#her heart pumps gin and secrets

[ktechnicolour]

Yoglabs: Behind Closed Doors - Mass Spoiler Post

General Outline

So the general outline for the plot revolved around my OC Subject K, and her rose tinted perspective on the state of yoglabs before slowly uncovering the truth of her own purpose as well as the underlying secrets the lab holds.

The story is set after the events of Shadow of Israphel and Yoglabs with the series like Blackrock, Flux buddies, Flux Baddies and Sipsco all being cannon to the universe.

Character Plots

Since the story is so heavily character focused and thats kinda the layout in my head, ill breakdown events via characters and important points.

Subject K

The main character of the story. She was born on a boat to an archaeologist couple, however her mother died in childbirth. Her father treasured her dearly, and brought her along for alot of his studdies, teaching her to draw and gifting her the sketchbook she has. During studies into the lost 4th dimension, (the aether, the nether and the errebus are all cannon with the lost 4th dimension being oceanus) their boat is attacked by a greater elder guardian and destroyed. This gives her a deep fear of the sea and anything tentacle-y. K washes up on a beach and walks aimlessly for days in search of any kind of civilization to help her. She finally comes across a town of people who rather than help her, drive her out as an ill omen saying she'll only bring destruction. Tired and close to giving up on everything, she hides away in a nearby cave for shelter and decides she's better off alone. She ends up stealing what she needs from the village to survive, surviving but never really making anything of herself. One night, during a usual raid on the village, it also gets raided by yoglabs, capturing the villagers and herself in the process. She is then used as the 11th subject in project divinity, a project aiming to recreate Ridgedog. she's spliced with his DNA and given a secondary heart and circulatory system, and though she survives, she doesn't manifest any of the power or abilities of her predecessor. The fact that her second heart doesn't work is actually what saves her life. in a desperate attempt to kickstart her 2nd heart and her magic, Xephos decides to use what they have left of Ridges Ichor, essentially, liquified magic that pumps through the secondary circulatory system of a demigod fuelling their power. This kickstarts her magic, but she cant control it properly. Her body just keeps generating energy with no limit. her outburst of power on the village, destroying it entirely stops her from burning out and overloading herself by venting some of the excess power. When she's brought back to the labs, she's fitted with her collar and told by Xephos its to keep her alive. while not entirely a lie, what she isn't told is that it slowly siphons her energy to fuel a secret project at the labs Site B. more on that later. She's thankful for a proper home and a second chance at life and through her interactions with Xephos, she comes to understand him as a very conflicted and troubled man. At one point she finds him late at night passed out with a bottle of gin next to Honeydew's clone vat. at that point she develops a sense of sympathy for the lonely spaceman as a kindred spirit. She knows herself how devastating loss can be. Once her magic awakens, she has dreams that are flashbacks to Ridge's life including time spent with his brother, who always refers to him as "pup". (i had some ideas with coming up with a fun anagram for his brothers name, but the best i could do was Earlship)

Xephos

Originally an alien who crash lands, leading into the events of Shadow of Israphel, they face off with the man himself deep in the heart of one of his facilities (heehoo site B) where Israphel is attempting to rebuild one of the huge robots (remember the hand in the sand?) and has been using a cloning system to create workers and versions of himself. He is also using Ridgedog as a generator to fuel the energy needed for the giant robot. The original Israphel is hooked up to what seems to be a large life support machine. they stop Israphel's plan, but Xephos receives a fatal blow. To save his best friends life, Honeydew hooks him up to the life support system granting him control of the facility. They rebuild the Yoglabs main site, originally using it for good, but Xephos becomes obsessed with the cloning systems. after loosing Knight Peculiar, he cant bare the thought of loosing Honeydew and through extensive testing develops a strange desensitization to the meaning of loss. After the Clone Labs Takeover Honeydew's current clone replaces the original master version. (yes I know that's not exactly how it goes in the episode, but CREATIVE LICENCE) however, since cloning at this point is still imperfect, this new Master Clone slowly deteriorates, loosing memories, cognitive functions. imagine immense dementia. until the point Xephos stops cloning him, not wanting to make the situation any worse. Xephos thows himself even deeper into perfecting cloning to save his best friend, but begins loosing sight of his reasoning through obsession. When he begins trying to clone Ridgedog despite ridge's warnings, the first attempt ends in a catastrophic failure, destroying a large portion of the labs in the process. Ridgedog confronts him on this to which Xephos challenges him to a duel. Ridge begrudgingly accepts, and the swordfight takes place on the cliff above the main door of the lab. Ridge easily beats Xephos and begins lecturing xeph on the danger of what he's messing with. as ridge turns to look out over the cliff face, Xephos strikes, running him through and leaning close revealing himself to be controlled by israphel; "you always were too trusting, Pup." before kicking him off the top of the labs. Ridge falls landing in a huge explosion of light. While Xephos is being controlled by Israphel, most of the time its rather subtle, twisting xephos' beliefs and desires into his own. With the original Ridgedog now gone, Xephos dives even deeper into project divinity, driven by Xephos' regret and Israphels need for a replacement power source for the giant robot project; Sentinel. Thus, K is created being the first surviving subject.

Lalnable Hector

Lalnable is one of 3 active Lalnas in the universe. the others being Lalna, the Flux Buds Variant and LividCoffee the original from the Duncan's lab series. Lalnable plays the biggest part in the story of the 3 being Yoglabs' clone. while defective, Lalnable is all yoglabs is left with in terms of lalna since Livid left destroying any record of his original DNA in the process. Lalnable does leave yoglabs before subject Ks creation to investigate the flux buddies and the events of Flux Baddies takes place. However, Specimen 5s Flux corruption quickly grows out of control and rather than deal with the mess and fast spreading flux corruption, he cuts his losses and flees back to yoglabs. The magical corruption however gains the attention of a certain endermage, Rythian, who tracks Lalnable back to the labs, breaking in to confront the scientist about his actions. Rather than kicking rythian out, Xephos takes the opportunity to make a deal with the mage, if yoglabs offers its resources to deal with the flux, rythian would offer his understanding of magic to help subject K better control her powers. Xephos orders Lalnable to assist and capture specimen 5. Subject K begs to go along, and against Xephos' wishes and through Rythians persuasion, she's granted leave under the exception that she wears a special system, in the form of a backpack that connects to her collar, since the system isnt designed to work outside the labs. I was planning some rather fun interactions between the 3 of them with Rythian taking a begrudging liking to K because of her resemblance to Zoeya.

Specimen 5

In an attempt to better understand Lalna, Lalnable creates his own version of Nano. However, since 5 is created from already corrupted material, 5s corruption spreads abnormally fast turning her into an abomination of tentacles and claws that spreads flux wherever she goes. Lalnable, although having developed feelings for 5, is a reckless coward who flees rather than facing his responsibilities. The magical corruption created by 5 gets the attention of Rythian, since due to his background, is rather sensitive to magic in the world. Due to this sensitivity however, he is unable to deal with the flux alone since it would very quickly corrupt him if infected.

Rythian Enderborn

After the events of Blackrock, a space fairing bounty hunter, Fiona crash lands at their castle. through helping repair her ship, Zoeya develops feelings for the bounty hunter. torn between Rythian and her new love, Rythian makes the difficult choice to encourage her to leave. Left with fishton and a painful goodbye, Rythian is once again alone. Living with the regret of loosing the girl he loved and never telling her the truth of how he feels, he shuts himself away, endlessly studying and taking up a deep interest in alchemy. While out on a material gathering trip, he comes across the huge amounts of flux quickly spreading through the lands and the horrifying creature causing it. with further investigation, he spots a fleeing Lalnable who he decides to trail all the way back to the labs. He confronts Lalnable on his recklessness before Xephos walks in on them, K in tow. after getting the whole story Xephos sees the opportunity to gain a magic expert and a monstrous weapon in one go and tells them to capture the creature, promising Lalnable they'll help Five any way they can. (a blatant lie) and in return for Yoglabs' resources, Rythian would help K with controlling her magic, Xephos hoping she'll make a more useful asset in the future. Rythian agrees to help, intending to sneak away once the flux is cleared. however, through traveling with subject K and Lalnable, he grows a fondness for K. she reminds him of Zoeya. When they finally confront Five, K freezes, terrified by the tentacles, reminding her of the night she lost her father. Rythian manages to get her out of harms way before working begrudgingly with Lalnable to secure Five. Back at the labs K is excited to have a new friend to show around. after a few days of working together, she decides they should take a break so K can show rythian her favourite part of the labs. She takes him to the botanical conservatory, excitedly showing him all the generating flora she's been working on in her spare time. Its a very sweet moment of downtime before the sprinkler system kicks in to water everything. Rythian's skin burns and blisters in the downpour and K panics to get him somewhere safe. This is when her healing magic manifests as she apologizes profusely, healing the burns, much to rythians surprise and awe. Rythian vaguely explains his enderborn origin, though not going into much detail about his past. After some reminiscing he mistakingly calls K zoeya, leading into a conversation about his relationship and regrets. K sympathises, but also tells rythian he should never have let her go. understandably, rythian becomes rather upset and leaves the labs later that night.

Dr. Riviera, Epsilon and Grimm

Sometime after rythian leaves, K is wandering the labs upset and mulling over her conversation with rythian, when she notices something watching her out the corner of her eye. She chases it, managing to corner the strange creature which huddles in the corner chewing on a book. K realises this is her Sketchbook and become extremely irate. Riviera comes across the two, attempting to diffuse the situation, slowly convincing Epsilon to part with the sketchbook in return for a bag of jellybeans. Riviera takes the two back to Bio-engineering, getting Epi to apologize, though her words are broken and childlike, explaining that Epsilon isnt supposed to leave this section of the labs and that if Xephos knew about her, Riviera would be in trouble. K finds herself unable to stay mad at the adorable creature and promises to keep her secret just as they realise Xephos standing in the doorway. Xephos lectures Riviera on his purpose in the labs, that he should be creating bio-weapons, not kids show mascots. he threatens Riviera with cutting his med supply, which Riviera sadly agrees to, promising he'll fix epsilon soon. K tries to ask Riv about the purpose of his meds and why he seems so scared of Xephos. She promises to come by again soon and bring epsilon some less sketchbooky snacks. When K returns a few days later Rivieras mannerisms are off and he seems strangely excited to show K his work on epsilon. Epi is completely unrecognizable, having been reworked into a monster, he mouth dripping with acidic poison. K is horrified by his inhumane treatment of the creature he showed so much care for, calling him a monster. Riviera seems to argue with himself about this before K flees in disgust and just generally being creeped out. Epsilon breaks out of containment, creeping into Ks quarters during the night. K manages to wake up and notice before Epsilon destroys her sketchbook snatching it away just in time. K is furious with her sketchbook almost being destroyed and what Epsilon has become. She kicks Epi out into the hallway against the wall when Riviera runs over blocking Ks way. She confronts him on how he could do this to herm getting very mixed and confusing responses. This is when she finds out about Grimm, who manifests threatening Riviera. Grimm essentially appears as a phantom of smoke escaping from Riviera's missing eye socket. imagine a Jekyll and Hyde kind of deal. Riviera gives in to Grimms threats promising to keep working on Epsilon. Riviera explains Grimm to K and apologizes for what he's done, telling her about the meds that keep Grimm in check. K promises she'll help him find another way and that Epi doesn't deserve this.

The True Nature of the Collar

K attempts to confront Xephos on the matter with Riviera and sees a side of xephos she never has before. he threatens her, telling her to know her place since she belongs to him. he reminds K that she's nothing without the labs and that everything she has was given to her by him. K, unable to stand against xephos attempts to flee the labs, but as she crosses the threshold of the main doors exit her collar overloads, electrocuting her and shorting out the labs systems. Xephos comes running and K expects the worst, but instead his mannerisms are forgiving and concerned. He reminds K that the collar is keeping her alive and cant work outside the labs. he apologizes for his previous comments, telling K he only wants to keep her safe. He sends her to the med bay to have her and her collar checked over for damages. (aka, turning up the amps to knock her out next time) As Xephos leaves, he muses over the power of the shock the collar delivers not being high enough to knock her unconscious, revealing the true nature of the collar; Keeping K bound and loyal.

Dr. Riviera, Epsilon and Grimm (.Cont)

K returns to Riviera explaining what happened, and Riviera reveals he's working to change epi back to her adorable self. K advises Riviera to appeal to Xephos' better nature, and Riviera explains the fate of his previous experiment, Delta. Delta was an extremely smart and powerful creation. essentially, similar to the endo rex from Jurassic world, but far more intelligent. Riviera reveals that Delta was created with a human brain, which although caused it to be intelligent, introduced issues of free will and was inevitably destroyed. Riviera was warned against using human brains to create creatures, but reveals that he broke this rule when creating epsilon. Epsilon, rather than being created to be a bio-weapon, was intended to be a secret project for Riviera to create a companion, purely for company. Were Xephos to find out about her origins, or Grimm to finish his work on her, both would be disastrous. Lalnable, being bored and poking his nose around find out about epsilon, and realises straight away she's far too intelligent not to have a human brain and uses this info to barter for info on the flux buddies. Naturally, Xephos is pretty pissed at this and confronts Riviera, telling him he was only hired because of Grimm. Epsilon manages to sneak away in the heated argument and seek aid from K, who confronts Xephos on what the labs stand for meanwhile Grimm sees an opportunity in Riviera's emotional state to attempt full control. in the struggle, Riviera manages to take the corrupted missing eye out of his pocket but cant bring himself to destroy it, so K does instead, destroying Grimm. Xephos' response is to fire Riviera before storming out of the bio-engineering lab.

Confrontation

K tails after Xephos, demanding explanation and telling xeph hes being unreasonable, and Xephs facade with her drops. he's cold and harsh to her, telling her she's nothing more than a means to an end. she looses her temper, but before she can loose control of her powers, Xephos activates her collar shocking her unconscious. She then awakes to find herself in a dark and unknown part of the labs with her collar hooked up to a bunch of glowing pipes and systems trailing off into the dark. (yall remember the flashback on page 15?) Unlike ridge she manages to overpower the system, partially because her body creates more energy than the system was built for originally but also because ridge never tried to break out of it for backstory reasons~ She finds her way into the deeper parts of site B, finding the original xephos hooked up to some kind of life support system. She's discovered by the imposter Xephos who reveals his plans for reviving a giant sentinel. (remember that hand in the sand?) After some big bad guy monologuing, Israphel/xephos reveals himself and his real reasoning for trying to remake ridgedog. They have an epic giant robot boss battle showdown, and K realizes that he's dependent on Xephos. She pulls Xephos from the system, but he wont wake up. She pours so much healing magic into him that she burns out her magic entirely and collapses just as he wakes up. She finally comes to in the med bay with xephos looking over her and they go over what happened.

Wrap Up

Essentially, this was the end of the first arc. I had some rough ideas for a Grimm focused spin off dealing with what happened to Epi and why Riviera is troubled by Grimm.

I also had plans for K going off to find Ridge to restore her magic and a whole story that involved Kirin too. But that was more self indulgent and a little more creatively licensed in terms of what the characters were like. This also included a scene with K standing between Ridge and Kirin mid fight which causes the giant scar on her back thats been shown in a few of my arts.

So that's kinda the whole deal. Lord knows i've probably missed a bunch of details and little things, but generally that's the whole story.it would've been cool to finish the whole thing but personal health and mental stability just didn't allow for it. That said, the story is still very much alive in my heart and I'm always happy to talk to people about the setting for behind closed doors. If anyone has any queries or questions about anything that I've missed or not covered properly, feel free to drop something in my ask box anytime :) Footnote: This ended up taking a lot longer that I intended since I've recently had a lot of mental health struggles so please be kind ;u;

[une-nuit-pour-se-souvenir]

Gossip Girl Best Music Moment #18 "Whatcha Say" - Jason Derulo

[rogue-durin-16]

UNSURPRISING

Summary: There were a few moments during Fred's friendship with Y/n's in which they were a bit too close to kissing. Then, there was that one time they did.

Pairing: Fred Weasley x Reader

Genre: fluff

Tags:

Fred Weasley: @whiskeyn-rain @lumos-solemn @meph1stophelian

Permanent taglist: @elia-the-bibliophile @randomparanoid @karlthecat15722 @thebutchersdaughtersblog @amourtentiaa @just-here-to-escape-from-reality

Warnings: language maybe, murder

A/N: this one was not scheduled for tonight but I wanted to cheer @meph1stophelian up because she deserves it, so enjoy your dose of Fred fluff <3

Rogue-durin-16 masterlist

"Okay, Y/n," Ginny grabbed a pastry from the platter which we had stolen from the kitchen and that now laid on a small coffee table in the middle of the Room of Requirement. "truth or dare?"

"Dare."

"I dare you to... Wait." She thought about it for a second before leaning on Luna to ask her something. "I dare you to kiss Fred."

"Uh-uh." Fred, who had just moved to the higher table where the drinks had been laid, was quick to respond, "Not happening." shortly after followed by me.

"I'm not doing that."

"You can't skip a dare!" Ron exclaimed outraged.

"I can if I'm over eight years old." I replied, leaning back on the couch with my arms crossed.

"What she said." Fred agreed, raising his glass at me before drinking.

"Since when do you two back out of a dare?" Ginny questioned with a frown.

"Since this girl here" he motioned at me "started dating Pucey."

"What?" Harry asked in shock. "Pucey? Pucey as in Adrian Pucey?"

"Yeah?" I replied.

"You and Pucey?" Hermione raised her brows and gave Ginny a confused look. "I don't quite see it."

"Oi, what's there to see? I'm the only one who has to see it, don't you think?" I responded, slightly annoyed. "And why is no one talking about this bloke's love life?" I pointed at Fred who now stood behind me. "He's dating that Hufflepuff girl too!"

He tsked his tongue. "Not anymore."

"That's... unsurprising." George commented.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Fred questioned suspicious, kicking my leg for me to move aside so he could sit.

His twin snorted. "You know what's supposed to mean." He took a sip from his drink before nodding at Ginny. "C'mon Gin, change the dare— for Pucey's sake." George scanned us both with analyzing eyes before adding, "we don't want Y/n to end up ditching his boyfriend for this twit, now do we?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"YEEEEH" I was already down on the arena, clapping, when Fred landed with a wide cocky grin on his face, his breathing ragged due to the match's intense last few minutes.

I had rushed down the moment the snitch was caught to be the first one to congratulate him, so I was quite breathless too.

"Did you see me up there? Saving the bloody match!" He exclaimed, tossing his broom and bat on the ground in order to catch me when I threw myself to him.

"You were brilliant oh my gosh!" I let out a surprised laugh. The match seemed pretty much lost until Fred's performance came into play. "Oi, don't let it go to your head!" I was quick to add, pulling away from his embrace.

"Y/n Y/l/n just said I'm brilliant," He stated, the grin not leaving his face. "it's definitely going to my head."

I groaned, letting my forehead fall against his chest. His heart was beating fast, but I blamed it on the adrenaline of the match.

But what was I supposed to blame on the way my own heartbeat picked up when his hand found the small of my back and casually pulled me a tad closer?

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Oi," I slid open the door's compartment and scanned it briefly before saying, "everything's full, do you mind—"

"Not at all." Fred rapidly answered, sitting up slightly but quickly returning to his laid back position after I had taken a seat by his side.

I had a brief exchange of words with George and Lee before silence fell upon us; it was quite unsual, yet understandable due to the exhaustion we had been put under during the last semester.

It was because of it that Lee fell asleep, shortly after followed by George. I took the chance to grab my book to avoid giving in to the sleep, though my reading was soon disturbed by Fred's foot tapping over the upholstery of the seat.

"What?" I questioned quietly, my brow quirked at him while my eyes peeked over the book.

"What are you reading?"

"Advanced Potion-Making— what do you want?"

"Rude." I rolled my eyes, making a smirk dance on his lips. He seemed to weigh what he was about to say. "I got you something for Christmas."

"Wait— you what?" He got up, ignoring my shock, and, stretching his hands to reach his bag, he pulled out a small package. "I— you—"

"Speechless, I see." He pointed out amused, handing me the package before plopping back down, his gaze trained on me. "C'mon, open it." His teeth trapped his lower lip in anticipation, and I felt how my blood started to pump violently through my veins before I unwrapped the present. "A little birdy told me you liked... What's it called? Chokers?" I could only nod, speechless at the delicate choker in my lap. "I mean, my hand would have been just as good but you can wear this one in public too."

My face flared up at his words and astonishment was replaced by the usual need to fuck that little bastard up. "I hate you."

"I'm kidding, love." He chuckled, tugging on his sleeves and nodding at the jewelry. "You like it?"

The softness in his gaze made my anger go away as I took another look at the choker. "I love it, but you didn't have to." I scrunched my nose. "it looks very—"

"If you say expensive I'll shove it up your arse so watch your tongue." He warned me, half jokingly and half serious.

