#head heart hand fic

[manicpixiefelix]

all this, and love too (will ruin us)

{ One-Shot for head, heart, hand. }

Summary: The night of Oliver's party and both yours and Felix's moods are ruined upon finding out Oliver had been lying to you both for your entire friendship. While sticking with Felix all night to make sure he doesn't maim Oliver, Felix realises he doesn't like sharing you anymore. You're more than okay with this, but Oliver doesn't seem to be okay with sharing Felix, even if he has no say anymore. Canon tries to happen, but you get there first, so you kill the problem at it's source.

Need to Know: They/Them. Explicitly NB Reader. FWB!Reader/Felix. Reader is from a well off family but has pretty much been adopted by the Cattons.

Warnings: MAZE SCENE; death, murder, violence, nongraphic smut, dominant felix, bathroom blowjob, oliver's birthday party situation, oliver being incredibly manipulative, reader being incredibly manipulative back at him, heavy drinking and drug use, You VIOLENTLY Murder Oliver Quick In The Maze.

A/N: 6074 words. oh god these oneshots are only getting longer and longer. whoops. but also PLEASE heed the warnings. this is the Reader Kills Oliver oneshot (first of two) that i was talking about. not sure how i feel about it. its very unedited.

TAGLIST IN COMMENTS!! // TAGLIST ALWAYS OPEN ! (just message or comment to be added)

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On the drive back from his parents' house, Oliver sits in the back. Like a scolded child he keeps his gaze low and voice even lower. None of you speak the entire drive back; you try and focus on the wind in your hair and the hum of the car and not how your stomach is turning. In your mind you see the connections as they light up, small things you'd missed, things that are starting to make a lot more sense.

You wonder what other lies you could have gotten ahead of if Oliver hadn't been so nervous about you going through his file at Oxford.

Every single thing about him was designed specifically to be appealing, to you, of course, but more importantly to Felix. It was meant to be you who knew it all, could see the full board and all the pieces the people around you moved; it was meant to be you who could plan well enough and see far enough out to keep Felix out of situations exactly like this.

Felix is curt and swift the moment he's out of the car, trying to escape Oliver who rushes after him, his desperation echoing through the halls. You're several steps behind Oliver, silent, watching the exchange, watching Oliver cling to an ever-dwindling hope for even friendship, as Felix calls out the weirdness of his ongoing lies, tearing that hope asunder.

"I just wanted to be your friend," is all Oliver can say when pressed about his lies. It's genuine, it breaks your heart, but it doesn't make it better. For a moment, you see conflict as it flashes across Felix's face, but he clearly can't do this right now, needing at least the night, but promising not to tell his family.

As you go to leave, go to follow him, Oliver catches your sleeve, holds it too tight for just a moment -

"I thought you knew," his voice wobbles, but there's something like alarm bells in the back of your mind. Everything about Oliver is purposeful, even now. But you know him, you know how he likes to play.

"No you didn't," you look at his fingers still coiled in your sweater, watch him drop them, "you knew I trusted you." You wouldn't let him shift this blame; the faint dismay you can see in his eyes behind the hurt gives him away. He knew Felix had more emotions than sense, but somewhere along the way he seemed to have forgotten that you were so much more than another adoring fan in Felix's shadow.

"'m sorry," stumbles from his mouth almost like a reaction to the look in your eyes, "for hurting Felix with all this, I- I never wanted that," he shakes his head, dropping his gaze, "or hurt you," tacked on as an afterthought. Both of you know where he was placing the importance of that apology. Everything Oliver Quick does is with purpose.

"I know you are, Oliver," you tell him, standing tall and unflinching as you left him alone.

"If you leave my side tonight I'm going to maim him," is how Felix greets you when you enter your room. Sitting on his bed, you see a little, ornate box open in front of him, and you recognise it as one of the few stashes he had around the estate for desperate times. This one, if you recall correctly, was shoved well beneath Henry the Eighth's bed, and had a decent amount of coke that you'd left here after last Christmas.

"Can't fucking believe- I can't fucking believe him!" He rants, cutting up lines of coke on the little hand mirror Venetia had donated to this particular stash box. Mind working a million miles a minute, you're quiet, letting him rant. Running on autopilot, you begin to strip down to your underwear, pulling out your costume for the night, frowning at it in the afternoon light.

"How complicated is your costume?" Felix asks, finally looking up, gazing over at you and the sheer, shimmering thing in your hands. Without a word, but with a vague shrug, you turn it to him.

The base was like something you'd see at a rave, little more than green underwear, with straps, and beading, and jewels, and loops of green and purple pearls by your hips that would bounce while you walked. The overcoat, though it was far to generous to call it that, was pure gossamer, sheer and green, with hand-stitched silk leaves making up the hem that fell perfectly to your ankles, and intricate, hand embroidery of vines that extended across both shoulders, and both arms, ending with little, purple flowers embroidered by your wrists.

There's large, brown boots with a bit of a hell and some large buckles, and a belt that's half a skirt that hit just below your knee to give you some coverage, at least on your left, sewn to look like it was covered in leaves. Plus a leather thigh harness and flask that Farleigh had gotten you made for your last birthday.

Leaning back, Felix reaches out to feel the gossamer between his fingers, frowning for a beat.

"Don't be precious about it."

For a moment, you frown in confusion. Despite your entire outfit being exquisitely and perfectly tailored, you knew you could afford to not be precious about pretty much anything, even this. But that's never been an outright request he's made.

"I'm not?"

Quiet follows, the soft rustle of your garments as you begin to get dressed, and Felix quickly snorting a line of coke.

"I'm going to lose my fucking mind tonight," he mumbles. Even though you're half dressed, you still lean over his shoulder automatically as he lifts the mirror and the rolled bill up to you like an offering, holding the mirror steady for you.

"I need a drink," you groaned, to which Felix immediately agreed.

"God, why don't we stash anything in here?" He lamented, laying back and watching you head to the door once more while you're trying to do up your belt to hold up your partial leaf skirt, still without your overcoat.

"Because that's tacky and we're not alcoholics." Even with your explanation, Felix pouted. Still, it's a quick trip to the Blue Room and the bottle of rum you're glad Venetia hadn't found in the broken piano.

The night gets blurrier, gets better, with half a bottle of liquor in your veins before the sun even sets. As you're making yourself dreamy and ethereal with glitter and gems and makeup in the mirror, Felix drapes himself over your shoulders, pouting again. The drinks and drugs are already hitting you both and you can hear the revelry beginning outside.

"It's not going to last," he says pointedly, and you're confused until you see him trying to poke at the iridescent eyeliner that wasn't quite dry. Rolling your eyes, you smack his hand away. So he makes his point again, adding, "I'm going to get glitter all over me."

You smirked at him in the mirror, tipping your head against his.

"Don't be precious about it."

A spirit amongst the fairies, you greet your college friends with open arms and boundless enthusiasm, always keeping Felix close at hand. He was more subdued than you, more subdued than many of your friends were used to. Whenever you looked at him, it seemed like his gaze was searching, his expression drawn unless someone had caught his attention, and he wore a smile that seemed to convince them.

"Need a drink," his hand around your wrist and no time to protest, Felix dictated your night and it's pace. Frustration and apprehension keep him tense, even as he tries to loosen up; you feel every time that tension spikes, even if you don't know it's cause. His nails dig into you, wherever he's holding you, shoulder, thigh, arm -

In the bathroom, doing lines with India and some guys who claim to be friends of friends of the Cattons, you're leaning against the sink until you Felix nudge your knee with his own. Looking to the door, you see Oliver in white, taking up it's space. Felix only has to gently tap your thigh for you to shift, sitting in his lap.

"You can't ignore me forever," Oliver tells him, watching you both, watching the way Felix wraps an arm around your middle to hold you close and secure on him.

"I can try," Felix practically sings, his nails sinking into your stomach. With his free hand, he offers you his cigarette, raising it to your lips. You drop your gaze as you inhale, trying to only focus on keeping Felix secure in this moment.

"Felix we need to talk," Oliver insists, "Felix, come on man -"

"Look, man, I tried to be nice -" Felix started, and though you tried to gently warn him, pressing against him with Fi on your lips like you hope he won't say something he'll regret, he just holds you tighter and continues on, "but can you fuck off and bother somebody else?"

India half snorts with laughter in the middle of a line of coke, the others all judging Oliver the longer he lingers in the doorway, but Felix drops his gaze. His lips are on your shoulder to keep from saying anything else.

One of guys whose names you don't know asks who Oliver even was, but Felix can't answer; tension again, maybe anxiety or frustration, but his mouth moves from the gossamer and embroidery on your shoulder to your bare skin above the neckline, where your collar meets your throat. His teeth sting. His nails still sting. He swears under his breath before he lets go.

