no obvious reasons. Why a hooded vulture? First animal that came to my mind for some reason.

•Frieza wouldn’t be the favourite anymore…probably. The emperor of the universe would become the biggest brat of the universe.

•King Cold would treat everything Kuriza does as an accomplishment. Accidentally death beam Frieza in the face? Manage to break an expensive bottle of wine? Learns to bite Vegeta in the arm? Gets lost in Raditz’s hair? All accomplishments!

•The walls of any base/ship/palace are adorned with pictures of the three boys. His sons and his grand baby.

Im sorry these aren’t great. Very random and all over the place but it’s nearly 4am and I can’t sleep so…

[thefabulous-mostgroovy]

If I Make it Through Tonight (Everybody's Gonna Hear Me Out)

Martin saw his first monster at the age of ten.

He saw his second monster at the age of twenty-eight, and that monster was his boss.

Jon/Martin, 4.6k words, rated T, read on AO3. This is for day 5 of @jonmartinweek for the prompt Cryptids. pls ignore that i completely forgot to repost this to tumblr lmao

Martin saw his first monster at the age of ten.

He was in Brownies at that age, amongst a group of girls who could tell he wasn't quite like them. The scout leader had been talking about a camping trip for over a year at that point, and finally managed to organise it at a local site. A few girls complained about the dirt and didn't like the smell of the campfire and the portaloo, but Martin stuck with a small group of girls who he found huddled around a flipped over rock, looking at bugs.

He doesn't remember most of the night, in all honesty. They did the usual stuff you were supposed to do when you go camping: stories, songs, s'mores. Nothing too exciting. Then they all went to bed in their lackluster tents and sleeping bags.

When Martin woke up, he didn't know what time it was. Just that it was dark and the campfire had been put out. The girls in his tent were all still asleep. Sitting up and pulling his jumper on, he carefully pulled the zipper on the entrance down and poked his head out. He couldn't see much but the vague silhouette of the other tents and trees.

The woods at night were quiet. Martin closed his eyes and listened to chirping insects and rustling bushes. He's always liked the sound of nature. He lived near a woodland with a park sitting on the edge and he would lie in the basket swing and watch the spaces through the trees. Sometimes he would see deer or rabbits or foxes, or once, even a badger. He didn't have a sketchbook, but he would take some printer paper and a clipboard and draw the animals and plants he saw. Not very well, mind you, but he would sometimes convince his mum to let him keep his favourites stuck to the fridge.

Martin was snapped out of his thoughts by a loud rustle in the foliage, and a hush fell over the woods. A true silence was left ringing in his ears and he turtled into the neck of his jumper. He vaguely remembers, from a walk through that woodland with his father, being told that silence is the most dangerous sound in nature; it means everything that could be eaten has run away, leaving only the thing looking for something to eat. He fumbled for his glasses behind him, not taking his eyes off the treeline, and shoved them onto his nose. It didn't help much, but it wasn't as blurry anymore.

Amongst the black, he saw something shifting, heard the sniffs of a large nose. Heavy, yet careful footsteps made their way through the bushes, and into the campsite. Now out of the trees, Martin could see it clearer.

The creature was enormous, hunched unnaturally on four legs and covered in thin, dark hair. The skin underneath was pale and covered in painful-looking stretch marks. The paws didn't seem like paws at all. They looked more like hands, with elongated fingers and harsh, ragged nails. It was almost person-shaped. Almost. The hunchback made it look like a man trying to walk on all fours, on his hands and feet, but it moved so fluidly, like it was used to it.

Until it stood up.

The thing rose onto its two hind legs, pushing at the portaloo with its knobbly hands, towering over the thing by easily two and a half feet. The small stall rocked back and forth, clattering as its balance was tested. It chuffed as it tried the handle with clumsy fingers, then moved on to investigate a tent.

Looking back on it, Martin knows it was a terrible idea, but his mind had filled with the awful image of this creature—this monster—getting into the tent and ripping the girls inside to shreds, and he simply acted in instinct. He blindly fished the wind up torch he brought with him out of his sleeping bag, and turned it on. The crank made an awful, loud clicking noise and the light wasn't very bright, but the monster still squinted at it.

Big reflective eyes stared at Martin, the lumbering body frozen in a startled turn. Its hair stood on end, teeth bared in its snout and stained with something dark, and it stared. It stared and stared and didn't move a muscle. Martin stared back, suddenly cold with fear. It raised a long, slender finger, the tip thick like a paw pad, the nail curled and yellow, and it held the finger to its lips. Like it was telling—no, warning—Martin to be quiet.

The light faded out. Martin didn't rewind it. He listened to the creature disappear back into the woods. He did not go back to sleep that night.

The first monster Martin saw, he discovered many years later, was a werewolf. And it sparked what can only be described as an obsession.