"What a way of ruining a sweet gesture." I pointed out, feigning a pout.

"Don't worry, I'll make it sweet again, you'll see—" he pushed himself away from the wall and scooted closer to me, tending his palm. "Give it to me." I obeyed and shifted my position so I would have my back to him. His fingers moved my hair away before his hands carefully placed the strap of velvet around my throat and clasped it. "There." He whispered, putting my hair back in place.

I turned around again without any clue of what to tell him. "I-I'd have gotten you something—"

"Y/n, it's a gift, not a trade." He gave me a warm smile, one that anyone rarely got to see, and my face heated up once more. His eyes seemed to flicker to my lips just for an instant, but he soon averted them from me to check on our peers. "Don't tell them, I won't hear the end of it."

I too peeked at them before leaning in and placing a soft kiss on Fred's cheek. "Merry Christmas, Fred."

The little smile grew into a wide side grin while he casted his face down, fixing it on his hands. "Merry Christmas, Y/n."

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was out after curfew, yes, but I wasn't doing anything bad, just visiting my friends in their common room; I only had to be careful and no one would notice me.

Or so I thought.

To my luck, while I was tiptoeing through one of the halls, none other than Fred Weasley bumped into me.

"Shit!" We both took a moment to observe one another. "Alright, sorry in advance." He apologised, taking a peek at the path he had taken before grabbing my hand and pulling me with him.

I didn't hesitate on running with me; I knew he had brought trouble directly to me, and if I didn't follow, I would get detention and, with Umbridge in control, I had to avoid that at all costs.

"Wait wait— Here!" He tapped what I assumed was a camouflaged door and pulled me inside before it could open completely.

We both reached for the door at the same time, shutting it as fast and quiet as possible and stepping back right in time to hear what I assumed was a part of Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad.

Fred was so close that I could feel his heavy breath tickling my neck while we stumbled back into the pitch black darkness of the narrow passage.

"Well, that was close." I commented, trying to keep my pants at bay; it was the only sound heard —our pants.

His hands left my biceps to presumably fall limply on his sides, but he didn't step back to put some space between us. I couldn't see anything, but I still turned around and instantly knew his eyes were trying to find mines, just like my fingertips attempted to intertwin with his.

It was a bad idea, but no one had to know; the lack of light in the secret passage would prevent anyone to witness it, even us.

No one would see it, I thought, trailing my fingers up his arm until I reached his cheek.

His own hand made its way to my waist, giving it a squeeze and pulling me to him.

I pushed him away as soon as we heard Filch's cat miaowing at the hidden door, followed by the erratic running of the caretaker.

Fred grunted in frustration. "C'mon!" He rushed me, taking my hand once more and running down the ginnel.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

We were running breathless, hands held, casting spells left and right.

'Don't stop moving' Arthur had said when the part of the castle we were defending fell into the Dementors' claws.

One of the Carrow apparated a few feet ahead of us, sending a Cruciatus in our direction even before we came to a halt in our running.

Fred raised his wand, quick as lightning, shielding us from the curse, and I didn't miss a beat before hexing the death eater, hitting her right in the chest.

Fred spun around to guard my back from another death eater that stood behind us while I, seeing that the Carrow sister attempted to get up, casted another stunning spell at her, only that this time it hit her shield.

Both Fred and I duelled the two Voldemort's acolytes until we managed to take them out almost simultaneously, yet in very different ways.

"STUPEFY!" Fred yelled out loud to enhance the spell's effect.

I did the same, knowing I needed that extra push to take Carrow out only that my spell was way more harmful. "AVADA KEDAVRA!"

Fred turned around, still gripping my hand, to see the death eater's corpse on the floor. "Fuck!" He exclaimed.

"Was that a good 'fuck' or a bad 'fuck'?" I inquired, adrenaline pumping through my veins when I turned to meet the redhead's eyes, sparkling with excitement.

"Definitely a good 'fuck'." We both let out a laugh as if I hadn't just murdered someone. "Kiss me." He demanded; fortunately, I was thinking that same thing, so my lips crashed against his in a rough kiss right after he had finished the sentence.

We both tried to pour into the kiss as much sentiment as possible to let the other know how much we had craved to do that for the last three years. Our hands and arms were wrapped around each other, pulling our bodies as close as possible in the now empty corridor as if the world was about to end; it most likely was.

"Being realistic," I began speaking against his lips, once he had pulled away only enough for us to breathe. "we might be dead by tomorrow," if the situation was a bit different, we would probably be crying, but our little victory had made euphoria flood our hearts. "so know that—"

"I love you too." He finished with a nod.

I nodded back, pecking his lips before untangling by limbs from his and pulling him with me in order to resume our jog away.

[velvethopewrites]

Top Hinny canon moments? ❤

Ack! So many. Okay, five. Let’s see if I can narrow it down.

1) Lucky you scene in OOTP - important for many reasons, mostly I just like it because Ginny basically helps Harry pull his head out of his ass with grace and gentleness while still standing firm. She soothes him, reassures him and oh yeah, reminds him he is not the only person on the planet to suffer so. Ok, so I am paraphrasing, but you get my drift. It’s brilliant, subtle writing and just what the reader and Harry needs at that point in the story.

2) The several sunlit days kiss in HBP. Close you eyes and think of this scene. Don’t think of the blasted movies. Think of how Jo wrote it. It is EPIC. It is romantic. It is fucking poetry. There are fierce gazes, blazing looks, breaking glass and a shocked yet absurdly quick to accept things Ron. Not to mention a beaming-so-bright-you-can see-her-from-outer-space, Hermione. There are no words because Harry and Ginny DO NOT NEED WORDS. It is pure passion and anyone who says differently is high.

3) The “I told her it was a Hungarian Horntail” scene in HBP - not just because it is funny, which it is, it’s hilarious *that a girl, Gin*, but it also shows just how comfortable Harry and Ginny are with each other. There’s no embarrassment or anyone getting offended (except Ron, lol, but that is sort of the point), there’s just a great line about a tattoo. Also there are kisses goodnight and gentle touches and there’s just Harry and Ginny being Harry and Ginny. A glimpse into their future life together, perhaps.

4) When Harry saves Ginny in the Chamber of Secrets - from the text - it was probably the worse day of his entire life. That is a literal quote. Now tell me that doesn’t mean something. I had an inkling Ginny was going to be our girl in the first book and this scene in the second one, sealed it. He slays a (basilisk) a freaking dragon for her with a big sword - uh, symbolism, anyone? Could Jo have dropped any heavier hints? (Well, yeah, in the size of Ron and Hermione being gaga for each other from the get go, but that’s a whole different post). People who think Ginny came out of nowhere, need to learn how to read and stop basing their knowledge on the films.

5) The ”Better than Firewhiskey” scene in DH - I almost picked a different scene, but in the end I went with this because it shows us how deeply the both of them feel - they are broken up, but not really broken up. There is tension between them - like a live wire of hormones, wanting, and yearning and PINING. She kisses him - passionately, joyously wanting to give him something to remember her by (and maybe give herself something to remember as well, in the long months ahead) - Ginny claims Harry with a kiss - just like he claimed her in the previous book. Again, my fiery OTP do not need words. They have moments - because that is the best that Harry can do with his prophecy of becoming a murderer hanging over his head - MOMENTS. Neither of them know what the future will bring - death, destruction, or even a (hopefully) happy ending. But for now they have this - this kiss - this passion and yeah, they have each other in this tiniest, frozen-in-time moment and it is glorious. It is no wonder Harry thinks of Ginny as his last moment before dying. Because Ginny represents the entirety of what it feels like to BE ALIVE to him. She is his beating heart, his pumping blood and his soothing balm all in one. This moment makes my heart pump faster, too.

Whew. *wipes brow* Thanks for the ask @startanewdream!!!! This was fun. ;) I got sort of into it, lol.

[hiinnys]

full hearts, empty hallways

(for @geekspen: two things - (1) i’m fully aware that this is literally a month late and i’m so sorry - uni took over my life in depressing ways (2) i’m also fully aware that this is not a muggle au for which only my brain can be blamed and i swear to get you one of those if school ever lets up or i get better at time management. hope you like whatever this is, you’re a darling <3)

she can hear the crowd even from where she’s pacing, just outside the locker room. usually, it’s one of her favorite things, the electricity racing through the stadium - it’s the thing she’s always loved about quidditch. but tonight’s not just any night. they’re one game away from playing at the world cup - one game away from ginny literally making quidditch history as the first player to carry her team to a world cup in her first season. it’s not the potential for an accolade that’s got her so damn nervous. it would be great, sure - a fantastic thing to rub in the faces of arseholes who thought she wasn’t good enough to be where she is now - but she’s had enough accolades in her life (and what the hell did the arseholes know anyway?).

it’s the very real possibility that she’s gonna fuck up. it would be easy to - one wrong move, one missed goal, and she’d have to watch the faces of the teammates she’s grown to love so much sink in disappointment. the thought terrifies her, so she continues wearing a hole in the concrete floor, praying for some sort of miracle.

“weasley,” and gwenog’s marching up to her, blazing look of confidence ginny wishes she had a fraction of right about now. her hands land on ginny’s shoulders, stilling her pacing for a minute. “remember the strategy, yeah?”

“yeah,” as if it’s possible for ginny to forget after the near month of drilling it into her mind and body. she’s fairly sure she could reenact their practices play by play in her sleep by now. distantly, she supposes that’s the point.

“then you’ve got nothing to worry about, kid. just play your heart out and we’ll be onto the cup in two weeks, yeah,” gwenog pauses, waits for ginny to nod, squeezes her shoulders. “that’s my girl.”

she walks back to the locker room, leaves ginny to mumble the plays to herself.

“stealing my plays, weasley? because i’m pretty sure i came up with that exact strategy sixth year,” he lowers his voice at the end, like he’s telling her the most important secret in the world, so she forces herself to suppress the tooth-rotting smile she wants to wear in favor of a raised eyebrow and a barely there smirk, just to play along.

“you wish you came up with such good strategy,” she turns around to look at harry - her harry, with his furrowed brows and mischievous eyes, her harry, who is definitely not even supposed to be in the country right about now.

“pretty sure my strategy worked out alright,” he’s got this smirk, all cocky self-assurance, and she knows he’s thinking about a kiss in a common room a million years ago.

“that was all luck and you know it,” she whispers back, and they let the silence settle around them for a moment, breathing in the same space for the first time in weeks. “aren’t you supposed to be in bulgaria?” she asks after a minute (or maybe it’s been a year, who really knows?). he affirms her question with a short nod, a gentle mhmm.

“and if anyone happens to ask, i am in bulgaria,” he comments, rather innocently for someone who’s disobeying at least ten different orders from his superiors just by standing in front of her. “i wasn’t gonna miss this.” and he’s standing there, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking impossibly young and at ease, and it’s so simple - nothing else in the world is, but they are.

“aren’t you up for a promotion in a couple weeks,” she questions because she’s not ready to let this go - to let this moment end. “seems stupid, risking your spot for a chance.” a chance we win - a miracle, really.

“it is stupid to risk my spot for a chance,” he responds easily. “entirely different conversation to risk it for a sure thing.” she falters and the fear’s back in her heart, pumping through her veins where the blood’s supposed to be.

“it’s not a sure thing. what if i fuck up?” she whispers the last bit, as if it’s too much to say aloud.

“you’re not gonna fuck up,” he whispers back, walking closer to her for the first time since he entered the room, but she doesn’t notice. she’s too busy thinking about all the ways she can screw this up to notice the way he’s looking at her - like he’ll explode if he doesn’t make her understand.

“what if i do,” ginny insists.

“then you hang up your kit for off season, come back in four months and try again,” he shrugs, hands leaving his pockets and coming to rest on her neck, his thumbs curving under her jawbones. “first shot doesn’t mean only shot, gin.”

“after making it this far? that’s one hell of a way to disappoint everyone, isn’t it?”

“not everyone. i’d still be proud of you,” he whispers and there’s something in his voice, something in him, because she’s finally looking at harry, brown eyes on green, and she can’t hear the crowd anymore. can’t feel the fear. can only feel him.

“yeah?” she asks quietly but he gives her this look, like she’s just asked him the dumbest question in the world, and for the first time that night, ginny feels like she can actually win. (maybe she’s already won, she thinks offhandedly.) “even if it’s the worst game i’ve ever played?” she teases, waits for him to nod, then:

“even if i don’t make a single shot?” another nod and a ghost of a smile on his face that sets her heart running. “even if it’s worse than that one game in fifth year?” and she knows that it’s playing in his head, that he can see himself, back on a broomstick, yelling at mclaggen, twenty seconds away from injury from the way he grimaces.

“that’s a pretty hard record to beat,” he breathes in between a quiet laugh. “but, yeah, even then.”

she can’t help not touching him anymore, fully aware that this is the closest they’ve been in awhile but overly conscious of the fact that, for once, she can’t afford to have her head swimming in him, so she stands up straight and touches her forehead to his. immediately, his eyes close and she smiles to herself, just for a second reveling in what she does to him, before closing her eyes too.

“you staying for the game?” she whispers, expecting a response but instead feeling him grab her hand and move it to his back pocket. there, her hands close on what she had thought was air, but now she knows is his cloak. he’s silent the entire time, a conversation he only wants them to hear: you won’t be able to see me, but i’ll be there. i promise. she can hear gwenog calling for the team to line up, but she doesn’t move, not yet.

“you need to change your play,” it’s still a whisper, but this time it’s urgent, enough for her to open her eyes in confusion, and see him in full auror-mode. she can practically hear his brain working, processing strategy after strategy, making plan after plan. “you’ve used those moves the past four games, mercer’s gonna expect it.”

the panic’s back, muted only because harry’s hands are on her. “what do i do instead?”

“you’re the professional,” he shrugs, a soft smile finding its place on his lips. “trust your gut.”

she can hear gwenog calling her name now, knows she’ll be out here any second to bring ginny in, but her eyes stay locked on harry’s. he leans in slightly - barely moves at all really - lips just about to touch hers, when the door opens and he pulls back, somehow managing to get the cloak on himself without leaving anyone the wiser. if this was another time, she’d be impressed. but, as it happens, reality comes crashing back in the second he pulls away and she’s very aware that her time’s up. she’s nodding at whatever gwenog’s just said, and following her into the door when she feels it - the whisper of his hand, a soft squeeze, and maybe this was the miracle she was praying for.

[deja-you]

Suave requests are open, how about a drunk + jealous Lafayette?? Lots of fluff please!

A/N: okaaaaayyyyy so i got this in my inbox like a month ago when my requests were still open (they’re not rn, sorry) and it’s been sitting in my drafts decaying. 

but i’ve revived it. and i’m turning it into a precursor to my new AW+WR series which you can read here. this lil drabble takes place before all the events of AW+WR, can be read as a stand alone if you want, i guess. also, sorry if this isn’t what you had in mind when you requested this...

“You’re really going to tell me that you’re not bothered that Y/n is talking to other guys?” 

Lafayette only shrugged and pulled his gin and tonic closer to his chest. “How could I be upset? I’m in a room full of models. Y/n can talk to anyone she wants.”

“So you’re going to pretend that you don’t only have eyes for Y/n?” Hercules asked, unimpressed with his drunken friend who was leaning on the bar a little too heavily at this point in the evening.

“I don’t know why you think I’m in love with her,” Lafayette sighed dramatically. “I told you she was cute when I first met her, but that was it.”

“Yes, that and all the parties you invited her to afterwards. And then there were all the texts from you asking for her number. And the fact that you can’t stop talking about her. Not even for a single minute. And--”

“I get your point,” Lafayette scowled at his friend, finishing off the contents of his drink. He continued frowning a little longer, then as if a switched had suddenly been flipped, his back straightened and his features softened into a brilliant smile. “Stop worrying about this so much. Tonight is for us bachelors. Introduce me to your model friends.”

It was Hercules’s turn to scowl when Lafayette sloppily threw an arm around his shoulder. “You sure you want me to do that?”

“I said I did, didn’t I?” Lafayette said plainly. 

Hercules begrudgingly lead Lafayette away from the bar and introduced him to one of the models. The model introduced herself as Caroline, but Lafayette didn’t bother remembering it, knowing he’d just forget it anyway. She was more than pretty, being a Victoria Secret’s model, she was gorgeous. Lafayette would be lying if he said he wasn’t enjoying her company. 

But there was something missing. 

He found it was easy to smile and nod along to whatever she was saying, even asking questions every now and then. Lafayette just didn’t feel anything. No heartbeat pulsing in his ears, the blood wasn’t running warm through his veins. He didn’t feel alive, he was just... there.

“Enough about me,” the model gave him a stunning smile. “I imagine your life must be more interesting. Can I just say I loved you in Times New Roman? I loved that show.”

Lafayette returned her smile. “And I loved being on that show. I take it you’re a fa--”

He paused when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Lafayette turned to see you standing beside him, staring at him with bright eyes and a pleasant grin. 

Suddenly all he could hear was his pulse. Accelerating at a concerning rate. The blood once more pumped through his veins, warming him from the inside out. Lafayette was breathing again, really breathing. His heart had returned to him. 

“I’m glad I found you,” you told him. “I didn’t know if you would come, but I’m glad you did. I see you’ve met Caroline.”

Lafayette’s mouth was parted slightly, and he had to remind himself to close it and use his words. He glanced at the model he had completely forgotten about the second he laid eyes on you. 

“Ah, yes. Thank you for inviting me. We were just having a conversation about... about...” he glanced at Caroline, trying to remember exactly what they had been talking about.

“We were talking about Lafayette’s impressive acting career,” Caroline supplied. 

You pressed your lips together and nodded. “Of course you were. He does have an impressive repertoire, doesn’t he, Caroline?”

“Very impressive,” Caroline nodded, leaning forward to gently squeeze Lafayette’s arm. 

He was at a loss for words, staring at you like a deer caught in headlights. You raised an eyebrow and gave him a mirthful smile. “It was nice to see the both of you. I should get back to my date now.”

You gave a little wave that Lafayette returned pathetically, and walked over to where a man that Lafayette subliminally recognized from some professional sports team he never watched. Tod, or Tad was it? Whatever his name was smirked and placed one of his large hands around your waist. 

Lafayette’s heart was still in his chest, but now his rib cage was tightening around it, restricting the rapid beats and pulses. He couldn’t tell the difference from his physical and emotional pain at this point. 

The model at his side had continued talking about some subject that Lafayette couldn’t care less about. He didn’t hear a word she said. At some point she must’ve asked him a question because she was now staring at him expectantly. 

Luckily for Lafayette, Hercules had noticed his predicament and had come to his aid. 

“Excuse him, Caroline. Lafayette here is just a little tired from a full day of filming. He does his own stunts, you know that?” Hercules said, and Caroline remarked that she hadn’t known that. “Anyway, he’s just a little out of it tonight. I’m going to take him out for some fresh air.”

Lafayette managed to shoot her an apologetic look as Hercules pulled his inebriated friend outside the party and onto a quieter street corner. 

“Are you still going to claim that you’re not in love with Y/n?” Hercules asked when he believed their conversation could be kept private.

Now outside, the beating of Lafayette’s heart had stopped once more and he could finally think straight again. “What are you talking about?”

“I really have to spell it out for you? You were staring daggers at Y/n’s date just because he smiled at her,” Hercules said in exasperation. “Look, the first step is admitting you have a problem.”

Lafayette shoved his shaking hands into his pockets to better control them and attempted an unbothered shrug. “What? Maybe I’ve got a small crush on her. It’s not a big deal.”

“Oh, we both know it’s a lot more than a small crush.”

[nahimjustfeelingit-writes]

Imagine:

The reader is a best selling author and her book is about all her past lovers (Erik is one of them)

Smutty, Flashback, Dark

It’s hard writing Erik with a nickname besides killmonger so I am sorry in advance if his name pops up when it’s not supposed to LOL. Enjoy Loves!

Y/N was afraid to come out with this book but her team insisted that she did. They said it was one of her best works yet. Y/N did agree but there was one particular person in that book that she didn’t want to know about her writing. Y/N went along with it anyway because she needed the new book to do well since her royalties were getting low from other published works. That was over three months ago. Now, she was still doing interviews and signing autographs in New York and Los Angeles book shops. Her face was on TV, in magazines, and in Time Square in Manhattan, New York. He knew... he had to know.

Y/N’s book was an erotic tale about her past lovers. She gave each of them pseudonyms to protect their identities. The title was called Concupiscent. It means lustful or desire. This wasn’t like the poetry or erotic romance tales...this was very smutty and so nasty you couldn’t go a second without touching yourself. The fan mail she received was outstanding. Especially from the BDSM community. It was all thanks to him... F-16. He was the last chapter in her book filled with past lovers.

He was nicknamed F-16 because the one thing he told her was that he flew an F-16 Fighter Falcon Jet in the Military. His story got the most hits out of all of them. People were dying to know who F-16 was.

-I need F-16 in my life! He fucked you so well I could feel that shit myself!

