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nebulaafterdark · 7 months ago

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A Marriage For Love

Summary: When Y/N and Aegon receive news that they cannot wed, they flee King’s Landing for a simple life in Bravvos. Upon returning to visit their families, they find themselves face to face with the consequences of their actions. Cheesy, targcest, idiots in love. Based off this request.

“We mustn’t allow them to carry on like this!”Alicent shouts.

“I agree,” Rhaenyra says, heartily. “Keep your son away from my daughter.”

“Keep your daughter away from my son!” Alicent bites out. “She should begin preparing for her marriage to the Lord of the Riverlands as Aegon should be spending more time with Helaena.”

“Mayhaps there is a simpler solution.” The King sighs, with a hand to his head.

“What is it you suggest, father?” Rhaenyra wonders.

“We might betroth Y/N and Aegon.” He smiles, looking between his daughter and wife.

“You may betroth my firstborn son to her…plain featured daughter when I am cold and in my grave.”

“Alicent!” Viserys roars.

Aegon wastes no more time listening to them quarrel, setting off in search of Y/N. He finds her in the library, as she often is. “Y/N,” he kneels before her chair. Closing the book and using his finger against the binding to hold her place.

Y/N looks up at him. “What is it?”

“There is something I must tell you.” From the time they were small, Y/N has been the one to hold his secrets.

“Speak it,” she squeezes his wrist.

“Only moments ago my father offered to betroth us, our mothers rejected the proposal. They want your hand for some River Lord and mine for Helaena.”

“No.”

Aegon cups her face in his hand. “Come away with me. We can build a new life, together. It may not be as lush, but it will be ours. You will still have your cakes as they please you, I swear it.”

“You would do that for me?”

“I would do more for you and worse.” Aegon smirks.

“Well…what shall I bring?” Y/N asks, ignoring the pang of guilt in her chest.

“Pack sparingly, a change of clothes or two. We’ll need gold and jewelry to trade; enough to get us started.”

“Where will we go?”

“One of the free cities,” he decides, “no one will be looking for us there. And it does not have to be forever, long enough for us to get married. If we’ve a child, they’ll have no choice but to honor our union.”

“Alright,” Y/N swallows.

“Go now,” he presses his lips to her forehead. “Meet me at the dragon pit in one hour’s time.”

The princess nods, nuzzling against him for just a moment before they break apart.

By the time anyone comes looking for them, Y/N and Aegon are long gone. Leaving behind only a note.

‘If you will not allow us to marry for love, we will do so elsewhere.’

King Viserys is so distraught at the news, he passes with the shock of it.

Rhaenyra takes her place as Queen, refusing to rename her heir.

————————————————————————

Life is different in Braavos, no maids, dragon keepers nor castle. Aegon cuts his hair up to his chin on the day of their wedding, freeing himself from the memories it holds.

There are rumors of course, about the town baker and his wife, the tailor, who may or may not be the long lost prince and princess. Their dragons do nothing to disprove these whispers, however they do stop them from reaching the Red Keep.

Years pass, news breaks that Y/N is with child, growing rounder by the day.

After a long day’s work, Aegon is exhausted, shucking off his boots near the door of their humble abode and bringing his wife an offering of sweets.

Y/N smells Aegon before she sees him, calling out from the kitchen, “what have you brought me today, husband?”

“What if it were for me, spoiled thing?” Aegon chuckles, lying his offering on the counter to wrap his arms around her. Their babe kicking at his palms.

Y/N reaches back, cupping his cheek. “Best turn about and fetch mine then.”

He smiles, pressing kisses to her shoulder. “How is our little dragon treating you?”

“Well enough,” Y/N sighs, stirring the broth. “I have not wretched this day.”

“That is good.” He pats her belly. “I brought you cake.”

“What kind?”

“Dinner first, my heart.” Aegon insists.

“Or I could have cake for dinner.”

Aegon sighs, as she leans into him.

“Please?”

“Very well.”

Y/N turns to face him, abandoning her cooking in favor of his kiss. “Thank you.”

————————————————————————

Bringing their love into the world is a long and grueling task, Aegon keeps her spirits up as best he can. Unfortunately there is only so much a man can do for a laboring wife.

Y/N is exhausted by the time she delivers the afterbirth, fighting sleep as she nurses their newborn daughters. A task she deems horribly painful in itself.

Aegon strokes her hair, whispering words of love and encouragement until the babes are satisfied. “You rest now, I will bathe them.”

His wife does not protest, allowing her heavy eyes to close.

Neither of the twins cry, until gods forbid he sets them down. “Shh,” Aegon hushes them, taking one in each arm. “Papa put you down for only a moment, surely you cannot be held at all times.”

The babe on the left yawns, stretching out her little arms. The babe on the right merely blinks at him.

Until they learn to crawl, Dahlia and Visera are indeed held at all times.

————————————————————————

By the time their sons are born, Y/N often tells stories of her family back in King’s Landing. Her mother especially, who she wishes to meet them.

Aegon returns from the dragon’s nest with two new eggs, one for each of their boys. “Stormborn and Sunfyre are thoughtful, they deliver us clutches in pairs.”

Y/N smiles, from their dragons came an egg for each of their children. “Let’s see.” She waves her husband over.

Their eldest son, Laenor, toddles toward him, pointing to the bright golden egg, “mine.”

“Ah, ah, hold on just a moment now.” Aegon says.

“Please?” The two year old pouts.

“Yes, alright.” Aegon sets the dark blue egg down beside his wife and youngest son. “We must be careful with it now, sit in Papa’s lap. We’ll hold it together, hmm?”

Laenor claps his little hands together, reaching up for his father.

Aegon backs up to the arm chair, holding the egg above his head, “climb up.”

Laenor furrows his brow, crawling into his father’s lap.

“There we are, my boy.” Aegon holds the egg infront of him, allowing Laenor to touch the egg’s scales.

“Look, Papa.” He points.

“I see, my love. Soon it will be a little dragon, just for you.”

Laenor squeals in delight, “Mama, look.”

“I see it, sweet boy. That is a lovely egg.” Y/N grins.

Dahlia and Visera play happily on the floor with their own dragons, still small enough to tote about.

At all of six months old, Aegon the fourth has no understanding of the word gentle, he slaps at the egg like a drum.

“Aegon!” Y/N can’t help but laugh, moving him away. “You must be kind to your dragon.”

“Him fly!” Laenor tells his brother, who merely stares back at him with a toothy grin.

“Yes, he will fly.” Aegon smooths down the curls at the back of his son’s head.

“When your uncle Joffrey, was born Ser Harwin took Jace, Luce and I down to the dragon pit to find the perfect egg.” Y/N recounts, with a far off look in her eyes. “He must be a man grown now.”

Aegon clears his throat, praying he does not live to regret what he murmurs next. “What if we went to visit your mother?”

“Well…” Y/N sighs, patting her son’s legs as he climbs over her. “We couldn’t.”

“Why not?” Aegon challenges, “it’s a short trip on dragon back.”

Y/N stares down at her hands, “my mother must be very angry at me.”

“My mother was never anything but angry with me.” Aegon chortles, “Rhaenyra will get over it.”

“Are you certain?” Y/N frowns, “I know how you detest court.”

Aegon nods, “for you, the world.”

————————————————————————

Word spreads through the streets of King’s Landing like wildfire. Princess Y/N and Prince Aegon have returned to them.

Daemon is the first of their family members to cross their path, all but dragging Y/N to his wife in the throne room.

“You wait here,” he barks at Aegon. Leaving him outside with the children. “Princess Y/N Velaryon,” Daemon calls upon their entrance.

Rhaenyra moves to stand.

The king consort leaves them to it.

“Your grace, I would first like to apologize for my long absence.” Y/N says, as her mother stalks toward her; expression unreadable.

Rhaenyra pulls her daughter into her arms, cradling the back of her head. “You must never do that to me again.”

“Mother,” Y/N cries, clinging to her like a child. “I am so terribly sorry.”

“Shhh,” Rhaenyra sways her. “We can still make this right.”

“I should like that very much.”

“You need only say the word and I will have your marriage annulled.”

“What?” Y/N withdraws, “no. You cannot annul our marriage, it’s been consummated…several times over. We’ve children.”

“Children?” Rhaenyra sucks in a breath.

“Two daughters and two sons.”

“Might I see my grandchildren?”

“Of course,” Y/N holds up a finger, dashing over to the throne room doors and inviting her family inside.

The children scamper in as Rhaenyra’s eyes well with tears.

Dahlia stares at her grandmother in wonder, while Visera clings to Aegon’s leg.

“This is my mummy,” Y/N tells her children, “remember how I told you?”

Laenor moves toward her first, waving his hands.

“Well hello, my prince,” Rhaenyra bends down to greet him. “Who might you be?”

He smiles, “up.”

Rhaenyra huffs a laugh, taking him into her arms. “That’s quite a name, Prince Up.”

“It’s Laenor,” Y/N says, bringing Dahlia closer, with their hands clasped together. “This is Dahlia.”

“Good morrow,” Dahlia smiles.

“Good morrow, Dahlia. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Rhaenyra beams, “if you could put in a good word for me with your sister, it would be much appreciated.”

“Visera is shy.” Dahlia whispers, “but she will come round.”

Aegon the fourth kicks his chubby legs, squirming about in his father’s arms as they approach the Queen.

“My goodness.” Rhaenyra turns to him, “what a warm welcome.”

The little boy squeals, as Y/N takes him from Aegon, freeing his arms for Visera, who hides her face in his shoulder.

“And this is Aegon, the fourth.” Y/N smiles, presenting him to her mother.

Rhaenyra grins, “hello, sweet boy.”

He covers both eyes, with his little hands, babbling loudly.

“You are a delight.” Rhaenyra reaches a hand out, tickling his belly. “I should like you all to join us in the grand hall for supper tonight. We will feast, in your honor.”

“Mother, we did not prepare clothes for a feast.” Y/N tells her. “But if you’ve material, I will make do. In these past years, I have learned to stitch quite well.”

“And I could assist in the kitchens.” Aegon offers.

Y/N’s eyes light up, “you must taste his baking, mother. It is divine.”

Rhaenyra shakes her head. Not sparing a glance at her half brother, “you are my guests. I will have gowns and robes sent to your rooms. You will find everything as you left it.”

Y/N smiles, “we’ll see you for dinner then.”

The Queen nods, excusing them.

Y/N and Aegon lead the children away from the throne room, up the stairs toward Y/N’s old apartments. Meeting her younger brother and his heavily pregnant wife on the stairs.

“Sister?” Jacaerys blinks at her.

“Jace!”

“My love, might you find Luce and Joffrey?” Jacaerys asks of his wife. “Tell them our sister is here.”

“Of course, husband.” Baela leans in as his lips brush her cheek.

“You’re going to be a father?” Y/N grabs for his arm.

“I am a father.” Jace grins, “this will be our third.”

“Has it been that long?”

“Some seven years, sister.” Jacaerys looks to the children behind her. “And you,” he laughs, “have more to show for it than I do.”

Again Aegon is left standing off to the side as Y/N’s family fuss over her and their children. He is glad for it, surely. This is her dream, not his.

“Aegon?” Alicent gasps at the sight of him.

He turns to her slowly, “Mother?”

The Dowager Queen grimaces, “a word?”

“But of course.” Aegon steals one last glance at his wife and children before following his mother down the corridor. For a moment he thinks she might embrace him, until she grabs his face harshly between her fingers.

“What were you thinking?” Alicent seethes, “taking off like that? Putting your father in such a state of distress; his illness took him not even a day after receiving word that you stole his only granddaughter and heir to the throne.”

“Stole her?” Aegon huffs a laugh, “I did not steal her.”

“Did you not think for one second of the shame it would bring on your siblings, or me?”

“As you thought of my wants when you promised me to Helaena?” Aegon spits back.

“It was expected of you,” Alicent seethes.

“Only my supposed wrongdoings are ever clear to you.” Aegon scoffs, “so strike me for it, as you always do and let us be done with it. How dare I desire to marry the one person in the world who loved me?”

Alicent recoils as though he’s slapped her.

“Aegon?” Y/N calls for him, “where’ve you run off to?”

“I’m just here, darling girl.” Aegon replies, striding away from his mother.