From that point forward, Martin found everything he could on monsters, ghouls, and cryptids. He found books in the library about Mothman and the Loch Ness Monster and Krampus, and checked them out, much to the dismay of the librarian. He copied the anatomical sketches into the jotters he took from the supply bin in school and proudly showed his teachers, who replied with a concerned grimace.

(To be fair, he doesn't blame them. He was this specky little eleven year old holding up drawings that might as well have been props from The Shining. He once heard a teaching assistant mutter 'Redruuum' behind the teacher he was proudly showing a picture of Bigfoot to, and she was quickly sent off with a glare.)

The interest only got worse as he grew up. He set up trail cams in his local woodland, he went on ill-advised camping trips to unregulated areas, he had a truly awful vampire phase in high school and is rather glad he's not still friends with anyone who would remember it. He started carrying around a camera everywhere he went, just in case, deciding that his top goal should be to finally get a picture of one of the damn things. But one thing truly takes the cake for the lengths he's willing to go to get that shot:

After dropping out of high school and needing to support himself and his mum, he made up a lie about having a master's degree in parapsychology and applied to the Magnus Institute.

Working at the Magnus Institute had been a total dream for Martin for a few years at that point. The idea of being completely surrounded with resources, with proof of the supernatural was all he could ever ask for! Of course, he applied to other jobs as well, but he had all his hopes pinned on the institute. When he got the interview, he was practically vibrating with nerves the entire time. The whole thing was a bit weird, Elias is definitely a bit of a freak who learned what a smile is from a WikiHow guide, but he did get the job!

And ended up in the bloody library.

Sure, having very easy access to every book you could possibly want on supernatural creatures is great, but zero access to the research department is not great. It also doesn't help that there are actually very few books on cryptids, and most of his coworkers thought they were a load of rubbish.

All in all, Martin does what he can before simply returning to independent research (i.e. Reddit threads. Grim). That is, until he got moved to the archives.

It's all he could have ever asked for: two hundred years worth of statements and research packed away into a maze of shelves where no one can see him rummaging around and taking notes on the book he hides in his desk drawer. A boss who doesn't seem to mind, if downright encourages, employees staying late, even if he is a bit of a dickhead about it (a very handsome dickhead, but that's a matter for Martin to think about elsewhere). And two coworkers who are truly entertained by Martin's Origin Story and hand him files to read on werewolves in America, and vampire killers. He swears he was only a little disappointed to find out that vampires are not as sexy as they are, according to Anne Rice.

This is all to say, Martin is finally going on another proper Cryptid Hunt.

Now, Martin has never set foot in a proper research facility, but he thinks he's onto something. Statement after statement has been cropping up about a monster roaming London in the night, that speaks in static and has dozens of eyes. It's like nothing Martin has ever heard before. He's determined to find it. He's got his digital camera, he has a torch and plenty of backup batteries, he has a Polaroid camera, just in case cryptids don't capture well on digital—which he assumes they won't, if the statements won't even record without the tape recorder.

Speaking of tapes, he'll need to find some blank tapes to record anything important on. Not that he thinks a Polaroid wouldn't be enough proof, he just- he likes the Lo-fi charm, alright? It's—as much as Jon detests the word—spooky.

It's not his first rodeo borrowing (stealing) the odd item for one of his hunts, but this time he's more nervous. Jon has made it very clear that Martin is on thin ice, especially after letting a dog into the archives and it causing a mess on the floor. So, he tries his best to be very careful when he picks the lock to Jon's door and stuffs a couple tapes into his satchel. It's all going surprisingly swimmingly until he runs into Jon on the way out after getting his coat.

"Martin?" Jon calls as he spots him. "Did you see anyone going into my office?"

"Mm, no," Martin says, like a liar. He's always been good at lying. That's not great for his character, but it is great for him getting away with everything.

"Right, I must have forgotten to lock the door, then," he mumbles. Jon has his coat on and his bag over his shoulder, which is odd considering Martin doesn't think he's ever seen Jon leave on time. He shows up early and he leaves late; as far as Martin knows, he could bloody live down here.

"Are you heading out already?" Martin risks asking. It's not that he wants Jon to work himself to death, but could he maybe start his self improvement journey when Martin isn't trying to walk out with stolen Institute property?

"Yes, I have, uh—" Jon waves a hand as he thinks, "—plans. I have plans. Shall we head out together?"

The suggestion throws him off, as do many things Jon does. He has these odd moments of treating Martin no different from Tim and Sasha, then the next minute going back to calling him useless. Martin tries to cherish the few and far between acts of kindness Jon dishes out, but he tends to ruin it with his face going bright red and starting to stutter and fumble with what he wants to say. Then Jon will usually side-eye him and tut and the moment will be over and Martin has failed to woo his hot boss once again and—

"Martin?" Jon interrupts, head tilted and brow furrowed.