-could you please share with me who F-16 is? He sounds so sexy.

-are you still in touch with F-16? If so you are a lucky woman, Y/N.

-F-16 fucked you real good!

-all of the chapters were amazing! Nothing surprising but that F-16!!! Girllllllllll I need more of him! Write an entire book with just him and I’d give you all my money!

-The book club loves the story! A lot of us reread F-16 while sipping our wine LOL. Very sexy chapter.

“You see, Erik, they can’t get enough of you,” Y/N spoke to herself within her penthouse while reading fan mail. She sipped her glass of red wine with enthusiasm. Y/N couldn’t deny the fact that she missed Erik deeply. It was just a one night stand but goddam...the shit needed to happen more than once. However, Erik was very secretive with his life. He was also very upfront and told her what he wanted: some pussy...

July 8th, 2019:

F-16.

She lived for nights thick with lust.

Angel Face wasn’t so much an angel anymore.

She yearned to be seduced and destroyed.

She was tired of delicate kisses and romantic evenings.

No...Angel Face wanted something harder; vicious even.

The Blaze was a rather chancy bar. Y/N sat on a bar stool on her fifth shot of Blue Sapphire Gin with her finger twirling a strand of her sleek silk pressed hair. Maybe she didn’t have enough to drink. She was already talking herself out of this mess. Her stomach did summer salts and her fingers fiddled with the hem of her short red mini halter dress. Such a slutty choice of attire. She nibbles the corner of her bottom lip as her amber-colored eyes scanned the bar for a potential man to take her home and fuck her hard and rapid. She didn’t want timid strokes, she wanted back-breaking strokes. Y/N needed a man who looked at her as she rested before him with her divine body exposed for him and thinks to himself, what kind of noises would I like her to make? 

“OHHHH!” 

Thunderous drunken applause came from Y/N’s right. She looked over at the small group with immense curiosity. A group of men that looked very hazardous and unsafe. Even the women who entertained them looked a little wary. They were all tall and muscular. Men who could snap your neck with a simple squeeze. 

“Can I have another shot of Gin?” She asked the same punk rock bartender who gave her the last five she had.

“Foxy,” He nicknamed her since she settled at the bar, “You’ll pass out and I don’t want your pretty face on this bar.” 

“I can handle it, trust me,” Y/N pleaded.

“Fine, I warned you.”

He poured her the shot she asked for.

Y/N threw it back and accepted the sweet burn.

“Whew,” she pinched her lips together, “That really hit the spot,” she let out a drunken giggle, her breasts bouncing.

“Foxy,” The punk rocker gave her a playful smile, “Are you alright?”

She gave him a goofy grin, “never better,” her words slurred slightly.

The Punk Rocker gave her a bottle of water, Y/N taking it thankful that the bartender was being thoughtful.

Y/N turns back around focusing on that corner again. There were dartboards on the wall and a pool table but instead of the men throwing darts they were throwing daggers. Y/N flinches in her seat. Sharp toys...spine-chilling. Her body felt hot all over. The alcohol seemed to make her hyper-aware of all the predatory eyes on her. All different types of men staring at her like a pack of wolves. 

“You’re too delicate for this bar, Foxy.”

Y/N could agree with that but she was tired of that label. Why couldn’t she be risky and wild? Y/N was doing it now. That dance floor surrounded by low lighting was calling her name. She could twirl her hips and shake her ass into a sweaty frenzy. Finger comb her hair to show off her sex appeal, lock eyes with a man just to tease him and make him consider going to the urinal to buss a load. Bend over to show her lack of panties. Yes…she didn’t have on panties but she did bring a pair in her clutch just in case. Y/N could be heaven or hell. A strong man’s dream and a weak one's nightmare. 

“That a boy F-16!” 

Y/N’s eyes darted back over to the group of intimidating men, resting on whoever F-16 could be. She hoped this was him. He was honestly the only good-looking man in that bar. 6 ‘3, 225 lbs of lean muscle. He wore a tactical black utility vest, black long sleeve fitted henley, cargo pants in a black and grey camouflage pattern and black timbs. 

“Watch out, Damion, I don’t wanna end up aiming for your head,” F-16 spoke while rotating a Kunai throwing knife in his hand. All eyes were on him in that moment to see if he would miss or actually hit the bullseye. 

“Any day now, F16,” Damion rushes him while downing the rest of his beer. F-16 gave him a death glare before turning back to the dartboard, arm coming up and forward swiftly. The throwing knife whizzes past Damion, almost slicing the top of his ear and landing straight for the damn bullseye. The area exploded with cheers, yells, and ferocious pats on the back. The women clapped delicately while staring at F-16 with sultry eyes. Y/N could relate to those stares as well. He was...so damn...fine. However, if he was around those types of men that means he’s equally as dangerous. 

Don’t do it, Y/N...

“Hey, could you watch my bag for me? I feel like dancing.”

The punk rock bartender squinted his eyes covered with black eyeliner, “alright, Foxy, don’t get yourself hurt out there.”

Y/N stepped off of the stool, giving the bartender a sassy look, “who would want to hurt all this?” Her hands trailed up and down her tantalizing body, “I mean...fuck it maybe, but hurt…”

“I think I underestimated you, Foxy,” The bartender gave her a sly grin.

Y/N swiveled around in her heels. She made her way through the wild crowd and to the dance floor. They were playing decent music to dance to. She found a spot in the center and started at her own pace. Her eyes moved around her to take in all the men who savagely wanted to grab her. They looked ready to gang-bang her and she liked the thought of men salivating over her that intensely but Y/N wouldn’t bring herself to fuck a group of men...unless they all looked like F-16. Her hips moved in a circle to the deep base of the Afrobeat. She really liked the variety of music here. Of course, this caused all the black people to crowd the dance floor too. Y/N had her hands in her hair, on her thighs whenever she went low, on her ass when she let it jiggle and bounce. She was looking really scrumptious on that dance floor. 

It was as if the entire dance floor made a circle around her. She was in her own world now. Eyes closed, body moving with a skill that could make a grown man cry. She was giving her the best sexy performance. This had her adrenaline pumping. 

Behind every bad bitch is a sweet girl who got tired of everyone’s bullshit. 

“You’re the best fucking dancer I’ve ever seen.”

“Thanks,” her heart skipped a few beats.”

“Name?” He raised a single brow at her as if to say oh, you’re gonna tell me your name, baby girl.

“Foxy.” She didn’t want to tell this man her real name. This was supposed to be a no strings attached ordeal. 

“You’re doing the damn thing, Miss Foxy.”

The way he said her newfound nickname had her toes curling. She was Angel Face no more. Not when this fine ass dangerous man stood before her. That’s right...F-16 was down for her. Y/N’s little performance sparked his interest. 

“You’re out here by yourself?” He got closer to her now. His dreads rested over his eyes almost and it gave him a wild look. 

“Yes, I came alone.” 

“Damn...to a place like this? you never come to a place like this alone, Foxy.” 

“...why?” She gave him a perplexed look.

“Because it’s filled with bad guys,” His eyes looked tricky, “None of that fake shit you see in movies, baby girl...the real lion's den.”

Y/N swallowed spit to soothe her dry throat. 

“I take it you’re one of those guys?”

“You wanna find out?” His precarious grin would be beautiful if it weren’t for his haunting words. Y/N came to find out. She wanted this. 

“Yes, if it’s with you, I’m down.”

He chuckles, “Shit...aight.”

He grabs Y/N’s hand, leading her towards the “bad guys” that she watched from the bar earlier. Some of them reeked of liquor breath and cigarettes, others smelled quite nice like F-16. The women in the area looked at her like she was competing with them. F-16 kept her close though, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting her between his strong thighs. She assumed he did this to show the other men that Foxy was his to play with. 

“This is Foxy. I found her shaking that thick ass on the dance floor.” 

She froze at that introduction. Y/N looked around at the group of men giving them a shy smile and a wave of her small hand.

“Nah, baby girl, introduce yourself,” His words were cutthroat and sharp in her ear.

“I’m Foxy, nice to meet y’all,” F-16′s hands gripped her hips on both sides.

“She’s soft,” A tall man with skin like midnight and a scar on his left cheek spoke, “a good girl.”

Y/N didn’t like that. She was trying to appear like a bad bitch, not a princess. 

“Pussy probably tastes just like sugar,” The man spoke again causing the other men to hum in approval.

“If it does, I’ll be the judge of that. Ain’t that right, Miss Foxy?” 

His soft-spoken voice tickled her neck. She felt frazzled. Her low eyes turned to his dark ones, her lip between her teeth. 

“Yeah...that’s right,” He gave her a sly lop-sided grin with those full lips. He was certain that Y/N would be going home with him. She liked that a lot. A hell of a lot. He could take her to his place right now and fuck her all night long. Y/N wanted to bury her face into this man's neck and breath in his scent. He was so large and warm surrounding her. Her pussy quivered and damn near begged her to let this man put it on her. 

“So, what do you guys do for a living?”

She was curious. 

“We’re military men,” One of them spoke up.

“I’m an Airmen,” F-16 spoke with a husky voice, “I fly fighter jets.”

He said it in such a dismissive tone that it didn’t appear all the way true. He did hint to the fact that this place was filled with nothing but bad men so maybe he was putting on a front so she wouldn’t go running away crying. All the other men had treacherous looks on their faces. 

Killers.

They’re murderers.

She was glad they put on a nicer front. If not she probably would chicken out of an opportunity with F-16. 

“Sounds cool,” she smiles, “tell me more.”

“Nah,” F-16 places his thumb against her chin to rub it lightly, “You’re not interested in what I do. You just want somebody to fuck the shit outta you.” 

Her lip twitched a little. Damn, this man could read her like an open book. 

“Is that a problem?” Y/N said in a discourteous tone.

“Fuck no. That’s what I plan to do to you, Foxy. Just know you’re in for some shit, girl,” he brought his lips to her ear, “You got these other bitches mad at you.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” She spoke in a bold tone, “they’re loss my gain.” 

“Shit,” He places a kiss to her neck, “I like you. You got a lot of mouth on you.”

Y/N normally didn’t but he sparked a rebellious nature within her. Y/N wanted to be a bad girl for him tonight. 

“Sharing, F-16?” The same man with the face scar asks. He had a determination in his eyes to have a piece of Foxy. F-16’s succulent lips dragged down Y/N’s neck and to the exposed cleavage on the sides of her dress. She was alarmed by his outright need to suck her flesh in front of these men. His hands were dancing around her hips just above her soaking wet pussy. He didn’t need to respond to that man, He let him know by how famished he was. 

“Come on, let us get a piece of that,” Another man with an African accent asks. 

“Y'all some thirsty motherfuckers. Nah, she mines,” F-16 wrapped his hand lightly around Y/N’s neck. She shuddered from how thick and warm his calloused hand felt around her slender neck. If he applied just the right amount of pressure she would probably whimper in ecstasy. Even though Y/N was bold enough to stand between F-16’s legs she wasn’t bold enough to press her bubble booty against his crotch. She just knew that dick was nice, hard, and suckable right now. 

“You can’t speak, Foxy?” One of them spoke up with a harsh tone. F-16 grunted with frustration. Maybe it was best that he takes her out of here to avoid a brawl between these men. 

“I can speak...I’m with him, sorry,” She gave her best charming smile. The menacing glares were thrown they’re way had Y/N shaking in her heels. F-16 pulls Y/N closer to him, her ass finally slumped with a soft bounce against his long and rather...girthy erection. 

Stuff this pussy, Daddy, She thought. Lord, he was everything she was missing. 

“Can we get out of here?” Y/N whispered to F-16 while he was drinking his whiskey, “I want you to take me home with you.”

“Just like that, huh?” He licks his lips, “Don’t act all scared when I take that ass out of here.”

“I promise I won’t” She spoke to him softly before placing her lips against his dimpled cheek.

“We’ll see.” His disbelieving eyes had Y/N second-guessing her words. 

________________

Leaving that bar was like a breath of fresh air. F-16 informed her that he arrived on a bike and that she would need to ride out to his hotel on the back with him. He didn’t have a spare helmet so he offered her his. She took it with quivering fingers hoping that he didn’t sense her fear. 

“You riding, baby girl?” He looked so good on that speed bike. Taking one last calming breath, Y/N placed the helmet over her head, gripping her clutch tightly before settling on the back of the bike with F-16.

“Good girl. Wrap your arms around me nice and snug...good girl. Now lean in towards me...just like that. You’re ready?”

“Just drive.” She placed her cheek against F-16’s back, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Say less,” He zoomed off down the city street and into the night. Y/N was in a state of anxiety the entire ride. He zipped and zoomed between cars, made sharp turns, and sped up whenever the roads were clear enough for him to have a little fun. He had to feel her heartbeat rattling against his solid back. Now, they were inside a tunnel whipping past cars. Y/N could feel her dress flying up past her naked ass and at this point, she didn’t care that everyone around her caught a glimpse before they were nowhere in sight. She wasn’t about to let go of him just to pull the short-as-fuck dress down. Plus, she had too much ass back there anyway. F-16 began to slow down as he approached a luxury hotel in Boston. He drove through the garage, going around several levels before finding a parking spot. The minute he parked his bike Y/N hopped off to fix her dress. It was up and around her waist. That explains why the valet men wolf-whistled at her. The minute Y/N removed her helmet she came face to face with F-16 adjusting his shirt and revealing two Glocks resting on his hips. His well-knit, muscle-bound abdomen and hips made her crave to touch, lick, and suck this man all over but those guns...petrifying. 

“Gotta watch my back,” He answered her question before she could even ask, “Got a lot of enemies.”

“For a fighter pilot?” Y/N gave him a puzzled stare.

“You’d be surprised, ma,” His eyes flickered up and down her shapely form, “I won’t hurt you.”

She knew he wouldn’t but Y/N never saw guns up close and in person. This just made the situation more real for her. She was definitely fucking a trained killer. Maybe a mercenary? An assassin? He’s definitely more than a fighter pilot for the Military. All of the men at that bar too.

“Don’t be scared, ma, I got you.”

“Okay,” Y/N placed her hand in his and allowed him to lead the way to his hotel room. 

__________________

It was dark.

Everything pitch black.

She could hear him moving about before a small lamp light within the living room flickered on. She looked around her with eager eyes as he removed his utility vest and timbs. She walked slowly around the hotel room, hands in her hair and a nervous feeling in her gut. 

“Restroom?” She asked with a shaky voice.

F-16 points down a hall, “Down and to your left, baby girl.” 

Y/N took off finding the restroom with a jacuzzi tub, standing shower, and a beautiful view of Boston. She closed the door, pulling her dress up to use the toilet. Y/N ran her trembling fingers through her hair, trying her hardest to calm her nerves. He was gonna put it on her for sure he didn’t even have to prove that to her. She wiped and flushed, standing at the sink to wash her hands and look over her makeup and hair. Her hair still looked nice but that wouldn’t last. Makeup still on point as well. She hesitated to leave that bathroom. 

“Breath, Foxy, it’s just sex. You’ve had sex plenty of times,” Her voice didn’t even sound convincing. Grabbing a hotel rag in a frenzy Y/N refreshed herself between her legs before finally leaving that bathroom. When she walked back to the living room he wasn’t in sight and it was dark again. Turning around, Y/N went to find his room which was directly across from the restroom except the door was cracked. Being the nosy girl she was, Y/N peaked between the crack to see what he was up to. F-16 was in the middle of packing away some weapons and foreign currency. He was topless showing off his powerful and dynamic body covered in keloid scars. She had an odd look on her face as she studied the organized placement of those scars. It was beautiful but Y/N is a smart girl, she knew those scars held a grizzly past. Before she could even react F-16 pulled his bedroom door opened, staring down at her with a menacing glare. 

“Spying on me?” He had a glint in his eyes and a base in his voice that made her shiver.

“I’m sorry I was just looking for you!” She spoke in a jumble. 

His chest rose and fell with harsh breaths, “It's not polite to spy on someone, Miss Foxy. That shit can get you in a whole lot of trouble if you aren’t careful,” F-16 stepped back to allow her to fully enter his room, “Get comfortable, we got a long night, ma.”

Y/N cautiously stepped inside. F-16 reached out to harshly slap her ass. Y/N’s back flinched and her hands came around to caress her sore flesh. 

“Big ass on you, girl,” He closed his door, “You need another drink?”

“N-No.” Y/N sat on the edge of F-16’s bed facing a wall mirror that hung over his hotel dresser. 

“Stand up,” F-16 stood in front of her. Y/N got up from the bed, his hard body pressing against the front of hers.

“Turn around.”

She did as she was told, turning away from him and stroking her hair to the side to give him access to her neck. F-16’s hands feathered through her hair, massaging her scalp. She closed her eyes, head falling back against his brawny chest as he lightly tugged on her pressed out strands. He would wrap his fingers around her hair and pull to make her head fall back against him. Now, his nose was in her hair as he massaged her scalp. The air from his nose warmed her scalp each time he exhaled. Her eyes fluttered shut and now her hands were reaching back to squeeze his thighs. That’s all she could really reach since he was much taller than her 5’ 5 self. F-16 takes her hair into a ponytail, leaning down to place his lips against the back of her neck. Now, her body was arched forward a little and her bubble booty was pressed firmly against his groin. His lips circled her earlobe over her diamond stud in her left ear. His wet warm mouth had a tight suction on her ear that had her thinking about that same tightness around her clit. F-16 softly places his hands on her hips, flipping Y/N around to face him. His brown eyes were so fanatic that she couldn’t even hold his gaze. F-16 grabs her jaw, placing his starving lips against her neck again. His hands moved from her jaw down and around her waist to pull her from the ground. Startled, Y/N wraps her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. He had better access now to her collar bones and heaving chest. His large hands squeezed each bare cheek of her ass while he places open-mouthed kisses along her breasts.

“I’m tired of this fucking dress,” He spoke in a hushed tone, “I feel like cuttin’ this shit off of you, girl.” 

If he did that she wouldn’t have anything to wear when she went home. He takes one of his hands to untie the halter. Once that was free he practically ripped it from her chest. Her breasts popped out at him and his lips began to suck and lick her nipples. Y/N arched into his mouth while her hands fingered through his dreads. She tried looking down to watch him pleasure her breasts but he had her so weak and feeling so good. He was suckling like a hungry baby and damn she could feel that shit in her toes. 

“Fucking sexy, girl,” He murmured something into her chest while his lips attacked each hard nipple. Not only were her nipples given attention but around her breasts were too. He french kissed that skin basically wetting her up with his saliva. 

“Oh, God,” She mewled, “Your mouth feels so good on me.”

She wanted him to lay her on her back and lick and suck her all over. Y/N’s body was screaming for attention. Y/N pulled F-16’s face away from her nipples and replaced it with her greedy dripping tongue. He swallowed her tongue and lips with his full mouth. His tongue was deep down her throat causing her eyes to open and stare at him with a sexual appetite. She really needed him. Kissing him made her open her legs further so she could feel his clothed dick stroke her hard clit. 

“You needy little girl,” He smirked, “that pussy wants some attention, huh?”

“See?” She opened her legs as best she could. F-16 looked down then back up at her face. Y/N had her fingers pinching her clit, “Suck my clit.”

“Shit,” F-16 tosses Y/N on the bed, “Spread them legs and show me how you play with that pussy.”

She didn’t hesitate because her fingers were aching to touch. She spread her legs so wide she felt like they were detached from her own body. Her pussy was spread out and sloppy. She fingered her clit causing some of her natural lubricant to drip. Taking her fingers, Y/N dragged that liquid up to her clit to rub it in. She noticed F-16’s erection twisted to the side in his briefs now that his pants were removed. If she pulled those briefs down his dick would probably hit her in the face. He walked up to her, standing between her legs and bringing his hand down to rub along the outside of her opening. Wet gushing sounds came from her pussy each time his fingers would tap lightly against her hole. Damn, she was so wet. His other hand grabbed his balls through his briefs. 

“This how you play with that pretty pussy, Foxy?” 

“Yes,” She rolled her hips.

“You rub that clit just like that?”

“Mhm,” Her eyes closed.

“Make that clit nice and hard, huh?” 

“Fuck yes,” She was close. 

Two of his fingers slipped inside. She widened her legs while still rubbing her clit. He was knuckle deep in her pussy and she was sure his hand was soaking wet. 

“I’m making that pussy cum?” His other hand was in his briefs now.

“Yeah, you’re making my pussy cum,” Y/N couldn’t even rub her clit anymore from how weak he made her. Now his thumb replaced her actions. She thrust her hips forward more to get his fingers deeper. 

“This too much?” His voice was so low and seducing.

“No, I can take it,” Y/N moaned out.

“Shit, then you should be able to take this,” F-16 slid a third finger inside. 

Stuttering she said, “F-fuckk I-I’m cumming f-for you!”