"Sorry," he mumbles finally, sighing and resting his forehead on your shoulder. You tell him it's okay, voice fond, but when you lean over to do another line of coke, you meet India's reproachful gaze. It takes you a long few seconds to connect the dots, to realise what was going on in her head. You're so fucking over everything tonight.

"You know Farleigh was lying to you about us, right?" You say casually, taking your line and sitting back up. Her eyebrows rise in surprise, "I know you think we're all gross and cousin-incest-y -" you hear Felix's faint laughter behind you, and feel him nudge you with his thigh, silently asking you to get up. Both of you do, and Felix manages his first proper smile of the night, even if it is smug.

"But we're not related," he tells her, "thank fucking god," and smacks your ass as the two of you exit, as if to just prove a point.

You're on your knees in a different bathroom when you hear everyone else start to sing happy birthday, but Felix's voice is a low growl of don't you dare stop, and his hands in your hair. Nothing else matters to you in this state of mind, blurry, pliant, desperate to follow his every command. It's as if you've forgotten what exists outside of Felix's hands on you.

The night becomes lights that are too bright, and music too loud, and laughter and glitter and the warmth of the people dancing around you. After a few hours you feel yourself starting to come down from your high, starting to come back to yourself, still on the dance floor. Venetia's dancing with a blonde boy, looking so pretty, like she's having a genuinely fun night, but when you point it out, Felix takes your hand.

"Don't look at Ven," there's that hunger in his eyes, that firm tone he'd been using all night, "don't touch Ven, don't -" he cuts himself off, wets his lips. Looking around for a moment, he spots something in the crowd that makes him scowl. Just a moment, as you follow his gaze, you see Oliver. The moment your eyes lock with his, however, Felix has his lips on your jaw.

"Fucking mine."

There's half a second where you and Oliver are still locked in this moment, you watch the way his expression starts to shift, jaw tensing, something like anger flickering in his eyes. But you can't bring yourself to give a shit about Oliver as Felix has his arms around you, kissing down your throat with a feverish, almost lewd intensity in the middle of the dancefloor.

"Prove it," and you let him drag you from the house, heading towards the place that had always felt a little special for you both, almost a little magical.

"I'm being selfish," Felix announced as you finally hit the tree line just before the maze, "I don't fucking care anymore, I'm being selfish, about you -!" He turns to look at you, only to see you gazing up at him with starry-eyes, hanging on his every word. He breaks into a sheepish grin momentarily, shaking his head as his voice drops for a moment, "oh, you're fucking loving this, aren't you?"

"I want you so bad right now it's actually embarrassing," you agreed with a wide grin, unable to contain your laughter, despite how genuine the feeling was.

"I'm being selfish," he said once more, muttering it this time, though as you entered the maze and the moonlight peaked down upon you, you could see the blush still upon his cheeks, "I don't want anyone else to fucking touch you again, you hear me?" This time, when he looks at you, he thinks he can see hearts in your eyes; your overwhelming love and acceptance, even for this -especially for this- is making it very hard to keep the stern act up, except -

"Anything you say," you tell him, breathless as you approach the centre of the maze, voice edging on desperate, "anything at all." And you see it hits him just where it had needed to, to hear you wanting and wanton and offering yourself to him -

The gossamer overcoat is ruined, scratched all up the back where you're pinned against the statue, half sitting on the base with your legs around Felix's, your fancy green undergarments around one ankle. His nails scratch down the bare skin of your back, fucking into you with furious intent to match.

"You've always been mine," he groans into your ear.

"Felix -" you whimpered. Immediately he was grinning, lips inches from yours, gazing at you through his lashes.

"How's that proving anything?" He teases, low and knowing, and as his hips snap up to meet yours, you take the hint, his name getting louder and louder on your lips as you almost chant it, till his hand is between you both, helping get you off, and you're close and all but screaming his name and -

"Felix." Not from you. Oliver.

"Oh Jesus Christ!" Felix immediately looks murderous, and not in a fun, sexy way. Oliver's demanding to talk to him while you struggle to pull your underwear back on.

"Could hear you out there," Oliver mumbles, half stumbling over his words, unable to look at you, focused on the dirt by your feet instead.

"Kind of the point, Ollie," you snapped, frustrated and now unsatisfied, but dressed once more.

"What the fuck is wrong with you, Oliver?" Felix demanded. Oliver advances on him, presses into his space with desperate eyes and a bottle clutched to his chest. He doesn't look at you, he can't fucking look at you, you don't matter. It's Felix and his emotions who lead every situation the two of you share; it's Felix he has to win back over.

But he should have expected you not to leave, should have expected that when Felix pushed him away, shouted for him to get the fuck away, that you would try and step in.

"He's already got you on a leash, can I just have this one fucking moment?!" He snaps at you; he doesn't hit you but you recoil like he has, and Felix's gaze grows cold. Oliver seems to sense this before he even turns back, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, I just- they already have everything -"

"Back off." Felix warns sharply, but Oliver can't help himself, won't listen.

"I just gave you what you wanted!" Oliver throws himself at Felix, pins him to the statue, their bodies flush and Oliver rambling, "like everyone else does! Everyone puts on a show for Felix..." his voice drops, childish and weak and wanting, and you watch him press himself closer as he turns gentle, "so I'm... I'm sorry if my performance wasn't good enough..."

"I think..." some part of it was working on Felix, his voice soft and placating, "I think you need to see somebody," or maybe he knows by now exactly how Oliver wants him to act; his eyes never leave Oliver's face, even when he doesn't let him go, "you need help okay, seriously -"

"No, no, I don't," Oliver's voice is rising again, "I just need you to understand how much I fucking love you," a tremble in his voice, sounding so raw, so needy, "you're the only friend I ever had, Felix." The manipulation is so blatant it almost hurts; you don't matter to him in this moment, all that matters is saying exactly whatever Felix needs to believe.

"I mean, doesn't this just prove how much of a good friend I actually am? How well I actually know you?" That hope, that dangerous, heartbreaking note of hope that's going to make your skin crawl. But you're not leaving without Felix, and he's not leaving this moment it seemed, "I'm still the same person, yeah? I'm still the same person," he insisted.

A long few moments pass, Felix's gaze searching Oliver's face for something beyond you. But then, finally, his gaze slips to you. All you can do is shake your head.

"Don't-" Oliver murmurs faintly, tipping his head to try and block you from Felix's line of sight, but Felix turns his attention back, expression helpless.

"I don't know what you are," he breathes, "but I do know you; you make my fucking blood run cold."

The fight drains out of Oliver, as does every last drop of hope. He lets Felix push his hands away, makes himself give Felix space to breathe. After a beat, he looks back at you, unsteady on his feet, pain in his eyes, but then he lurches, quickly shoves his half-finished bottle into Felix's hands, and rushes away to be sick.

Oliver is doubled over, retching, when you get to Felix. Before he can raise Oliver's bottle to his lips, you tuck yourself under his arm and wrap him up in a hug. He's trembling, but you feel the bottle against your back. Felix tucks his face into the crook of your neck, tears unspilled, clinging to his eyelashes.

"Better?" You ask forlornly once Ollie had gone quiet.

"Fuck off," he spits, finally coming back around. You watch him over Felix's shoulder, and the glare he levels at you as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand is almost surprising. Still, you try and show the same compassion you knew Felix would in this moment.

"Wash the taste out of your mouth," you try and tell Ollie gently, moving carefully out of Felix's arms, wrapping your fingers around the neck of the bottle he'd brought with him, "I think you should go to bed after." Oliver doesn't even reach for the bottle, but he does stop, looking between it, and then between you and Felix.

"Please," Felix sighs, head bent and bottle clasped tightly in his hand, "I need this."

"We can get another," you tell him quietly, calmly. Felix's gaze flicks to yours, imploring for just a moment, but dropping again when you don't relent. Felix sighs, once more, but finally relents, handing you over the bottle. Which Oliver has kept his focus on, brow now furrowing.

"I gave you everything else of mine, my drink's not even good enough for you anymore, like the rest of me?" He sneers, reaching unsteadily for the bottle in your hands, though his eyes and their focus betray him. Something lights up in the back of your mind, like one of those memories that made far more sense once Oliver's lie had been revealed. Alarm bells once again.

Felix stumbles to a halt -

"Fucking fine -" but as he tries to reach for the bottle again you step out of his range, beginning to see red as you got closer to Oliver, prickling with suspicion, "what is your problem, Y/N," Felix sounds so fucking tired, but all you can see is the deer of a boy before you growing wide eyed as he looks into yours.