"Oh! Oh, uh, yeah, sure, let's- let's go!" Martin lets out a nervous chuckle and Jon sends him an odd side-eye, and tuts, and sets off towards the lift. Martin curses under his breath and follows.

It's a little awkward in the lift, tense in a way that Martin is sure Jon doesn't feel. He clears his throat quietly.

"So, what plans do you have?" he asks, hoping Jon didn't actually intend on walking side by side in silence to the front door.

"Hm?" Jon raises a brow at him, like he's said something truly outrageous, then his eyes widen a little. "Oh- nothing much, just- visiting a friend from my uni days. Anything planned for yourself?"

"Not much." Martin shrugs. "Hoping to have a nice night in, you know?" Jon hums and nods a little as the lift sings and opens to the ground floor. The chit chat is idle and dull as they make their way through the dwindling crowds filtering out of the Institute, and they share curt goodbyes as they part ways.

_____

Martin triple checks his bag for maybe the millionth time: he has a camera, digital and analog, his phone, water, a few snacks, a torch, a loaded tape recorder and an extra cassette, and some basic first aid items. He has everything. It's time to set off.

The grass is dry and crunches beneath his feet as he makes his way into the woods. He tries to walk confidently, as if confidence is all he needs to warn off a thing that one statement said could most accurately be described as a fucking dragon. This is an impeccably stupid idea to begin with, so who cares if puffing his chest out makes him feel a little safer.

He ditches the path and wanders off into the trees, knowing how bad of an idea that is, and doing it anyway.

The light from the torch sends stark shadows streaking along the ground and up the trees, startling animals off in the distance, but no dragon. Martin knows it's not close because he can still hear the vague chitters of squirrels and insects. He walks slowly, carefully, because it's not going to be any help if he scares them off himself. He swallows as his nerves start to get to him. Maybe talking will take his mind off of it. He starts the tape recorder with a clunky click.

"Okay, erm... documentation of Martin Blackwood going Cryptid Hunting, because he's a bloody moron, tape one. I've found the area that a lot of these statements mentioned, it's a pretty popular walking trail, so hopefully this will come up with something."

A breeze sends a shiver down his spine as he checks all around him, pointing the thin beam of light through the spindly trees. His footsteps are light as he can manage, barely rustling the grass and fallen leaves. He doesn't see anything except a grey forest, illuminated by shitty LEDs, and he hasn't seen anything for the last twenty minutes.

"I'm starting to think this is a lost cause. I mean, it's getting late, and it's bloody freezing, I might just turn back." And he clicks the recorder off. The quiet in the absence of the whirring tape makes him feel even worse.

He tries to follow back the way he came. He winds through familiar enough looking trees and broken branches and rocks and logs. Then he walks past the same bunch of trees twice, and sees a log that he swears he saw ten minutes ago, and a small stream that he thinks he's already stepped over. In what feels like no time, it's been an hour and he hasn't found the trail. He quickly and quietly curses under his breath, panic starting to settle in at the fact that he's lost in a woods with frequent monster sightings.

"See, kids, this is why you follow the walking path," he mutters into the recorder. "Don't do what I do, for Christ's sake." He turns it back off, to preserve space on the tape, but it clicks back on by itself. With a shaky breath, he turns it back off. It turns on again. "Shit, don't tell me the recorder's broken..."

He holds the thing up to his face, trying to inspect the buttons for damage, but he doesn't know how tape recorders work so it's not revealing much.

A branch snaps somewhere behind him. Not a thing branch, or a twig, but a heavy, crunching snap, that sends the forest into silence. Nothing fills the air except Martin's quickened breathing and the whir of the tape. And possibly a short shriek from him, but that's unimportant.

Martin shines the light in every direction, hand shaking as he frantically searches the darkness for a presence. The tape recorder clicks itself off, then starts to play. His own voice comes out garbled and backwards through the tinny speakers of the recorder. It crackles and starts to fade into static. The thing shakes in his hands and he thinks maybe he should put the thing down, when something comes out of it, through the cacophony of static.

"Martin..."

The man in question freezes for only a second before he fumbles to pull his Polaroid camera out of his bag, not bothering with the digital. With the shrieking tape record tucked under his arm, he stands with his camera poised, listening out for movement. He hears a rustle on his left and whips around, taking a picture in that direction.

In the brief second that the flash lights up the trees, he sees it: an enormous, black creature with sickly green eyes covering every inch of its face, twisted horns reaching up into the branches and taloned feet reaching over the bushes. A mane of fur covers its back and neck, tapering down its chest. A tail audibly swishes behind it. And it was looking right at him.

The camera spits out a picture and Martin barely even notices. He takes off in a run.