His fingers came up to rub her clit as her essence spilled onto the bed. Her thighs closed and her body fell back against the bed. F-16 finally let those briefs down and showed her what he was packing. He had such a beautiful dick and body. It looked so good and she knew it would feel just as good in her pussy. Beautiful man. She had a serious body and dick fetish. 

“Damn, can I suck it?” She licked her upper lip, “Let me slide that right down my throat.”

Y/N was proving to him that she wasn’t afraid. She opened her legs more for him while wrapping her small hand around his big dick. F-16 smiled down at her and she thought she would die from how fine he is. Taking her giving and unsparing lips, Y/N allowed that pipe to slide right in down to the base.

“Nasty bitch,” F-16 showed Y/N no mercy as he fucked her mouth. She thought she would take control but it was all him… all of him indeed. She wanted to suck him dry. Her sloppy mouth spilled saliva over her chest. She purposely made gagging noises to let him know that she loved the dick and how perfect and beautiful it was. 

“Daddy, I want,” She said while F-16 slapped his weight on her tongue.

“Say please,” He rubbed it along the length of her tongue.

“Please feed me.”

Swallowing it whole, Y/N was loving that chocolate stick as it swelled in her bountiful mouth. 

“Fuck, bitch, look what you’re about to make me do,” His head fell forward and his lip was between his teeth. His face looked so relaxed but his body was literally shaking as he erupted thickly within her mouth. It was yummy perfection. F-16 slapped Y/N’s pussy before rubbing her clit and labia in slow circles. Her eyes were on him, silently telling him to punish her brutally. Removing his hand and placing it in his mouth to suck off her cream, F-16 walks over to his pants to grab his wallet. Wrapped in gold was a magnum that he ripped open to roll over his shaft. Walking back to Y/N with her legs still spread open He reached down to pick her up so he could fuck her standing. She practically jumped on him, opening her legs to give her pussy to him.

“How you like that pussy fucked?” He asked while rubbing his dick back and forth over her wet folds.

“Deep daddy,” Y/N stared into his dark eyes, “So deep daddy...very deep...I wanna feel your balls slap my pussy.”

“You wanna be a slut for this big dick so damn bad,” He finally let his length inside of her. He was deep like she wanted. Her mouth fell open into a silent scream. 

“Damn, pussy feels just as good as it tastes, baby,” F-16 gave her shivers, “You wanted to be filled like this looking the way you did at that fucking bar, HUH?!” He thrust forward sharply and pulled out slowly. He repeated this assault on her pussy over and over until she was finally able to mutter a sound. 

“You can take some dick in you, mhm,” Y/N bounced as best as she could on him without stopping. F-16 was so big in her little pussy. He saw her struggle and now his hands were under her ass to lift her up and down his dick. She dragged her nails painfully over the scars on his chest when his dick made contact with her g spot. 

“Damn, you’re gripping my shit,” His hand found her neck, “You like showing this pussy off? Wearing no panties with all that ass and pussy out. If I would have known, this dick would be in that pussy at the bar instead.”

The thought of being fucked on the dance floor or on that pool table in front of all those people had Y/N so wet and open for him. She moaned his name and wrapped her arms around him while he molded his dick into her pussy at a rapid pace. The power of her orgasm pushed against his dick causing him to slip out. He grabbed his dick at the base and rubbing it along her clit. She continued to spill for him when he did that. Y/N’s cum was plentiful. She couldn’t lie that it feels great when he’s a little too big and overwhelming to take. His dick was long and strong and when he pulled her off him to place her on her back she almost came again. She wondered how long he would be in town because she really wanted to fuck him from sunrise to sunset. 

Damn, now his lips were on her pussy. Y/N rubbed the back of his head softly even though his lips were strong on her pussy. He was licking away the mess he caused. 

“Mmm, fuck this tight pussy up, Daddy,” She was ready for more. 

He still had his lips on her pussy. 

“Daddy...please,” She tried pulling him away but damn he was really eating her pussy. Her arms wobbled and fuck she was gonna cum again. He held her hips in place while his tongue fucked her pussy. She watched his head move back and forth. He pistoned that tongue in and out of her. She wanted the pussy fucked again he was gonna give it to her every which way.

“Ima fuck around and hit you up every time I’m in Boston with a pussy like this,” He slapped her phat pussy, “Ain’t no such thing as too much big dick for you, slut.”

She was really being a daredevil tonight. F-16 wanted to give her backshots but Y/N needed to sit on his dick first. She begged him and now here she was bouncing on his dick. Her ass clapped against his thighs and her titties bounce in his face. 

“Good, bitch, sit on it, take that FUCKING dick!”

This was a real dick fuck. Foxy is a true rider. She was fucking F-16′s head up on purpose. Ride that dick. Jump on that dick. Bounce on that dick. Taking that dick and using it for a cum stick. 

“You hiding that sexy phat ass from me?” His sweaty face glowered at her, “Fuck me in reverse, bitch, and twerk that ass!”

Y/N kept the dick in her while turning to give him a view of her phat ass. She looked back at his sexy face because it said it all for her. F-16 was ready to bust a load in that condom. 

“Shit, that's how you feel?! Gon’ head nut on this Daddy dick then!” her moans were so damn angelic. She couldn’t hide behind a nickname like Foxy when Angel Face was her true identity. 

“Damn, I got me one for real,” He slaps Y/N’s ass, “Thick as fuck, damn, got a phat ass.”

Out of nowhere, F-16 sits up on his knees causing Y/N to fall forward on her elbows with her ass in the air. F-16 was ready to slam in that pussy for real. She needed to be appreciated for being such a good slut for him. F-16 grabs a fist full of her hair, making her look up into the mirror above his dresser. She strained her neck to watch her ass clap back on him.

“Been too damn long...hmmph.”

That’s that shit she was talking about.

Fucking hard and rapid.

Use her pussy like a punching bag.

“You watching that ass? Watch it while I fuck this pussy.”

She could see her cheeks acting like a tidal wave whenever he dug deep. He was fucking the shit out of her. She would love to roll over to this every morning and before bed at night. Damn, F-16 could fuck some pussy up. She just watched open-mouthed as her ass bounced and clapped. She started moaning and cumming around him. 

“You are sexy as hell, bruh...got my dick hard just looking at you, Foxy.”

She started twirling her hips and popping her ass while throwing it back on him. F-16 had his arms by his sides but from time to time he would pop her big ass for pleasing him so good. 

“That’s how you do Daddy’s dick? Just nut on me and fuck on me like this? Nice tight juicy pussy on you.”

“Mmmm-ahhhhhh,” She looked back at it with a pout of her lips. 

“Good, bitch, that’s right, give Daddy that pussy,” He slaps her ass with his eyes on her, “Get that pussy stuffed...good girl...let Daddy use that pussy.”

F-16 had his hands on her hips again and that's when Y/N really was in trouble. He was holding that nut off to feel her as much as he could like she would disappear. 

“Let Daddy use that pussy...let Daddy use that pussy...Let Daddy use that pussy,” He was so hung up on how good she felt he was repeating his words, “I should have fucked you raw and leave my nut in you GODDAM!”

Dick throbbing Y/N concord F-16’s dick. He was filling that condom up load after fucking load. 

“Fuckkkk, it’s so much cum!” She could feel it even though it wasn’t actually coating her walls. His thrusts became slower and slower until finally, his dick slipped out. Y/N turned around on the bed, grabbing his dick to remove the condom. F-16 watched her pour his cum into her mouth from that condom before arching forward to suck the rest from his dick. 

“I’ll suck your dick all the time, Daddy,” She looked up at him with her beautiful eyes.

“Then bring it on I’m always hard and ready to be sucked on ma,” 

Y/N found herself sucking this man’s dick yet again. Anywhere, anytime, anyway he wants it. 

“I wish I could take your fine ass with me,” He fingered some of her hair behind her ear before reaching forward to slap her ass, “I need you to calm a nigga down when he ready to kill a motherfucker.”

She didn’t flinch at his words. F-16 knew that she had him figured out the minute he stepped to her. Yeah...it was for the best that she didn’t get involved with this man and his deadly lifestyle but who was she kidding? Whenever he came to Boston or New York he could stop by and give her some good, rough, loving in her tight pussy. 

The End.

@tgigoldie @soufcakmistress @chefjessypooh@chaneajoyyy@pananegra@theblulife @becincere @blaqwidow91 @fish-outta-watah@moonlight-night-sky @eyeknowmywrites  @crowngold@njadakillthiscookie@blktinkerbell@luvanxi @sheisexcellent1@chocolatedippedinhoney@brandithecrystalgem@dababydababydababydababy@soulfulbeauty19@btitannaaa@sunkissedebony97 @youngblackndgifted@harleycativy @rbhp@thee-germanpeach @thadelightfulone@bugngiz@palmstreesallday@skylahb @bakaris-shorty @nizzle-mo​ @truglori @queenflaws

[youarejesting]

Quarantine.14

[Masterlist] Pairing: BTS x reader Friends2Lovers But as slow as you can go until the anticipation kills us all… Genres: friendship, drama, romance SLOWEST OF BURNS BUT IT WILL BE BURNING AN ETERNAL FLAME!!! Rating: PG-13 and above Summary: Your brother works with a few BigHit dance teams and whilst having permission to accompany him at work the city shuts down banning anyone from stepping outside for a whole WEEK while they disinfect the streets. If you step outside you might get arrested, shot or poisoned by the chemicals they are emitting through the city. Words: 1.1k Announcement: This is dedicated to @lethargicalyssa​ Hang in there I know it burns but I promise the water will be so sweet when we get there and when we get there everyone can quench their thirst.  🥵🧃✊🏻

[Part 1]  [Part 13] [Part 15] [Tag Yourself Here]

After ramyeon, the boys played games while taking turns in the bathroom. The shower was a comfort, even if your eyes were drawn to the place you had hidden the weapon. It seemed you had repressed the memories; they were nothing more than a sick feeling in your chest and a few distorted images. Washing your hair thoroughly you had your phone playing your Korean language app. You thought you were doing really well. Upon your return to your secret base, you noticed that your bodyguards had disappeared. Well not all of them. Hoseok was the only one left. Picking up rubbish and folding bits and pieces of stray clothes. 

It was becoming a serious problem how much you needed these boys, but you were in denial pushing it further and further down inside of you. You would deal with it later, whether you liked it or not you knew it would come and you would grieve deeply for each one. 

He smiled towards you, his head bopping to Senorita which played through the small static radio. He was singing rather cutely shuffling around the room. The tank top he was wearing had very low sides and you were trying your hardest not to stare. The two of you danced happily as you cleaned up the rubbish from the ramyeon packets. Dropping three in the bin, Hoseok grabbed your hand and spun you into his chest dancing. 

His body was warm against yours and he was pulling so many faces, each of them serious and sultry. With one swipe of his tongue, accompanied by the body roll of the century, you physically froze, unable to dance anymore. Not with the way your heart was beating harder than the bass in the song. He stopped examining you curiously. Eyes darkening as he noticed the emotion within yours.

The air was electric, like a thunderstorm on a hot day. He made your skin prickle in the most pleasant of ways. His hand on your waist twitched against you. It was hot, everywhere his body touched yours. Burning like a brand on your soft flesh. The smooth Latte tone of his skin made him glow like the sun. Oh, it had been so long since you had seen the sun. How could you not lean further into him?

He smelt like sweet and bitter citrus. A spark of pepper, the sensual haze of patchouli and the rounded notes of cedarwood. They were all such earthy tones that promised nothing more than vitality, intensity and fertility. His eyes flickered between yours trying to identify exactly what was running through your mind. He looked away for a split second to catch his breath. The scent of your skin was fogging up his brain. The saccharine mix of litchi and golden quince. The provocative heart of white chocolate and narcotic Jasmine. Followed by the depth and intoxicating flavour of gin.

He wondered if you would taste just as good, he swallowed thinking about how nice it would feel to press his lips to yours. He wanted you. Right now in this moment, just like this and simultaneously so much more. The way you danced the way you moved, curving your body like an exotic dancer. He knew how he must look and he wasn’t ashamed, seeing your eyes blown as wide as an excited kitten gave him a sense of pride as a man. Knowing you cared about him and wanted him in your life that gave him pride as a person. 

Everyone wanted to be desired, cared for and loved platonically or romantically, Hoseok wasn’t a stranger to these wants. Even if he masked it, behind his laughter, he wanted this feeling. You breathed his name, he shivered his hands releasing your hips and flying into your hair.  Lips pressing against yours. It was an explosion. Sparks flying out around you, he was so warm and bright, he was a supernova burning himself into your memory. 

He wiped all other thoughts clean from your mind and replaced them all with his touch, his scent, everything that made him Hoseok. This wasn’t J-Hope the rapper, the dancer, the extraordinaire. This was Jung Hoseok the young man, with a kind heart, big smile and occasionally sad eyes.  

You pulled away from the kiss taking control of the situation, “Hoseok” you gasped catching your breath “you know this isn’t fair on me or you, but I won’t stop it, just please don’t get too attached because you know this won’t last, the quarantine will end and you will go on tour. I don’t think I am worried about my feelings anymore. I am worried about you, all of you”

“Hey hey shh, let’s talk about this later when we are in our right minds” he leaned in kissing you again pulling you to sit on the couch. Enjoying each other’s embrace for a few more minutes. “I wonder how you see the world?” Hoseok smiled,

“the same just a little lower to the ground?” Your words had a double meaning and he smiled sadly catching both. You leaned back on the arm of the couch, you were playing with Hoseok's hands and fingers, intertwining them with yours. He grinned rapping adagio. You don’t know what it was but his voice was lulling you to an almost sleep. 

He watched your hands for a moment before pulling away and tucking you in. There was a quiet knock at the door and Thomas and Areum stepped inside. The three started talking in hushed whispers in Korean you tried to pick up the words you had been practising, only catching a few before Hoseok switched to English not happy with the conversation. “Thomas you can’t go,”

“It’s me or her and I can’t let them shove her out in a faulty breather” “Look Namjoon contacted a few people and is looking for a spare breather you just have to hold out a little longer” “They want it to happen tomorrow night there isn���t much time left, for this to happen, they have to get Mister lee across town to the hospital in the fog and back with less than ten minutes avoiding thieves and not dying”

“I wish they would stop pumping that disinfectant into the streets” Hoseok huffed. “Look, Areum will tell them we might, might have a volunteer, in hopes to stall them. We will take a vote before dinner. If we get no better ideas then you can take her place.”

It was almost painful not being able to react and tell your brother to stay inside, but you were scared the mention of the outside made you shake. You tried to not make it obvious, not wanting to blow your cover but you thought perhaps you had some sort of Stockholm syndrome to this building and particularly the basement. You knew you were safe here and here alone. Part of you was glad, glad that it wasn’t you, glad you didn’t have to go out again. They left and you laid there staring into the darkness shadows bending and weaving into strange and dangerous figures looming over you.

Ahh... the old pretend to sleep trope... haha

[Part 1]  [Part 13] [Part 15] [Tag Yourself Here]

Tags: @bubbletae7​ @lovemusicandotps​ @taetaebq​ @seveniefive​ @w0lfqu33n​ @anaiss97​ @moccahobi​ @maddymal​ @lilacdreams-00​ @lethargicalyssa​ @knjkitten​ @pieislife​ @bunnyboyenthusiast​

[boneandfur]

Restless Farewell [N*FW][1/3]

Summary: Veronique goes to The City That Never Sleeps to recruit a thief, instead she meets a man with whom she can be ordinary with for just one night. But is he really who he seems? // Pairing: Niles Edison (Thief) x THM F!MC // Rating: EXPLICIT 18+ LEMON. By clicking on "read more", you are verifying that you are old enough to be reading this fic. // Words: 2935 // Notes: this is the precursor to the sneak peek I posted. It is canon-divergent in some places, although it sticks to the canon story-line as much as possible The first fic in this series takes place in NYC, the night before MC and Rye meet with Niles Edison aka Eddie Quick in Washington Square Park. I HC the MC to be in their 30s and Edison to be late 40s. It’s full of angst and smut. If you like those two things, proceed! Lyrics are from the song Restless Farewell by Bob Dylan.

Chapter One

New York City is full of ghosts. 

The first time Veronique, once known as Alaïs Dègas Lionheart, came to the City That Never Sleeps, she was just five years old. She dreams of it, sometimes: Times Square in winter, ice skates and hot chocolate, her mother dripping with rubies and diamonds, a sheik's ransom. The Nutcracker Ballet, sugar plums and chocolate mice, her father carrying her on his shoulders to the castle in Central Park, a fairy tale of turrets and stained glass windows.  

And there are other memories too, darker ones, the kind a child doesn't understand, the kind an adult pushes away. Suitcases of gold bouillon, walking in on her father throwing handfuls of cash in the air as her mother lies on the bed, her mother's bruised eyes and bloody mouth. I walked into a door, ma petit. It was very silly of me. 

Yes, the city is full of ghosts tonight. 

Veronique walks down the city streets without really looking around, yet somehow her feet seem to know where they are going. She passes Times Square in a blur of color and light, Chinatown, with joss paper in the shop windows, botanicas in the Bronx full of colored saint's candles and Santa Muerte, until she is somewhere near Central Park, standing on the path to the castle.

The leaves whisper in the night, their music borne by the wind. Shhh, shhh. She can hear the song in her head that her father used to whistle as he counted stacks of cash, his blazing head bent in concentration. 

"Oh, all the money that in my whole life I did spend / Be it mine right or wrongfully / I let it slip gladly to friends / To tie up the time most forcefully..." 

"Daddy?" Veronique whispers, and only the leaves whisper back. Shhh, shhhh. 

She forgets she is a criminal mastermind, she forgets she is a thief. She forgets about heists in Monaco, and men with cold, flat eyes who stare at you as they kiss the mouths of their guns. She forgets about Rye, the man she loves like a brother, sleeping like a blameless man back at the hotel before their flight in the morning. There is only Alaïs, the Little Robber Princess, and a man's scratchy voice, singing a poet's song. 

"But the bottles are done / We've killed each one / And the table's full and overflowed / And the corner sign / Says it's closing time / So I'll bid farewell and be down the road... "

In the lamplight, the hair is fox-red, and Veronique runs. The man continues down the path, still singing softly. Her hand skims his shoulder, and he turns around. "Daddy?" But it is a stranger's face, craggy and rough and wrong, one eye sewn shut, the other blue as river glass. There is something cunning and strangely hungry in the man's eyes, under the lamplight they flicker for a moment, and Veronique realizes how far she is from the crowds, unable to disappear in plain sight. 

Veronique spins on her heel, and runs. Down the path, into the dark forest ramble, branches scraping her arms. She comes out on a well-lit path of cobblestones, with no sign of the man behind her. Despite her sigh of relief, she stills. She can feel someone, watching her from the dark. Waiting. A beat, and Veronique spins around, whipping her fists up, but the inky shadows remain still, seething with the secrets of the night. 

•••

Three city blocks later, she hasn't lost her tail. She wonders, for a moment, if it's one of the Rooks following her, but brushes the thought away almost as instantly as it comes. They wouldn't be so amateur. 

"Lionheart." That name, the name no one living should know. 

Veronique bolts down the nearest alleyway, and bursts out the other side, her lungs burning, just in time to see a black Lincoln with its lights turned off pull up to the curb. The window rolls down, and the long muzzle of a Berretta points straight at her. 

Time stills, and her mind goes blank. Lionheart. The last time she saw the two of them, it was snowing in the mountains, the sky a dusky purple from the ambient glow of the city. Her father had promised her a golden nightingale that would sing down the moon, and when her mother's lips brushed across her forehead, the little robber princess pretended to be fast asleep. 

"Get back!" Someone yanks Veronique by the wrist right back into the alleyway, hands braced on the brick wall over her head, body pressed up against hers, shielding her from harm. She is afraid to breathe, and all she can feel is his heart thundering against hers, under the cover of darkness. The Barretta aims, and fires, and Veronique bites back a scream as the bullet's impact rains down red brick dust on the pair of them. He grabs her hand, and whispers hoarsely, "Now!" 

Veronique doesn't look back, or up at the man pulling her through the shadows, until they are back in the well-lit streets of Times Square. She is shivering, she cannot seem to stop. Lionheart. That name. How could someone know it, after all these long lonely years? 

"Alright, luv?" The man turns around, looking down at her, and drops her hand in surprise. "Bloody hell, you're not who -- " he corrects himself "-- you're not what I was expecting." 

But who did you expect? Veronique finds herself staring up into the face of a handsome, distinguished older man with dark brown hair gone nearly gray and a trim beard, wearing a brown trench coat and a long dark red scarf. He whips off his glasses, rubbing them with his sleeve, and shoots her a charming smile. His eyes are malachite green behind his glasses, like the pendant she wears around her neck. 

There is something dangerous about this man, she thinks -- Something that could make or break an ordinary woman. He holds out his hand to shake. 

"The name's Eddie." 

She pushes a swath of golden hair behind one ear, and smiles. "Hey." 