“Is everything alright?” Y/N asks, holding a hand out to him.

“All is well, my dearest love.”

————————————————————————

Dinners at the Red Keep have not been this tense in years. Namely because the Blacks and Greens rarely break bread together.

Jacaerys’ and Baela’s children dance with their cousins as the quartet plays merrily, the six of them becoming fast friends.

Y/N laughs, pointing toward their eldest son. “Look, my love.”

Aegon leans his head closer to hers peering around his brother. Laenor spins round in circles until he is dizzy enough to fall over. When he is able to stand, he goes straight back to it. Aegon chuckles, “we’ll need to keep an eye on that one.”

“Without doubt.” Y/N remarks, bouncing Aegon the fourth in her lap. He grabs a fistful of her mashed potatoes.

“Oh my,” Aegon grabs his hand, wiping it clean with his napkin.

“You’d like dinner too, wouldn’t you?” Y/N says, turning the boy toward her.

Little Aegon coos at her.

Aegon presses a kiss to his son’s cheek.

“Won’t you excuse me for a moment,” Y/N addresses the table, “I need to feed him.”

“We’ve nurses,” Daemon offers. “You’re welcome to finish your meal.”

“That’s quite alright,” Y/N says, pushing away from the table. “We’ve survived without nurses thus far.”

Aegon catches her hand, “will you return or shall I bring the children up when they are through?”

“I will return, shortly.” Y/N squeezes his fingers before moving down the row of chairs into the hall.

Aegon clears his throat, as other occupants of the table eye him, warily. “Lovely meal.”

“Indeed,” Otto agrees.

————————————————————————-

Y/N wakes the next morn to rays of sun shining through the large window of her childhood bedchamber.

Aegon feels her begin to stir, tightening his hold around her waist.

“What did your mother say to you yesterday?”

“It is far too early to raise this matter, my heart.” He grumbles.

Y/N huffs, toying with his fingers. “She was awful to you, wasn’t she?”

Aegon presses his lips to her shoulder, “it matters not.”

“It matters to me.”

Days pass, Y/N does not press the subject. Though she does exercise every opportunity to glare at her mother by law.

They spend afternoons in the courtyard garden, with their children. Picking flowers to make crowns, finding shapes in the clouds.

“Just there I see a rabbit.” Visera tells her mother and father.

“Where?” Aegon cocks his head to the side.

“There’s the ears and there’s its tail.”

“Oh, I see.” Aegon spots it, “that’s quite a coat of fur on him, hmm?”

Aegon the fourth plucks petals from the wildflowers Dahlia weaves together, sighing as she does.

“What troubles you, my love?” Y/N asks, passing a hand over her silver waves.

“Everyone has been so kind and happy to receive us…though no one seems happy to receive father.” Dahlia says, taking one of the flowers and tucking it behind her Papa’s ear.

“That is the way of things, my darling.” Aegon smiles, sadly.

“We are happy to receive him.” Y/N insists. “Give father a big hug.”

Laenor sees the pile of bodies, throwing himself on top of his elder sisters.

“Squeeze him as tightly as you can and say ‘I love you, father.’”

“I love you, father!” Even Aegon the fourth chimes in, with a loud approving babble.

“I love you too.” Aegon tells his children, wrapping his arms around them.

“I think if no one is kind to you, we ought to go back home.” Visera whispers to him. “It needn’t be the way of things.”

“Too right you are, my darling.” Y/N breathes.

“Y/N, might I have a word with you?” Rhaenyra calls out to the courtyard.

“Of course, your grace,” she smiles, looking to her children. “Keep father company for me. I’ll return shortly.”

Rhaenyra leads her farther into the gardens. “When you were a girl, your grandsire and I would bring you here to watch the changing of the leaves.”

“I remember.” Y/N says, wistfully.

“I owe you an apology,” Rhaenyra takes her hands. “For many years, I thought Aegon stole you away from me. I blamed him, for the death of our father.”

“It was not his fault, mother.” Y/N insists, “I wanted a marriage for love.”

“I see that now.” Rhaenyra assures her. “He is a fine husband to you and a good father to your children. I should not have pushed so relentlessly to end your union.”

Y/N shakes her head, “all is forgiven.”

“Even in our years apart, you have remained my heir. As I believe you would be a great ruling Queen, if that is what you desire. I will provide your children places of high status in court. For Aegon, a seat at the small council.” Rhaenyra offers, “and of course, my sincere apology for the way I have acted.”

“You wish for us to stay?”

Rhaenyra cups her cheek, “very much so.”

Y/N looks down at her wedding ring. “I know Alicent has been unkind to him. I will not stay in a place where he’s treated poorly.”

“I will speak with her.”

“And…I fear Aegon holds little interest in the small council.” Y/N admits, “I hope that too is negotiable.”

“All things are,” Rhaenyra assures her.

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#house of the dragon #aegon targaryen x you #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon targaryen #hotd aegon #aegon ii #aegon imagine

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charliemwrites · 1 year ago

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Part 4 of Mafia!Price

No Content Warnings

There are many things to appreciate about your boss, but one of them is his respect for routine. You’ve gotten him on a schedule and now he seems happily beholden to it; appreciates your promptness with tea and pastries and morning “briefings” each day.

He’ll happily sit back in his big leather chair and listen to you chatter out his itinerary for the day. Meetings, reports, phone calls. Trips to the dock, now, bless him.

You try not to stare between glances at your tablet. For a rich bastard, he is unfairly handsome. Good taste in just about everything, classy and luxurious without being ostentatious. Old money vibes, for sure, though you know better than to do more than idly wonder. Helps that he’s also remarkably gentlemanly with you. You’re not one to buy into old stereotypes or gender roles, even the ones that benefit you — but you’ll take a chivalrous boss over your old one any day.

Besides, it’s not like he’s spouting off about what women should and shouldn’t be doing. Or trying to use you as an example of an “acceptable” working woman. So, yeah, you’ll indulge in the door-holding and offered arms.

“Alright, best for last — your reservation for Muse is tomorrow. The restaurant is twenty minutes from your penthouse, so Simon will be downstairs by 7:30.”

You check that off your to-do list as you continue speaking.

“Do you have a suit picked out yet, or should I order something? Green is in season and it would go nicely with your eyes.”

He hums; you glance up. Leaning back, one arm lax on the arm of his chair, black watch gleaming. The other is propped to press his index finger against his lips. Like he’s telling you to keep a secret. The corners of his mouth are tilted up.

Your tablet dings and thankfully distracts you from staring.

Oh, for the love of— the only person more inconsiderate than Philip Graves is his damn assistant.

“Is that the color you’re wearing, then?”

Will need to call later today — as if!

“Hm?” You ask, not having caught it.

He arches his eyebrows; ah, you must have been making a face again.

“Are you wearing green tomorrow?” He repeats.

You blink. Are you what?

“Tomorrow, sir?”

He nods, once. “To Muse, luv.”

When you continue to stare with pleasant obliviousness, his eyebrows furrow a bit.

“You do know one of those seats is for you, yeah?”

You press your lips together for a moment. Well… shit. You take it back. You take it all back. John Price is a terrible, horrible, awful man who is so rude.

“I do now.”

Across the office, you make wide eye contact with Gaz. He grimaces in sympathy and ducks his head, though it’s clearly just to hide his traitorous laughter.

“Of course you’re coming along.”

“Sir,” you say, pleasant and sweet, “remember when I first started here? And I told you that I’m not a mind reader?”

“Of course,” he answers. “You threatened to spit in my tea in the same breath.”

“Only if you told me to fetch it for you,” you correct, before continuing, “I feel you may need a reminder: I cannot read your mind. How was I supposed to know you wanted me to go with you?”

“‘S your job, isnit?” He replies. You give him a dark look; he puts his hands up with a chuckle. “My apologies love, I thought you’d be in my pocket next to my handkerchief. Like always.”

You set your hand on your hip, proper cross now.

“It’s outside usual working hours, sir. How could I have possible expected to be invited to your fancy man party?”

“‘Fancy man party’?”

“Well, there’s nothing for it, I’ll have to leave early tomorrow.”

You’re already tapping madly at your tablet, looking up a salon willing to do your hair and makeup. God knows what kind of meltdown you’ll have if you can’t get your eyeliner symmetrical.

“Do whatever you need to do, luv,” Price soothes, standing. “I really am sorry for the short notice.”

You wave him off, then pat his arm as he gently guides you towards the door. Absently, you comply, more focused on getting appointments set and rearranging your own schedule for tomorrow.

“I’ll make it work,” you promise, “I always do.”

You let him bring you all the way to your desk, lower yourself into your ergonomic rolling chair.

“I’ll let you know what color I’m wearing by… one o’clock. Yes?”

“Sounds great, luv.”

You glance at the clock. “Also you have a call with the KorTac Group in ten.”

He chuckles and taps your chin. “Cheers, luv.”

—

Simon is the one to pick you up Friday evening. You both pause in the lobby of your apartment complex, staring.

“You look lovely,” he says at the same time you ask, aghast, “what happened to your face?”

He’s got a dark bruises discoloring the skin around one eye. Clearly some ice has already been applied because the swelling is down, but it must be fresh because he didn’t have it yesterday.

He snorts. “My job happened.”

You tut. “I’ve got something for that but we need to get moving. Mr. Price said he needs some help with his suit.”

You grab his arm without hesitation, habit from any of your escorts or drivers always offering it to you. Usually you accept out of politeness, but tonight you could use the extra stability in your heels. Simon doesn’t seem to mind even though this is the first time you’ve done this.

He walks you to the car, holds the door for you. Sleek and spotless, a black Jaguar — your choice for the evening. You hum in delight at the warm interior as Simon slides into the front seat.

“Oh, thank you for the compliment, by the way,” you add as he pulls into traffic. “You look quite smart as well.”

He grunts, but you notice a bit of color to his ears in the passing streetlights. You smile to yourself and busy yourself with your tablet. Double checking the reservation confirmation, answering messages from Farah and Gaz, updating Price on your ETA.

The car stops at a luxury high rise just at 7. You hop out before Simon can get the door and receive a sharp look. He holds up a reprimanding finger; blink in surprise at the sternness of it.

“You pull that shite again and I’ll handcuff you to the door handle, miss.” He warns. “Making me look bad.”

You huff, amused, and take his arm again. “Don’t threaten me, Mr. Riley, I’m meaner.”

But you squeeze his thick bicep good-naturedly as he leads you into Price’s building. Your boss lives in the penthouse at the very top; Simon has to swipe a card for access. He’s also got a key to let you both in the door, holds it so you can enter first.

It’s all sleek and modern; not at all what you would expect of your boss’s more classical style. His office has a sort of 20s Hollywood vibe (gangster, you teased once) but clearly some interior designer was paid far too much for something out of a drab minimalist catalogue.

You don’t linger long, heels clicking on the polished floors.

“Sir?” you call.

“In here, luv.”

You grimace at the flight of stairs between you and the loft, but force yourself up them. The whole floor is the mater bedroom and it’s the size of your entire apartment. Walk-in closet, sectioned off lounge with a desk. His bathroom door is open, mirror fogged. It smells like soap.

“Bedroom to your right,” he calls.

You tip-tap in and your mouth instantly dries. Price is standing in the middle of the room, half dressed. Nothing unprofessional, no. He’s wearing slacks, a belt. But he’s also in socks, a white undershirt. No watch or rings or anything yet.

It feels oddly more intimate than it should. Your face warms despite yourself.

“E-evening, sir.”

He turns and you’re utterly unprepared for just how handsome he really is. Freshly groomed, hair trimmed and gelled, eyes bright.

“Well, aren’t you just a dream,” he rasps. “You’re stunning.”

You clear your throat, know that all the makeup in the world can’t hide how brightly you’re flushing. It’s pure politeness, he’s not looking at you with anything more than friendly appreciation. Mind out of the gutter, now.

“All the flattery in the world won’t save you if we’re late,” you manage, shaking yourself back into work mode. “So let’s see what we’ve got.”

You pick his shirt, a pocket hanky, his shoes. Tell him to get into those while calling Simon up the stairs. He’s there so fast you blink in surprise, then gesture him over. Sit him on an ottoman and extract the little bottle of makeup you’ve started keeping on hand for situations like this.

“Bullshite you had that in your purse,” he scoffs.