The creature doesn't make any noise as it follows, doesn't roar or growl or anything, but Martin can hear it crashing against trees and clawing at the wood and ground. He can tell that it's bounding towards him. The recorder is practically screaming and it hurts his ears. He looks over his shoulder, and suddenly understands why three separate people called it a dragon. The thing has six legs and it's leaping from tree to tree like an awful overgrown squirrel.

In his terror, watching it grow closer and closer, Martin trips over a branch and goes flying to the ground. He rolls onto his back, scrambling to kick himself away as the creature closes in. He doesn't get very far as it slams a giant hand down on his chest and stomach. Martin screams bloody murder, kicking his legs in the hopes of hitting anything within reach, pushing at the leg and pulling at its fur.

Martin has always wanted to see another monster, but this is just a little too close for comfort. The thing stares at him with its too many eyes, and they each start to glow, starting from the centre at radiating outwards, the pupils thinning into tiny slits.

Martin feels pinned (in a more metaphorical sense than how he is very literally being pinned to the ground). He feels like he's getting an x-ray, like this monster has peeled him open and is stripping him bare. He's completely frozen under its oppressive gaze. He doesn't know how he's so sure, but he is filled with the inescapable dread that it now knows every last detail of his entire life.

He doesn't realise he hasn't been breathing until the feeling stops, and he gasps in deep, gulping breaths, tears falling down his temples. The static from the tape recorder—which had been abandoned to his left when he fell and had still been screeching—starts to quiet down, evening out into a steady white noise. The monster blinks all its eyes in unison, and the pupils have each grown rounder, filling out most of the eyes.

"Martin," the recorder says again. That voice- Martin knows that voice, where does he know that voice? "Martin...?"

"H-... hello?" he whimpers. He wonders if this is recording. "Are you... is that you? Speaking?"

"The tape," the monster says, glancing to the recorder. It—he?—sounds almost more confused than Martin. "It hears me."

The voice is deep and a little bewildered. Martin can't help but think it's the kind of voice you could find reading an audiobook. There's a curious aspect to it, a need to know more that is impossibly familiar. How the hell does he know his name?

He squints, no longer convinced that he's about to be gored or eaten. He swears he knows that voice, that posh, over exaggerated accent, the way it says Mahhhtin- wait, holy shit—

"Jon?!"

The monster- creature- thing– Jon looks back at Martin, shocked for a moment, then he hurriedly sits back. The six legs fold up surprisingly easily into a cat-like position.

"Martin, what the hell are you doing out here?" says the voice coming from the recorder. Says Jon. Says Martin's boss. He's having a bit of a time, okay?

"What am I doing? What are you doing?" Martin spits as he scrambles to sit up. "You mean to tell me you're a- a what? A dragon? A monster? A giant ferret that can only speak through a tape recorder? You don't even have a mouth!"

Jon stares, very unimpressed.

"What I mean is, it's very dangerous to be out here this late, especially off-trail." Jon chuffs as the recorder speaks. There's an odd purring rumbling from his chest. "I'm taking you back to your car. Come on."

"Oh, like you know the way," Martin grumbles, but still grabs the tape recorder and straightens out his bag, standing to follow.

"Like this, I know everything, Martin," Jon says, voice low and gravelly in a way that makes Martin's face go hot and red. Jon shuffles around and nudges him between his shoulders with his snout. "Now, let's get a move on."

Martin trudges alongside the giant dragon-Jon, who stoops his head down to seem closer to Martin's height, head tilted at an angle to lay his horns flat against his shoulders, instead of catching them on the branches. Part of him wants to try and make conversation. Part of him wants to forget this ever happened. A massive part of him wants to pet Jon's mane—it looks very soft and fluffy, and this close, he can see tufts of very dark green and dull grey amongst the black and he just really wants to sink a hand into it and—

"Yes, Martin, you can pet the mane," Jon sighs, rolling his eyes. Martin flushes from head to toe.

"How did you- what!" Martin squawks, and Jon laughs a little.

"You were thinking it very loudly at me," Jon explains. Martin stops in his tracks.

"Wh– you can read minds?"

"That's one way of putting it, I suppose."

"Well, don't read my mind, please."

"I can't exactly help it much." Jon rolls his eyes again and moves his neck within Martin's reach. "Go on, I suppose. If you still want to."

There's an odd look in Jon's eyes, looking almost expectantly at him. Hesitantly, Martin raises a hand, checking his face for signs that he was joking, and it doesn't seem so. Jon isn't the type to joke about that anyway, so he carefully reaches over and strokes the fur. It is soft. He carefully pets the fur down with the back of his hand, then sinks his hand a little further into the fluffy mass. At the firmer touch, Jon swings his neck to press into Martin's hand, so hard that he stumbles back.