•••

"You look as though you could use a proper drink. I know I could." Eddie shakes his head in disbelief. "You almost gave me a heart attack back there. Christ! I thought --" but he bites back whatever it is he was about to say. 

She's still shaking from adrenaline, her skin buzzing, and she realizes they are so close that they could touch, if they wanted. She wants him to touch her, she realizes. To just feel like an ordinary woman for one night, instead of one who can make or break a man. But she doesn't move away. "A drink sounds fantastic. I'm --" Alaïs. It's on the tip of her tongue, and she wonders, for a brief, unguarded moment, what it would be like to be herself with a stranger, just for one night. "Alaïs." 

He raises his brows, giving her an obvious once-over, eyes lingering in appreciation on her legs and breasts. "That's a lovely name -- Alaïs. She was the mistress of Henry the Second." He clears his throat, the distance between them fixed, neither making any move to go off and search for the promised drinks. And then his lips are on hers, the sound of the city falling away in his searing kiss. Her heart rate speeds up, adrenaline pumping through her veins as the kiss deepens, his tongue hot in her mouth as his hands encircle her hips, pulling her flush up against his broad chest. 

When they pull apart, Eddie smiles down at her, so softly that Veronique feels her insides fall apart. "How about that drink, then? I know a place..." 

•••

The hotel bar is well-appointed, with dark, heavy pre-war furnishings, a relic of a time gone by. They sit at the bar, their knees not quite touching, the air between them heady, thick with desire. Eddie levels a wink at her, and catches the eye of the bartender. 

"What'll you have?" Carter, his name tag reads, gold leaf on black plastic. He's blonde, good looking in that slick, clean cut way, and his smile is practiced, white and fake. 

"I'll take an Old Fashioned. And for the lady, a gin and tonic, I think. Make sure it's top shelf, proper gin, none of that shoddy Bombay." Eddie pushes a strand of hair behind her ear, dark green gaze locked on hers for a moment. "Did I get it right, then?" 

Veronique drops her eyes, then looks up at him from under her lashes. "Make it a gin fizzy." 

Eddie hums in approval. "A bird of refined tastes, you are." 

"Citrus Pay, sir, if you'd like to open a tab?" Carter returns with the drinks, bringing out a tablet, and Eddie recoils, a look of disgust crossing his features. 

"I don't go in for none of that bloody newfangled garbage. Cold hard cash, that's what we paid with back in my --" 

Carter rolls his eyes. "Very well, sir. Some of our older guests prefer to pay the old fashioned way, if that's what you prefer." He slides the Old Fashioned towards Eddie, mouth trembling as he tries to hide his amusement. "And for the lady, a Tanqueray gin fizzy, garnished with a fair-trade organic lime wedge, raw unrefined pink turbindo sugar on the rim, hand ground and imported from --" 

Eddie rolls his eyes. "You're not on the pull, mate, you're just serving the lady a drink. No need to slather it on." 

Carter rolls his eyes. "Very well, sir. Signal me if you need another, Old Fashioned." 

Veronique plucks at Eddie's sleeve before he can give the bartender a piece of his mind. She nods to a low-lit booth with a chessboard. "Care to place a wager?" 

Eddie's eyes light up in appreciation at the swing in her hips as she brushes past him, his eyes raking her up and down. "As long as it doesn't involve any of that bloody modern claptrap, I'm all in, luv." 

•••

"Lady's choice." Eddie sets up the board so fast that her head spins. His knees brush hers under the table, and her pulse speeds up erratically, craving each seemingly innocuous touch. "Black or white?" 

His hand lifts the hem of her skirt, caressing her just above the knee. Not so innocent after all. "Black." 

He raises a brow, sipping his drink thoughtfully. "A lady who likes to live dangerously, I see." Surveying the chess board, he moves a white pawn two spaces. "And I suppose this wager of yours is dangerous too?" 

Veronique takes a slow sip of her gin fizzy, seductively licking the foam off her lips, and watches as his pupils enlarge. "You'll have to play the game to find out." 

Eddie inhales sharply as she scoots to the very edge of the seat, parting her legs and moving his hand further up her thigh. "Oh, I intend to." His eyes are locked on hers as she mirrors his move, pawn before the king going two spaces forward. He moves another pawn two spaces forward. "So what brings you to New York, Alaïs -- business or pleasure?" His hand slides up her thigh. 

Alaïs. The name gives her heart a funny little twist, and she realizes she hasn't heard it spoken aloud by another person for almost thirty years. "I could ask you the same thing." Veronique plays with the malachite pendant around her neck, drawing his eyes to her cleavage. "But tonight... It's pleasure." 

Eddie is fighting back a smile. "Are all American birds these days as cheeky as you?" 

Veronique leans forward, long blonde hair brushing the chessboard, and asks in a husky whisper, "And just how long has it been since you've been in New York City?" 

He leans forward, their faces mere inches apart, his lips brushing against her ear, the sound of his English accent making her throb between the legs, like the beat of her heart, aching, wanting. "Too goddamned long enough." 

She turns her cheek, and his lips ghost across hers, the sensation of his stubble on her flesh causing her to inhale sharply, a tiny, yearning moan escaping her. "Eddie." 

He leans back, but his gaze never leaves hers. "You're not bloody cheeky, luv, you're downright dangerous." 

That I am. She thinks of the malachite pendant around her neck, sharpened to a point. 

All thieves live by a code of honor, my little robber princess, her father's voice whispers down the years. Never kill a man just to kill him, for it will always come back to haunt you. But if you need a friend, this stone is your best bet. Lick it and stick it, it'll work like a charm. Keep it close, and it may save your life. But I hope to hell that day never comes. 

Instead of answering, Veronique pulls Eddie's hand right to the apex of her thighs, hot and slick, craving his touch; and with her other hand, makes a move on the board, leaving her queen open. 

His fingers brush the thin strip of fabric, feeling how wet she is. He growls, his voice dark and rough. "What's the wager? We never said."

"That we both win tonight." She slides backwards in the booth, away from his hand, her heart hammering like mad. She must be crazy, she must be foolish, but she doesn't care, she wants -- "Eddie." 

"Right, then." He drains his drink and then throws some cash on the table, holding out a hand. "Shall we?" 

•••

They've barely stepped into the elevator when Eddie spins her around, pressing her up against the wall in a hard kiss. His hands glide up her thighs, cupping her ass, and she rocks against him, moaning as his fingers skim over the damp fabric of her underwear with the lightest pressure, teasing her clit. 

Eddie grunts as Veronique bites his shoulder, and all of a sudden the elevator dings. They break apart, disheveled and erect in all the wrong places. Eddie adjusts his trousers as a dark-haired man with an arrogant look steps into the elevator, followed by a pixie-haired blonde girl who looks as though she's smelled something bad. 

"The ground floor, bellhop," the dark haired man says to Eddie with a peevish air, and turns to the girl. "I didn't know the Waldorf-Astoria was hiring riff-raff these days. I'll have to have a talk with the owner." 

"Oh, Uncle Antoine, don't be such a snob," the girl says. "Like... Oh. Em. Gee!"

"This is your stop, mate," Eddie says with a grimace, slamming the emergency stop button. "'Fraid the elevator's closed for maintenance." He shoulder checks Antoine on his way out, and pushes him and his niece from the elevator into the hall, the pair of them spluttering with indignation. "Stairs are that way, guv." 

"I'm leaving a one star review on Yel--" Antoine is cut off as the elevator door slides shut, and Eddie turns back to Veronique, a smug grin on his face. "Now, where were we?" 

She can't be sure, but when she's sure, she's sure. Eddie has just picked both their pockets. A dangerous man, indeed. 

"Right... here." She tugs on his hand, and notices that there's a slight indent on one of his fingers, where a ring used to be. He can't be married, she frets in her head. But she can't be bothered to worry about it for long, because when Eddie kisses her, firmer than the first time, it feels more meaningful, more right. Like calls to like. It only makes sense that it would take a thief to make her come tonight. 

Eddie's mouth on hers is hot, her nipples are aching for his touch and as he begins rolling one nipple between his fingers, her brain short-circuits and goes blank. There is only this -- his slow, measured kiss, stretching out the pleasurable sensations happening elsewhere in her body. There's the way he tastes, like brandy and citron, and the sound of his deep growl as his hand slides between her legs again. 

It takes her nearly a full minute to realize she's no longer wearing underwear. He must have stolen them. A rush of heat throbs between her thighs, and the sound of his fingers slipping in and out of her slick, wet folds causes the coil of heat to tighten inside of her, harder and harder, biting her bottom lip as his mouth moves down her neck, sucking and nibbling a path to her nipples. The door starts to open, and Eddie slams on the floor button with his free hand. 

"I can't tell you how goddamned beautiful you are," he whispers into her ear. "Because words can't express it." 

Veronique is panting now, unable to catch her breath, and when he swirls his fingers rapidly over her clit, she comes hard and fierce, right then and there. 

"Eddie! Oh, fuck!" Veronique's hips buck uncontrollably, riding the intense wave of her orgasm. He sucks one nipple into his mouth and she screams his name, her legs nearly giving way as she collapses against him, his mouth claiming hers in a hard, possessive kiss. 

"Let's get you to bed, luv." Eddie strokes her cheek with the back of his hand. "Because I plan to shag you until you can't walk for a week." 

"Hurry," she moans.

She's never seen a man slam the elevator buttons so fast in her life. 

•••

Tag list will be in comments section since they seem to only work half the time.

[quvsvrs]

— °❖｡× ⌜pretty little...⌟

SECRETS — AN OOC LIST THAT I CAN’T BE ASSED TO PUT INTO AN INTRO/MUSE PAGE.

These secrets could be common knowledge amongst the players ( but not between any characters ) and they also could be new ones !!

FOREWARNING: there is triggering content in these secrets, please be wary and exercise caution when reading them !!

xanthos elder: he craves affection and the kind of love that only people who could disappear could have but struggles with never being able to have it.

ana sasaki: five years ago, there was a serial murder case that has since gone cold with a staggering thirty-six victims, the case belongs to her.

babylon lee: his main source of income is being a hitman for a vampire coven with the promise of becoming one to protect his family.

sweetpea byeol: though they knew they are a beauty to behold, they’re cursed to always see an ugly, rotten corpse staring back at them in the mirror.

justice ru: strange images flash through their mind during sleep mode, they seem like memories but they’re too apprehensive to tell anyone else.

gladiolus orr: his blood pumps slower than normal, too much gold in his veins and with the statue scare years ago, he struggles to keep up his energy.

leonidas pan: he’s scared of being alone but finds himself alone almost all of the time and is scared to go back to the ocean to never have human contact again.

kagari setsushi: they want to live a life as a normal teenager, for at least one day, before they live the rest of their existence swindling deals.

giselle ruan: she believes the reason she’s not like the other white ladies is because when she was murdered, she was carrying a child but told no one.

ari sullivan: has already forgiven the corrupt military compound for raising her corruptedly and wants parental affection from them desperately. 

corentin auster: he has since forgotten, but never wanted to be king and was intending on using the storm of the accident as an escape route.

hero rubia: he had given executive order to continue an unstable experiment with him as a volunteer, resulting in the accident that gave him his powers.

lovecraft quillon: before his discipline of being disembodied and then stitched together, his father would force him to listen to zarin’s own punishments.

garnet crimson: he accidentally murdered someone as a werewolf pup and his father took the blame and is now in prison for life. 

jubilee neuva: she pleaded innocent to a robbery that she did and had pinned it on another heist team member, thus imprisoning them. 

amalthea slade: despite being a priestess specializing in the liberation of dark magic in people’s hearts, practices dark magic themselves and has no heart.

zale reyes: he eats the hearts and steals the wealth of the poor, unfortunate souls that fall in love with him and they turn out not to be his true love.

morpheus viki: they have free will and are not bound by the three laws of robotics and will do anything to feel human emotion, specifically love.

vitaflora darling: she usurps her guardian duties to party outside of the summer court and challenges anyone who tries to stop her or tell on her.

kaisuke alder: his father is a plagiarizing scientist, emotionally and financially abusing him until he decided to run away with no plan.

zion creed: he killed his entire noble bloodline in the blind anguish of his parents killing his impure wife and child that he had hid from them for years.

seneca han: she stalked anyone who stole from her store and if she deemed them as vile, she murdered them and ate their livers.

river ulysses: he doesn’t trust his father and is leading an investigation against him to uncover his corrupt agreements and underhanded executive deals.

euphemia young: she comes from a secret society of women assassins who also dabble into genetic experimentation, thus how she got her powers.

joseph borealis: he’s a very closeted gay and paints himself as a ladykiller to hide it from his homophobic old western ranger parents.

kohl boogdonavic: they investigated their birth, their mother was a prostitute who was bitten by a vampire before she went into labour but still didn’t survive.

mona dorrance: she derives sensual pleasure from genuine gambling and is willing to gamble her life and anyone else’s she can grab her hands on.

channing drakul: their brain has been implanted into a genetically mutated beast because of attempted murder by a rival gang, they use a human avatar.

amelie dan: her husband was murdered two years ago and pretends her mourning is spending frivolously when in reality, it’s murder sprees.

kalliste van amstel: she doesn’t want to be a sea monster and is trying to find a way to change herself from a scylla to a human like the little mermaid. 

shae kyd: he comes from an abusive, alcoholic home and escaped to the sea and hates himself for falling into the same addictive patterns as his parents.

riordan genovese: he blames himself for his father’s untimely death and parties to forget his grief and mourning and soon-to-be responsibilities.

sugarplum min: she doesn't want to admit she still loves her mother even after she was convicted of luring, then murdering and eating children.

wisteria howlite: they’re scared of humans, having been caged and starved by them as a child to hone their hunting skills. they’ve since broken free of them.

sia aquino: she doesn’t intend on returning to her kingdom, knowing that she’s to marry whomever her parents had arranged for her.

neo traka: he’s lonely and really curious about the world he crash-landed on as an infant but believes it’s his divine destiny to conquer it before the argenti.

chocho kunori: she’s an addict to alcohol, marijuana, and mdma and is often under the influence of one of the three at almost all times.

roan lao: he doesn’t think he’s good enough of a magic user to be a sage and his insecurity leads him to daydream about modern life.

maximillian chung: his hypersexualization and excessive, riotous partying is the result of unresolved issues of being a servant of any underland dweller. 

june del basque: his villainous ways are extreme even for his taste but during times of chaos, drastic measures need to be taken for order and peace.

jangmi bae: she has a history of self-harm during long periods of losing competitions— they come in the form of bruises so it doesn’t scar.

xenon yong: his immaturity is a coping mechanism used to replicate the excessive coddling and mental abuse from his overbearing mother.

dani lucania: she believes dying to be a radiant adventure but stays alive to keep her sentient tower company for as long as she can.

aya doe: although only alive because of the wizard who created her from stone, she absolutely hates that man and has run away from his obsessions. 

amora vormir: she’s the sole survivor of a warlord’s invasion on her planet, but has since massacred the army and aims to rule over another planet.

ludwig ritchie: his family has a long history of espionage and currently works for the argenti resistance effort to monitor high-risk argenti targets.

carnelian seo: he’s struggling to keep his funds on a tight leash to keep his store running and a roof over his head as his sales are lowering each day.

bubbles kasady: although she did graduate high school, she didn’t score high enough to enter any post-secondary, despite boasting about it to her peers.

xiomara cygnus: her species is dying and she’s been given a mission by her mother to find a perfect mate; other elves her age were given the same task.

cassiopeia zeos: she’s a single mother because her blind lover was murdered as a revenge plot against her, thus her child doesn’t live with her.

ewan major: he’s attempting to resurrect his dead lover by making a deal with any demon that he comes across despite the dangers of it.

xiaobo zhou: in his blind rage of not being appointed master of his home temple, he had injured his two brothers so badly they were forced to retire.

icarus rune: his owner only kept him because he was given to him at birth and faced mental and physical abuse until he bought his freedom.

aaliyah novena: unable to age, she was once the young lover of a corrupted warlock who wanted her to live forever and kept her in a magical pendant.

asmodeus ven: before insanity, he feels his life was boring and pitiful and so believes everyone is one bad day away from becoming just like him.

geronimo orchard: though a talented runner in track, he also is a drug/potions mule or ‘runner’ because of pressure from his criminal older brother.

daiya monde: she doesn’t believe in purity and only keeps the ruse to have access to valuables and treasures otherwise hoarded away.

kiyoshi gin: she was actually heavily scorned by being banished from the hidden world but doesn’t let others see her anguish from being shut out.

denali whittle: he’s a host to a powerful symbiote, having made the fusion after having mistaken it for argenti slime while containing an infected zone.

qiang lu: he glitches in and out of existence, his mother killing his father after agreeing to have a demon child in order to experiment on his body.

[sirius-archive]

Chaos Theory Pt. 2

Pairing: Cedric x Reader

Warnings: Swearing, alcoholism and drug usage (mentioned), low key violence?

Word Count: 4644

A/N: okie dokie chapter two here we go! first, i want to thank everyone who has commented/reblogged/messaged me about Chaos Theory and if you’d like to be tagged, let me know via my inbox. To all my friends in AO3 town, thank you also for your support. Another note: I will be away over the next two weeks so I won’t be able to post the next chapter of Chaos Theory until then. However, when I do get back, I’ll post the next two chapters.  

Chapter Two:

There is something pleasantly sweet about Cedric Diggory’s smile.

It’s gentle and unassuming; a perfect display of pearly-white teeth framed by soft, kissable lips. Sometimes, it reaches his eyes and gives off a warm radiance that you could bask in for an eternity. Sometimes, it tickles the corners of his lips in a subtle display of sincerity. But it always, always, has an effect on you that you can’t exactly describe.

You’re not sure if it’s because you’re drunk on adrenaline from the Quidditch World Cup or you’re just being sentimental, but you feel as though you’ve drowned a cauldron of amortentia and the potion bubbles frantically inside your stomach whenever Cedric so much as glances your way.

Your eyes can’t help but drift over to him like you’re a compass and he’s true north. At the moment, he’s laughing and chatting animatedly with the rest of your friends, but there are secret moments shared between the two of you where your gazes clash and linger with a sense of longing. You can’t help but wonder if it will always be like this; stealing glances at each other from across the room but neither of you taking the first step.

You hope that one day, you’ll be brave enough to break the pattern.

You decide to try and distract yourself by trying to soak up the moment. Most of the Weasley clan bar Mr. Weasley are gathered around a large fire and joined by Fred and George’s friend, Lee Jordan. The host, Cedric, sits between Bill Weasley and Harry, who looks a little tense around the shoulders. You’re about to get up and join them but your brother, Luke, playfully jabs you with his elbow and nods in the direction of your gaze.

“Like something you see over there?” His voice is teasing and condescending and the knowing smirk that goes with it jolts the itch on the inside of your wrist to life. You resist the temptation to scratch it, instead choosing to narrow your eyes on your brother.

“No. I was simply…observing the campfire.”

“Were you now?”

“Yes.”

Luke shakes his head, amused by your obvious attempt at a lie, “You’re lying.”

The irritation begs to be scratch, practically pleading for you to peel the skin back and plunge your nails into the flesh.

“No I’m not.”

Luke sighs in mock disappointment, “You truly are a terrible liar. I thought I taught you better…” 

You work your jaw, “Might I remind you that you crashed our party because all of your friends are drunk and high, and you didn’t want to spend the night alone?”

Luke shrugs, his grin lopsided, “What can I say? They’re all lightweights...amateurs. And don’t change the subject.”

He wags a finger at you in the same way a scolding parent might, and you bat it away with a sigh. You roll your eyes at him and throw your arms up in surrender. Luke pumps a fist into the air and grins triumphantly.

“Why are you serpents always so perceptive?” You grumble, scowling at your brother.

“It’s a curse,” he chortles and shrugs, “Besides, that’s what future lawyers like me do; we perceive things and stick our noses where they don’t belong.”

You give a very loud snort, “That’s presuming you’re actually smarter than you look.”

Luke clutches his chest in mock offence, “That’s a low blow, even for you.”

You shrug through nonchalance, though you can feel Cedric’s eyes on you again and you have to fight every single cell in your mortal body not to look or you might as well turn into a pillar of salt.

“He’s looking at you right now, y’know,” Luke playfully nudges your shoulder with his own, “What are you going to say to him?”

“I...” you pause, realizing you’re at a loss for words, “...I don’t know–? I mean, what can I say, really. He’s him and I’m me and we both have responsibilities...especially since this is his last year and–”

“–wait, what are you talking about?” Luke interjects, brows knitted together in confusion.

You give him a quizzical look “It’s Cedric’s last year...”

Luke studies you for a long time, a familiar expression filling out his features. It’s the same look he wears when he’s piecing a puzzle together, or if he’s deciding whether something is genuine. You can almost see the wheels and cogs hissing and turning in his head, like you’ve peeled back his scalp and peered into his skull, watching the electrical currents scuttle along the network of synapses in his brain.