“You remember two weeks ago, when Soap came in with that bruise on his jaw?”

They told you it was a “disagreement” at the docks. You didn’t ask further, figuring it was some sort of bar brawl in that part of town. Rowdy boys.

“Ever since, I keep a couple minis on hand for you all.”

They’re so small that you just keep them in a pocket of your purse with the rest of your makeup and the tampons. Good for emergencies like this.

“You sure you’re not a mind reader?” Simon grumbles as you gently dab it over his face.

“How would being a mind reader even help in this situation,” you scoff, patting at it with your middle finger.

Price steps out of the closet with arms out. He’s picked a waistcoat as well that you hum in approval at.

“Which cufflinks are you wearing?” you ask, turning back to Simon. He’s sitting remarkably still and stoic — reminds you of a big dog trying to maintain some dignity while getting fawned over.

“The silver and diamond.”

You make a noise of disagreement. “The gold and onyx would go better.”

A pause. You sneak a glance and are relieved to see him smirking. “I’ll wear those then. Any opinion on a watch?”

You hum again, carding through your mental catalogue. “Oh! The Bulova you wore during that meeting with Kate Laswell. You remember?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He disappears into his closet again while you lightly blend in the last touches of Simon’s coverup.

“There we are, good as new!” You declare. “Oh, and here.”

You set a couple of ibuprofen in his palm as he stands. “For the inflammation. Take with water.”

“Yes, mum,” he mumbles.

You wince. “Sorry! I’m being overbearing, aren’t I?”

He blinks, then puts a hand up. “No, no. That wasnt — I didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

You don’t entirely believe him. Know that you can be a bit much when you’re on a time crunch. Especially for something like this — an important business meeting over fancy dinner. You feel like everyone’s appearance is riding on you; this is your job after all. One thing out of place and everything will fall apart and it’ll be your fault.

“Simon, go take those,” Price orders from behind.

You turn as he approaches, a similar apology all set on your tongue. Instead, he gives you a sheepish smile and offers the cufflinks.

“Bloody useless with these,” he explains. “So unless you want to spend fifteen minutes losing respect for me…”

You laugh, amused by the idea of your hyper-capable boss struggling with a bit of jewelry that cost as much as a week of work. You step in close to thread them through his sleeves, fingers nimble and sure.

“You’re not wearing cologne?” You ask, surprised.

Don’t even realize how that might sound until he arches an eyebrow at you.

“Thought you might have an opinion on that too,” he replies. “And you haven’t steered me wrong, yet.”

He shows you his modest, but impressive collection of colognes. You pluck up one, sniff, and make a face, eyes watering a bit. It’s mostly full; clearly one he doesn’t wear often and you’re grateful for it.

“That bad, eh?”

“Sir, why?” You lament, putting it back.

“Gift from an ex,” he explains.

You store that tidbit of information away for further examination. The idea of your boss in a romance. Right now you’ve got a task to focus on.

“Did they hate you that entire time?” You wonder.

He snorts. “Maybe.”

You shake your head and pick a different one. Blink in surprise and sniff again. Feel your stomach flip.

“That one?” He asks when he notices you hesitate.

“No,” you say a little too quickly, setting it down. This is a business meeting, you can’t afford to be distracted by how he’ll smell with that on his skin.

You settle on one that doesn’t make your head dizzy and your panties shamefully damp. Still feel a bit like you’re shooting yourself in the foot, though. He’s going to smell sinfully good regardless.

You leave Price to his finishing touches and have Simon help you down the stairs. Check through the notes you hurriedly collected when you realized you’d be attending this dinner.

Price comes down too soon for your poor, stupid heart. Looks like something out of a magazine or a novel or a movie or… just too good to be real, really.

“Pass inspection?” He asks.

“Barely,” you tease.

His eyes do that thing where they smile more than his mouth; how you know it’s genuine. You try not to fluster, zero in on his tie, a little crooked and loose.

“Goodness, sir,” you murmur, stepping in close. Yeah, you were right. That cologne is going to be a personal challenge all night. “How did you get along before me?”

“With bad cologne and shitty ties, apparently,” he chuckles.

You grin despite yourself, getting it secure and centered, before smoothing his vest over it. Give him a once over. Feel your stomach flip again.

“If I may say, sir, you look handsome,” you offer quietly.

“Should hope so,” he replies, voice dipping in a way that’s detrimental to the state of your panties. “You dressed me.”

You hum, reach for your usual dry, sharp humor. “I have great taste.”

Instead of scoffing, he hums in agreement. Something flickers through his eyes that you don’t dare allow yourself to daydream on.

Simon, bless him, clears his throat and draws your attention. You check the clock above the stove.

“Ah, we need to get going. I can’t walk fast in these heels.”

You slip your arm automatically into Price’s and try not to obsess over how well you two fit together.

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Masterlist

#cod #my writing #fanfiction #reader fic #oddly wholesome for a mafia au #mafia!au #mafia boss price #assistant reader

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utterlyotterlyx · 7 months ago

Text

A Ballad of Storm and Shadow

Azriel x F!Reader

Part One

Summary - Rhys had been content in taking the darkest secret of his family to the grave, but when the threat of Hybern increases, he has no choice but to send a message to another world and pray to the Mother that his call is answered.

Warnings - angst, mentions of war, tension, fluff, touch of sadness and longing

This is a crossover series, some aspects will differ from that in the books. Physical attributes are described in this fic, it is essential to the storyline of the character

Rain spattered against the ledge, the open window allowing the tears of the sky to coat the black glossed paint with their sadness. Azriel watched them inquisitively, noting how each droplet fell further into the room than the last, his shadows pecked along the ground to dry the dampened spots and it was a welcome distraction from the conversation encircling the room.

The storm raged on overhead, cracks of lightening slicing across the sky every few moments, the clouds rumbling their anger throughout the city. A harmony to the idea of war.

There was no avoiding it. The war, that is. It had consumed Azriel's every thought as he played out every possible scenario in his mind, ones where they all made it out alive, and the ones where they all perished alongside Prythian. It was those visions that kept him up at night, flashes of Cassian's bloodied face lifeless against the earth, wings torn and soul withered, were enough to make him desperate enough to the point that he'd give anything to avoid it.

Azriel ran his marred hands over the curve of his leathers, soothing down each muscle and drifting over every glowering siphon attached to his body, doing his best to pull himself from the images that plagued his waking moments and sleepless nights.

If Rhys were speaking then Azriel would have been listening, but, surprisingly, he wasn't. Rhys stared dead ahead, nails digging into his nails beds and jaw clenching along with the reeling thoughts plaguing his own mind, staring right ahead at the corner of the table placed in the centre of the seating area at the River House. Azriel wasn't the only one who noticed, Amren had halted her words to slice through his train his thought, "Are you going to say anything?"

Rhys' gaze pulled from its formerly trained spot at the table edge toward his second in command, and it was clear that there was something he wasn't sharing with his family. His eyes drifted about the room, landing on each one of them in turn before they landed on Feyre and wavered slightly. Azriel couldn't blame his brother for his fear, he had finally gotten everything he had ever wanted after all the horrors he had endured, and now that picture perfect life was being threatened.

But something still wasn't right. Rhys was too consumed in his mind to pay any real attention to what Amren was saying, what plans were being spoken of, and that wasn't like Rhys. It wasn't like Rhys at all to blatantly ignore words spoken that could aid them in their collective efforts against Hybern. Azriel couldn't exactly be too picky about it though, considering he too was ignoring the firedrake fumbling plans into fruition, also too consumed by his own demons.

"The High Lords will be convening in three days time," his words were tense, his eyes burning, "Give me one night to think. We can start on this tomorrow," Rhys ran his hand over his face and leaned back in his chair, inhaling deeply and pinching the bridge of his now.

"The future of this continent, your home, is threatened, and you wish to speak of this tomorrow?" Amren scoffed, her silver eyes dancing under the faelight in warning.

Rhys rose from his seat, having had enough of the incessant drawls of war and death and offered Feyre his hand, a hand that she took willingly and stood at his side, fingers wrapped around his forearm and body drifting beside him, "Yes, I do. I cannot think when this is all you're speaking of, Amren. I am High Lord, and I need to think about how to spare my family and my people from this."

Instead of retorting in a way only she could, Amren contained her fury and buried it deep within her core, "Fine." Amren almost spat at his feet, but he paid no mind to it, he didn’t have the energy to go head-to-head with Amren that night, not when there was a much more pressing matter to attend to.

So, Rhys took Feyre to bed, and made sure that she was sound asleep before removing himself from her embrace. He threw an onyx silken shirt over his body but didn’t bother strewing up any of the buttons, content in allowing the night air to glide across his skin, he wasn’t sure how long he was going to able to appreciate its touch.

The High Lord of Night paced through the River House swiftly, not wanting to disturb any member of his family or alert them to his movements, and as soon as he stood on an ornately stunning balcony, the same he had stood on with Feyre that night on Starfall, did he unfurl his glorious wings and take to the skies, determined to reach the place that he hadn’t visited in over 200 years. A pool of starlight lay within a small valley within the mountains, not too far from the cabin but recluse enough for no one to be able to find it unless they knew that it lay there.

It had been too long since he had been there, but the all too familiar aura curled around him like a lost hound and pulled him down to it. The pool twinkled in greeting, reflecting the endless wonder of the sky above, and Rhys then remembered just how small it was, and just how long it had been since he peered into it or drifted his fingers along its rippling surface.

None other than he knew of what it truly was - not even his mate- it was a thin veil between worlds, a veil he used to send messages through often in hope that they’d find the one intended for, and he would wait for hours at a time for a whisper of a response. One time he had waited an entire day, desperate to hear her voice on the wind, hauntingly mesmerising like a siren to a sea captain, replying to his message with her usual level of warmth and understanding.

Then one day he just stopped visiting the place, the weight of her void had become too much to bear, too much that he had made the selfish decision to try and move on, to live his life in anyway that he could. Part of Rhys thought that she would have commended him for it, that she would have understood and that she was somewhere and knew of his strength, pain, and success of finding his mate.

But it had been so long. Rhys wasn’t sure if the pool was being monitored from her end, and he was terrified that his plea would fall upon deaf ears. But she was the only one who could help them, the only one powerful enough to give them any real chance of surviving. That power was the reason she had been sent away in the first place.

Rhys fell to his knees at the bank of the water, the contact of his markings without their twin flames in the snow causing the pool to ripple and hum with eons old yearning, and the stars within it began to glow, eager and ready to pull his words from his lips and sail them through the veil. He lowered himself to the surface, his face reflecting in the water showing him just how exhausted he had appeared, and the pool knew it, it knew of his desperation and rippled in a way that Rhys was sure it would split open at any given moment.

But, the water settled and shuddered, the gate between him and the one he thought of often still firmly in place.

"I'm sorry that it's been so long," he began, not knowing what to say to soften the blow but wanting to believe that she wasn't angry at him for it, and hoping that she too was thriving wherever her feet carried her. "If it means anything, I have missed you, and not a day has passed where I haven't thought of you," he fiddled with his fingers, his breath sending gentle wisps of steam rising into the air, "I found my mate. You'd like her, I think. She's my High Lady now, things have certainly changed."

"We are going to war. The Cauldron is in the grasp of our enemy and it threatens to devour the continent as we know it, and I fear that none of us with survive the destruction. I suppose I just wanted to speak to you, to say that I'm sorry I haven't visited in so long, and to let you know that I love you despite our distance. I may not survive what's to come, but I just wanted you to know that, and if there's any way you could come and save my ass then that would be greatly appreciated," he spoke the last words with a soft chuckle.

Rhys often thought of what she looked like, she had been only a girl when she was sent away, thrust through a portal with no way of knowing how to get back if she wished it. The day he heard her whisper through the pool had been the best day of his life, and on some level, he knew it still was in a sense. In those days, Rhys knew that she was alive, she may have been struggling but at least her heart was still beating and soul was raining havoc.

He wasn't sure of what he was expecting, he knew the chances of a reply were slim to nothing, but his heart still sank when the pool rippled with intoxicating silence.

Rhys waited another hour at least, but when the stars within the pool began to dim, he knew that it was time to leave. He rose to his feet, his soul solemn and heavy, and he couldn't bring himself to glance backward at the water as he ascended to the skies.