The purring starts up again as Jon parks himself on the ground and leans heavily into Martin's arms. Martin laughs as he pets Jon's—again, his boss—chest and the back of his neck, wrapping arms around his as far as he can reach. The fur tickles his nose, and Jon rubs against him, all his eyes closing as the purr vibrates under his hands. His backmost leg starts kicking at the ground and a contended sigh comes from the recorder. Martin then laughs so loud in shock that he ruins the moment and Jon shakes him off.

He clears his throat. "Sorry, erm... let's continue."

Martin follows him through the woods with a smug little smile on his face. A question scratches at the back of his mind, but he isn't sure how to ask it without making things awkward. He figures, Jon will just, apparently, read his mind and find out anyway, so he might as well ask himself.

"So are you, like... fully in there?" he asks.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you're- you're conscious in this- form, I guess." Martin thinks for a moment. "Side question, is this like a werewolf thing?"

"Well, first, I suppose you could call it a werewolf thing, it happens every few weeks. And to answer your initial question, kind of?"

"So then why did you chase me down like you were going to kill and eat me?"

"I- I do apologise for scaring you," Jon starts, guiltily bowing his head. "Though, I will admit, it was my intention. I didn't recognise you. Or- I did, but it didn't register? Usually, like this, my brain is a lot more... simple. Straightforward, I suppose is a better way of putting it. Like my sentience takes the back seat to make room for something more- primal. Being able to speak through the tape recorder seems to put me back at the forefront."

Martin doesn't know what kind of answer he was expecting, but it wasn't that.

"So you've got some kind of... animal brain when you're—" Martin tries to find a delicate way to put it, and fails, "—this thing?" Okay, that was possibly the worst way he could have described it. He's totally blowing it with his hot monster boss.

"Sure," Jon huffs.

"That explains why you went all cat-ish when I pet you," he chuckles, and Jon pushes him with his head.

All in all, it's a rather pleasant walk back to his car, with the lumbering Jon next to him and his six legs thumping on the ground with each step. He's almost a little disappointed that it's over when he dumps his bag in the back seat and turns back to Jon with a quiet sigh. He has to tilt his head back all the way to look at his face. Sat back on his haunches, middle and front legs politely tucked in at his chest and stomach, combined with the long, slender horns, makes him easily ten feet tall.

(A far cry from his five-foot-five boss.)

"So," Martin says.

"So," the tape recorder says. Jon blinks his many eyes. "I'll see at work on Monday."

"Yup."

"Right. On you go, then." He swoops down and nudges Martin towards the car with his snout, then turns and heads back into the forest. Martin watches for a moment, then opens the door and collapses into the driver's seat. Jon looks back at him through the bushes. Even with the door closed, the recorder crackles out one last message: "Oh, and Martin?"

"Yeah?" He knows Jon Knows he's answered.

"Don't tell anyone about this."

And Jon disappears into the dark.

_____

By the time Martin gets home, he realises that his picture is still in the woods, and it takes all his will power not to drive back and hope Jon is still roaming around and will help him find it. But, then again, Jon probably won't want loose evidence of him being a were-dragon-ferret-whatever.

In a slightly foul mood, Martin goes to sleep.

_____

On Monday, Martin makes very awkward eye contact with Jon as he delivers his tea.

He tries to make small talk in the break room and fails miserably.

He gets no work done for the entire day. But, at five o'clock, after he's returned from washing the mugs, he finds a Polaroid of Jon on his desk, and a note.

The sticky note reads: 'Sorry for knocking you over. Still don't tell anyone.'

Martin keeps the Polaroid folded in his wallet. He doesn't tell a soul.

[intcritus]

kisses while wrapping your legs around your lover. //Zack

  How they ended up on the carpet is beyond Zahir but he doesn’t mind, not when that beautiful mouth is against his, sipping from his lips like it’s the last time they’ll kiss. It’s silly the way he indulges the Hero, often wanting to see him in every way the badger can. There are fading teeth marks on his collar bone, golden hair mussed from the amount of times the badger had grabbed it to tilt Zacks’ head back so Zahir could kiss and bite at his jaw and throat. Today had been tiring, so many people, ugh, he didn’t have the capacity to deal with them anymore. 

Legs wrapping around him draws his attention back to Zack, teeth nipping and tugging at the badger’s bottom lip. Gods, he was so fucking pretty. ❝ ━ Afraid I’ll leave ya wit’ no kisses? Such a greedy lad. ❞ His chuckle is quiet, one hand shifting to Zack’s throat, thumb brushing over his adam’s apple before spanning his throat completely, not to choke him but to cut off one sense so the blonde could focus on the touch, the grinding of their pelvises as Zahir bends down to kiss him again. To enhance that sense so the sensuous glide of their tongues could properly be appreciated. A groan vibrates along his tongue, and oh, he wants to release their erections, to take in hand and give pleasure, but this grinding, clothed is much better.