"It's Oliver's," trying with all your might to not jump to conclusions, you hold the bottle out, desperately hoping that you'd connected the wrong dots, that Oliver was just drunk and as helpless as he appeared, that he couldn't be this malicious or vindictive-

"You want me to be sick again?" He tries to stand up to you, bottle pressed to his chest and refusing to step back even as you continue to crowd his space, "fuck off." He's seeming more sober, more alert, more with himself with each minute that passes. The distant noise of the party rings in your ears and all you can think about is the cold bottle between you and how Felix had almost -

"Leave him alone," Felix called out, footsteps in the grass sounding as though he was making his way back to the maze, "he's not worth it."

"He's pathetic," you spit, nose to nose with Oliver now, face heating up as hot, angry tears begin to close your vision. Still, you can see in Oliver's eyes that he's finding fewer and fewer ways to escape the situation.

"I don't care what either of youse think of me anymore," Oliver's lip curls as it quivers, trying to play distraught and callous all at once, "go fuck each other to feel like you're not just a fucking waste of space, vapid cunts -" he can see he's touched a nerve by the way your expression lights up with malevolent fury.

"Fi," there's a shake in your voice that you can't even fight, "please leave."

"Can you please come with me," Felix sounds like he's on the verge of tears, and when you turn, he's reaching for you, his hand shaking, "please can we go?" He begs.

An angel. Your best friend. Your everything. Your Felix.

Seeing him like this, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that Oliver's greed and jealousy would rather see Felix hurt than not in love with him, you couldn't let him get away with it. Finally you start to cry, even if you hadn't meant to, and the sight of it has Felix begging for you to leave with him. Oliver starts pushing, demanding that you both fuck off.

"Give me a minute, My Felix," you tell him, trying to smile, trying to reassure him, "I'll catch up."

"I'm not leaving without you."

"I don't want you to see this," you turn back to Oliver with newfound resolution. He's stepped back, leaning himself against the statue, doubled over, head in his hands.

"See what?" Felix asks dubiously, and Oliver looks up, sees the way you're approaching him, and scrambles to straighten his posture.

"Ollie's going to have a little drink," you offer him the bottle again.

"Tryna make me sick again?" He snarls.

"Then use it to wash your mouth out, then swallow," you order coldly, "and repeat until the bottle's empty."

"Why should I?"

"Because it's just as perfectly fine as when you handed it to Felix," you hissed, voice low enough that Felix himself couldn't properly hear. Oliver narrowed his eyes, matching your tone.

"If I don't?"

"What I will do to you, Oliver Quick, will be much worse than whatever you've put in that bottle, so you'll drink it all up," you leaned in, whispering close and menacing, "and if you do throw it up, I will have you on your belly, like the worm you are, sucking your own sick off of the fucking ground."

"What the fuck is going on?" Felix demanded, and you turned, taking a deep breath and hopefully giving a much more convincing, determined smile.

"He made you cry."

Felix's expression immediately changed. All soft and fragile but understanding, he just asks that you don't be long. You promise not to be. Both you and Oliver watching him go.

Once in the clear, you turn back to your captive audience, keeping your voice low.

"I'm not going to make you drink it," you admit, and though Oliver's confused and on edge, he seems to relax, just a little.

"The fuck do you want from me then?"

"I just need to hear you say it," you step back from him, give him space, even step around to place the bottle at the foot of the statue and lean your forehead against the cool stone.

"Say what -?"

"I'm not fucking stupid, Ollie," you groaned, looking at him out of the corner of your eyes, "you think I could hurt you? I ruin lives behind the scenes, I couldn't -" you flail your hands awkwardly, rocking back on your heels, turning to him properly once more. It appears to work, however, as Oliver is now only regarding you warily, instead of seeming actively cautious. "I was... hurt," you admitted, "I know why you said it, but I was hurt to hear you say Felix was your only friend."

"That's not -" he tried, defences lowering further as he attempted to defend himself.

"No, I get it; I've done terrible things because I love Fi, I couldn't imagine," you cast a pitying, apologetic look to Oliver, "him not loving me back."

And it works. He cracks, little by little. The tears begin to form, the lip starts to tremble.

"It's not fucking fair," it already sounds like there's a lump in his throat, "why do you deserve his love?" He scowls, "why can't I? I can be like you, I can be good -" he babbles, sniffling harshly amongst his defiantly sharp tone, "I know I could be," you gently wrap an arm around him and he fists a hand to tightly in your overcoat that it tears, "I was everything he wanted me to be -"

"I know, Ollie, I know," you carefully remove his antlers, holding them in one hand as you coax him in close, running a comforting hand through his hair.

"I wanted him to love me, I wanted- I never wanted him hurt, but wanted him dead so it wasn't my fault if he didn't love me; he couldn't love anyone -" he breaks down into furious tears, "I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. I hate you, I hate that he loves you without you even trying -" there's no apology in his distress, even as he lets you hold him close, and you, for a few more moments, whisper reassuring nonsense. "I never wanted to hurt him," he mumbled softly, "but I wanted to kill him. I could never hurt him," there's anger and guilt in his eyes as he looks up at you, tear soaked and helpless, "but I wanted to hurt you." What you give him in return is pity, is sweetness and apology, but your blood is burning through your veins.

"You would have regretted it."

"I know..."

"Are you lying?"

"I think I am."

You have what you need, the confession, the intention; validation for your motivation. Hook, line and sinker.

"Hey, Ollie, Ollie, darling look at me, I know, okay, I know-" you try, taking his face in your free hand.

"No you fucking don't!" Oliver insists, but you keep insisting, "don't fucking take that tone, I just told you I was trying to kill Felix to hurt you -!" He thrashes, but your gentleness is unrelenting in this moment. You will give Oliver Quick what he deserves.

"Ollie, look at me, okay? Look me in the eyes, please -" you begged, and finally he did, despair and anger all there amongst the tears, "keep looking me in the eyes," you tell him gently, and firmly, and he does, too curious for his own good and wanting to see where this was going -

"Everything," you give him the faintest, reassuring smile, one hand on his face, shaking, messily wiping tears from his cheeks with your thumb as he keeps your gaze, "is going to be -"

- and you ram one of his antlers into his soft, exposed belly with all your strength. Surprise and pain hit him all at once and suddenly he's scrambling, trying to get your hands off of the headpiece. But he's winded, and suddenly in overwhelming pain.

"- fine," you breathe out, shaking with adrenaline. You have him pinned against the statue, just like he'd had Felix only minutes ago.

"Eyes, Oliver," you ordered coldly, while making sure to keep smiling, even as fresh traitorous tears were gathering and already spilling down your cheeks. Hand in his hair coming to grip him tightly, keeping his gaze level with yours, "what did I say? I want you to look me in the eyes -" and you rip the antlers out before plunging them back into his gut. Lips twisting into an animalistic snarl involuntarily, Oliver splutters and fights and squirms but everything is becoming slippery, and warm, and slick with his blood. The antlers, your hands, and his; hard to get a grip like the firm one you had on your weapon of choice.

"Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-" he chokes out helplessly, bloody hands moving up, trying to grip your arms, your shoulders, your face, "how -fuck- why -?"

"Whatever you had in that bottle is too good for you; you tried to kill Felix, you said so yourself."

As his strength begins to fail, the way he holds your face turns tender, almost gentle, before his hands fall back to rest on yours, both gripping the bloody antler. Oliver's weight rests on the statue, watching you with despair and helpless, pained moans. Cheeks wet with tears, you can't even fathom how you're doing this, or who you will be once it's done.

"You are not the minotaur of this maze," you grit your teeth, leaning your weight on the headdress, driving it into his guts until the bloody antler snapped clean off of the headdress, you still can't bring yourself to stop. It doesn't feel like enough. He tried to kill Felix. So you took the other antler in hand, unable to stop yourself, shaking with rage and tears, "you are the dear in my fucking headlights; you tried to hurt Felix, you tried to kill Felix! You are nothing, nothing, nothing," you punctuate each nothing with another bloody, unnecessary jab until you can't keep going. The second antler collapses to the ground, and you stumble back, hands shaking.

"Didn't want to hurt him," Oliver insists weakly.

"You were someone we loved," you can see the first antler still jutting out of him, stemming the blood flow but undoubtedly causing excruciating pain. But you spare him no sympathy, only a look of absolute loathing, finally taking in what you've done, the blood your fury had shed. "Someone I loved!" Burst from you, raw brutal betrayal scraping its way from your throat, face hot and wet with tears, falling to your knees, looking up at him with an exhausted fury, "you will never hurt him again. I will never give you that chance."

But Oliver's quickly unfocusing gaze slips from you, rising to a point beyond you, out into the maze. A weak, faint, but somehow still triumphant smile works it's way across his lips.

"Him?"