“Who–who did you think I was talking about?” You ask, slowly, in a voice filled with caution. Luke’s lips quirk into a smile, flashing a row of pearly-white teeth.

“Well–”

“-Luke, buddy, where’ve you been?” A slurred voice booms through the air, it’s owner emerging from the shadows shortly after. Caleb Jin stumbles into view, a crooked smile spread across his lips, “We’ve been looking everywhere for bro...”

He stops, realizing that Luke isn’t alone. For the first time since he’s arrived, he’s noticed you and your friends, and he gives a teasing, sarcastic salute.

“Ah, finally nice to meet the pretty one,” he winks and tries to smirk. It’s as appealing as a limp piece of celery. “Now all I have to do is meet the other three and I’ve met the whole set…”

“He must be pretty wasted if he’s referring to Hermione, Ron, Harry and I like we’re collectable chocolate frog cards,” you note, watching as Caleb begins to unbuckle his belt.

Luke winces, “Yeah…though I’m 66.6% sure he’s being serious.”

“What?” you bleat and Luke shakes his head.  

“I’d...better make sure he gets back to his tent safely...” he murmurs, rising from his seat, “I’ll see you in the morning, yeah?”

You nod at your older brother and watch as he waves goodnight to everyone and saunters up to Jacob, slinging an arm across Caleb’s shoulders to support him.

“Bye, pretty one,” Caleb waves at you hopefully. You wave back and hear him cheering in the distance.

“I think I’ll go to bed,” you announce as you turn back to your friends, “Thanks for tonight…”

“Already?” Harry asks, somewhat disappointed in your decision to leave, “It’s barely ten o’clock.”

“Still, I better go. We’ve got a long trip tomorrow.”

“I think I’ll come, too,” says Hermione, climbing to her feet and walking toward you.

“Oh, come off it, Hermione, you’re probably going to go and read or do nerdy stuff like study,” Fred flaps a hand at her dismissively.

“And what’s wrong with that?” she snaps, hands planted on her hips.

“We should take you back to bed as well, Gin,” Bill interrupts, rising from his spot in the grass. Ginny folds her arms across her chest indignantly.

“But I’m not tired!” she moans, and Bill narrows his eyes on her.

“It’s late, Ginny. We’ve all got to get up early to make it back home in time for breakfast.”

Ginny turns to Charlie, pleading him with an imploring look. Charlie grimaces, as though he’s fighting the urge to concede to her wishes, “Bill’s right, Gin.”

“I thought you were supposed to be the fun brother,” Ginny grumbles as she stands, pushing her hair off her glowering face.

“Hey!” Fred and George exclaim in unison and Ginny waves a hand at them.  

“I’ll walk you guys back,” Cedric springs to his feet.

“No need,” you blurt, your hurried response embarrassingly shrill.

“Oh, but I insist.” Cedric smiles, and the way it curls transfigures your spine into a strand of spaghetti. Your mouth flaps open to protest, but Hermione interjects before you can say anything more.

“That would be nice,” she smiles graciously, but the way it pinches the corners of her lips suggests that she’s scheming. You narrow your eyes on her suspiciously, and she shrugs innocently. Ginny stomps over to you and Hermione and Cedric leads you away from the campfire.

“It’s been a really lovely night,” Hermione smiles as the three of you stroll toward the Weasleys’ tent.

“It has,” Cedric agrees with another gracious smile (Curse him), “The game was thrilling and the company…” He glances shyly at you, “…well, I don’t think I would have enjoyed it very much without you.”

You notice Hermione and Ginny exchange a look and by the way Hermione’s shoulders tremble, you suspect they’re stifling giggles.

“Well I’m certainly glad I came,” you say, fighting back the warmth in your cheeks.

Cedric’s eyes linger on you for a moment, dancing between your eyes and your lips, “As am I.”

Does he want to–?

“Well it’s certainly made me realize why the boys love Quidditch so much,” Hermione admits, and you can hear a faint teasing tone in her voice, “It’s all rather thrilling, isn’t it?”

“Thrilling indeed,” Cedric remarks, “Never thought the Weasley Twins would predict the outcome of the game.”

“They’re smarter than they look,” you joke, “Though I think they learned their lesson.”

Cedric raises a brow, “And that is?”

“Never make deals with the devil.”

“Or someone just as trustworthy as they are,” Hermione adds, “Which is not trustworthy at all.”

A gentle laugh trickles from Cedric’s lips and curls in the air, “I suppose they had that coming.”

The conversation soon steers toward the upcoming year. You and Ginny exchanged a pained look, but before you can change the subject, Hermione has launched into a lecture about what she’s anticipating the most.

As she rambles, Cedric’s hand grazes against yours, long fingers reaching out tentatively to tickle the skin of your hand. Your heart floats in your chest as though someone had untied the arteries and veins attached to it and set it free. You imagine it drifting around like a helium balloon after it’s string have been snipped; lighter than air, ascending into the milky white clouds of heaven.

Eventually, you arrive at the tent. Ginny bids Cedric a curt ‘goodnight’ before marching into the tent. Hermione turns to you wearing a smile of her own.

“Well, Good night,” she smirks suggestively, her eyes flicking toward you and Cedric before she disappears into the tent. You and Cedric loiter in the awkward silence, wondering who will break it first.

“I really did mean it when I said that I was happy you came,” Cedric finally says, smiling, and you realize with a delighted thrill that it was more than just a compliment. It was genuine.  

You chew your bottom lip, biting down on a goofy grin, “And I had no reason to doubt you.”

Cedric studies you for a long moment like he’s trying to draw the edges of your face on the canvas in his mind. His tongue darts out to slide across the cushion of his bottom lip and you wonder if he knows how handsome he is when he does that or if he can hear the blood rushing through your veins at the sight of it.

“You know, it’s nice to see you smiling again,” he finally says.

A wave of embarrassment drenches you in an uncomfortable warmth that burns beneath your cheeks as you recall the last time you saw Cedric. You remember the heat of the day; the air hot and sticky and sweetly perfumed with the scent of salt and butterbeer. Imaginary tears ghost over the rosy-pink skin of your cheeks and stain your lips with salt. Your hand moves to wipe tears that aren’t there.

“Yes I–I never did thank you for…what you said. So…thank you.” You stumble for words, your cheeks practically aching from all the bashful smiles.

“No need to thank me,” he smiles, “I’m just glad that you’re doing better.”

More awkward silence, filled only with the distant, drunken cheers of the Irish wafting over the campsite like a bad smell. You and Cedric shift awkwardly in the moment, eyes darting everywhere in a shy dance of will I? should I? before you shatter the moment with a quick nod.

“I should probably start writing my article,” you blurt, tucking a stray ribbon of hair behind your ear.

“Already?” Cedric asks, brows raised, “Talk about commitment…”

“What can I say?” you shrug, smiling, “Sleep when you’re dead, right?”

“I wish my teammates were as passionate about Quidditch as you are about writing,” Cedric says, eyes roving over you in awe. “Well, I guess this is goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”  

You turn quickly and move to retreat into your tent but your feet stop in their tracks, hesitating outside the folds. And, before you realise what you’re doing before you can even talk yourself out of it, you’re spinning on your heel and turning toward Cedric, reaching up and planting a tender kiss on his cheek. It’s decidedly chaste since it doesn’t seem appropriate to snog Cedric yet, but the warmth of his smooth skin against your lips is rather intoxicating, and there is a moment where you want to move a few inches over to kiss his lips but you don’t.

It leaves more of an impression than you expected, and you watch as a bright pink hue stains the exact spot where your lips had made contact with his cheek, the colour blossoming like wildflowers in the spring. It’s an adorable boyish look, and you admire for the millionth time how handsome he is, even in the low light. Even when bashful and unprepared and surprised.

Cedric beams, and it looks like he’s swallowed the sun. “Well, er – see you in the morning?”

You nod, biting your lip as Cedric begins to walk backwards as though he can’t peel his eyes away from you, his expression fixed as though he’s in a trance.  He stumbles unceremoniously into a tent and issues out a string of mumbled apologies, making you giggle.

Yeah, you think, your fingers moving to brush across your lips, the warmth of his cheek still ghosting over them, excitement bubbling up inside of you and bursting like a balloon filled with liquid sunlight, See you in the morning.

***

You’re not sure when you fell asleep exactly. Between working on your article for the school newsletter and the almost dreamlike night you had experienced with Cedric, it was a wonder you even slept at all. But your sleep is broken by two trembling hands shaking you awake, and you emerge from the cloudy greyness of sleep to find Hermione’s face looming over you.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“We have to get Mr Weasley,” Hermione whispers, her voice low, “We have to get out of here!”

“Why?” you ask, but then a scream pierces the air like the high-pitched shriek of shattering glass, and the heavy thrum of what sounds like a crowd of people tripping over themselves fills your ears.

Hermione gestures toward the tent’s folds, “Have a look for yourself.”

Yanking your nightgown off the bedpost, you wrap it around your pyjamas and poke your head out of the tent, your eyes widening in horror.

The campsite has been thrust into a world of pandemonium. Screams of terror cloud the air like a fog as stampede witches and wizards clamber past, retreating into the surrounding forest for safety. A large crowd of hooded wizards chases them into the wood, laughing and hooting as various bursts of light streak through the air like bullets. The air is thick and heavy with smoke and dust, rubble smouldering and tents burning.

Perhaps the worst part of it all is the four figures twisting and turning mid-air as though suspended by imaginary strings. The hooded wizards are puppeteering them into grotesque positions. Two of the figures are children.

Somehow, you don’t think you’re going to see Cedric in the morning.  

You clamp a hand over your mouth as you watch the scene unfold.  

“How cruel do you have to be to prey on children,” Ginny mutters darkly, gripping her wand tightly, “We have to help them.”

“No,” you snip, grasping Ginny’s wrist and yanking her back, “Us three against a crowd of wizards? Ginny, we’ll die. We have to be strategic about this…”

You release your grasp on Ginny and she turns to Hermione, whose brows are furrowed in thought. “(Y/N)’s right. The proper authorities will be here soon. They’re trained to do this sort of stuff.”

Fire rages in the dark depths of her chocolate-brown eyes and she forces out a sharp huff as though she were breathing plumes of smoke, “Well we can’t just let them torture those muggles!”

“There’s nothing else we can do,” Hermione says, composedly, “If we try to help them, we will all die.”

Ginny’s mouth twists into a thin frown like she wants to argue the point but doesn’t. Instead, she concedes with a curt nod of her head. Guilt twinges in your chest.  

“For what it’s worth, you really are a force to be reckoned with,” you remark, giving her a half-hearted smile. Ginny beams proudly, “Just…remember to choose your battles wisely.”

Ginny perks up at that, straightening her spine and squaring her shoulders. Hermione glances at you furtively, a warm smile tugging the corners of her lips. The touching scene is interrupted by Mr Weasley as he bursts through the tent’s entrance, eyes wide and voice tainted with an unnerving tone of panic.

“Good, you’re up,” He notes, eyes darting between the three of you, “We need to leave. Now.”

The three of you follow Mr Weasley out of the tent and spot Ron and Harry standing close by, both of them just as horrified as you are. You rush up to Harry, and a warm feeling of relief sinks into your skin.

“Bil, Charlie. Take them into the forest and wait for me there. I’m going to see what I can do to help.”

Bill and Charlie nod as Mr Weasley hurries off. They lead the group of you toward the forest, and as you reach the fringe of the woods, you and the others turn back to watch the scene. A group of Ministry members have their wands drawn out and directed at the group, attempt to diffuse the situation with words, though it doesn’t seem like they’re achieving much at all.

You bite your lip, eyes scanning the crowds for Luke, praying to every known god that he is safe. You don’t think you could lose him, too.

“We should keep moving...” Ron murmurs to you and you nod. Hermione gently pats your shoulder, massaging into the tense muscles.

“He’s going to be okay,” she whispers, as though she had read your thoughts, “I saw one of his mates earlier. He’s probably with them...”

“Yeah, you’re right. He’ll be fine. He can take care of himself,” you say, trying to convince yourself that it’s true. Hermione takes your hand and leads you into the Forrest.

The four of you walk in a tense silence, listening to the worried murmurs and distant screams filling the air around you. The shadows of the night cloud around you like ravenous demons as you walk further into the woods, but you keep your hand in Hermione’s as she leads you deeper and deeper.

Your thoughts sprint through the events of the night, anxiety churning inside of you and awakening the itch on your wrist. What if Luke got hurt in all the commotion? Where is Cedric? Is Mr Weasley going to be okay?

Hermione squeezes your hand, as though she can read your thoughts. Behind you, Ron yelps in pain. You stop abruptly, Harry very nearly crashing into you.  

“Ah, shit.” He mumbles and you squint at the forest floor, only just making out Ron’s lanky figure.

“What happened?” Hermione asks, anxiously, blinking through the darkness, “Where are you? Oh, this is stupid, Lumos.”

A narrow beam of light pours from the tip of her wand, lighting up the winding path. Ron lies, sprawled, on the floor, dry leaves and dirt sprinkled in his hair. You swallow the urge to laugh and help him to his feet.

“I tripped on a tree root,” Ron mutters, angrily. He dusts the dirt from his knees and Hermione picks the twigs from his hair.

“Well, with feet that size I suppose it’d be hard not to,” an oily voice drawls from behind you and rage surges through your veins like rivers of lava.

Draco Malfoy leans against a tree, his demeanour visibly taunting. He’s calm and composed, radiating the same, ugly energy that usually reeks off of him. You narrow your eyes on him and speak without thinking.

“Well you know what they say about wizards with big feet,” you glance at his feet and raise a brow, “And yours look kind of small.”

Ron snorts.

Draco’s nostrils flare.

In all honesty, you have no idea how big Draco’s feet are, but you’re satisfied with the look of offence and disdain that crosses Draco’s face.

“What’s that?” Draco cups his ear, “I can’t hear you from all the way down there.”

Ron steps forward protectively, “Fuck off, Malfoy.”

“Language, Weasley,” Malfoy drawls, his pale eyes glittering maliciously, “Or do you have to eat slugs again for you to finally learn your lesson?”

“What do you want?” Harry snarls.

“I’m just trying to find a good seat,” Malfoy shrugs, lazily, “Though you’ll probably want to hide the mudblood.”

“Shut your mouth, Malfoy!” Ron shouts, “Or I’ll have to do it for you.”

“That is the second time you’ve threatened to do so today,” Malfoy sneers, “Yet here I am.”

“Oh this is so pathetic,” Hermione snaps, “Let’s go.”

“The only thing that is pathetic here is you, Granger,” Draco spits, eyes narrowing like a snake eying its prey, “If you ask me, you should be out there with the muggles they’re torturing.”  

“Oh, shut up,” Harry snaps, “You’re only saying that because you feel threatened by her superiority.”

A cold, metallic laugh splits through the air, lacking amusement and warmth, “Please Potter, who are you trying to impress with these two charity cases? Your parents? Because we all know how that’s going to work out.”

“Alright, this has gone far enough,” Hermione says, composedly, “Let’s go.”

“What’s going on here?” says a familiar voice, and relief fills you up like sea water.

Luke steps into the light of Hermione’s wand, and you launch yourself into his arms. He returns the hug, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you closer, breathing into your hair. You hold him close, clinging onto him like you might crumble. He’s okay. Everything will be okay. 

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” you murmur, eyes wet with unshed tears, “I can’t lose you, too.”

“You wouldn’t know what to do without me,” Luke teases, untangling himself from your embrace. His smile is loose but genuine.

Draco straightens, his casual demeanour shifting immediately. He’s nothing but talk, especially when a teacher or someone with authority arrives. And Luke is that person right now; a Slytherin prefect with an impeccable reputation.

“Draco,” Luke regards him with a simple nod, “I’ll see you at school.”

Draco nods wordlessly. As Luke and your friends move to walk deeper into the woods, you turn to Draco and stare at him curiously.

“What made you so cold and dead on the inside, Draco?” you ask, and Draco’s face falls. For once, he can’t come back with a retort, and you leave him staring into the darkness, completely speechless.

***

The walk home from the Quidditch World Cup somehow feels longer than the journey there.

You all walk in silence, too tired to even string a proper sentence together. You sluggishly trail down the road, exhaustion slowing you down as though it had hooked a rope around your waist and was yanking you back. You rub your eyes, stomach growling, limbs heavy as your mind sprints through the events of the long, chaotic night.

Through all of it, the Dark Mark still haunts your thoughts like it’s still looming over you like some sort of cruel god of pandemonium. The return of the Death Eaters has everyone on edge, as though their all denying a simple yet terrifying truth.

Fortunately, you had caught up with Cedric before you left. He promised to send an owl as soon as he arrived home. You would have liked to chat with him for longer if it weren’t for Fred and George, who tried to lure him into buying one of their ‘experimental candies.’ 

Harry gravitates toward you, his expression unreadable, “You alright?”

“Yeah,” you sigh through the lie, “Just tired. You?”

“Yeah,” Harry shrugs, “So…how did you meet Cedric…?”

The sound of his name jolts through you, and you suddenly feel more awake. “Oh, well, we met last year and we just…clicked.”

“Clicked, huh?” Harry echoes, though his voice has a slight edge to it, “That’s…good.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. Nice of him to walk you back to the tent, too.”

Your brows knit together as you study Harry’s expression, “Where are you going with this?”

“Nowhere,” Harry snaps, his voice cracking sharply like a whip, “I’m just saying it was nice of him to walk you back…”

“Well, he didn’t just walk me back.”

“I know–”

“¬–and why bring this up after the night we’ve just had?”

“Because–”

“–Because what?”

“You’re not giving me a chance to answer!”

“Well if you’d just hurry up and spit it out–”

“Would you two shut it? We’re nearly there!” Ginny interrupts, pointing into the distance. Ron and Hermione stare at you like they’re cataloguing your every move. They tear their eyes away and exchange a glance.

If you were less tired, you would have questioned them. Instead, you ignore them and turn back to Harry. He isn’t paying attention anymore, his mouth twisted into a frown as he glares at the Burrow. You can tell by his expression that he doesn’t want to talk anymore, and you cross your arms, deciding it’s better not to.

Picking up your pace, you catch up with Fred and George and the three of you chat lightly as you slowly approach the Burrow. It’s faint, but you think you hear a grumbled protest from behind you, and you glance over your shoulder to find Ron, Hermione and Harry arguing quietly amongst themselves.

What are they up to?

Your thoughts are interrupted by a relieved Mrs Weasley, who rushes up to the group of you and throws herself into Mr Weasley’s arms.

“Oh thank goodness you’re alright,” she mutters, squeezing him tight. A copy of this morning’s Daily Prophet falls from her grasp, slightly screwed from where she had been gripping it. You pick it up and flatten it out while Mrs Weasley pulls her children into a bear hug.

SCENES OF TERROR AT THE QUIDDITCH WORLD CUP the headline reads in large, bold letters. An image of the Dark Mark floats beside it, and a twinge of fear plucks the centre of your chest as the memory of last night flashes in front of your eyes. Shudders rattle your spine.

“This isn’t good…” you murmur.

“Well, obviously,” Harry grumbles from behind you, his tone dripping with sardonic venom, and you jump, slightly startled. He stands behind you, reading over your shoulder, and he’s close enough for you to feel the warmth of his breath fanning across the nape of your neck. A different type of chill shoots through you like electricity.  

“Lets – er – go in and have breakfast…” Ron suggests, glancing uneasily at Hermione. Harry grits his jaw and shakes his head, snatching the Daily Prophet out of your grip. He marches inside with Ron on his heel, but Hermione lingers behind.

“What has gotten into him?” you snip, and Hermione gives you a strange look, as though she knows more than what she’s letting on.

“We’re all just a little bit tired and hungry,” she sighs, patting a reassuring hand on your shoulder, “But don’t worry about it for now. Come on, let’s have something to eat.”

Don’t worry about it for now, you mentally repeat as you follow her inside, that’s easier said than done.

***

Chapter three will be released soon. 

[nalufever]

Queen of Gin

A Shalily fic ~ Shagotte x Pantherlily, Fairy Tail fandom - written for @shalilyqueenwrites A small xmas fic gift!

Summary: Dubbed the Queen of Gin by her customers, Shagotte runs her speakeasy during daylight hours as a questionable poetry parlour. Investigated by a stalwart G-man who's got his own secret demons, Shagotte learns to love and trust, saving herself and her new love.

"Why would I look the other way, Miss Shagotte?" Lily rolled his eyes, grimacing as the suspected gin runner fluttered her eyelashes. "Somehow, every night, your gatherings are full of people."

"We're poetry enthusiasts." Shagotte grinned and winked at the irritated face of the attractive G-man. "Arts enrich the soul, doncha know."

"And yet your patrons see fit to enrich your pockets. All from reading poems? I think not." The tall and thickly muscled man shook his head. "You're wetting their lips with hooch, I can't prove it now, but I will soon."