Because it’s a denial of what he wants, that Zack will get eventually but the kisses come first. Hands map their way across scarred skin, Zack never one to stay idle, nails leaving behind marks. It’s a delicious sort of pain, one that invigorates senses, their grinding erratic, kisses sloppy but it doesn’t deter them, merely spears them on as they find pleasure in one another, every kiss like gasoline into the fire budding between them. 

kisses for his pretty hero. | @nvrcmplt

[maria-de-salinas]

@remadoramicrofics day 17 - Ghost

Words: 892

Rating: G

The first time Remus saw the ghost, he was half-asleep on a thin spring mattress in an upstairs room of the Hog's Head, fingers of early morning light sliding past the thick black curtains and threatening to keep him awake.

The child was three years old, he'd guess, with long wavy hair the same mousy colour as Dora's when she slept. Eyes like his, with those long dark lashes, only the child didn't hide behind them, but looked right at him, the corners of their mouth turned down.

"Hello there," said Remus, crouching down to eye level, or close to it.

The child dropped a plastic cup full of grass and dandelion heads and ran away.

A week or so later, Remus was crashed out and freezing on the lumpy floor of a tent that belonged to one of his friends from the werewolf camp, slipping his arms through the sleeves of his jumper and hugging them to his chest to keep warm. This time, the child was maybe nine years old, dressed in a school uniform--a blue jumper with a white collar and black trousers, their hair still long and wavy but neon green this time. He saw Dora in the impish grin, like they were about to pull the fire alarm or put frog spawn in the teacher's coffee, but the shadow that darkened their face as Remus stepped closer, the lowered eyes that fell to their untied trainers, almost guilty, was all him.

The child didn't look him in the face; their eyes were fixed to some spot just to the left of him, as though Remus wasn't there. As though he were the ghost.

"What's that you've got there?" he asked, eyeing the piece of paper the child was holding. He liked to draw when he was younger--used to spend hours getting a house or a dog or a tree just right. Maybe the child did too?

The child's eyes grew wide and startled; frowning slightly but still not looking at him, they half-hid the paper behind their back as though afraid someone would snatch it. Remus started to say that it was okay, he wouldn't judge, but before he'd finished the child ran away, arms and legs flying everywhere.

Remus knew he'd see the child again. All week he could barely sleep for the half hope, half dread of it. He needed to see them, and he couldn't.

It was 1 a.m on Saturday and he was spending the night on the Underground, slightly drunk and nodding off with his head against the window. He sucked in his breath, sure he'd seen a reflection in the glass, staring at him.

His child was slouching on the seat opposite, only this time they weren't really a child anymore, but a long-legged teenager, dressed in deep purple robes with rips and tears at the elbows--deliberate he thinks, and not the result of wearing them for years on end. Their hair was spiky now, the way Dora liked it, but limp and sullen, like it hadn't been washed in awhile. He could just see the tip of a dark brown wand sticking out of the front pocket, near a sewn-on badge with a black badger on it.

Remus tried to catch their eye but like before, they looked right through him into the opposite window, all sorts of different thoughts going on behind those eyes, things Remus didn't know. Someone whispered to their seatmate and they glanced over sort of furtively, through long strands of hair, the way he used to. Afraid of being the target of their whispers, the way Remus was, or merely looking for a friendly face?

The train moved on, and his child looked down again, hands clasped together, hair falling into their face, a rucksack at their feet. More a question than an answer--how did they get there, where were they going, why did they looks so tired?

Remus did everything he could to get their attention--staring, waving his hand, tapping the tip of their trainers with his, even breaking that most sacred of British norms (and why not? His own existence was a violation) and talking on the train.

"Hello. Can you hear me?"

If his child heard him, they made no show of it. The train stopped and they slid through the open doorway, Remus watching them get smaller and smaller as the train pulled away, and he knew his child was slipping away from him--that he'd never see them again---

He ripped his eyes open and stood up, losing his balance and grabbing onto the handle to right himself. A young woman looked up from her Walkman, her eyes startled, forehead wrinkling in disgust as she looked him up and down. He welcomed it, needed it even. However much he hated himself, it wasn't enough.

He sat back down, avoiding the window for fear he'd see his child's reflection. Or worse, his own, pale and watery as a phantom. He touched his forehead, half expecting his hand would slide right through, but it was solid, slightly damp from his rapid pulse and the heat of his jumper. Alive, or something like it.

Morning came, and he got off, found someplace to change his clothes. Spun himself to the camp to get his battered leather valise and pack up his things.

He was needed.

[nanuk-the-bat]

Was tagged by @phenanthreneblue! Thank you! <3

ARE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?

Nope. I was almost a Kathleen though and that would have been a tragedy lol, but really, I'm not particularly attached to names.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?

Couple weeks ago, when I decided to split a whole extra spicy fried Korean chicken with my other half, who basically drinks hot sauce. Said I'd try the hot hot one. I did, and I wept from the burning deliciousness.