It was a pity really, for if he had turned around for but a moment, he would have seen the pool sparkle to life.

Azriel was curious.

It wasn't often that he found Rhys to be hiding something from him, or any of them for that matter. It was the beauty of their shared family, they knew all of the worst things about one another, from actions to thoughts, and nothing was counted as being too ferocious to accept.

But Azriel knew that Rhys was hiding something, his High Lord had been on edge from the moment he had returned to the River House after sneaking out that night, under the impression that no one had known of his time away. But Azriel knew everything, every single move was accounted for thanks to his shadows and his own keen hearing.

The Shadowsinger had merely thought that Rhys needed a moment to himself to think, but as the time stretched on, it seemed that Rhys was on a mission of sorts, and Azriel's suspicions became clear when he saw his brother the next morning, hair askew and eyes occasionally flickering through the window to a certain spot against the mountain face.

Rhys had worn the same expression for three days, not even Feyre could get him to talk to her about what it was that had him so concerned. But Azriel couldn't miss the longing in his eyes each time he passed by the window, like he was expecting someone to float up to the glass pane and solve all of their problems.

The day had come to meet with the High Lords, and the location had been set at the Dawn Court Palace, Thesan had always been the perfect mediator, besides, Cassian had been banned from Summer which automatically ruled that location from the list.

To Azriel's understanding, Rhys hadn't uttered a single word to anyone all morning, not even a single scold toward Cassian and Mor for their incessant bickering. It was worrying Feyre, Azriel noticed, he saw the emotion sketched into her furrowed brow each time she would try and speak to her mate to only be ignored. It seemed as though only Azriel and Feyre, and perhaps Amren, had noticed it.

The silence continued all the way to the Dawn Court, and Rhys' brooding only lightened when Helion appeared after his lacklustre greeting to Kallias and Viviane, spurring Rhys to remember the reason why they were there, what they had to do in order to give Prythian a fighting chance against Hybern and the Cauldron.

Helion jerked his chin toward Feyre, asking, "Does Tamlin know what she is?"

Rhys, his sadness wavering for a moment as they stood before the doors to the meeting chamber, spoke, "If you mean beautiful and clever, then yes - I think he does."

Azriel watched Helion closely, taking a tentative step toward his High Lord and Lady as the High Lord of Day sent Rhys a unimpressed flat glare, "Does he know that she is your mate, and High Lady?"

Ignoring Viviane's squeal, Rhys answered, picking a loose thread from his jacket and allowing it to float to the ground, "If he arrives then I suppose we will find out."

"I always liked you, Rhysand," Helion said after a lethally dark chuckle, knowing just how powerful he was in comparison to Rhys' brothers; he rolled his shoulders and glanced to Nesta, his gaze lingering whilst he enquired of who she was.

"She is my sister," Azriel didn't miss the muffled flinch that sliced across Rhys' face, "She will tell her story when the others are here."

Skittering steps against the pale golden stone pulled the attention of the Inner Circle toward Thesan who was surrounded by his highly alert Peregryns, beings who seemed a little too on edge.

"I hate to interrupt," Thesan drawled with wary eyes before they landed on Rhys, "But there is a woman I have never seen before in the meeting chamber, she says that you sent for her."

No one could miss how Rhys' entire body language changed from lax to urgent, his posture straightening and eyes boring into the doors of the chamber as though he could see through them; his breathing quickened, and it became apparent that whoever the woman was had been the cause of his ire for the last three days.

Begrudgingly, Rhys followed Thesan's order to wait for the others, Tarquin seemed less than pleased to be stood before Rhys, and it wasn't long until Beron and Eris rounded the corner of the corridor, sneering and spitting their horrid words, sending warning glares to Cassian and Azriel in particular for the scuffle between the two courts over the now High Lady of the Night Court and Lucien Vanserra.

Opening the doors, the woman lounging in the chair facing their entrance was not the person Rhys had been longing to see, Azriel deduced that much from the instant droop of his shoulders before he fully even saw her face. She sat in one of the deep rooted chairs, legs strewn over the arm and a dagger pricking into each one of her fingers, not hard enough to break the skin.

She was glad in a green dress that extenuated her long legs and her utterly wild scent had enveloped the room, a scent of lemon verbena and crackling embers, her blonde hair was well tamed and pinned backward in a loose yet luxurious ensemble, and power poured off of her in searing waves.

"And who exactly are you?"

A grin formed on her lips at the defensive question directed her way by Helion, and she rolled her eyes incredulously in response, sliding her legs from the arm and propping her elbows upon them, "Is that any way to greet a guest?" The tip of her dagger scratched into the wood of her seat, a curved and lethal weapon not of Prythian, "They really don't have any manners," she spoke loudly, directing the comment elsewhere.

Large hands clasped around the back of her seat and a flash of white hair reflected against the dying sunlight, "She did tell us that they were going to be apprehensive of us, Fireheart." The woman hummed, seemingly unphased by who she was trapped in a room with, anyone else would have been quaking in their boots at the knowledge of it.

"I didn't think she was being serious-"

"You haven't answered the question. Tell us who you are and why you're here, or-"

"Or what?" The woman's gold ringed eyes glistened, hungry and bristling with a flame Rhys, nor any of them, had ever witnessed. She rose from the seat, "You'll hurt us? I'd like to see you try."

Azriel stuck to Feyre and Rhys, sizing up the male with the tattoos in an ancient language littered down the side of his face, and that only seemed to make the male smirk, "Don't think about it. You wouldn't last a minute."

Tension simmered in the chamber, the High Lords of Prythian bar one faced the two strangers who looked much like them but were different in every single way imaginable.

Only when a click of heels entered the room followed by an exasperated sigh, did the two strangers grin, their offensive stance dissipating before Rhys' very eyes as they turned to make room for another.

"You'll come to rather enjoy Aelin's wit," a voice as mesmerising as the crashing summer waves called into the simmering silence, a voice so perfect that it had Rhys almost whimpering in disbelief as he took a step forward. Another woman appeared adorning a playful smirk, "And the vein in Rowan's forehead."

Azriel studied her, even his shadows couldn't stop themselves from peeking over his shoulders at the sound of her melodic voice, one so calming that it had them dancing toward it. She was by far one of the most incredible creatures Azriel had ever seen, dressed in an impeccable midnight blue gown that exposed her taut legs, allowing Azriel to see the two markings delicately placed below her knees, the twins to Rhys' own. Her hair was as dark as the night and swaying with each step, eyes as violet as the summer horizon that were lovingly teasing her companions, and she moved with a grace Azriel had never encountered in all of his years. A crown composed of onyx stone flowers and jewels curled around her head and glittered in the slowly decaying light, it was delicate and rested just over her ears, keeping her skin free from the imprint of it.

But it wasn't the crown nor the dress that had really stolen Azriel's eye, no, it was the pristine pair of feathered wings that were tucked neatly behind her back, not wings of an Illyrian, but wings of some form of angel Azriel presumed. They resembled the night sky, black and speckled with silver, and the longer Azriel focused on them, the more he struggled to believe that they weren't enriched feathers of pure starlight.

Rhys loosened a breath of disbelief, and his bottom lip quaked softly as he took her in, eyes trailing up her form and resting on her face, not believing who was stood before him but thanking the Mother all the same, "You came."

With her dress swaying in the breeze infiltrating the room from the open arches of the chamber, she faced Rhys and smiled sadly, taking a moment to drink him in just as he had with her before she answered, "You called."

"I didn't think you heard me," he took another step toward the curve of the pool, slowly but surely closing the gap between them, "You've grown."

"I've always heard you," their features were so strikingly similar, and Azriel was grasping onto any memory or mention of the female before his eyes, "And, if I hadn't have grown in over 500 years I'd be quite concerned."

Rhys laughed, throwing his head back and lips stretching into a smile of pure bliss, he didn't stop his steps this time, no, he allowed his feet to carry him all the way to her and bundled her up in his embrace, inhaling the scent of her deeply into his lungs "Hello sister."

Sister.

The two strangers, Aelin and Rowan, took a step back, serene smiles on their faces as they watched, seemingly understanding what it meant for the Rhys and the female, "Hello you," she replied, wrapping her arms around him and holding him tightly, "Someone mentioned that you have a mate now?"

Rhys pulled backward and sent her a look of wonderment, "I do. Feyre, darling? Would you?" He extended an arm out to her and Feyre wasted no time in joining him, "This is y/n. My sister."

"Well, half-sister, but we don't take notice of the specifics," she grinned at Rhys and softly nudged him, "It's an honour to meet you, Feyre Cursebreaker."

"How do you-"

She waved her hand dismissively, "I know many things."

"It's true, it's extremely annoying," Aelin spoke flatly nestled under Rowan's arm, the fire in her eyes softening.

Glancing about, Azriel became completely aware of just how much the beauty of y/n had captured the attention of all within the room, from the hue of her skin to the glossy black of her hair, from the curve of her jaw to the strikingly vibrant eyes that had stolen Azriel's breath from the moment the light had hit them.

She was undeniably Rhys' sister, but Azriel was sure that Rhys had only ever had one, and she died years ago.

"I'm sorry, but how?" Cassian couldn't help but ask, drawing the attention of everyone to him, he glanced to Azriel who shrugged, confirming that he knew nothing of the female before their very eyes.

Y/N smiled softly, her eyes dimming slightly and promised, "My," she looked to Rhys for a moment, "Our story-" her gaze returned to Cassian, but not before gently floating over Azriel and widening slightly, "-is one for a different day. Prythian is in danger and you need help, I'm here to provide it."

"What about us?"

"One more word Aelin and I'll send you back home, I'm sure Aedion would love to take your place."

Aelin gasped, "You don't mean that."

"Try me. See where you land this time round."

Aelin grimaced, recounting the time y/n had shoved her through one of her fancy test portals to only land in the foulest smelling swamp she had ever experienced. She kept her lips sealed and moved to the seat where she had been sat minutes before with a forced smile, prompting the rest of the occupants of the chamber to do the same.

The Shadowsinger moved with the rest of the Inner Circle, finding his place beside his High Lord and Lady, which was just a stones throw away from y/n, and he found himself completely lost in the scent of a brewing storm, his shadows unwinding from his body as it flooded his lungs and fighting through invisible storm clouds in order to brush against her for even a moment, to taste her skin and shudder at the power laced within it.

Crossing her leg over the other, Azriel watched y/n recline into the comfort of the seat, doing his best to not make his awe so obvious whilst she took a moment to gaze upon every person in the room, her eye lingering on a certain Autumn heir with a level of intrigue before she spoke with a feline grin, "So, you're all on the verge of death. Tell me more."

Author's Note

Trying a different writing style with this one - let me know what you think x

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hypnagogics · 10 months ago

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SUPERBLOOD WOLFMOON | teaser + summary

♡: spider!ellie williams x reader

FULL SYNOPSIS: in a city shrouded with mystery, lovable loser ellie williams leads a double life. by day, she's an ordinary young adult. she juggles her studies, a boring job at a run-down record store for a few extra bucks, playing guitar in her free time, and ignoring your texts, the usual. but by night, she transforms into a famed superhero, beloved by the country. she's there when any problems arise, whenever she is needed to sort a squabble out. however, maintaining anonymity as arachnelle is of utmost importance to her. she vowed to take that to her grave, it was just easier this way, keeping her life split in two.

as her most dear friend since the earliest days of childhood, you've always sensed there was a lot more to her than meets the eye, and in recent times your suspicions have reached an all-time high, with her being even more strange and avoidant than usual. your patience is running thin, as well as your curiosity rising, and you cannot help but pry into her affairs. but as you delve deeper into her secrets, you uncover a horrifying web of intrigue, crime, and danger, with a shadowy figure known only as the "claw" pulling the strings from behind the scenes, and potentially being the very source for any and all peril occurring in the city. amidst the whirlwind of chaos, blossoming romantic feelings begin to accumulate for your best friend, only complicating the already bizarre relationship between the two of you more. as you become entangled in this whole ordeal which all started with a few simple peculiarities—a fiasco you never grasped the true severity of before diving headfirst in—you'll traverse the labyrinth of hidden truths and city-wide corruption, all while grappling with your own personal emotions and doubts at the core. you'll be forced to face the daunting question of how much risk you're willing to endure in pursuit of the complete truth, and whether the sacrifices made along the way were truly worthwhile in the end.

read this first! ▪︎ daily click ▪︎ series playlist ▪︎ series masterlist

☆: yeah i can't keep a single thing to myself like ever i'm wayyyy too impatient and excited to share new things. new series!! i'm sososo hyped for this one :) lmk if you'd like to be added to the series taglist whichever way! the formatting of this is nicer on desktop trust me...