Like in a horror movie, you cast your gaze over your shoulder. You hear when Oliver finally gives out, stop holding himself up on the statue and fall to the ground, but all you can see is Felix at the edge of the maze.

And that look in his eyes.

Oh god, what have you done?

"Felix," tears start welling in your eyes again, and finally he looks away from Oliver's body, his own antler protruding from him, slowly bleeding out, to you. From here, he can't see the blood on your hands, the blood that's all over you, but he can see it all over Oliver, "Fi, please, you need to -" but he's stepping towards you, almost automatically; he looks ill. You have to look away, can't bear for him to see what your rage has brought about.

"I'm not," his words are robotic, still a bit slurred, and he keeps looking at Oliver, "going without you. 'said that." But he stops behind you. Eyes closed, you wait, you can't bear to even look at him. Then, slowly, he moves. When you breathe, it makes you shake, but you slowly open your eyes.

Felix approaches Oliver. You watch the faint, far away smile wears as he sees Felix up close once more.

"Fe-lix," he sighs faintly, reaching out with weak, shaking, bloody hands, feather light finger tips leaving red streaks along Felix's cheeks, his jaw, his lips. Felix's head dips in close, into Oliver's aching touch, his forehead resting against Oliver's in this moment.

"You were going to fucking kill me, Ollie?" Felix whispered through clenched teeth, on the edge of tears.

"'m sorry," Ollie mumbled weakly, shock and blood loss catching up with him as he struggled to keep his eyes open, "didn't want to hurt you."

"You wanted to kill me -"

"It wouldn't hurt."

"It would have hurt them!" Felix grabbed him by the collar with one hand, wrenching the dying boy up enough to see him pointing at you, still kneeling on the ground, second bloody antler laying in front of you. All Oliver could do was make a pained whimper, and Felix dropped him back to the ground, "and you said it yourself-" his voice is venomous, but your breath catches as you realise just how much he must have heard to know that, "and even having a thought like that," he snarls, hatred burning in his eyes, "means you don't fucking know me at all."

Felix is by your side in the very next moment, pulling you into his lap as he leaned back against the base of the sculpture. You're sobbing into your bloody hands, nothing else to do or say. Even as he's shaking, as he's crying too, Felix doesn't let you go, doesn't let you feel anything but secure with him.

"You saw it all, didn't you?" You whispered finally, and feel him nod.

"I said I wouldn't leave without you."

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry -" and while he tells you that you don't have to be, the words, the fears, the desperate justifications and rationalisations pour out of you, "he said he was trying to kill you, Fi, and I couldn't- I should have walked away, just gotten him kicked out or taken away or- or- but I couldn't," you gasped, "I couldn't let him ever have that kind of chance again, I couldn't risk that, my mind wouldn't let me -"

"I know, I love you," Felix murmurs weakly, his forehead against your shoulder once more, "dad and Duncan will know what to do, they'll take care of it tomorrow," he sounds so young in this moment, so tired and fragile. You nod quietly, leaning into him. When his hands find yours, threading your fingers together and holding on tightly, Oliver's blood is still sticky on your skin. Neither of you seems to care.

"How did you know something was so wrong?" Felix finally asked, the air cooler and quieter now. You have no idea how much time has passed, but it sounds as though the party was winding down. Oliver's party.

"He wasn't that drunk," you said after a long moment of deliberation, "could see it in his eyes," taking a deep breath, you cast your gaze to the guest of honour, completely still, chest no longer shifting with shallow, frantic breathes, "if he wasn't drunk, why was he sick?" Sighing, you leaned into Felix. You felt so hollow; "everything Oliver Quick did, he did with purpose."

[essektheylyss]

One thing that I feel is really interesting and often forgotten about Essek is that fundamentally, his characterization has been from the start based upon his desperation for external perspectives and connection, which, along with much of his narrative and mechanical positioning, means that he actually has an extraordinary and almost (but not actually, as I'll show) counterintuitive capacity for both growth and trust.

(Buckle in. This is a long one.)

In particular, I would argue, knowing now that many places where the plot touches Ludinus have long been marked for connecting back into the current plot, that he was quite possibly built as a prime candidate for radicalization by the Ruby Vanguard. He felt isolated from his culture, he was desperate for other connection, and he was certainly of the type to believe he was too smart to be drawn into such a thing, given his initial belief that he could control the situation and the fallout. If things had gone any other way, he easily could've been on the other side by now.

As such, he has been hallmarked by being fairly open to suggestion, perhaps for this reason, but the thing about that kind of trait is that it is both how people are radicalized and deradicalized. This is certainly true of Essek, who experienced genuine kindness and quite frankly strangeness from the Nein and was able to move from the isolation the Assembly had engendered to meaningful and genuine connection, largely propelled by his own internal reflection. By the time Nein are aware of his crimes, he's already begun to express regret to an extent and, furthermore, doubt in the Assembly, including explicitly drawing a line against Ludinus, even in a position where he was on his own and probably quite vulnerable.

Similarly, when the Nein reach the Vurmas Outpost some weeks later, he has moved from regret for the position he's ended up carrying a heavy remorse. This makes sense! He's fairly introspective, seems used to spending a lot of time in his own head, and was left with plenty to mull over. It's not some kind of retcon for him to have progressed well past where the Nein left him; it just means he's an active participant in the world who has done his own work in the meantime.

This is another interesting aspect to him. I've talked about this a bit before but I cannot find the post so I'll recap here: antagonists in D&D have significantly more agency than allied NPCs. Antagonists are active forces, against which the party is meant to struggle; allies are meant to support the PCs, which means they tend to be more passive in both their actions and their character growth. Essek was both built as an antagonist, in a position that gives him significant agency, and also was then given significant opportunity to grow specifically to act as a narrative mirror for Caleb's arc. Even when he becomes a more traditional D&D ally, he still retains much of that, though he occupies a supporting role.

I believe that this is especially true because of the nature of Caleb's arc, which I've already written on; the tl;dr of this post is that Caleb is both convinced that he is permanently ruined and also desperate to prove that change is possible. Essek is that proof, because he is simply the character in a position to do so. But this also means that his propensity for introspection and openness is accentuated! He has to do the legwork on his own, for the most part, because that's where he is in the meantime.

But he still ends the campaign necessarily constricted; he is under significant scrutiny, he's at risk from the Assembly, and he goes on the run fairly soon after the story ends. He spends most of the final arc anxious and paranoid, which is valid given the crushing reality of his situation. It would be very easy to extrapolate that seven years into this reality, he would be insular, closed off, and suspicious of strangers, even in spite of the lessons he's learned from the Nein and their long term exposure.

So seeing his openness and lightness now is surprising, but at the same time, given this combination of factors in his position in the narrative over time and his defining traits, it's not by any means unreasonable.

But one thing that I found so delightful is how much trust he exhibits, which is obviously a wild thing to say about Essek in particular, given much of what he learns is both earning and offering trust, which was something he says explicitly in 2x124 that he's never really experienced: "I've never really been trusted and so I did not trust." It makes up much of the progression of his relationship with Caleb, and the trust that he is offered by the Nein in walking off the ship is the impetus he needs to grow.

But I think it's easy to talk about trust when it comes to people who have proven themselves to you or to whom you've ingratiated yourself, and that's really the most we can say about Essek by the time he leaves the Blooming Grove. There is this sense in a lot of discussion of trust (not solely in this fandom) that it is only related to either naivete or love, but there's far more to it. Trust at its best is deliberate—cultivating an openness to the world at large is a great way to combat cynicism and beget connection instead. It allows a person to maintain curiosity and be open to experience, but it can be incredibly difficult to hold onto.

It is clear that the Essek we meet now is a very pointedly and intentionally trusting individual. He trusts Caleb and by extension Caleb's trust in Keyleth, as he shows up and picks up a group of strangers from a foreign military encampment and walks in without issue. He trusts the Hells to follow his lead moving through Zadash and to exhibit enough discretion so as to avoid bringing suspicion upon all of them. He trusts that Astrid will respond well to his entrance, but he also trusts himself and the Hells enough to execute a back-up plan in the case that she doesn't. In the end, he even trusts them enough to give them his name and identity.

He doesn't scan as someone who has spent half a dozen years living like a prey animal, afraid of any shadow he runs across in an alley, withdrawn into himself and an insular family, which would've been an easy route for him to take. He scans as someone who has learned the kind of trust borne of learned confidence and a trained eye for good will and kindness, which are crucial weapons one would need for staving off cynicism in his circumstances—as if he has survived thanks more to connection and kindness than paranoia and isolation. (If we want to be saccharine about it, he scans quite poignantly as a member of the Mighty Nein.)