DO YOU HAVE KIDS?

One larva/ honey badger/ cherub

WHAT SPORTS DO YOU PLAY/HAVE YOU PLAYED?

Volleyball. Basketball. Soccer. La cross. Archery (if that counts?) Not a sports person, but I have decent coordination and enjoy physical activity for the sake of mental and health benefits.

DO YOU USE SARCASM?

Only when extra sassy

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?

Their voice, followed by hair color

WHAT'S YOUR EYE COLOUR?

Mossy log meets dappled sunlight.

SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?

Can I have both? No...fine. Happy endings with a bit of trauma along the way.

ANY TALENTS?

Not a master of any skill set, but I sing significantly better than the average person. And my level of ocpd helps with organizing. Oh and bad timing.

WHERE WERE YOU BORN?

Technically in the USA, but not in any of the states.

WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES?

Drawing fictional characters ad nauseum. Gaming on rare occasions. Choir and solo stuff on a blue moon.

DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS?

One cat that looks more like a gray fuzzy slinkie with the moves of a squirrel, and one illusive tuxedo cat.

HOW TALL ARE YOU?

Average height.

FAVOURITE SUBJECT?

I assume this means academically? Microbiology or Music. No I can't pick.

DREAM JOB?

Pathologist? But I'm too lazy to pursue that atm.

TAGGING

@thedogtorwho @star-spangled-bastard @laudanine @wondrouswendy @dethharmonic and @ anyone else who wants to join.

[last-knight-who-was]

Alright, so this is sort of a prologue chapter to my Dragon Age: Origins fanfic. Been awhile since I actually wrote something, glad to get back to it!

-------

The Denerim Alienage was in a lively state. Marriage ceremonies were always a big affair, one of the few occasions to be celebrated and this particular ceremony included not one, but two weddings. A small stage had been erected in the square, beneath the vhenadahl. The children had been eagerly making paper decorations over the past week, which the adults had hung throughout the square.

The residents of the Alienage were in high spirits, the children playing a game of tag as the adults went about their preparations. Among them was hahren Valendrian and Cyrion Tabris, standing beside the stage in discussion.

“...most of the preparations are complete, Nelaros and Valora will be arriving in the morning,” Valendrian was saying, his gaze drifting around the square. It settled on Soris, who was holding one of the children up so they could hang their decorations, while Shianni cheered them on. “I see Soris is helping. Where is Ashara? I’ve noticed she hasn’t… been around.”

Cyrion let out a sigh, sending a glance of his own towards his nephew and niece. “I haven’t seen her much myself,” he admits, disheartened. There is a slump to his shoulders, his daughter’s absence weighing on him. “She hasn’t spoken to me since the date was set. Leaves first thing thing in the morning and returns well after dark.”

“Takes after her mother, that one,” Valendrian replies with a fond chuckle. “Give her time. She’ll calm down after the wedding. You remember how Adaia was.”

Cyrion nodded, though the frown didn’t leave his face. “Adaia was upset, but Ashara…” He hesitated, a far-away look in his eyes. “You didn’t see the look she gave me. She was furious.”

Valendrian studied his friend for a moment, then returned his attention to the ongoing preparations. “Give her time, this is our way. We all have to grow up someday,” he replied, lightly clasping Cyrion’s shoulder.

“I hope you’re right.”

-

The Denerim marketplace was as crowded as ever, people making their ways between stalls and storefronts, the air full of chatter. A raven haired elf made her way inconspicuously through the crowd, hands tucked behind her back. At her side was a tiny blonde girl, her hand gripping at the older girl’s belt.

“Where we goin’ Ash?” The little blonde asked.

“To get you some new shoes, lil badger,” Ashara replied, shooting the girl a small smile. “It’ll be winter soon. You need some shoes that ain’t got holes in ‘em.”

The blonde glanced down at her shoes, wiggling a toe that peaked from the torn seam. “But you ain’t got any coins,” she pointed out, looking back up at the older girl.

“Don’t I?” Ashara countered with a playful grin, pulling a hand from behind her back, a small leather coin purse dangling between her fingers. Blue eyes widened, and the blonde began to turn her head to look behind her. “Sera!” Ashara hissed sharply, drawing the girl’s gaze right back to her. “Never look back.”

“Sorry,” Sera replied quietly, eyes focusing on the coin purse instead. “When did you…?”

“Few minutes ago,” Ashara replied, shrugging as she pocketed the purse. “I’ll teach you how when you get a lil older.”

Immediately, the girl’s face brightened in excitement. “Promise?”

Face softening, Ashara brought a hand up and lightly ruffled Sera’s hair. “Cross my heart,” she swore.

“Yes! Then I can help you get stuff for the orphanage!” Sera cheered excitedly, practically skipping along.

“Sounds good, lil badger,” Ashara replied, the smile dipping slightly.