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nightprompts · 6 months ago

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&. 𝐟𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐬𝐚 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬.

( dialogue prompts taken from furiosa: a mad max story (2024), directed by george miller. feel free to edit and change as you seem fit. )

❛ as the world falls around us, how must we brave its cruelties? ❜

❛ we should go back now. ❜

❛ i'll come with you. ❜

❛ the stars be with you. ❜

❛ who's coming for us? ❜

❛ who do we have here? ❜

❛ what do they call you? ❜

❛ now, you have had a hard day, haven't you? you must be exhausted. ❜

❛ there's only one thing i need you to do and that is rest. ❜

❛ you don't have to say a word, i promise. ❜

❛ tomorrow, i'll take you home. ❜

❛ keep an eye on her, keep her safe. ❜

❛ you're bleeding. ❜

❛ i'm not gonna leave you. ❜

❛ whatever you have to do, however long it takes, promise me you’ll find your way home. ❜

❛ no, no, no. don’t look away. we mustn’t look away. ❜

❛ why would you run from me? ❜

❛ you’re gonna have to show me who you are. ❜

❛ you don’t have to watch if you don’t want to. ❜

❛ you may wanna close your eyes. ❜

❛ you will rule with me in the splendor of a new wasteland. ❜

❛ i’m afraid for you, sweetheart. really afraid. ❜

❛ witness me! ❜

❛ you’re all fools for coming here. ❜

❛ when things go bonkers, you have to adapt. ❜

❛ she looks nothing like you. ❜

❛ she has her mother’s perfections, and none of my deficiencies. ❜

❛ she’s perfect. not like the genetic absurdities you have for sons. ❜

❛ would you like to stay here in the citadel? ❜

❛ if i let you stay and you grow to become a strong, healthy woman, you could become one of our wives. ❜

❛ no! she’s not for sale, she’s mine. ❜

❛ you behave, i’ll behave. ❜

❛ where have i seen you before? ❜

❛ we're going to build ourselves a war rig. ❜

❛ he done the most runs on the fury road. and brung back the booty every time. ❜

❛ eyes left. they’re flanking us. ❜

❛ you’re going to pull over and get out. ❜

❛ where did you think you were going? ❜

❛ there is nowhere else. this is the wasteland. wherever you thought you were going does not exist. ❜

❛ i lost my convoy. i lost my crew. i’m gonna have to start again. and i’m driving off thinking i ought to start with you. ❜

❛ you may be raw, but you have about you a purposeful savagery. ❜

❛ you give me time, i’ll teach you everything you need to know about road war. ❜

❛ if you survive everything we take on together, you’ll have all the skills you need to get wherever you wanna go. ❜

❛ keep it. you’ll need it. ❜

❛ for you. for your travels. you’re done here. you’re free to go. ❜

❛ food, water, wheels, whatever you need. i'll help you put it together. give me a couple of days. ❜

❛ i want what you want. a full belly... and a fistful of bullets for a tank of gas. ❜

❛ we’re not leaving without our tankers full of gas. ❜

❛ you wanna get out of here, follow me. ❜

❛ let’s kill him. right now. ❜

❛ this place at the end of your map of secrets... where is it? ❜

❛ i wanna help you find this place. wherever it may be. ❜

❛ come with me. ❜

❛ there is no hope! not for them, not for you! certainly not for me! ❜

❛ it’s the price we all pay to survive in the wasteland. we cannot be soft! ❜

❛ stay! you’ll find peace here. ❜

❛ if you find him, he’s mine. ❜

❛ gentlemans, it’s time. time to do war. ❜

❛ here, no time for long goodbyes. we’ve done some mighty things together. goodbye. ❜

❛ you’ve found me. ❜

❛ you could have necked me in the night, but you didn’t. ❜

❛ i have nothing. i am nothing. ❜

❛ remember me? ❜

❛ you crawled out of a pitiless grave, deeper than hell. and only one thing’s gonna do that for you. and not hope. hate. ❜

❛ no shame in hate. it's one of the great forces of nature. ❜

❛ so... this is the day i die. i’ve always wondered how. ❜

❛ my childhood. my mother. i want them back. ❜

❛ i'm right there, i’m right there with you. i too craved nothing but revenge. ❜

❛ if the shooter goes around the back, the shootee won’t know the precise moment of the execution. ❜

❛ what you want, dear, are my cries of anguish. anguish without end. and if i could give you that, i would. ❜

❛ if you can’t do me quick, you’ll have to do me slow. ❜

❛ i’ve been waiting for someone like you, someone worthy of me. ❜

❛ no honor, no rule of law to sort things out. just two evil bastards out here in the wasteland. ❜

❛ you do this, you do this right, you become me. ❜

❛ i am nothing like you. ❜

❛ you are me. already dead. ❜

❛ to feel alive, we seek sensation. any sensation to wash away the cranky black sorrow. ❜

❛ the question is... do you have it in you to make it epic? ❜

#furiosa #sentence starters #inbox memes #ask memes #rp memes #roleplay memes #roleplay prompts #dialogue prompts #random dialogue #movies

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fataldrum · 6 months ago

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Dorian Gray is queer art, period.

Apparently Netflix has decided to make an adaption of The Picture of Dorian Gray with Dorian and Basil as siblings. Unless they're planning to go the gothic horror incest route, they've completely missed the point of the relationship between these characters.

If you haven't read the book, Basil is a painter who becomes infatuated with a beautiful young man, pouring his feelings into a painting. Dorian becomes jealous of the painting's beauty, realizing that he will never be as young and unspoiled as the version of himself on the canvas. He finds himself wishing that the painting could age instead of him. His wish is granted, allowing him to stay young and beautiful until the end, with his moral and spiritual decline reflected only in the painting.

I cannot overstate how queer this book is. Dorian is so beautiful that their first meeting inspires a wave of existential terror in Basil. Dorian changes Basil's entire understanding of art and beauty. This book is so queer it was used as evidence at Wilde's sodomy trial.

The existence of the portrait itself is tantamount to a confession of queer desire. Basil tells his friend, Lord Henry, that he can't exhibit the painting because "I have put too much of myself into it.”

Lord Henry (who will later lead Dorian into a life of vice) laughs, but Basil explains:

“[E]very portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. [...] It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.”

This is how he describes meeting Dorian:

When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. [...] I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then—but I don’t know how to explain it to you. Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I grew afraid and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that made me do so: it was a sort of cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to escape.”

Notice that turn of phrase--it was not conscience but cowardice that made him attempt to flee. Why would conscience factor into his decision? Because he felt shame at his reaction to Dorian's perfect, beautiful face.

Lord Henry is shocked to discover Basil cares for something besides his art.

“He is all my art to me now,” said the painter gravely. “I sometimes think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the world’s history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me.

Basil goes on to confess, "I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there."

Lord Henry still doesn't understand why there is too much of Basil in the painting, so Basil explains:

“Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it, and I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry—too much of myself!”

Lord Henry asks how Dorian feels about Basil, and his response is absolutely tragic.

The painter considered for a few moments. “He likes me,” he answered after a pause; “I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.”

Any adaptation that ignores the way Dorian's existence and beauty utterly destroyed Basil is doomed to be shallow and insipid. This is not just a book about a magic painting. It's a monument to queer longing.

#dorian gray #read this book it's so fucking gay

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octopiys · 2 years ago

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Some incorrect quotes and scenes for the pies

Roach: *Screams*

Ghost: *Screams louder to establish dominance*

Capt. MacTavish: Should we do something?

Capt. Price: No, I want to see who wins.

Alejandro: You lying, cheating, piece of shit!

Valeria: Oh yeah? You’re the idiot who thinks you can get away with everything you do. WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD

Alejandro: I’m leaving you, and I’M TAKING RODOLFO WITH ME

Rodolfo, picking up the monopoly board: I think we’re gonna stop playing now.

Price: You know, not every problem can be solved with a knife.

Ghost: That's why I carry two knives.

Soap: I made tea.

Ghost: I don’t want tea.

Soap: ....I did not make tea for you. This is my tea.

Ghost: Then why are you telling me?

Soap: It is a conversation starter.

Ghost: That’s a lousy conversation starter.

Soap: Oh, is it? We are conversing. Checkmate.

Gaz: Is letting someone win at chess sapiosexual bottoming

Price, putting his head in his hands: Does anyone in this goddamn team ever think before they speak-

Graves: Must be hard not being able to laugh

Alejandro: I do have a sense of humor you know

Graves: I’ve never heard you laugh before

Alejandro: I’ve never heard you say anything funny

Graves:

Graves: fuck you

Alejandro: fuck you

Soap, motioning to a Halloween display: All these ghosts! All these ghosts! I still can’t find a boo.

Ghost:

Ghost: is it because I said I didn't want your tea-

Soap: YES ITS BECAUSE YOU SAID YOU DIDNT WANT MY TEA

Ghost: Schrödinger’s cat is overrated. If you wanna see something that’s both dead and alive you can talk to me any time of the day.

Gaz, just finding out that Ghost is legally dead:

Gaz: Why isn’t the statue smirking at me?

Price: It isn’t smirking at anyone, they’re all just imagining it.

Soap: Three of us saw it, Cap. How do you explain that?

Price: *points at Soap* Sleep deprivation. *points at König* Paranoia. *points at Ghost* Delusional personality disorder.

Gaz:

Gaz: damn.

Roze: What’s something you guys are better than Horangi at?

Hutch: Mario Kart.

O'Conor: Yeah, video games.

König: Emotional vulnerability

Graves: *Gets down on one knee*

Alejandro: Oh my god, it’s finally happening.

Graves: *Falls over*

Alejandro: The poison is kicking in.

Gaz, after falling out of a heli for the third time: Do you take constructive criticism?

Nikolai: I only take cash or credit.

Soap: Can you keep a secret?

Ghost: Do you know anything about my life?

Soap: No I do not. Good point.

Gaz: Hey heads up if you try to make a candle with food coloring, the food coloring will just sink to the bottom of the glass, and when the flame eventually reaches the bottom all the food coloring will catch fire and become one giant tall flame that you cannot possibly blow out and the glass will start to crack and then you'll throw your tea on it in a panic and then the extremely hot food coloring will boil and sizzle horribly and then the glass will shatter. Please take my word on this haha-

Roach: What did you-?