So it is easy to imagine this trust and openness as a natural progression of his initial search for perspectives external to his own cultural knowledge. Though he makes those first connections with the Assembly to try to vindicate his personal hypotheses, he finds in them exposure to the deepest corruption among Exandrian mortals, which could've—and did, for a time—turned him further down that same dark path.

But it's also this same openness to exposure from the wider world that allows the Nein to influence him for the better, and in spite of the challenges he's certainly faced simply surviving over the past seven years, he seems to have held onto this openness enough to move through the world with self-assurance and a willingness to extend the kinds of trust and good will that he has been shown.

(I would be remiss not to mention that I was reminded about my thoughts on this by this lovely post from sky-scribbles and their use in the tags of 'light' to describe Essek's demeanor this episode, which is really such an apt word for it.)

[arsenicflame]

steddyhands modern au inspired by this post:

(1828 words, themes of kink but nothing explicit, established blackhands & gentlebeard-centric. Happy Pride!)

Stede picks up leatherworking in the wake of his divorce. He's not exactly sure how it ended up being such an important hobby for him, only that he had always admired the intricate designs on his horse's best bridles, and with little else to do with his time, he decides to give it a go.

It's rocky going at first, but he's having fun working with his hands for the first time in his life, and there's a sense of satisfaction in seeing the design come to life as he works. With practice, his skills improve, and he learns how to make things that are truly one of a kind.

He starts off posting his pieces online, as a way to reach fellow enthusiasts, but quickly finds himself with a rather large audience. Stede’s style is unique, and, after many requests from his followers, Lucius encourages him to make some more basic pieces he can sell. It's not about making money for Stede, but another way to meet new people who share his interests- as Lucius keeps telling him, it's sad that his personal assistant is the main person he talks to these days. 

So Stede sets out on a new adventure, and has quite the time designing a new range of patterns for the market. He makes purses, belts, bracelets, and, most importantly, dog collars- all still with his unique designs embossed into them, of course. He rents a booth at his towns monthly craft fair, and very quickly finds himself with a new group of friends in the other regulars- Pete, his usual neighbour, who sells an array of wooden figures he carves, Roach, who runs a stand for his bakery, and Frenchie, who isn't actually a stallholder, but is almost always busking near his friend Wee John’s stand of knitted goods, bringing life to the market even in the pouring rain. There's also Buttons, another regular at the market. Nobody is exactly sure what he does there- he doesn't sell things, or seem to buy anything either, but rain or shine, he's there with the birds.

Stede’s been doing this a few months by the time June rolls around. As he's setting up his stand, he notices that the area is much busier than it’d normally be at this time of morning. Lucius, who got roped into helping run Stede’s stall somewhere down the line (despite his protests that this is not what personal assistant means… But hey, he got a boyfriend out of it, at least), reminds him that there's the parade today, too- not realising that Stede had no clue there was a parade today, and especially not that it was pride. Stede immediately jumps to fretting about the amount of stock he’s brought, and Lucius takes the cue to escape, saying he’ll go and grab them coffee (but really, he's off to flirt with Pete)

Lucius is still missing when Ed stumbles across the little leather stall. Stede’s just ran back to his car to fetch his last boxes of inventory, and by the time he returns, Ed’s already begun to narrow down his choices. Stede greets him, starting to tell him that they're not actually open yet, but before he gets more than a couple of words out, Ed’s exclaiming “You're a Kiwi!!!”

The two of them smile at the shared recognition, and Stede says he’ll make an exception, just for Ed, and asks him what exactly he was interested in. Ed tells him that he's looking for a collar “for his boy”, and points out the particular design he was looking at. It happens to be one of Stede’s favourites from this latest run of work, a fact he mentions to Ed. It leads them into a discussion about Stede’s craft, and Ed’s Izzy, and then everything in between. Ed’s listening intently to the things Stede’s telling him, completely drawn in by the process, and by Stede himself. He watches as Stede stamps Izzy's name into the collar, and Stede even lets him have a go at one of the stamps. 

Lucius reappears sometime in the middle of this- only to immediately retreat again, seeing Stede engrossed with Ed. He sets up camp at Pete's booth opposite, watching this man flirt intensely with his boss- and Stede flirt back just as hard. Does Stede even realise he’s doing it? Lucius had known Stede was gay since before Stede even admitted it to himself, but this is on a whole other level.

The pair stand there so long that Izzy comes to look for Ed- the two of them are manning a float on the parade with their crew, and it's past time for them to get geared up. He's already worked up, frustrated to have been left to set up everything alone, when Ed had just gone to see if he could get them both coffee. So maybe he's a bit of a prick, approaching with a brash “where the fuck have you been, Edward”, to which Stede brings the same energy, giving a bitchy “Ed! Do you know this guy?” Izzy tenses, ready to snap, but then Ed cuts in, excitedly telling Stede that this is “his Izzy!” Which confuses the hell out of Stede. 

Forgetting his earlier attitude, he asks Ed if he “really named his dog after his friend”, only to be met with confusion right back from Ed at where the hell Stede got the idea he had a dog from. Stede gestures at the bag with the collar in it, to which Ed has to tell him, “oh, no, that's for him.” Ed tells Stede that they're here to run a float for their local leather society, and while Stede is certainly shocked by what Ed’s saying, he's not finding himself… uninterested. It's simply that he’s never even considered any of this before, especially not that people would use the things that he made for this, but Ed sounds so enthusiastic about it all. He tells him about how his friends would love to see Stede’s work, about how classic leather gear is always so fucking boring- but not Stede’s stuff, no, Stede’s stuff is “fresh” and “fascinating” and unlike anything Ed’s ever seen before. 

Ed's enthusiasm is incredibly infectious, so when he invites Stede to come back to see their float, he readily agrees. It’s a concept Izzy’s less than enthusiastic about. He doesn’t really want to bring this man who’s dressed like he just walked out of a HOA board meeting to their kinky little corner of the world, but he is having a lot of fun watching Stede squirm, so decides not to raise a protest. He does demand he gets his long-overdue coffee first, though (Stede pays for it- as “compensation for him distracting Ed from his job”, he says, not giving Izzy a second to process before he's tapping his card)

By the time they return to the float, Fang, Ivan & Jim are waiting for them, all already geared up. Stede is stunned silent at the sight for about 5 seconds, before he starts actually looking at the quality of Jim’s harness, and proceeds to go off about the poor quality of the craftsmanship, about how the hardware is tacky and completely the wrong choice with this leather, how his “ten year old daughter could do a better job!!!” 

There's complete silence from the group, until Izzy, of all people, bursts into laughter at Stede’s audacity (and, the fact he was staring at Jim's tits completely unabashedly, like he hadn't even noticed them in the first place). Izzy's laughter sets Ed off as he tells the group about Stede’s misunderstanding- “you didn't say he was a person!” “I mean, he's my dog”- and soon everyone's having a friendly giggle at Stede’s mistake.

It's somewhere in the middle of the retelling that Ed remembers that this whole thing happened because he was buying Izzy a gift. After a moments fumbling, he presents Izzy with the collar-  It's a rich, deep black, embossed with a rolling pattern that resembles waves. It’s made from a firm enough leather to take the tooling, and to remind Izzy that he’s owned while he’s wearing it, yet still soft enough for long term comfort. Izzy's eyes immediately lock on to it, an unreadable expression coming over his face, and Ed turns it; first so he can really see the design and Izzy’s name embossed into it, and then so he can see the small “Ed ♥” on the inside of the collar, right over his swallow tattoo. 

“I did the heart,” Ed says to him softly, intended only for Izzy’s ears. Izzy's eyes flick up to Ed’s, and he raises his chin to give Ed the room to put it on. Ed buckles the collar around his neck almost reverently, a test of the tightness turning into a caress of Izzy's neck. It's a perfect fit.

It's as though something comes over Izzy; so twitchy and abrasive earlier, now silent, staring at Ed with a look akin to worship in his eyes. He obediently tilts his head for a kiss as Ed's fingers move to his chin- It's a sight to behold, and one that has Stede intrigued. He wants to know more about this lifestyle, and these men in particular. He wants to be the one to put that expression on Izzy's face.

The moment breaks as Ed and Izzy pull apart, and Ed calls for the crew to finish the last bits of set up. Izzy shakes himself a little before running off to bark orders again, but even still, there remains a softness to him that wasn't there before. 

Ed turns back to Stede with an apologetic smile, already obvious that he has to get going. Before he can speak, however, Stede jumps in -“My business numbers on the card in the box… I'll be around all day”- Ed’s smile turns more genuine at that, promising to stop by if he gets a moment, and that he’ll send his friend's Stede’s way- “if he wants that kind of business.” Stede says that he does, actually- that he's seen a whole new world already today, and, while he was a little taken aback at first, he can feel the passion Ed and his friends have for this life. If there's one thing that's ever mattered to Stede, it's other people's enthusiasm. Maybe he doesn't completely understand yet, but he would like to try.