Nearly an hour later, the two of them made their way back through the market, a new pair of boots on Sera’s feet. Ashara’s eyes drifted towards the Chantry and she paused, considering. Grabbing Sera’s hand, she shot the girl a grin. “Come on, let’s take a detour,” she said, pulling the blonde towards the Chantry.

“Why’re we goin’ to the Chantry?” Sera asked, even as she hurried to follow.

“Right of passage,” Ashara said, grin widening.

The courtyard outside the Chantry was empty at this time of evening, allowing the two girls to walk right through. Moving around to the back side of the building, Ashara turned to Sera. “Alright lil badger, you ready to become a woman?”

Sera stared at her uncomprehendingly. “Whatcha mean?”

“I mean, we’re gonna climb to the top of the bell tower,” Ashara replied with a smirk.

Eye growing wide, Sera looked up at the Chantry. “But I… I’ve never climbed anything that big before,” she mumbled, turning back to the older girl. “What if I fall?”

“Then I’ll catch you,” Ashara said, kneeling down to meet her eyes. “But you ain’t gonna fall. We’ve climbed plenty of buildings Sera, this ain’t any different.” Gently, she bopped her finger against the blonde’s nose. “I’ve got your back, lil badger.”

Nose scrunching, Sera smiled back at her. “Alright,” she agreed, looking up at the building again. Taking a few steps back, she hopped back and forth on her feet a few times, before running towards the Chantry. Jumping, she grabbed onto the uneven bricks, pressing her boots firmly into the wall. Quickly, she began to climb, finding different spots she could get her fingers onto.

On the ground below, Ashara watched with a small smile, hands resting on her hips. Grey eyes followed Sera’s every move, ready to react if the girl lost her grip. But, as Ashara had known, her lil badger made it all the way to the roof without issue, pulling herself up to sit on the edge.

Without hesitation, Ashara began to climb, making her way to the top of the wall and pulling herself onto the roof in half the time. “Good job Sera, but we’re only halfway there,” she said, ruffling the girl’s hair as she lead her across the rooftop to the base of the bell tower.

Sera followed eagerly, not even waiting for Ashara’s go ahead before she began to climb the tower. With a laugh, the teen followed her, the two girls ascending the tower with ease. Upon reaching the top, Ashara took a seat on the roof, patting the spot beside her. Sera sat beside her, leaning into the older girl’s side as Ashara wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“This is the best view in the city,” Ashara said, gazing out over the market and the neighboring buildings. The Chantry bell tower gave them enough height to see all the way to the docks and the ocean beyond. “Me and my brother used to climb up here all the time.”

Sera tilted her head, studying the older girl curiously. She noticed the slightly watery look in those grey eyes, pursing her lips. “You’ve been sad all week,” she said finally. “What’s wrong?”

Ashara grimaced, having been avoiding conversations just like this one since the announcement. “Just getting used to the idea that my entire life has been traded away to someone I don’t know,” she replied, sighing.

Sera blinked, head tilting. “You don’t wanna get married? But all the adults say its a good thing!”

“I’ll tell you a secret, lil badger. Adults are fuckin’ stupid,” Ashara said, lips pressing into a firm line. “They think just because something is tradition, because its always been a certain way, that that means its fine and shouldn’t change. But that’s bullshit.” Pinching the bridge of her nose, she idly massaged at it. “I don’t wanna marry some fuckin’ man! And nobody, not Valendrian, not dad, has the right to make me!”

For a moment, they sat in motionless silence. Then Sera carefully wrapped her arms around Ashara’s waist. “M’sorry they’re making you get married,” she said softly.

Ashara swallowed around the lump that was building in her throat as the tears finally broke free after weeks of holding them back. “Me too,” she mumbled, resting her cheek atop Sera’s head.

For a long time, the two girls simply held each other while Ashara cried silently. Eventually, the older girl pulled back enough to wipe her eyes.

“Do you want me to bite your husband tomorrow?” Sera asked earnestly, gaining a bark of laughter from Ashara.

“Maybe. I’ll let you know,” she said, shaking her head.

“Alright,” Sera replied happily, fully prepared to follow through.

A smile pulled at Ashara’s lips as she leaned over to press a kiss to the blonde’s forehead. “I love you, lil badger,” she murmured.

Sera blushed, grinning shyly. “Love you too Ash,” she mumbled.

Climbing to her feet, Ashara ruffled Sera’s hair before offering her a hand up. “Come on then, let’s get you back to the orphanage. My life is gonna end tomorrow, need to make sure I get plenty of sleep.” As Sera took her hand, Ashara pulled her to her feet, then leaned down to her face and said, “If you tell anyone you saw me cry, I’ll hang you from the vhenadahl by your underwear.”

A giggle erupted from the tiny blonde, blue eyes sparkling with amusement. “Our secret,” she promised.