Gaz: A MISTAKE WAS MADE

I just wanna say thank you all sm for 300 followers! You all r loved and I'm not good with responses but I appreciate them all so muck, thank u again :DDDDD

#call of duty #cod mw2 #modern warfare 2 #john soap mactavish #simon ghost riley #ghostsoap #incorrect quotes #captain john price #alejandro vargas #alerudy #rodolfo parra #kyle gaz garrick #gary roach sanderson #könig modern warfare #horangi #nikolai cod #phillip graves #valeria garza

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mcflymemes · 5 months ago

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THE DA VINCI CODE (2006) PROMPTS * assorted dialogue from the film, adjust as necessary

you say you hate history. nobody hates history. they hate their own histories.

we are who we protect, i think. what we stand up for.

that's why we study history... so we'll stop killing each other.

can you keep secrets? can you know a thing and never say it again?

how many have been murdered over this question?

if it's so important to you to stop us, then you're just going to have to shoot us.

understanding our past determines actively our ability to understand the present.

tonight, this will be our quest.

how would you know that?

you seem... uncomfortable.

you have me confused with someone else.

why would i try to run? i didn't do anything.

will you excuse me a moment?

i was supposed to have drinks with him earlier this evening.

i waited for over an hour.

i'm afraid the police arrived more quickly than i anticipated.

you must follow me, please. for your own safety.

you knew they were coming?

if you step inside, please. time is of the essence.

you have not been honest with me.

you will leave this house!

your ruse is pathetic.

will you just tell us what the hell it's for?

i've jammed my shoulder, i've been shot at... i'm bleeding.

if we are to get away from here, we must find another way.

you can start with him.

do not react to this message.

you must follow my directions very closely. you are in grave danger.

i could run them over.

i can pretty much remember what i see.

sorry for all the mystery, [name].

i'm into something here that i cannot understand.

you should be ashamed.

if you would close your eyes...

well, that's a bit strange, isn't it?

how many wine glasses are there on the table?

there's virtually no empirical proof.

that is what they want you to believe.

that's a common misunderstanding.

you are saying all this is real?

you are an angel.

i am a ghost.

have you ever heard those words before?

why are you asking these things?

i am the messenger of god.

every breath you take is a sin.

you will be hunted by angels.

you believe in god? your god doesn't forgive murderers. he burns them.

do you mock me?

we are betrayed.

did they find it? this buried treasure?

i've never heard about any of this.

this is an old wives' tale.

now you're a psychologist too?

what will you do?

it's a rudimentary phallus.

the only thing that matters is what you believe.

i thought i was going to die.

sometimes i wonder if i wasn't alone down there.

maybe human is divine.

thank you... for bringing me here.

the mind sees what it chooses to see.

do i owe you money?

care to open up for an old colleague?

first, a test of honor.

shall i serve coffee or tea?

what would you do?

maybe there is no proof.

surely such a travesty has never occurred.

your heart is true.

they are used to keep secrets.

you used me.

we've been dragged into a world of people who think this stuff is real.

do you trust this man? i hope you can.

i don't follow.

stop now. tell me where it is.

i don't know what you are talking about.

is it a secret you will die for?

well, i must say, you two are anything but dull.

forgive the intrusion.

i'm not sure how much help i'm gonna be here this evening.

funny, i don't even like history.

i've never seen much good come from looking to the past.

are you a god-fearing man?

you're acting like you lost your mind.

#rp meme #mcflymemes #rp memes #rp prompt #roleplay memes #rp starters #roleplay prompt #ask meme #ask memes #roleplay meme #roleplay inbox prompts #rp inbox meme #inbox prompt #inbox meme #sentence starter prompt #sentence starter #sentence starters #the da vinci code #da vinci code

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themareverine · 1 month ago

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God Laughs | DoFP!Logan x fem!OC

synopsis: 'I'll love you in every time, Logan, that I know. Just say the word." So much hinged on so little, and it doesn’t make any damn sense. They all knew it—their moments, any of them, ceased to exist if he didn't do this—this unspeakable thing, the only thing that would keep any of them alive.

warnings: time travel elements, AU, pre-established relationship, some angst, a big age gap due to time travel, a little angst, unedited, will do later, PG-13. 🌶️🌶️🌶️

a/n: happy thirtieth birthday to me. 🎉🥂i am sorry this is so long, but i'm actually not, and this fic has been taking up space in my brain for like a month and a half. please enjoy.

MASTERLIST | NAVIGATION | TAGLIST🏷️ let me know if you want added!

Time in the ether is both cold, and slow.

Being alive 200 years leaves Logan nowhere near shortchanged when it comes to dreams. Really the only peace a man who cannot die—a living weapon—finds is sleep, walking in and out of dreams. Digging graves to bury secrets, the horrors of living. Phantoms of his living moments, somehow though, manage to follow him into REM, into the colorful, twisting pictures of dreamstate—they rob him of purest joys. Highest highs. Through their boneless fingers he falls, time and again, even in his sleep—some nights, he doesn’t even rest. Barely breathes. Just wrestles with the things his mind shoves into dark recesses during daylight, vampires bleeding him dry.

And much like the nightmares that find him as he fitfully sleeps, the ether between time is equally harrowing. A scythe that cuts slow and deep, through certainties and everything humans, once, thought they understood.

Nothing in the world like it, slipping through the sands of a timeglass—lives already lived, time already elapsed. Unable to fully blot from the universe moments already bled, God Himself, Logan is sure, laughs—laughs as he chases moments, daylights. Nights. Stretches of time in the bend of space the Almighty must just chuckle at. No more than a mouse chasing reward, trapped in the grand scheme of an oversized cat.

He’d jumped through the waters of time before. Drowning in pain, his body fighting to stay alive and knit together when travel would otherwise viscerally rip apart.

Logan supposes it is not far removed from shaking a bottle, a tornado of contents spinning together to form some perfect union of chaos and beauty, bouncing off walls and wholly contained within units of matter. Hurricane on steroids, rushing to find somewhere to land, but in no hurry to do so all at the same damn time.

That is what the ether feels like—a hurried state of asystole, neverending, that somehow doesn’t seem to mind at all. And Logan has never felt more intimate, precise pain than he does here, filtering through time and space—everything hurts. Whitehot fire that laps at his spine, racking every thought, every movement, every cell with the finest, knife-edge agony.

Like a blacksmith’s hammer beating to life creation from the hottest flame he burns, beat into oblivion while slowly knitting together something that resembles signs of life.

“Need you to do this, Pryde.”

Kitty had an overwhelming ability, he knew. Taxed her to the point of soul crushing. He’d rocketed through time, balancing in her hands, times before—and some part of him always felt her during the process, guiding and sifting his moments in the past through careful, graceful hands.

Truly gifted, Logan understood this was not a bowl of cherries request—he knew it would shave years off her life, steal heartbeats she’d never get back. Days of recovery, horrors of readjusting back to the present. Not a light lift for either of them—as he was ripped apart only to be stitched back together in a younger, former life, she was there, with nobody to put her back together as strain and pain played her like a drum.

And as painful as it was, Logan knew Kitty—she would die for things like this, consequences be damned. Young and reckless, she’d skipped through the folds of the time space continuum for less than what he was asking, but one’s own desires were another thing entirely. Couldn’t fault her for that. If he were able to rip open the universe, go back to former days, well—he didn’t know. So many nightmares, so many phantoms.

Logan wasn’t even sure if he was whole, anymore.

“And you’re sure you wanna do this, Logan?”

Cigars had never tasted so flat, so sour. Maybe if he rolled it through his fingers harder, it would shapen up. But nothing could change the broil in his gut, the ripple of consequences hanging out on the edge of history. They all knew it—their moments, any of them, ceased to exist if he didn't do this—this unspeakable thing, this thing God had gifted. To ensure his future, the future of Charles Xavier, had never felt so—so cold. Dead. Excruciating.

So much hinged on so little, and it doesn’t make any damn sense. And then the voice of reason, a cherubim amongst thieves. Stealing minutes, ripping away time none of them have. Light in a universe of darkness, his sun. Adonis to his Icharus, Aphrodite to his eternal, cold war—she’d looked as if the world had stopped, and in a way, it was not far off. His world had stopped spinning, their world. Threatened to collapse.

“Kitty, we have to. We need to–if we don’t, we don’t have this conversation.”

No other conviction necessary. Decided, on a whim—on the bleeding edge of should we? they’d made a plan. Go back decades, retrace steps already taken. Cool trails already blazed. Forge new irons, cast new stones—do everything to ensure this moment, this moment that cannot be barren, paralyzed. Do what God commissions, what heaven allows.

Follow me, Logan.

A bed of stone had never felt more like a grave, and the very idea sends an unfamiliar shiver down his spine. Like a seance, candles burn in the darkness—easier for Pryde. But in some twisted way, Logan finds it fitting—fitting, this supernatural undertone. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wishes it were light. Prays for morning, for the innocence of blinding daylight streaming through open windows, the fresh bounce of sun on his skin. Something about this being dark, tucked under the earth, feels eerie. Backwards. Graven.

Man was not meant to live in the dirt, but to die there—man was not meant to venture alone.

I'll love you in every time, Logan, that I know. Just say the word.

Pain in his chest had ripped him from the cool ether, snapped him awake in an arctic sweat. Pebbled with goosebumps and twisted in damp sheets, he’d ripped off the layers of blankets with gusto enough to carve canyons.

Rousted from apparent sleeping arrangements, the world swims as he attempts to scrub life back into his face—to feel.

Parts of him were still sorting themselves out deep in his tissues, Logan could almost count his cells unscrambling. Never would he wish the kinesthetics of memories sorting themselves into brain matter on any man, enemy or otherwise.

One thing was painfully clear from the jump, a branding iron seared into the folds of his brain—her face. Her features. Every moment spent together, every sweet nothing she’d ever said. Honey salve on gaping wounds, he could smell her. Taste her, even in time.

It’s the one memory that doesn’t need sorting, that seems welded into his biology, his very being—her.

Her face, her name, her laugh. More a part of him than he’d ever know, he carries her in the low of his spine, a simmering heat that starves. A man could die, aching for a woman like he burns for her.

Aching in memories that feel foreign in this body, like dreams. But they are more real than he’ll ever confess—more real than sunlight or air, than scripture etched into faraway stones. The song of the world, the prayer of the universe.

Logan had never believed in soulmates—until fate had split him down the middle. He’d never known he was missing part of himself, until he’d tasted her goodness. Her sweetness. Her beauty and strength and insecurity that had fallen through his fingers like butter.

Time is his enemy, and there’s very little room to reminisce. That comes later. Much, much later.

Her presence a grounding rod to the now and here, excitement pistons through him like a locomotive. Logan wasn’t around in this period of her life, decades ago. He’d met her years after—in the blossoming glow of things to come. He can only fathom where she is, what she does in the twilight years of knowing him—of better, safer years.

Often he catches himself, watching her march through the days of their life together, wondering where she’d have gone, who she would’ve become if not for him. What better she’d have done in the world, what good she may have accomplished beyond his tether.

Never lasts long, though. He mauls the high fantasy of letting her leave. Crushes the beastial part of him that warns she’s better off without him, navigating life alone. Safer, whole. Selfishness always catapults his justifications, his rationales. She stays, she’s yours, and nobody else gets her. Just the way it is, and he’d worked hard to ensure it. Logan wears enough blood to fill a reservoir—blood she’d helped him spill. Lives he’d taken for her. The cost for her was higher, atmospheric—he’d rob hell to pay it, even today.

And in a way, he isn’t far off.

Thoughts of her send him buzzing with a little thrill he hasn’t known since boyhood, pulses his brain. Windows in this room are his stage, daylight a rapturous, blinding audience that sparkles with anticipation. He breathes and feels her, somewhere, in this universe.

There’s a presence, an energy— the world is alive with the promise of her, things to come. He doesn’t know how, perhaps it’s cosmic, built into the foundations of God’s creation. Or maybe it’s divine, maybe supernatural. Maybe just biology. Whatever it is, it tastes sweet, pulses through him like a live wire strung tight on five thousand molten-lava volts.

A groan slips through streaks of daylight crisscrossing the floor through floor-length, heavy curtains. Logan all but springboards from bed, about-facing with the poise and grace of a fighter much younger than himself, heart racing. Somehow he manages self-control—the claws don’t come. Instead, his arm draws back into a fist far quicker than he remembers, almost sending him off balance. His arm—it weighs next to nothing.

Mind spinning, he remembers. Adamantium—no adamantium. It’s a foreign, blissful feeling. At this point in his lifetime he hadn’t been cursed with steel bones, hadn’t been ripped apart to be stitched back together into whatever atrocity hell had born across the earth. Hadn’t been anyone’s lab animal, a plaything. That would come, he imagines—and briefly, Logan wonders if he’ll remember this feeling. If it will crop up in memories when he returns to his time, when future Logan is put back in time, and this is all but a dream.

It doesn’t matter—assumptions come to a burning halt when blonde hair flips from beneath the covers of his former grave, his resurrection site. Blonde spirals of curl, muffled from obvious extramarital affairs, spill over milky skin. A hit of perfume hangs out beneath his nose, but it’s seared like a branding iron with the familiar, unmistakable scent of sex. Orgasm rides the air like it’s a jet plane, and very quickly Logan can’t breathe.

Thoughts spin through his brain, a kaleidoscope of horror and shame and confusion, watching his bedmate rise into a stretch not all that far removed from a cat.

He doesn’t remember this. Oh, fuck, not even a little. His future self’s mind pistons for any recollection, any silver cord of remembrance of who she could be, but it comes up blank. Distressingly blank, pitifully void. A blackhole of lust and perverted nothingness, his stomach hollows. Pitches up against his esophagus. And Logan isn’t a man to easily toss his cookies, but—he’s not far off. His dick numbs as she glances over her shoulder.