One year later, Stede’s back at the market on pride weekend again, far better stocked for the crowds this time around. Lucius is finally free to spend the day flirting with Fang & Pete to his heart's content, now that Stede’s roped his own boyfriends into helping him run the stall- and into modelling the merchandise. Ed loves that part, while Izzy needs a lot more convincing, but the puppy eyes Stede & Ed weaponise against him make a very good argument.

[trentcrimminallybeautiful]

i have this really stupid idea in my head that im frankly a little obsessed with and the idea is this: trent crimm doing a drunk history episode on ted lasso's first tenure at richmond. is that how drunk history works? i don't think so. do i care? absolutely not. it's a special episode who cares because this image is not only hysterical to me but treasured. i treasure this image. i hold it close in my heart and also laugh and laugh and laugh.

[johnslittlespoon]

it's almost time. when? idk, when i stop being a coward LOL

[commsroom]

two things about doug eiffel: 1) he's a very physical person; he's always moving and needs to keep his hands occupied, and that extends to physical affection, something he's largely denied on the hephaestus; 2) he is an absolute space heater of a man.

which is to say, if hera had a body, i would hope for her sake that it'd be more biological than mechanical, because that guy is going to cause something to overheat.

... but, also. because, the way eiffel interacts with hera, he's always attempting to establish some physical connection - i think he makes eye contact with her cameras, touches the walls, etc. and he knows she's "always there" but he still doesn't really get it. he keeps asking. i think the same thing applies to her presence in the station - he never fully gets that she's always everywhere. sometimes when he gets up to leave a room, he'll ask her to go with him - just force of habit.

and sometimes, when he can't sleep properly - which is often; he's a restless sleeper, overcaffeinated, and his thoughts keep him awake - he'll curl up next to hera's servers. and it's hot in there - and he's already a sweaty guy - or it's too cold, if the AC is actually working properly - and it's loud, but it's enough to quiet his thoughts. and at first hera reminds him that she's equally there in his quarters (which would be set up enough for a suggestive retort, if he were any less tired), but he looks so tired, and it seems to help. and she's not sure why, but it does kind of make her feel closer to him, too.

[hetamata]

dead girls!!!

[humankk]

Heart on the Table in nutshell

[supervisormeero]

Do you ever go insane but like... about your own character. Your own character that you created. Losing your mind and your ability to be normal but it's not about the blorbos, it's about Your Own Very Special Fictional Guy

[baeshijima]

when you have a crisis over whether or not a kiss scene is needed to make the yearning and reunion and pent up emotions that much more meaningful or if it is better to have them commit small fleeting touches and nuzzles and trembling eyes and

[manicpixiefelix]

head, heart, hand. {Felix Catton/Reader/Oliver Quick}

Part 1.

Summary: It had been a long time since your world has revolved around anyone but Felix Catton. He was like that; undeniably, unassumingly magnetic. You'd watched countless fawning, fairweather friends drawn into his orbit, only to be cast out when he eventually got bored of them, but not you, never you. Maybe you were a toy in the beginning, the thing they'd all called you when they were feeling especially petty, but it became clear that Felix has wanted to keep you around. You weren't a toy, you weren't family, you were a sharp and beautiful tool, too good, too useful to be put down. Your loyalty was rewarded with a life in his shape. Felix was like the sun, and you lived your life enjoying his warmth, and wanting to keep him shining.

{ masterpost }

Need to Know: They/Them. Explicitly NB Reader. FWB!Reader with Felix, Venetia, and implied Farleigh in this chapter. Reader is from a well off family but has pretty much been adopted by the Cattons.

Warnings: Smut (M & F Receiving (not reader)), discussions of gender set in 2003 (no slurs tho). Degrading language (reader is referred to as as dog)

A/N: 3698 words. HELLO EVERYONE AND WELCOME!! Im so excited for this, this first chapter is essentially setting up the reader's life and dynamic with Felix and the Cattons. There's some Venetia/Reader and implied Farleigh/Reader but its the casual kind of sexuality they all share in the movie, yanno? Please let me know what you think, i LOve feedback!

Taglist: @strangemaximoff @renaissance-mama @tsach @malscorner @xhoneymoonx134 @yelchinweasleylothbrok @tarriea @florencediet @butitsbetterifyoudoittoem @belladonnadarksshade @fandom-multiamory @snazzynacho @jubileexoxo @soocore @be-lla-vie @nightingale2124 @willow-sages @null4ndv0id @gracieluvthemoon @day2dream @marvellover98 @navixfr @bitxhinthecomments @daintylovers @alesunsets @noturningbacknow @d0llysposts @alilcloudy

----

You can't quite remember a time where your world didn't revolve around Felix Catton. He's rather like that; magnetic. His very aura is intoxicating, suffocating, until they're breathless and all but gasping his praises. You've seen it happen countless times since you'd first met him all those years ago.

Felix is affectionate and tactile, always yearning for contact with those around him like he has no idea how it looks from the outside. His hand around your shoulders, your waist, a kiss on your cheek, offering you a bump of coke from the back of his hand - you'd been too young when it has started for anything to seem too far when you're older. It felt only natural that you'd learned in due course the sensation of his mouth and hands on every inch of your body, just as you could name every part of him from the touch of your lips alone. Or Farleigh. Or Venetia. It was one of the many things that seemed far too normal growing up in such an insular, secluded environment. But everyone knew you were Felix's, even if he decided to share you on occasion.

Summers by the lake and Winters by the fire, Saltburn was where you found yourself when you found Felix to be your home. Months long sleepovers, and of all one hundred and seventy nine rooms, you share a bed with Felix most nights. Innocent children huddled for comfort, sharing dreams and laughter and hope for the future; adolescents turn to teenagers, and though the bed sharing continues, it does not remain so innocent.

And you are the only one to taste his hesitation the first time he ever kisses you, the only one to hear him breathless with surprised delight the first time you take his cock in your mouth since he's bored and wonders what everyone's going on about.

"What if I'm shit at it?"

"Do you want practice?"

The script is more of a formality when you're a few years into high school and both expecting to start screwing around.

Nervous, inexperienced touches easily became familiar, intimate gestures.

Its not something you talk about at school or in public, the people in your lives know you're close, but couldn't reasonably gauge the full extent beyond some schoolyard rumours... Which are technically true. But you both downplay it to most of the world. Perhaps it's about keeping up the appearance of availability; less chances to hook up with other people if they all assume you're taken.

A lot of your school life is about keeping up appearances, but that comes with the territory of being a well-to-do child of a wealthy family. At least you don't have to weather it alone.

With the amount of money your families are throwing at the schools you attend, of course you've forgotten more love showings of Shakespeare's comedies and dramas and tragedies than most students around the nation have even heard of, good only for how Felix's friend group - and you always amongst them - make fun of some of the truly awful lines.

Still, there are moments when the pretense drops. You catch each other holding reverence for the way the world speaks about love -

"You do impeach your modesty too much -" Felix is ahead of you in the maze, looking for a break from his family after Elspeth had insisted upon you all taking a trip to see A Midsummer Night's Dream in the city.

"What?" You laughed; it was getting dark, the solar fairy lights were beginning to glow amongst the imposing walls of leaves. Felix grins over his shoulder at you.

"Like in the play, remember? Near the start, Demetrius and one of the girls; you do impeach your modesty too much to leave the city and commit yourself into the hands of one that loves you not."

"Yeah but you love me, though," you laugh, and quicken your pace to catch his hand. You find yourself remembering the scene with a smile, but as the maze opens up ahead to the centre clearing, Felix slows. Pulling you close, he walks you to the wall of the maze, the strong branches and glossy leaves against your back.

"To trust the opportunity of the night, and the- the," his expression is playfully annoyed as he searches for the line.

"Something about it being deserted?" You supplied with little more than a murmur, thrill running down your spine as his body is warm, pressed against yours.

"Fuck, thanks, yeah," he breaks character for a moment with a huff of laughter, warm affection in his eyes, before that hungry, wanting look passes over him again, "to trust the opportunity of the night, and the ill counsel of a desert place with the rich worth of your virginity."

"The rich worth of my virginity?" You can't help but giggle, and Felix again breaks, if only to roll his eyes. As he pulls back, however, you wrap an arm around him, softly apologising, promising to play along. Again, he feeds you the line, and this time you lean into it, into the moment, into the intensity in his eyes. There's so much barely concealed want in his gaze, it overwhelms you, all you can think to do is kiss him.