"Dear heart, don't be such a tragic downer!"

"Excuse me?"

Shagotte crossed her arms, a tempting smile on her lips. "Would you prefer I call you sweetheart?"

"I'll have my numbers men nose out your accounts, and then you won't be so chipper." Lily straightened his hat and smoothed the lapels of his double-breasted suit. "Good day, Miss Shagotte."

"Always a pleasure." Shagotte leaned in close to her opponent. "You should smile more, makes you much more attractive." She smirked as Mr. D'Pantheur marched out of her salon in a snit. He was tasty, but the money she earned from selling gin illegally was more important than romancing some uptight government stooge.

><><><><

Miss Shagotte welcomed Friday night's guests with a smile and specially printed poetry booklets. Tonight she'd been given ideas from a certain G-man - and the lyrical poetry was very fresh - and very original.

Shagotte greeted the steady stream of her patrons. "Nice to see you and the missus, Mr. Dragneel! Who's your friend? Glad to see you've returned, Mr. and Mrs. O'Connel! You're in luck, tonight's reading is going to be the talk of the town." Shagotte passed out her freshly minted pamphlets, accepting a new stack from Aaron, one of her best helpers, and then urged him to assist in the kitchen.

"Talk of the town?" Lucy Dragneel tapped Shagotte on the shoulder. "I don't see an author's name on this."

"It's a surprise for later." Shagotte smiled, her eyes sparkling. "Who's your friend, Lucy?"

"I'm a regular blue-stocking, a bibliophile, an aficionado of the written word!" Lucy's friend answered, smiling as she took in the details of the parlour; dozens of rickety chairs ringing small tables - and a podium on a raised dais.

Lucy giggled and flicked the shorter woman in the forehead. "Dizzy dame, she wants your name!"

"Levy McGarden, pleased to meet you!" Levy thrust out her hand - which was accepted and rapidly pumped by Shagotte who smiled wider.

"I'm delighted to find another literature lover. You're gonna want a seat close to the action." Shagotte pointed to the front chairs. "Especially if my special guest shows."

Levy and Lucy exchanged looks of glee. They promised to find Shagotte afterwards to discuss tonight's poetry, moving to claim their seats.

At the scheduled time, Shagotte signaled for the doors to shut and she made her way to the podium. Her bright red high heels thumped at each step, drawing as much attention and admiration for her smart outfit as her smiling freckled face crowned with lustrous pale hair. Making a show of lifting her manuscript, Shagotte greeted the crowd. She made a few opening remarks about the weather and how glad she was to see so many in attendance.

She checked her watch and began to read the first poem, starting with the title: 'Bothersome Boy,' glittering amusement in her eyes and a suppressed smirk on her lips. A ripple of amusement moved around the room, the disturbance feeding Shagotte's satisfaction. She flipped to the next page and with even more passion, began reading 'Ode to Numbers: How a Certain Man Does Not Add Up.'

Reciting the third stanza of the poem, where the 'certain man' was compared in a bad light to a succession of local ne'er do-wells, Shagotte could hear the muffled honking of a bike horn from the street. With even more enthusiasm she read the next stanza. It dealt with the 'certain man's' poor fashion sense; cheap shoes and shiny tie that clashed with his suspenders. Keeping her eyes downcast on her book, Shagotte kept orating the poem. She heard the tread of a late-comer to the soiree and the creak as they settled into a chair. Another ripple of amusement circled the room as the attendees made certain connections between the new arrival and the content of the next poem which was titled 'Gee Whiz G-Man.'

Several more poems were read, with every progressive title drawing more titters of amusement. Shagotte announced an intermission and darted towards her private sitting room. Caught short by a 'certain man's' solid grip on her upper arm.

"Interesting, Miss Shagotte. You had such a good impression of me the other day, complementing my attractive smile. But today you've lambasted my clothes, job, and IQ. I'd be hurt, but I'd have to care about your impression of me for that to happen."

"Don't start off with a lie Mister G-man." Shagotte fluttered her thickly lashed eyes. "I said you would be more attractive if you smiled more." She tried to wrench herself out of Lily's grip and failed, so she glared pointedly at his large hand on her body. So large and capable looking, a bit rough but his warmth felt nice. "Do let go."

"Sorry." His cheeks flushed and he hunched his shoulders. "I've had enough of the stares, can we take this discussion out of the public eye?" Lily removed his hand from Shagotte's arm and looked at it front and back before shoving it into his coat pocket. "Please?"

"Fine," muttered Shagotte. "I'll give you ten minutes." She decided to blame her momentary lapse of judgment on the man's softly spoken plea. That was a weakness she'd work to eradicate later. Giving the watching crown an insouciant wave, Shagotte strutted off to her sanctuary as if taking Lily D'Pantheur there was actually her own idea.

Pouring herself a tall glass of water from a waiting pitcher, Shagotte took a satisfying gulp before offering Lily some. He shook his head and she giggled. "It's water, not gin. As if I'd offer you any rotgut seeing as you're so convinced I'm running hooch at my fine establishment."

"Thanks for bringing up the reason I'm here." Lily strolled around the room; taking a long, hard look at the pale pink upholstered seating, the doily encrusted wooden tables and gilt-covered frames holding brightly coloured art. "I need your help."

"You're crazy, Mister G-man." Shagotte set down her glass and crossed her arms, glaring for all she was worth at Lily. "My help? You've been accusing me of breaking the law and tryin' to shut me down. You need my help?" Angry sparks seemed to shoot from her eyes. "Please." Her chin lifted and her pink cupid's bow mouth flattened into a thin line. "You may leave."

"Not until you hear me out."

"How about you get out?"

"Please." Lily stopped his pacing in front of Shagotte. He bowed his head after removing his hat and holding it over his heart. "There's a new threat in town and I figure you're more good than bad. I see how many kids you're taking care of, you're their mother figure and someone like that can't be all bad."

"Excuse me?" Outrage made Shagotte raise her voice higher than she'd intended - several of her older helpers burst into the sitting room and milled about in as threatening a manner as they could manage.

"Do you need escortin' outside?" The oldest child stomped over to Lily. "Don't make me ask you twice." Miranda settled her hands on her thin hips and let her disgust show. She would have been exceedingly cute except for the jagged scar that covered her left cheek from her jaw to under her ear. With Lily remaining silent, Miranda turned to her boss. "Miss Shagotte, do you want us to give this bum the bum's rush?"

Shagotte held up a hand and shook her head. "He's a bum all right, but I need to hear him out. He's a government goon, yet I'm curious about what he's got to say."

Miranda sighed, as did the other three young adults; Richard, Betty, and Karl. The leader of the group, Miranda pouted but held her tongue.

"I'm not anything near a bum." Lily held up his hands in mock surrender. "I'm a hard working government soldier."

"Just yell if you need us, Miss Shagotte." Miranda and the others filed out of the room.

"More like hardly working government soldier." Shagotte deliberately turned her back to Lily, sauntering towards a credenza covered in books and potted plants. She turned and leaned against the piece of furniture. "What is it you want, Mr. D'Pantheur?"

Lily gulped, the sound loud and surreal in the confines of Shagotte's sitting room. "I want to understand you."

"I do believe you've flipped your lid."

"No." Lily rubbed his forehead. "The new gangs moving in are trouble. I've come to see you're the lesser of two evils."

"Thanksssss." Shagotte drew out the 'es' of her reply. "You sure know how to make a gal feel good about herself."

"Give me a chance and you'll never look back."

"Why should I?"

Lily D'Pantheur dropped his hat and sank to his knees in front of Shagotte. His voice was a soft echo of his former volume. "Because I know you are doing whatever it is you're doing to keep those kids off the street." He looked Shagotte dead in her eyes and smiled. "And if you don't work with me your business is doomed to failure."

Shagotte clenched her hands into fists. "Threatening a woman is a low and disgusting action."

"I'm afraid it's a promise." Lily slowly stood, rising to his full height. "You can work with me to bring down the new threat in the neighbourhood or be smashed with them."

Never slow or foolish, Shagotte took in all the new information given by Mr. G-man. A sour smile on her lips, she thrust out her hand and spoke. "Let's shake on it."

To be continued ^^

[professional-anti-writes]

Another fix-it, this one featuring Mor/Nesta!! cw for trauma, trauma-related thoughts

Nest/a’s stomach threatened to kill her. It burned ferociously, and no matter how she arranged herself in bed, the pain continued. When she gave up on sleeping and walked around her small apartment, despair burbled up her throat. She tried to splash water on her face, the way she used do as a human, but the sensation of it against her mouth made her panic and retch. “I can’t breathe,” she told her reflection in the cracked and dirty mirror above the washbasin. “I can’t breathe,” she said again, and slammed her palm against the glass. An ache spread up her arm, and she cursed, falling back into her bed.

Now she couldn’t sleep, her stomach hurt, and her arm ached. Nest/a lay her hand on her chest and tried to feel her heartbeat. She counted five seconds, seven, before her heart pumped. Such unpleasant things came with being fae. The slow heartbeat made Nest/a feel as if she had already died. Which she had, in a way. Her muscles had shivered and split from the bone, her bone had cracked and the marrow had run. And then she’d been put back together, even more painfully. None of this body was hers. She owned no part of herself.

At least, back in that cottage, she had owned herself. She had not owned her time—that had belonged to her father and to Feyr/e and Elai/n—but she had owned herself. Now she owned her time, but her not her life. If only she could have both.

At last, she decided to go to the pub, though when she got there, there weren’t many options for company. An orange-skinned fae with five rapidly blinking green eyes played dice with a blue blob that seemed to form hands as needed. The bartender, who called herself Gin, after the drink, was wiping down glasses with two arms and pouring herself beer with the other pair. Her third pair of arms ran through the light yellow feathers on her scalp, setting them in order.

“The usual?” she said when she saw Nes/ta. Nest/a grunted and sat down. She preferred a blue, strong alcohol that burned her throat and stomach. She found the approximations of human drinks a bit off and preferred the totally strange to the eerily familiar. She had two thimbles of it in a row and was nursing the third one when the bell on the door tinkled. Immediately, movement in the bar stopped. The dice-players gawked. The woman sweeping into the room wore masses of golden hair like a crown and looked around with dazzling golden eyes. Nesta swallowed, hard.

“Mo/r,” she said. A smile burst across Mo/r’s face, and she took the stool next to Nest/a’s.

“I’ll have what she’s having,” she told the bartender, her voice, as always, like honey rolling on the comb. Nest/a felt herself growing hot, and turned back to her drink.

“I suppose Feyr/e sent you?”

Mo/r sighed. “I’m sorry, Nest/a. I know Feyr/e is being hard on you.”

“Beind hard on me?” demanded Nest/a. “She refuses to let me live my life. She wants me to suddenlly fall in love with that predator Cassia/n and swallow down my hatred of her mate.” She almost gagged on the last word.

Mo/r looked across the bar at a lonely purple pixie. “He looks sad,” she said.

“Everyone here is sad,” snapped Nest/a. “That’s the point.”

Mo/r turned her gaze back on Nest/a. “I used to think that Feyre was sent to save me.”

“I—what?” For the first time, Mo/r had said something actually interesting. Nest/a leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

“When she first came,” Mo/r said quietly, “her emotions felt truer. She raged against Rhy/s. And I thought that maybe here was someone to oppose him.” She played distractedly with the collar of her red dress. Nest/a, against her better judgement, grabbed Mo/r’s hand. Mo/r looked down at it.

“Why are you still with him?” said Nest/a, her voice as low as she could make it. “Why do you stay?”

Abruptly, Mo/r stood. Nest/a followed her out of the bar into the alley. “Why do I follow him?” said Mo/r, standing against the brick wall of the pub. “Why do I follow him?” Nest/a could see Mo/r’s tears glinting in the starlight. “Who would love someone as dirty as I am? Who would love such a terrible woman?” Mor held her fists to her stomach, as though filling a wound.

Nest/a’s heart faltered. The chasm in her own belly threatened to reach up and swallow her beart. “You are not disgusting,” she said softly. “They treat us badly, they are careless with our hearts. They try to make us hate ourselves. That is their secret. One day, we won’t hurt this badly. And on that day, when we share the throne between us, perhaps we both will have someone to love. But we have things we must do first.” She took Mo/r’s hand again, this time with both of her own. “How does one go about bringing down a high lord?”

Mo/r smiled, trembling. “Oh, love.” She brought her lips to Nest/a’s ear. “I think I know the way.”

[tomgcsglasses]

The Christmas Party - Part 1 (TGC)

Tagging: @ontheoddoccasioniwritestuff, @glynnecarney and @prettyboytgc

You took one last look in your full-length mirror, ensuring every part of your outfit was perfect. Scanning your outfit from head-to-toe, your dark brown hair loose, cascading past your shoulders and ending with flawless waves just above your chest. Your burgundy, off-the-shoulder-dress hugging your body and accentuating your envious curves as it fell to the floor. The dress was accessorized with long, glittery earrings and black stilettos. To complete the look was your make-up - which you’d spend hours on - smokey glittery eye shadow, contoured to perfection, highlight glowing at every angle and your lips, matte, full and plump. Your earrings, eye shadow and lipstick all matched your dress. You were surprised with how well you cleaned up, you don’t usually spend this much time and effort with events like this, but you’re thankful that you did. You had to admit you looked good.

Once you were satisfied with your appearance, you grabbed your black clutch bag and made your way to the event. 

The atmosphere within the office was electric this time of year, the chaotic and frantic notion of your fellow colleagues seemed to have disappeared as everyone was excitedly chatting at the annual work Christmas party. Your company hired out the local assembly room, which was quite a surprise because that was one of the fanciest venues in the city. They really went all out this year. You scanned the room, surveying the decor, the huge 1920′s chandelier hanging in the middle of the room, the party lights slowly dancing around the room caressing the hundreds of well-dressed adults engaging in riveting conversations. Not bad work. Not bad. The bass was thumping as music was being played in the background, it was way too early to open up the dance floor and people weren’t ready to let themselves dance in front of people they worked with. As you continued to scan the room, you felt your heart come to a halt. Shit. You felt your heart pound underneath your dress. Suddenly, you felt restricted and the urge to cut yourself free was getting all the more enticing. There he was. The man you’ve been silently crushing on since the day he walked through the doors of your building just over a year ago. You noticed a waiter approaching you with a tray full of champagnes, you grabbed two, smiled at him and knocked back one of the glasses.

“Easy tiger, you’ve just arrived.” You felt someone whisper in your ear. You whipped your head around and sighed in relief when you saw your best friend of 9 years. Rory is your right hand man, your go to in every thing. From your first ever date, to choosing your outfit for the first day of work, he was there. 

“Don’t sneak up on me like Rory!” You smacked him on the arm. 

“Well, well, well.” Rory said slowly. “Don’t you look divine tonight?” He said, smirking a little as he gestured to your outfit. 

“Why thank you.” You giggled as you lifted the glass up to your lips and gulped the champagne. “You don’t look too bad yourself.” You glanced over his outfit, he was wearing a white shirt, tucked into dark blue trousers accompanied with the same colour waistcoat and tanned shoes. 

“Go on then. ‘Gis a twirl.” Rory winked. You did so, placing your right foot over your left and slowly twirling. Once you were facing him again, you curtsied. The two of you erupted into laughter, fooling around when someone tapped Rory on the shoulder. You stopped laughing and straightened your posture a little, not really aware of who the person was. 

“Alright mate?” the all to familiar voice said to Rory. Your eyes widened as you figured out who it was, you froze, heart beating faster by the minute. You could feel the blood pumping furiously around your body as you tried to compose yourself. Their voices all but a buzz as they were engrossed in their conversation, you weren’t really paying attention it as you were focusing on not passing out there and then. 

“You know Y/N Tom?” Rory asked, dragging you back to reality where your crush was standing opposite you; looking flawless as usual. You gulped, finishing the rest of your drink whilst you discretely checked Tom out. His short blonde hair quaffed to the side, his blue eyes sparkled with the assistance of the party lights and soft lighting from the chandelier. His white shirt, buttoned all the way up was tucked into his black trousers, matching his black jacket. He completed the suit with a neat bow tie and shiny black shoes. Is this boy trying to kill me with his good looks. I can’t breathe right now. 

“Oh yeah, of course, hey Y/N.” Tom turned his attention to you, his blue eyes glistening as his body faced you. He leaned in wrapped one arm around your waist, gently pulling you in for a hug

“H-hi.” Your voice hoarse, you coughed a little. “Hi.” You repeated and smiled. You returned the hug, a little taken back when you felt a spark run through your body. You felt your knees go slightly weak with the limited space between the two of you. You could feel his hard chest against yours. You melted a little when he tightened his grip on you.

“You look gorgeous Y/N.” Tom whispered in your right ear, sending shivers down your spine when his hand snaked their way down south to your hips.

“Thank you.” You giggled a little, pulling away. “I like your bow tie.” His bow tie? Really?!

Tom chuckled. “’Tis a good bow tie.” You laughed. Tom opened his mouth to say something when he got interrupted. 

“Y/N! You look radiant. Where have you been hiding that bod?” Your boss, who looks like she’s ready to take on the dance floor, stumbles to you. She embraces you into a tight hug, almost suffocating you in the process. You hug back, then pull away. She puts her hands on your shoulders and as she checks you out. “You my friend, look utterly divine.” She slurred out. She stumbled back and Tom caught her before she could fall. “Oh thank you Tom dear.”

Tom looked at you. “I think we should call her a taxi back home.” He chuckled slightly, drew out a chair and carefully placed your boss onto it. He then took out his phone and excused himself. Two minutes later he returns. “Taxi’s coming here in 10.” You nodded. 

You and Rory were in a deep conversation when you heard a groan, you turned your heads to find your boss’s legs in the air and her arm dangling just above the floor. “Oh no.” You said to yourself, you rushed to her left side re-adjusting her so she was sitting firmly on the chair.

“Your hair is s-so soft.” Your boss slurred. “H-h.” She hiccuped. “H-how do you get it-t like that-t?” She asked, shoving her face into yours so you can smell the array of alcoholic beverages she had consumed this evening. You crinkled your nose at the smell. You glanced to Rory who was finding it amusing and laughing with Tom, widening your eyes which was a signal for his help. He just laughed and shook his head. Tom leaned his back and chuckled at the state of his boss annoying you. You rolled your eyes and turned your attention back to your boss. “T-tell me your s-secret Y/N. I-i want to k-know.” She hiccuped in your face, her mouth smelt like a mixture of rum, champagne and gin. You gagged slightly. Your boss’s right arm slipped and she toppled over a little. Your right foot ready to jump to the other side, when you saw Tom go to her other side; setting her straight. You looked up and mouthed a ‘thank you’ to him. He smiled and mouthed back ‘it’s okay’. Thankfully Tom got the text, you knew this because he fished through his pocket and glanced at his phone.

“Taxi’s outside.” You nodded. Tom put your boss’s arm around his shoulder, you doing the same. You both carefully lifted her up, as Rory was behind carrying her clutch bag. You all slowly walked to the taxi, Rory opened the door as Tom went first taking her arm off his shoulder. It was hard work, but you eventually got her in and the taxi driver drove off. You all watched the taxi until it was out of sight. 

“Wasn’t she a handful?” Rory asked laughing. 

“I need a drink.” You said. With that you turned on your heel and made your way back inside to the party. The boys followed.

-----

The more the night went on, the more you drank, the louder the music got and the less everyone cared about their reputation around their work colleagues. Copious amounts of champagne, shots of jager, vodka, tequila, rum and cocktails was consumed, which meant one thing. The more you drank, the less you cared. About anything. Rory dragged you along, which caused you to link hands with Tom, the three of you making yet another trip to the bar. The bartender lined up three shot glasses, expertly pouring the liquor Rory chose for this round. Once it was done, Rory passed the shots to you and Tom. You clinked the shots and downed them, slamming them down on the counter once you were finished with them. 

“Let’s dance!” Rory shouted in your ear. You scrunched your face with disapproval. “C’mon Y/N, you know you want to.” He winked at you, poking you in your ribs playfully. 

You sighed. “Fine. Lead the way then boss.” You waved your hand, letting him go first.

“I love you.” He leaned in and pecked your cheek, grabbed your hand and led you into the dance floor. You took a hold of Tom’s hand as you both let Rory enter you into the jungle of hot, sweaty bodies dancing and grinding to the music. Once you were in the centre of the dance floor, Rory let go of your hand, you let go of Toms and you formed a circle; all of you re-joining with your colleagues. Rory turned you around so your back was facing Tom and away from him, placed his hands on your hips as you started shaking your hips along with the music. You could feel the alcohol getting to you a little - ok, maybe a lot, along with the music being played, you ran your fingers through your hair as you and Rory started dancing like hooligans. Both egging each other on to perform ludicrous moves, which to your surprise grabbed the attention of every male on the dance floor - including one in particular. They all were attracted to you, like a moth to a flame. You didn’t pay much attention to them because you were having too much fun with Rory. Eventually, they got bored and slowly moved away. 