“You’re awake,” voice heavily tainted with sleep, his feet suddenly burn with the itch to move. Get the hell outta dodge. Eyes scout the room quickly, picking out pieces of clothing he can only pray belong to this version of himself. “It’s early, if you’re hungry I can make breakfast—”

Unable to think of anything —get the hell out of here, Logan, “—no!” It’s more of a bark than it is an answer, and he bristles, fingers swiping at the discarded pants hanging out on the floor by his feet. Wrangles into them in time enough to split atoms. Hiking them up his legs, he works the belt, tongue suddenly thicker than winter molasses as it attacks his back molars, trying to raise some moisture in the Sahara his mouth has become.

He doesn’t miss his bedfellow flinching, though. Her shoulder shifts a little sharply in reaction, and he curses himself. “Girls are sensitive creatures, Logan,” years from now, she’s suddenly so there in his brain matter. Cascaded by the sun, rapturous in white. He can feel her against his ribs, her smile cutting paths through territory unexplored in the dark chambers of him, “Be careful with us, love.”

Spiraling blonde curl and bare shoulders say everything that clothes don’t have to, and he’d laugh if this wasn’t the most depraved thing he’d ever felt crawling through his gut, clawing like it’s hell. Future him remembers wandering through these mirages of life—mindless fucks, one-night stands that get him off, little more than cold graves of satisfaction. Briefly he wonders what the fuck, what happened to him. Once detached, now he’s tethered to starlight, stars to which he breathes to revolve.

Fingers burning, weightlessness threatens to topple him like Rome, conquering him slowly.

Shifting her hair in front of her, he feels a twinge of appreciation run him through—but he isn’t surprised. In a different world, he’d move mountains for a girl with curls the color of how he takes the coffee she so faithfully makes; curls that flick and move in private dances for him, God’s perfect design, conceived among the canyons of time. It’s a foreign memory, amputated almost—umbilicated to nothing in this world to give it life, but he knows. He just feels them tangle through his fingers something perfect, in a way that hair never has.

Always a sucker for a girl with curls—they were different. Feral. Wild.

His canines hit sharply on the plush of his bottom lip as the stranger angles to shift against the sheets, probably to face him. Logan all but bullrushes the mattress to put a hand on her shoulder, “—sorry,” bumbling like an idiot, he sucks in a breath, “not real hungry, but thanks. ‘S early, go back to sleep—I gotta hit the road,” barely above a constrained whisper, adds a little pressure to his hand to encourage the behavior.

She complies, and he dives for his shirt and what he can only assume is his jacket tangled in the sheets of his side of the bed.

Surprisingly, she says zilch. Content to let the subject drop, a mercy from God. Thank you God. He’s dressed. Barely registered that punch of hunger a good fuck always leaves behind before he’s out the door, palming his jeans for keys—bingo.

Fingers grazing sunglasses in his pocket, he slips them on the low of his nose. Shakes in his blood tell him he needs a smoke, booze, something for the cold edge peaking through his bones.

Spinning keys to the punched-out and snowkissed Bronco on his finger, Logan slips out the door, fighting boots onto his feet as he skirts the curb, looking for his ride.

It takes him a day to find her.

Well, more specifically, twenty-two hours—and finding isn’t the right word for it, either. He knows where she’ll be, she said so herself before he’d slipped into the sands. There’s only one place in the world she’d ever received formal education, property lines of a familiar farm and prairie grass amidst old farmhouses teaching her more than any public education ever could.

He’d been there, her childhood home, more than a dozen times. Been here, tasted this air. Watched the frost kick up on windows, slick up highways that have carried him all over farmland America, almost-Canada. The wilds of this place remain, scattered in and out of industrial complexes and pop up bedroom communities.

She’d always hated it here, all the snow and cold — people. Made no sense, honestly. She’d loved their home in Alberta, where winter was, in a sense, arguably worse. Had fostered a love for that place unlike anyone he knew, and he was from there. Never complained, though.

Logan had always known, secretly, that she missed the States, its freedoms and culture, a pretty that rivaled none. Faithfully and with duty she’d followed him everywhere, skiptracing across the globe like it was a game of hopscotch and not a fight for life.

While he’d been running all his life, she’d been firmly rooted—but he’d be damned if she didn’t pluck roots to keep after him, to keep them alive. Together they’d rested their heads in some less than Eden hotspots, places phantoms wouldn’t even tread—places purity went to die, holiness turned its face.

She’d counted it joy, just to scout the lines of living beside him. I’ll love you in every time, Logan.

If the tires on his Bronco could heave, they would. Twenty-two hours and no sleep, Logan could pretty well feel exhaustion lapping up the marrow of his bones, needling away at his eyes. Highway 7 signs, painted with snow and wobbling in straight winds greet him as he guides his Ford off the asphalt, out from between guiding lines that had shifted oh so many times the last day and a half—prophecy not much unlike his life.

And pushing the Bronco along the tree-lined lane, lights shining in the last fingers of fading night, Logan realizes that he’s white-knuckling the steerwheel. Maybe for the first time in his life.

He’s never been an anxious soul. Never a point to it, anxiety was wasted emotion. But all the same he feels a pit open in the depth of his gut, a fierce burning not unlike a lake flaming with inferno heat rising up his spine. Feeling feverish, his palms pearl with moisture.

A quick glance in the rearview at the darkness hanging out under his eyes punches home the marriage of piglet pink rising beneath his unkempt shave, which is now a handful of days overgrown. Muttering, he guides the wheel with a knee, working fingers through his hair—it’s thick. Dark, darker than future him remembers, styled in a way he hasn’t worn in at least four decades.

Popping the Ford to a stop in a parking spot overshadowed with packed, plowed snow, he snaps the shift into park. Sits there, in his leather jacket and jeans, staring at the front door of the college complex. A stone Goliath, it towers in the fading darkness, sunlight beginning to stretch the horizon to a new morning. There’s a few cars belonging to the overly ambitious, his eyes scan them.

Logan remembers the plan, all the details of the debrief—of a dossier that came from her lips, to his ears. Not a stitch of paperwork, no documentation to erase. So unlike the old days.

The most informal of the informal, perched across his lap, topless and smiling as her nails pull sharply at the flesh stretched across his collarbones. Scarlet lines to match fake but not inexpensive nails, he forgets how she manages them in an apocalyptic world. Twilight their only audience, four walls conferenced them as she’d relay detail after sweet detail, his brain pulsing with the weight of her against his chest.

If he closes his eyes, he can feel her again—even in a body that doesn’t even know her.

His dick twitches with a needy throb that reminds him where he is, where she isn’t. Absently his mind spins, his hand skates across the bench seat of the 70s Bronco, palming for her familiar presence. Void coldness ices over the space, and when the Wolverine opens his eyes, the cab is deceptively empty.

Forty years from now his brain weaves an image of her, flashing like a film reel. Supplants her in this seat next to him, smiling—-as young and beautiful as she was the day he met her, age hardly more than a number even as it joins itself at her hip.

Hips bucking up off the bench out of habit, with rebellion, his head falls back over the seat. Sinks lower on the bench, knees kissing the dashboard as the heels of his boots dig into the floorboards, anchored to nothingness. Bone grating against bone on his back teeth, the growl he releases is animalistic.

Painful, sharp, it licks up the heat in his blood. He palms at his cock buried in his jeans, suffocating in heat. Her mouth, sucking at his pulse, tongue flicking against his—tasting like lipstick, like chap and sweat. How her hair brushes his shoulder, raises his skin like he doesn’t remember. Her little noises, breathy little moans. Praying his name as he feasts on her presence, consumes her closeness, union almost supernatural, galactic. Otherworldly, divine.

And it hurts, his starvation for her. Loneliness he doesn’t remember cracks like a whip, canyons open his spine to perform surgeries that’ll leave him a barren, cold wasteland. Oh, fuck.

God, he missed her—hasn’t been gone but two days, and he misses her. An unmovable hunger mountains in the low of his belly, rearing an ugly head Logan knows won’t be turned but only one way.

A way that won’t exist for another decade, ten long years of arctic cold.

You’re a sick fuck, Logan.

Eyes snap open, pops the latch on the door. Freezing wind chases in and smothers tornado heat kicked up in the cab, amongst the radio buttons and film developing on the windows from his hot breath. Slipping out, Logan bats the door closed behind him. Pockets his keys. Considers the landscape, it’s pretty, then looks to the front door.

Marching after it, his eyes sweep the parking lot—her car. It’s here, sentinelled, standing guard in an otherwise empty lot of asphalt and fading starlight.

He chuckles, shakes his head. Much to his surprise when he tries the door, heavy doors open. Unlocked. Whisking inside like a silent shadow, Logan breaches the foyer. The first coordinator. Nobody is here, hallways as dark as skeletons in squirreled-away closets, the air stuffy with age and ventilated air.

An old smell creeps up and down the hallway, wraps around him—but it’s quiet. Serene. She said it would be, one of the happiest places of my youth, Lo, and she doesn’t really lie. It bleeds from walls like open arteries.

Something hangs in the air, a sweet lightness, airlessness that he can breathe, but doesn’t know. When his finger brushes the wall, curiously, the earth doesn’t split open, the air doesn’t move—-it’s just still. Unmoving. Patient, like a lover. Fortressed between thick pines and Midwestern snow, it’s a sleeping giant Logan doesn’t know. When he pauses to listen, to think, he can feel it try to touch him—-that weightlessness, that solace.

He could sleep here a thousand years, felt like he could breathe for the first time in a century.

Unsure where his feet point, but he knows where to go. Senior year, first class is theatre—-she’ll be in the auditorium.

One by one he ticks off the details in his brain, smoothing his hand over his mouth, trying not to miss his past, his future, whatever the hell it was. But parts of him claw to go back, memories that don’t belong in this body—and very suddenly, Logan wishes for the first time he were older, time wasn’t now. That he survived long enough for the day, ten years from now, that the rest of his life came marching through the doors of a dimly lit bar to rattle steel cages.

Wandering corridors eventually finds him standing outside the door. Metaphorically, crossing this threshold will change his life—it will ensure the future of everyone he’s come to care for, to know. It will ensure them, in a life far from now that feels faraway down and lightyears away.

He opens this door, crosses the place where carpet meets cheap linoleum, and he’d write in stone events that will play out forty years from now.

And he hesitates, only briefly. Hand hovering over the knob of the double doors, waiting for something to tap him on the shoulder. Opportunity to rip him away, fate to call out behind him, stop, you fool. His blood sings with anticipation, ripping through his ears in a way that blocks out everything but him in the shadows, standing here.

Waiting has never felt so smothering, so earthquake. It’s hard to swallow, but he manages. About to open the door, movement behind makes him flinch.

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow! Creeps in this petty pace from day to day—to the last syllable of recorded time—and all our yesterdays have lighted fools—”

Oh, shit. If that doesn’t fit.

For the first time in nearly 200 years, Logan’s heart stops functioning.

He forgets to breathe, the familiar weight of suffocation launching his lungs forward, pitching them against his ribs. Every part of him simmers with flames of ice he hadn’t known but only one other time in his life, fingers itching as they rest at his sides, motionless. Paralyzed.

But that twinge of ache, deep in his skeleton, rockets to life between the bones of his hand—-and Logan lifts one, to consider the claws. But there are none, they are still sheathed deep within himself, but they echo. They ring and shake, trembling as the speech continues again, restarts. This time louder, with more life—from the gut, it stirs him in a way that pays homage to curiosity killing cats.

Carefully he pops open the door, peeks through. Light spills through the opening, warm tones that force him back, squinting as his eyes adjust. Washed in light and emptiness, the room is vast. Pitches down to a floorstage, theatrical seating a quiet giant waiting to throw stones.

Instead, the air is still, motionless among the seats. Only thing moving within the four walls is the body rearranging a rolling podium, collecting things off the floor. Running lines under rushed breath, bare feet so at home center stage that it is almost treacherous.

He can’t breathe, every cell in his body pistons into an overdrive that sends his head reeling.

It’s her.

He shouldn’t be surprised, forty years in the future she’d told him she’d be here. Was always the first one here, in the auditorium, the only time I can use the stage, Logan, and the truth of it smacks him across the face as if he’s been whipped with a milkstrap.