"Your virtue is my privilege," you gasp amidst frantic kisses, wrapping your arms around him, trying desperately to remember the rest of the lines you know that you'd also been taken with in the theatre. Pulling back for just a second, you see him grinning when you take his face in your hands, "it is not night when I do see your face, therefore - something something - not night." The two of you erupt back into laughter before his mouth finds yours again, and the two of you are wrapped up in each other, blindly stumbling towards the solid statue you both know is there.

"Nor doth this wood," you find your voice again when Felix is leaning against the statue and you're making quick work of his undoing belt, "lack worlds of company, for you -" and with his belt undone, the two of you pause, taking stock of the moment. Both breathing heavily, you lean in and give him a languid kiss, your fingers looped into the waistband of his nice trousers, "for you," you murmur with a grin, lips inches from his, "in my respect, are all the world."

These are the lines that you knew without hesitation, the lines burned into your heart as you'd heard them uttered, and felt them resonate even back in the theatre. You grin, wondering if he'd wanted to hear them more than you'd longed to say them. As you kiss down his jaw, lips on his throat with intent to leave a bruising hickey, you free his cock, working your hand up and down his length.

"The how can it be said that I am alone," you kiss the hickey as it begins to bloom dark against his perfect throat, and sink to your knees before him, heart practically bursting to see the way he looks at you in this moment, all love and lust and appreciation for what you're about to do, "when all the world is here to look upon me?"

You watch others come and go from his life, watch him fuck around with other pretty elites, and had your fair share of flings too. The two of you gossip and brag to one another about your conquests, tease each other about terrible lays, or who the other has their eyes on next. There's never jealousy; as long as the other is happy, neither of you is concerned. After all, in the end, you always come back to one another.

Naturally Felix who you come out to first, the two of you sharing a smoke while playing cards by the window of his high school dorm room. Its after midnight, you should definitely be back in your own room, but the two of you have never really adhered to those rules, and the heads of your respective dorms stopped caring years ago. At the time you don't exactly have the right words to explain, but you ask him -

"Hey, you know you're a guy, right?"

He doesn't frown, but his nose gives this little scrunch as he's considering your words and his cards.

"Haven't put much thought into it, but yeah," he rearranges his cards for a moment before looking up at you with those gorgeous, brown eyes full of curiosity, "why?"

"I dunno," you shrugged briefly, as if you hadn't been struggling with for what's felt like months, "remember all those bars in France last summer?"

"Flashes of it," Felix smirks momentarily, "I'm still not sure if I believe Farleigh that he won our bet, but I suppose I'll have to trust him."

"With the amount of free drinks he was getting I'm surprised he even remembers properly," you can't help but laugh, though the moment is short-lived.

"What about it?" Felix finally prompts. For a long moment you're quiet, and the two of you finish up the round of cards.

"You know how we kept going to those underground gay bars because they didn't ask us for ID?"

"Again, vaguely."

"Some of them had these pictures on the walls of like, gays, and lesbians, and ladies with cocks, and men with tits, or big scars on their chests and bushes, and they all... They all looked really happy in those photos," as you spoke, unable to look at him, only watching his hands as he shuffled the deck. You know he's frowning, trying to follow along, but he's also not interrupting you, giving you space in what feels like an important moment, "I think I'm kind of like that."

A moment passes between you two.

"I know," Felix finally says, and you look up, surprised.

"You know?"

"We're all like that, aren't we? You, me, Farleigh, Venetia - mum keeps reminding us that she was a lesbian whenever it's even slightly relevant -" he begins to smile fondly but your surprise turns back to concern as you begin to shake your head.

"No, not like that, Fi," you sigh, and reach for the cigarette box as he begins to deal, "I don't think I fit the boy-girl thing." Once again the quiet lapses out as the lighter sparks to life. You inhale a lung full of smoke, looking out of the window to the star-filled sky, "I'm not a guy with a bush or a girl with a dick, I'm not..." You shrugged, looking at him, "I dunno what I am."

Once the cards are dealt, he finally looks at you, tips his head in that way he does when he's trying to figure something out.

"You're my best mate." He says it so simply, the faintest smile beginning to grace his lips, "you don't have to be anything if you don't want to be."

You don't realise how anxious you were about this moment until your breath comes out as a stuttering exhalation.

"Yeah?" You swallow hard, voice surprisingly weak and hopeful in the same moment, "you don't mind?"

"Kind of seems like a shit thing for me to have any strong feelings about."

"But you've known me as I am for so long -"

"Exactly; I love you, guy-girl or anything, doesn't change you," this is the moment, you realise, that you'd do absolutely anything for the boy in front of you.

"I love you too, Fi."

As he reaches across the small space for the cigarette, you lean in and kiss him before you hand it over; he's grinning as he kisses you.

It only takes a week for you to tell him about the name you'd settled on.

"I think I'm going to start going by Y/N," in the library, you, Felix, and Farleigh are getting very little work done when you bring it up.

"Changing your name?" Farleigh asks, eyebrows raised as he looks up from the same page of Heart of Darkness that he'd been reading for half an hour. You glance to Felix briefly, but he simply gives an encouraging nod to his cousin, and you, once more with your heartbeat racing, explain your relatively new identity change.

"So do we use he-she when we talk about you now?" Farleigh asks, voice genuinely confused rather than malicious. At this you give pause, you hadn't much thought about it; of course people gossiped about you, but you hadn't realised that if you were to be going forth with your new identity, you'd have to ask people to change the very language they used about you.

"I don't think so; I'm not he or she, and he-she is a bit much," you ponder, "I guess just them?"

"Hey did you hear about Y/N?" Felix stage-whispered to Farleigh, grinning. His cousin leaned in, keeping up with the bit and testing out your new name and pronouns seamlessly.

"No, what did they do?" He gasped. All you could do was chuckle, ducking your head to hide how wide you were smiling at how right it all sounded, how right it all felt to hear about yourself. With a firm nod, Farleigh sits back up, "okay, yeah, I can get with it. Y/N," he says decisively.

"Y/N does rather suit you," Felix agreed.

As you begin to come out to the rest of your friends and the school as a whole, you're surprised at how smoothly the transition occurs. You expected more resistance, more name calling, more bullying of any kind; of course there's the occasional bit of harrassment, and several people in the halls turn an unkind eye upon you, but it's been far easier than you'd expected.

Its only when you find Farleigh with a black eye that you learn that he and Felix have been getting into fights with people who've been talking shit behind your back. Of course you beg them to stop, insist they shouldn't be getting hurt on your behalf, least of all about this, but Felix smiles with a split lip.

"As if I'm going to let them get away with it."

Historically, Felix's girlfriends never seem to like you at first. Which they definitely shouldn't; it took him a few girls to remember that he shouldn't let them see him touching you so casually the way he does, more intimate with you without even thinking about it than he often was with them. It moves on, he gives them a warm smile and a teasing tone as he tells them not to be jealous-

"They're not -" a threat, you wonder as he gestures to you with a wide, open hand and smile to match, and proceeds to surprise you both, "a girl." The girl on his arm seems shocked for a minute, but everything about her eases. Your best friend, despite what people may think, is neither a liar nor an idiot. He knows what people think of him, what people assume about him and about you when they assume things one way or there other about him. The girls who he traditionally picked up liked to put him in little pigeon hole of heterosexuality, and though it wasn't true, the to correct them in instances such as that would probably harm the poor, pretty girls. Or at the very least, do nothing to quell their pretty rightful paranoia.

Because when the girl leaves his dorm before curfew that night, you slink up to his door and lean against it with the most pleased and endeared smile. As you always do.

"What?" Every time he's bashful, as if he has no idea what he's doing.

"Just love you is all, man," you tell him, grinning from ear to ear as you close the door behind you.

"Love you too, you know that," he tries to play it off, but is obviously hiding his ever-growing smile.

As you descend upon him, sitting cross legged on the bed - "I love you, I love you, I love you, Fi," peppering his face with kisses as he actually giggles and laughs and pulls you close - you wonder if you shouldn't be doing this since he has a new girlfriend. Except if he wanted you to stop, you knew he had no qualms asking you to.

He's always been the best about your identity, so you're not sure why it always hits you with a rush of euphoria when you hear him talk about you like that. Maybe it's the way confirms exactly what you're not to the world, while knowing that everything you are to him is a secret he holds precious and close to his heart.

When you get to Saltburn for the Winter, as you had for any major breaks from school as your parents were thrilled to be seeing as little of you as necessary, Duncan greets you at the door as he always does -

"Captain Y/N."

And Felix comes bounding down the red stairs, having overheard, and asking if Captain was alright, while you were overwhelmed with love at the gesture. Apparently Duncan's only reservation about the title was that it was usually reserved for military personnel, and he was something of a stickler for the rules. Still, when you thank him for referring to you as such, he grants you one of his rare smiles.