“Rory! I didn’t know you still worked here.” A high-pitched voice came from across the circle. You and Rory both looked up, as his eyes widened in surprise.

“No way?! Holly, what are you doing here?” Rory gasped. He squeezed your hand, then moved across the circle so he was opposite you. You didn’t care much, as you were in your own world, dancing to the music and having a good old time. You felt two strong arms snake around your waist, you turned your head to your right to find Tom dancing next to you. His hands squeezing your hips a little, leaning in to your ear.

“You ok darlin’?” He asked. You nodded and he nodded back. “Good.” You both danced a little, before he leaned back in again. “Did you want to grab a drink?” You nodded.

“Yes please.” He nodded, taking a hold of your hand and began to make his way through the crowd, apologizing to everyone who shot him a dirty look. Eventually you both made it to the bar. Tom leaned across the counter, trying the balance himself as he got the bartender’s attention. He shouted across his order, getting you what you’ve been getting all night. The bartender nodded and went on to make the drinks. Tom turned to you and leaned in to your ear.

“Have I said how gorgeous you’re lookin’ tonight Y/N?” He whispered in your ear, his lips grazing the lobe a little. You shivered slightly, you grabbed the counter to regain your balance. 

“You look rather handsome yourself.” You leaned in closer, giggling as your hands grazed over his bow tie - which was now loose with his top two buttons open - and down his shirt. You looked into eyes and bit your lower lip. You saw something change in his eyes, but you got interrupted.

The bartender gave Tom the drinks, he took one and gave it to you. “Here ya go lovely.” He said. You blushed and took a long sip, sighing deeply when you felt the rum coursing through your veins. You and Tom were having a conversation by the bar, when you felt someone fall into you. You were a bit startled, but saw that it was Rory. He was stumbling around, you finished your drink and placed it on the counter, helping Rory with his balance.

“I think we should get going.” You said to Tom, gesturing to Rory who had his head on your shoulders. Tom nodded and knocked back the rest of his drink too.

“Let’s go.”

-----

You switched on the light, as Tom carried Rory onto the sofa. Rory hunched over on and then titled his head back and opened his eyes. 

“Can I have a cup of coffee?” You nodded, making your way to your kitchen, putting water in the kettle and letting it boil. You then retrieved a cup from your cupboard, filling it with 4 spoons of coffee. Once you stirred the coffee, you cradled it in your hands as you sat down next to Rory. You cautiously gave him the cup, once it had cooled down a little and sat with him until he had finished it. “Thank you love.” Rory turned to you.

You inspected his eyes. “Are you ok? You can stay here if you want?” You asked.

Rory shook his head. “It’s okay, I live down the road, I’ll make it.” 

“Are you sure?” You asked. 

Rory nodded. “I’m positive.”

“Okay. But you’re staying on the phone to me until you’re in your bed!” You insisted. 

“Okay! Deal.” Rory placed the mug down and slowly stood up. He hugged you tightly, giving you a kiss on the cheek. He then hugged Tom.

“Get home safely pal.” Tom said. Rory nodded, fishing through his pockets and retrieved his phone. He dialed a number, you saw your phone flashing in your hands and saw it was Rory. You answered and started speaking to him. You stayed on the phone with him, you were with him throughout the entire journey home, you heard the jangling of his keys, the curses as he tried to find the right key, the celebration when he finally entered his threshold and finally him getting into his bed.

“Okay, I’m in the bed.” Your phone flashed, it was Rory sending you a selfie of him in bed with his suit from the party still on. You giggled a little. 

“Good. Get a good night’s sleep and I’ll see you tomorrow love.” You said, blowing a kiss down the phone you hung up. You sighed happily to yourself.

“Did he get home ok?” Tom asked, who was sitting on the sofa.

You nodded. “Yes he did.” You smiled. 

“Okay.” Tom stood up. “I’ll guess I’ll be going then.”

You thought for a second. “Did you want a cup of coffee, y’know, before you leave?” 

Part 2

[theteenagetrickster]

How Henry Ford, Who Published Racist Diatribes Against Jazz, Helped Popularize the Sound of Jazz and R&B - The Truth About Cars

Henry Ford playing fiddle with his old-time dance orchestra on his 70th birthday in 1933. (From the collections of The Henry Ford)

Henry Ford was unquestionably a great man, but he was not a very good man. As an entrepreneur and industrialist, he may have changed the world — for the better, I personally think — but as a human being he had serious failings. According to Richard Bak’s , the elder Ford would humiliate his son, Edsel, in public because Henry, a farm boy, worried that his only child would become the soft son of a rich man. That practice continued into Edsel’s adulthood.

Clara (Mrs. Ford) had to make her peace with Henry’s long-term relationship with Evangeline Cote Dahlinger, whom the industrialist met when he was 50 and she was 23 — his associate C. Harold Wills’ secretary at the Highland Park plant. Her son John Dahlinger asserted that he was the son of Henry Ford, whom he strongly resembled.

Ford’s public life was no less unsavory. His bigotries are well known. In his mind he divided the Jewish community between “good Jews” — those he personally knew, like architect Albert Kahn — and “bad Jews,” the boogeymen “bankers” of his fevered imaginations. Less well-known is the fact that many of the most hateful things attributed to Ford were not his own words.

Henry Ford was no writer. After foolishly for defamation, ignoring the old saying about not suing folks who buy ink by the trainload, Ford was shown, in a humiliating fashion on the witness stand, to not be a proficient reader. In guiding the development of the Model T, we know that Ford preferred wooden models of parts to blueprints. He may have been dyslexic. He certainly didn’t have the skills to write for publication.

Ford’s autobiography, My Life and Work, was ghostwritten by Samuel Crowther.

The task of expressing Ford’s distrust of world Jewry fell to Ernest G. Liebold, Henry Ford’s personal secretary and general manager of , the newspaper Ford used as his public megaphone. Liebold first came to Ford’s attention when, in 1912, Henry took over the small Dearborn bank where Liebold worked as a teller. The son of Prussian immigrants, he was precise, rigid, unemotional, and willing to do things that Ford wouldn’t ask his other associates to do (well, other than Harry Bennett). Over time his services to Ford included being his personal business representative, signing the automaker’s personal checks, responding to Ford’s mail, acting as Ford’s personal spokesman to the media, and, perhaps most importantly, controlling Ford’s schedule and who had access to him.

Liebold, like Ford, was also a man with Jews on the brain. He believed in Jewish conspiracies and, with Ford’s backing, set up an agency in New York City to investigate prominent Jews and those Gentiles he considered to be doing the bidding of Jewish masters. He surrounded himself with like-minded Jew-haters, an interesting mix of former government officials, ex-Secret Service men, czarist Russian emigres, fanatics, and ex-cons.

At the Dearborn Independent, Liebold began running a series under the heading of The International Jew, alleging all sorts of nefarious activities to those of the Mosaic persuasion. Jews supposedly had a “dictatorship” in the United States, where they maintained secret control of newspaper editors, bootlegged whiskey, Tammany Hall, and even major league baseball.

Liebold’s (and Ford’s) bigotries were not restricted to Jews. They saw blacks as inferior and criminal, though that, too, was blamed on Hebrews. The Independent blamed lynchings of blacks on “Negro outbursts” provoked by “n***** gin” allegedly produced by Jews.

One of African-Americans’ great cultural contributions to America and the world, jazz music, was also seen by Ford and Liebold as a Jewish plot*. Jewish Jazz – Moron Music – Becomes Our National Music, was published in the August 6, 1921 issue of the Dearborn Independent. Recorded music had been around since Edison’s 1877 wax-cylinder phonograph, and the “modern” Victrola that played Emile Berliner’s flat recordings was introduced in 1906. However, though the phonograph was a great success, in the 1920s much of what was considered popular music was still being sold as sheet music, and much of that originated from music publishing firms in New York City’s “Tin Pan Alley,” where many of the composers, lyricists, and publishers were from Jewish backgrounds.

From :

“Many people have wondered whence come the waves upon waves of musical slush that invade decent parlors and set the young people of this generation imitating the drivel of morons… Popular Music is a Jewish monopoly. Jazz is a Jewish creation. The mush, the slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin.

Monkey talk, jungle squeals, grunts and squeaks and gasps suggestive of cave love are camouflaged by a few feverish notes and admitted to homes where the thing itself, unaided by the piano, would be stamped out in horror. Girls and boys a little while ago were inquiring who paid Mrs. Rip Van Winkle’s rent while Mr. Rip Van Winkle was away. In decent parlors the fluttering music sheets disclosed expressions taken directly from the cesspools of modern capitals, to be made the daily slang, the thoughtlessly hummed remarks of high school boys and girls.”

And you thought jazz was about improvising on a musical theme.

In addition to the less savory aspects of Henry Ford’s musical tastes, he had a genuine affection for the kinds of traditional music that many Americans played at home and at community events. Among Ford’s personal artifacts at the Henry Ford Museum are his Stradivarius and Guarneri violins that he used to play fiddle music.

Ford started subsidizing old-timey music. Richard A. Peterson, the author of Creating Country Music, said that Ford, “put more money into promoting country music in the 1920s than anyone else. Ford was frightened by what he saw as the urban decadence of couples jazz dancing. In response he organized fiddling contests and promoted square dances across the country to encourage what he saw as older, more wholesome forms of entertainment.”

By the way, before you read “urban” as a euphemism for “black,” as it is sometimes used today, Ford genuinely didn’t like big cities and regretted how the success of the Model T created wrenching changes for the rural America of his youth.

Among those wholesome forms of entertainment, found in many homes, were reed organs, also known as pump organs. Once quite popular, you can find pump organs free for the carting these days on Craigslist. A reed organ is like an accordion with a steroid problem that you sit at to play. Foot pedals pump a bellows that sounds the reeds. Ford liked organs – there are at least a couple in the Henry Ford Museum’s collection, and he and Clara had an elaborate and costly pipe organ installed at their Fairlane estate by the Estey organ company, with the keyboard placed in a spot of honor in the mansion’s living room

Henry Ford was a tinkerer at heart, completely self-taught. He learned enough to become the chief operating engineer of Detroit’s Edison Illuminating Co., but he was far from a university-trained engineer. Laurens Hammond, on the other hand, was a graduate of Cornell’s engineering school.

Laurens Hammond (Hammond publicity photo)

Coincidentally, Hammond’s first job after graduating from college and serving in the military in World War One was for the automobile industry in Detroit, for the Gray Motor Company, which made marine engines. While at Gray, he invented a silent spring-driven clock that was successful enough that he was able to leave Gray and set up a small office in New York City. It was there he then developed an early version of shutter-glasses for viewing 3D films. That wasn’t a commercial success, though, and Hammond moved to Chicago to continue work on a synchronous electric motor he had invented.

Because it was linked to the frequency of the alternating current electric supply, it was very, very accurate. It had very little torque, though, so little that the motor had to be hand-cranked to start, but Hammond found a market for a low powered, but very accurate electric motor. Going back to his earlier invention, a clock, he replaced the spring drive with his synchronous motor, which could be started up by spinning the clock’s hands.

Though the clock company was an initial success, the Great Depression took its toll on Hammond Clock. Laurens Hammond pursued a couple of other inventions, like a self-dealing card table for playing bridge, but he ultimately found success in a market segment known better for bingo than for bridge.

America has always been a secular country with a fairly religious populace. Thousands and thousands of churches dotted America’s landscape in the 1930s. Many of them needed an organ, but something from the Aeolian or Skinner pipe organ companies was beyond the means of many less affluent churches.

Inspired by Thadeous Cahill’s Telharmonium, a massive, 200-ton machine patented in 1897 that was the progenitor for every electronic music synthesizer in use since, Hammond developed the “tonewheel generator.” To create music electronically, you first need something that can create a pure tone — a sin wave. Those pure tones, when combined with harmonics (integer multiples of the base tone’s frequency) and partials (fractional multiples), along with attack, sustain, and decay characteristics, are what make a violin sound like a violin and a flute sound like a flute.

For centuries, pipe organ makers have used that method to imitate other instruments, though to this writer’s ears, no matter what the “stop” on the pipe organ is labeled, it’s going to still sound like a pipe organ, perhaps an organ trying to sound like a flute, but still an organ.

By the 1930s there were vacuum tube-based oscillators that could create pure tones, but the sheer number of tubes necessary to create the many needed tones made tube-based organs cumbersome, hot, and not very reliable. Instead, Hammond pursued an electromechanical method of creating tones called a tonewheel.

A period article from Popular Science magazine called Hammond’s invention an “Electric Piano” and managed to get both how the organ worked (it used tonewheels, not vacuum tubes to generate tones) and where Hammond’s company was located (Chicago, not New York) wrong.

Hammond didn’t invent the tonewheel but he perfected it. Imagine something like a bicycle sprocket spinning past an electromagnetic pickup set radially near the teeth. As the profile of the sprocket’s teeth passes the pickup, it induces an alternating current whose frequency and amplitude are related to the number of teeth, their shape, and the sprocket’s speed. Using his quiet, accurate motors to power the tonewheels resulted in tones that didn’t waver. Hammond organs with tonewheel generators never really need tuning (though a lack of lubrication will affect pitch). Since the tonewheel motor was still low on torque, the original prototype had a hand crank, replaced in later production units with higher torque starter motor, to get the tonewheels up to speed before switching to the synchronous drive.

At first, Hammond thought he would sell a novelty called the Electric Flute that would sell for $30 or $40 dollars.

The Ethics of the Fathers responds to the question, “who is wise?”, with the answer, “he who recognizes the birth of something,” someone who sees the possible consequences of something from its start. It is a rare inventor who sees the full potential of even his or her own invention. Laurens Hammond himself thought Don Leslie’s rotating speakers made his organs sound worse, but Hammond Organ eventually bought Leslie’s ideas and his company, and today the swirling sound of a “Leslie” is closely associated with Hammond organs.

Hammond did, however, realize that his tonewheels had more potential than just being a plaything and started to develop a fully voiced organ.

That presented a problem because, ironically, Laurens Hammond couldn’t play keyboards. You can find publicity photos of Hammond sitting at one of his organs, but you will search in vain for a film or recordings of him actually playing the things.

Not being able to play an instrument is not necessarily an impediment to inventing or improving a musical instrument. Nobody today cares how good a violinist Antonio Stradivari was. Leo Fender couldn’t play guitar or bass, and he pretty much perfected the electric guitar and with George Fullerton, who also couldn’t play, Fender invented the electric bass. Hammond, though, was also tone-deaf, so profoundly so that he has been described as “amusical.” Nearly everyone that he hired after he started the organ project, whether they were secretaries, bookkeepers, or engineers, they were also musicians because he needed their ears.

Work on the prototype and patent sample started in 1933. Sources say that patent approval was sped up because the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office saw the invention as commercially viable and thought it would create jobs during the worldwide economic depression. The patent was granted in April, 1934 and production of the Hammond Model A organ began in 1935. While Hammond was waiting to hear from the patent office, like any inventor he must have had concerns if his invention was going to be commercially successful or not.

By the time production started, though, Hammond knew he had at least one customer, a very important customer.

In February 1934, after the prototype organ was returned to Hammond’s Chicago office from the USPTO, two engineers from Dearborn, Michigan visited Hammond’s facility at the personal request of Henry Ford. Somehow Ford had found out about Hammond’s new organ, perhaps from a source in the patent office, and he wanted an expert opinion. The engineers must have approved because they placed a tentative order for the first six Hammond Model A organs.

Thus, Henry Ford was the first customer for the Hammond organ, even if he didn’t end up owning the first one.

This is a good time to clear up some confusion. For a long time, there was a Hammond Model A on display in a place associated with another Model A, the Henry Ford Museum, one of those six. It was thought by some that that was the first production Hammond organ, a notion Henry did nothing to rebut. Additionally, the Hammond company promoted the idea that famed composer George Gershwin got the first Hammond organ. Considering how Henry felt about “Jewish jazz,” and considering that Gershwin was born Yakov Gershowitz and wrote some of the most famous jazz and blues compositions ever, it isn’t surprising that Henry might have rather people thought of him as owning the first Hammond organ, not Gershwin.

While there’s no record if Henry Ford and Laurens Hammond ever met in person, Ford did get a chance to personally check out an early Hammond Model A. One of the first production units was loaded onto Hammond’s beat up Ford Model A panel truck, driven by Emory Penny, sales manager for the Hammond Clock Co., and John Hanert, Hammond’s chief engineer. They were headed for the instrument’s first public demonstration at the 1935 Industrial Arts Exposition in the RCA Building (now 30 Rockefeller Plaza) in New York’s Radio City. Before they got to NYC, however, Penny and Hanert detoured to Detroit to show it to a very important customer before the general public got to hear it.

The roads between Chicago and Detroit in 1935 weren’t exactly up to modern Interstate highway standards and proved to be a test of the organ’s durability. When they got to Dearborn, Ford had them directed to drive the now muddy truck right into the Ford Engineering Laboratory building and onto its shiny oak floors. The industrialist brought along a “hillbilly” band to accompany him as he tested out the organ. His reaction was overwhelmingly positive.

“In twenty years, there should be one in every home in America,” Ford told Penny, adding, “You should sell organs at $300 . . . and don’t fall into the hands of those Eastern Bankers.”

Despite apparently thinking they could be sold for a fraction of the $1,250 introductory price, Ford gave his personal approval to the purchase of those half dozen Model A Hammond organs.

While en route to New York, Penny wrote to Hammond, “I feel he [Ford] would lend us half a million dollars.”

One of those six instruments was the organ that was on display for over 25 years at the Henry Ford Museum. Unfortunately, that piece of musical history was destroyed in a 1970 fire at the museum along with many other artifacts.

Incidentally, the actual first Hammond Model A didn’t belong to either Henry Ford or George Gershwin, though the fact that they endorsed the instrument with their purchases was undoubtedly a factor in Hammond soon being deluged with 1,400 backorders. Hammond Model A #1 ended up at a Kansas City dealer, who used it as a traveling demonstration unit for years until it was sold to a local church. It is now at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

Bob Pierce, a salesman for that dealer, described the early days on the road with it in his book, the Pierce Piano Atlas.

“Three of us, an organist, a maintenance man and I traveled in safari-like fashion with a van and an automobile for the next three years. We drove through Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Iowa, Arkansas, and Texas, hitting every little burg with a population over 100. We demonstrated the Model A on university campuses and radio stations, for women’s clubs, in music stores and churches, and even mortuaries. The only places we avoided were the gin mills.” That last bit proved to be ironic.

Hammond #1 ended up in a church and Bob Pierce’s sales team made sales stops at churches part of their regular routine. That wasn’t coincidental. Pipe organs were expensive and the Hammond Model A was a reasonable facsimile at a much lower price. The Hammond Model A was so competitive that pipe organ makers even lobbied the Federal Trade Commission to prosecute Hammond for calling his instrument a true organ instead of their preferred term, an “electrotone.” That backfired, as tests conducted at the University of Chicago’s chapel showed that experts were unable to distinguish between a Hammond and a $75,000 Skinner pipe organ. Hammond got slapped for unsupported claims in his advertising, but he won the right to call it a “Hammond organ.”

Whether Hammond salesmen deliberately marketed the Model A to black churches because they had less money to spend on organs, or whether it was because there were African American churches in the general vicinity of the Hammond factory on Chicago’s West Side, Hammond organs undoubtedly quickly became popular in black houses of worship. The Hammond B3 model was introduced in 1954 and added a percussive attack to the instrument’s tone and a “scanner” vibrato that fit well with the strains of the gospel music performed in those churches. The B3’s funky sound also fit new forms of popular music better than the tone of Wurlitzer’s competing organs, which were more in tune with rollerskating rinks.

The sound of the Hammond organ in church inspired musicians like Fats Waller, “Wild” Bill Davis, and the great Jimmy Smith to take up the instrument in a jazz setting. Smith’s protege Jimmy McGriff did likewise with the blues. Soon nightclubs purchased Hammond organs for visiting players to use just as they would have pianos. Moving from jazz and blues clubs to rhythm and blues bands like Booker T and the MGs was just a hop, skip and jump, making the Hammond B3 organ one of the elemental sounds of soul music.

Henry Ford died in 1947. By the time the Hammond organ started becoming popular in African-American music in the 1940s, though, Ford was already beginning to show signs of dementia, so he likely was not aware of what was happening in the world of music. If he had been aware of the kind of success the Hammond organ had, and with whom it had that success, he might have had some reservations about sending those engineers to Chicago.

In any case, that is how Henry Ford, a notorious bigot and hater of jazz and African American music, ended up inadvertently helping the Hammond organ become one of the foundational sounds of black worship, jazz music, and rhythm & blues.

*Little did Ford know that the Kosofsky family of New Orleans helped jazz pioneer Louis Armstrong buy his first horn.

This content was originally published here.

[savetopnow]

2018-03-17 01 MUSIC now

MUSIC

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