Everyone has accepted the change before you'd even arrived, and though his mother and father did occasionally slip up, they caught themselves before even yourself or Felix had a chance to correct them. Elspeth always made a show of apologising and correcting herself. After one such instance, all of you wine-drunk after dinner and squashed on several sofas together to watch some rom-com, Venetia whispers to you where she's in your lap that Felix had spent several phone calls over the past semester explaining the situation to the family, even making sure to remind everyone in the days before you'd arrives.

"He really does love you," she murmurs, "doesn't he?" The glow of the television haloed her recently bleached hair in light as her face hovered inches for yours. Out of the corner of your eye you see Felix wearing an amused smile and pointedly not looking at you. When Venetia leans in, giggling with her pupils blown wide, you kiss her back, and feel Felix put a hand on your thigh.

"Not during the movie," Elspeth says briskly. Farleigh snorts with amusement from her other side and Venetia breaks the kiss with a sharp little laugh. Still, she curls up against you now, with your arm around her, and Felix rubs circles against your thigh, hand not moving for the remainder of the film.

At Saltburn, your room was often more of a formality; the one attached to Felix's, divided only by a bathroom. Most nights were shared in another's bed, even if nothing sexual happened. Venetia especially liked these sleepover, liked how you'd be at her door if she merely implied she wanted your company. She'd invite you into her bathroom to simply talk while she bathed, neither of you bothered by the casual nudity. She'd put on a CD and sometimes a robe, and you'd brush and braid her hair; she'd talk and you'd listen, until she fell asleep in your arms. Venetia craved connection, and like with Felix, you were happy to oblige her.

"You're a good dog," she'd once murmured, your head between her thighs, "that's why he lets you fuck me." When you look up at her through your lashes, mouth still on her cunt, tounge going still on her clit, she's looking back, devilish smile on her face, "do you think about him when you fuck me?"

You lean back just a little, and carefully slide two fingers into her; Venetia's head falls back as she sighs gently.

"He doesn't have a cunt, Ven," you tell her bluntly, which of course makes her laugh until she's moaning with your fingers curling inside of her.

"Good dog," she stutters out.

"He wants you to be happy, and I can do that."

"My brother doesn't like sharing his toys," she whimpers faintly.

"I'm not a toy."

"Suppose I'll just - ah~" your thumb finds her clit, and you gently bite at her thigh, "have to enjoy you while he lets me, then."

In these quiet, intimate moments, sexual or not, Farleigh and Venetia both take to calling you 'good dog' as a term of endearment. Anyone else would probably be put off by it, but it begins to warm something in your chest; loyal and loving, the kind of creature you keep around. Felix, however, scowls when he learns about it.

"It's mean."

"I think it's sweet," you tell him with a smile, curling up against him on a sofa on one of the many balconies. Felix had been reading while you'd been napping against him when Venetia had appeared and cooed at the sight.

"They think it's sweet!" Venetia echoed with a pleased grin, sitting on the lounge chair across from you both.

"They're not a dog, they're my friend -" Felix had tried to argue.

"Man's best friend," Venetia had nodded.

"Oh piss off, Ven," Felix had huffed. Venetia had obligingly swanned back into the house while you stifled your laughter against his chest. When it's just the two of you, his voice turns soft, "you know I don't think of you like that."

"It's nothing, Fi, everyone knows you're my favourite is all."

"But you're not a dog."

You look up at him in all his glory, golden in the sunset and looking like a dream. You want to smooth the concern, the righteous anger from his brow, kiss the faint downturned edge of his perfect lips, do everything in your power to make sure he never worries again. No matter who or what you are, you are his. His best friend, his confidant, his shoulder to cry on, his partner in crime, his right hand, his, his, his.

All you can give him in this moment is your gentle voice full of absolute love;

"What do you want me to be, Fi?"

[wanderingblindly]

PLEASE give me rules of engagement director’s cut. i need it biblically

AAAAAH thank you!!!! I haven't gotten to talk about this fic before, I think, so let us commence the info dump <33333

The Origins

I've always been a fake dating trope fan, but I've never had an idea that made it feel like my story, you know? But I've always wanted to try!

While I was procrastinating on cleaning my apartment, I randomly thought of this dialogue, directly copied from my planning document:

“If we do this, we need to make some rules” “Max we live together, I’m sure it’ll be fine” “WE NEED RULES CHARLES”

My brain immediately latched on to it, and the fic was born like... two hours later hahah

My Favorite Bits

Ok so this is one of my favorite lines for the DUMBEST reason:

“Are women not…? Is it these women, or?” His voice sounded tight. They hadn’t discussed Max’s sexuality before. Actually, if Max thought about it, they never really discussed Charles’s, either. He was pretty sure Charles stayed the night at a few different women's’ flats during uni, but that was little more than speculation.  ... “That’s fine, of course. Anything is. Fine, I mean.” Charles stuttered, his cheeks still slightly pink.  “Doesn’t solve the problem though, does it?”

Was it vaguely inspired by BBC's Sherlock? Yes it was. Would anyone have noticed if I didn't confess to my sins? No.

More seriously, I also really enjoyed this little scene:

They always ate breakfast together.  Max always woke up first to get started on washing the fruit, and Charles always stumbled out of his bedroom in a state of total disarray about fifteen minutes later – hair sticking up, sweatshirt off one shoulder, pajama pants low across his hips, glasses nearly askew. They would eat breakfast together, Max happily talking about his to-dos and Charles diligently humming and nodding along as necessary. They’d get dressed, they’d walk out the door together. Max always locked it, Charles always lost his keys in the depths of his bag before he left the house.   It was easy and understandable. It was theirs. 

While the rest of the story, up until this point, has hinted at the routines baked into this domesticity, I loved how this scene used that to highlight why Max found the situation so alarming. They have a distinct rhythm -- an easy cadence that I tried to mimic in the very basic structure of the paragraph -- that's so noticeable when it's disturbed.

It also shows how much Max notices about Charles, even before he realizes why. To know someone well enough that even the slightest change in timing throws a red flag is just hmmmm I love it lol

And finally, one of my last favorite scenes:

“You’re still wearing your ring,” Max pointed out rather unhelpfully. Charles let out a bleak laugh, devoid of his usual eye-crinkling warmth.  “You picked it out for me,” He shrugged, leaving something unspoken in the air. Max didn’t do well with unspoken, with reading between the lines. He tried to breathe it into his lungs, find the meaning Charles left out. Speak it. 

The confession was just so full of "Max is trying his best and he doesn't entirely understand what he's done wrong but he'll do absolutely anything for him and Charles to just go back to the way it was before please please please". This line in particular highlights how much of this is Max desperately trying to understand what Charles really needs from him -- even though the answer ends up being nothing he expected.

Random Fun Lore

As always, this fic is full of random things from my actual life (for no real reason other than I'm unoriginal and boring). Some examples are:

Max's MD's summer party in the countryside: YES I have to go to this every year, YES I do get splashed by my coworkers, and YES there is far too much alcohol lol (although I do not partake like Max did but hey)

Full Recovery Mode: the very specific mug and the very specific tea that Max puts together for Charles is absolutely based on my real life (liter sized Japanese mug my beloved)

[justabunchofdragons]

HI i'm So glad you agree w my tags on that vid of wilson on speed... <333 seriously though imagine. house putting his hands around wilson's neck and feeling his pulse beating away at like 90mph. when he pulls away he has a bloody lip cus wilson was trembling so hard he bit down on his lip on accident. fuck my lifeeeee i cant stop thinking about them

ohhhhhhghgg ......!!!!!!!!!!!!! i must have you know i read this during shopping with my mother and i could NOTT stop grinning because that visual is so insane ... fuck......

[summonerluna]

Letters between Link and his sister, following the BotW memories.

Word Count: 3798

Will you take me to Gerudo Town one day? Mom said only girls are allowed in though. The Gerudo champion had so many jewels! I bet everything there is really pretty. Maybe you can take me and mom and you can just wait for us outside. I bet she would like it too. Write me back okay? A REAL LETTER this time? Love, Aryll

[pyrriax]

hi tumblr im pyrr pyrriax and im in my trimonthly artist arc, lord help me and all the projects that are currently sitting in my drafts while i am lured in by the siren song of drawing

[americankimchi]

obsessed with the idea that in another world shen jiu would just be the cang qiong sect’s extremely bitchy second in command who acts like a royal pain in the ass to everyone but closes ranks SO fast once someone else is rude to anybody from the sect like FUCK you those are HIS annoying little brat disciples/peak lords and only HE’S allowed to be mean to them