Castor wheels on the stage are loud, rattle the air as the podium rolls back to reset, and Logan realizes he's standing stupidly in the center aisle, looking lost and enchanted with her—and he is.

Even as he slips into the last row, sitting low in a seat to observe, he aches in a way that only God designed for the most violent, deep love.

Even at distance, the detail of her springs after him like a predator. It overtakes him, powers him into corners of himself that Logan didn’t think to ready. The first thing that he thinks is that she’s young, so young, young in a way that even a decade from now couldn’t know.

You ain’t ready for who you’re going to find, honey, it was a warning, shadowed between kissing him and making love in a way that would imply the world’s end.

When she told him he wouldn’t be ready for her, he thought she couldn’t be serious.

But she was righter than he is alive, he wasn’t prepared—innocence. Purity. Naivety. It spins around her in a dance he can almost taste, and his memories struggle to assimilate this precious little thing with the woman his heart knows, his body craves.

And Logan thinks it’s wrong, feels absolutely filthy, falling in love with her all over again, in the mere seconds he’d seen her standing there, reading from a frayed and tattered Macbeth.

How she’s the same person, he doesn't know—how she couldn’t be, is another thing entirely.

Logan realizes she’s been the same height practically forever, and that makes him smile. High heels tossed stage left beside a backpack in the shadows, what he wouldn’t give to see her conquer the world in thrift store heels the color of darkness. Familiar curves pull at denim jeans that take every ounce of his self-will not to notice, full hips on Hollywood display with the same leather belt and buckle she’d be wearing in ten years, when this body first makes eyes at her.

And her style hasn’t changed—high heels and jeans, a tucked-in tank top and left-open buttoned shirt that floats almost ethereally.

And his head cants to the side, not unlike a curious dog—he could cry, he thinks. Probably.

Brunette curl spills down her back, nearly to her ass, a lazy slipknot hanging limp at the base of her neck. Righteous indignation rises up in him like a wild animal—in a decade, he’ll meet her with cropped hair, curls cut to not-even shoulder length. His stomach knots, solidifies like it’s concrete. Memories spinning—Logan realizes he’s never known her with long, full hair. Hair like this, curls that make him insane, almost threaten to send him up the wall with ferality.

Insane, sick the way his mind immediately shoots to all the things he wants to do with it, with this little thing pacing downstage and back, humming and reading lines to what she thinks is open air.

Straight to hell with him, thinking about bending her over that stage and fucking her until she weeps. He won’t get the privilege of her taste for at least a decade, if not a few years after.

And that’s enough to gut him completely, punch a low moan from the base of his spine as blood rushes to take up space in his cock.

Subliminally, he feels for the ring that’s been hanging out on his left hand for twenty years—alarm snaps his gaze to his hand, its absence alarming and unfamiliar. Takes a second for his heart rate to still, realizing it isn’t there—and that’s right. It won’t be for a while.

But it’s become an engrained thing, a usual part of his life—memories relay that he does this often times a day, it’s almost a coping mechanism. Hilarious how it so easily translates to this body, this time when it isn’t even reality. The ring probably isn’t even crafted, he’s missing something that doesn’t exist.

“Excuse me, what are you doing in here?”

Klaxon alarms rings through his blood like a warning shot, and Logan for a second considers that he has been shot, a burning hole through the center of him widening to swallow him almost body and soul.

A steel beam drops to replace his spine, and he catapults to his feet like he’s on fire—scrambles out of his chair like an upset cat. Heart pounding, heat flares across his skin like his life depends on it, palms riding up the denim on his thighs as he tries to wick away bubbled moisture.

Swallowing a shallow breath, he watches her gracefully hop off the platform, finding her feet as she tosses the book on the stage.

Realizing she’s meeting him up the aisle, he steps to greet her halfway.

“This is a closed classroom,” her tone is firm, but not entirely uninviting—memory serves that he’s not unfamiliar with this, and won’t be, in their future together. “I’m running lines, did you need something?”

Her little way of always assuming the best of people—of prying without making it feel like she’s digging. God, she was good—-it’s no surprise to him that she’ll become a journalist, the nosiest person in the world, in but a few short years from this very moment.

Even up close she glows with a radiance that alarms him. Wearing the makeup she always does, mascara that sets off icy blues like a plague, Logan fights his way out of the depths of her gaze. Claws for purchase at anything he can get his hands on, which at the moment, is a quicksilver smile this body knows. It’s worked well for him, disarming the opposite sex.

He knows he looks good, always has, and Logan has weaponized his sexuality for his betterment since years ago. It’s a toxic thing, one that this very girl will dismantle in about twenty years—-will continue dismantling, claiming, for the next forty.

Absence of any reply has her taking more conversational territory. Her hand extends, she offers her name.

“I don’t know you,” no room for argument, God she’s still so forward, “are you a student here, or faculty?”

A polite way of asking what his old ass is doing at a college at ass o’clock in the morning, and very suddenly he realizes, off like a shot, he has no alibi. No backstory, no agenda for this moment.

Logan can’t even think past her bludgeoning pheromones and scent, much less the assault of her eyes. Like a wolf she takes him apart, plays with the carcass of his resolve like it’s a plaything.

Never usually unprepared, he fumbles for words. Arms crossing over her chest, she waits. Stands there for all of a few seconds, before she does that thing that all girls, seemingly, do—she fills up the silence.

“You’re not Graingly’s theater buddy from Pensacola, are you?” The look on her face tells her that not being whoever such a person is probably isn't a good thing, the way her hip cocks and her jaw flicks with the tight of muscle.

She doesn’t wait, not even a second, “You’re not supposed to sub until Friday—I’m his student lecturer, I set that date.”

Well there it is, his perfect in.

She won’t learn to interrogate and intimidate with silence for a while, and he finds her battle for dominance amusing. It’s even more raw and unpolished in her youth, she’d mastered it already in the years after this.

If he didn’t already know, he’d find it hard not to be curious how she’ll stonewall in the coming years—as she ages, matures. Instead, he just revels in her presence, in the floating feeling taking up space in the empty of his gut. He’d slaughter for a cigar but couldn’t move from his weld right here if the earth split open to consume him.

Logan’s chuckle is low, off the base of his ribs. Even if it is a little weak, a little breathless and ashamed of the thoughts sounding off like nuclear bombs in the back of his head—their first meeting, in a crummy Canadian bar in May.

The first time he sees her cry, an awful first date ending with an argument, him at her door asking to see her again in the straightline winds of a near tornado. How he asks to marry her, that first look at her on the day he makes her his own. That look on her face when they move in together, when they buy their first house—when they spill first blood together.

Pain raptures him to new worlds when he realizes what she becomes, what he gives her—mutation that traps her in this world, this life for an indefinite future.

And he can’t shake the reminiscence—their first fuck, her first time, his first time with someone so virginal, so holy and sweet and good. Burning through him like a branding rod dripping with white heat, he struggles to assimilate this young little thing with the woman, ten years in this body’s future, she’ll become.

And as legal as it may be, Logan can’t imagine touching her like he will, someday—she might break, such a fragile little thing. And yet all he can picture is taking her, right here and right now, unraveling the strands of time to hurry the fuck up what is meant for a decade from now.

She’s still talking.

“Listen, I really think you should—-” agitated. She's pissy, that same edge he will walk well, that same edge he’ll teach her to teeter, to exaggerate.

It’s a beautiful thing, really, watching their life together unfold in his brain—it’s like a movie he never wants to get up from, a picture he creates.

It tastes good, it feels perfect.

He puts up a hand, offering her an easy smile. Her mouth snaps closed, bingo.

“I figured,” if you only knew. He extends his hand, “Logan,” and she shakes it, hers fitting in a way that confirms God’s very existence. “'M not a teacher, and sure as hell ain't from Pensacola.” About three thousand miles north, actually—-a mountain house so pretty, we’re going to spend our honeymoon not leavin’ it.

But of course, it hangs out in the open wound his heart has become, unsaid.

That hits home, seems to fit the bill. Her posture loosens, and she crosses one leg over the other. Still does that, forty years from now, and he still finds it adorable.

“Good to meet ya,” and good God if she still drag her ‘o’s’ in that little Midwestern way that ticks up the corner of his mouth, amusingly. “Can I help you with anything?”

Again, always so willing—so naive. He could’ve been here to ruin her entire world and she’d help him do it, patient as a flower.

“Yeah, actually,” he runs fingers through his facial hair, gestures to her. “Believe it or not, honey, I’m here to see you. Sent, actually.” It’s going to sound so ridiculous. Unbelievable, and at this point, it is.

More sci-fi than reality, no human in this universe is aware that time can be so manipulated. Kitty Pryde, his very vessel, isn’t even alive.

And that hollows him out like a canoe, bloodlets any confident air in his sails to the ground. It cries out unforgivingly, laughs at him.

God was laughing at him, he was sure.

Her airy snort is dismissive, aggressively derisive. “Yeah, right,” she shakes her head, turns on the ball of her foot, “I don’t know any Logans. You can go, now,” turning back around, she backpedals away from him.

Hand flitting through the air, her chin lifts in an away gesture, “Like I said, closed classroom. Nice meeting you,” moving to the stage, she hauls herself back up, moving to retrieve the text she’d discarded.

Stalking after her, Logan hauls up on the stage. Comes up on her, grabs her arm. Starting, she whirls around at speed, knocking into him. Fingers clamping around the muscle of her arm, the look on her face is horrified for all of a few seconds, fear skittering in and out of the blues that flash in her eyes like dreams he doesn’t want to rise from.

His hard look into her face is quelling, and she shrinks back. Pages fall from her hands, hitting the floor at their feet with a hard thunk.

Logan can feel her heart throbbing, her blood singing with heat. Color creeps up her neck as she pulls at his grip, investigative. Eyes holding his gaze, they put up a fight—they disarm him in a way that he should fear, that shouldn’t be so difficult for a man that will endure the unthinkable.

Pain flashes between his ribs like a flare, lighting up his chest. Shuffling her a few steps closer, his other hand moves to loop a finger through a belt hoop, knuckle rubbing against the familiar leather.

“What are you do—”

He remembers what she told him to say, “I have a word for you,” it’s assured. Hard. Riddled with a confidence that bleeds out of him like his arteries have been sliced, pumping lifeblood onto the floor at his feet. He’ll beg, if necessary. Grovel at her beautiful feet like it’s worship, and in a way, she’s deserving.

Her eyes snap up from where he’s conjoined them, Logan watches her swallow a handful of shallow, doing-nothing breaths. “Sent to find you, darlin’.”

Ripping her arm away, her brow mottles with scarlet heat and confusion that isn’t concrete, but instead unsure. She said she’d be confused, uncertain of him when he walked up out of nowhere and called her darlin’, a petname that meant something. The name, the one she conjured up in showers and feel asleep to. Logan knew it was her favorite; she’d told him so their first time, You had me at darlin’, Lo, and you always will.

Poetic justice, really—and maybe, now, this will be why.

He’ll be why she falls in love with that name, with how he says it, how he calls her.

“I don’t understand,” she tries to make it sound strong. Logan releases her, expecting her to rear away like a upset horse—surprise lands in his gut when she doesn't.

Instead, she faces him. Draws her shoulders back. Lifts her chin and steps up to him, closing daylight. Her head cants slightly, eyes narrowing in that what’s up with you way that is curious, but hesitant.

Unsure rips off of her like heat he can only feel in every cell of his genetic makeup, in a way that regenerative mutation could only ever hope to heal.

“You may not,” he challenges, it falls off a sigh as he upturns a hand. Offers it, kindly. “But try, honey. A whole lotta world needs you to try.”

And she does. She tries. Business hours and daylight interrupt them, but she tries—and it’s a bloody fight, making her understand. Challenging every quip, every reasonable logic that she hurls at him like knives.

Moving to the auditorium’s lobby, then to the corridor, then up into the library. And after an hour, when she really started believing him, he drags her out to his Bronco—where they can be alone. Thrive in the uninterrupted them.

Cranking the heat and turning to rest his back against the door, he accepts her denial. Any question she throws at him for another hour, every rabbit trail of You’re absolutely wrong and this is why.

She pauses to breathe and remember what class she’s blowing off, and oh does he love her. He’s already so in love with her that it hurts, bludgeons that space behind his ribs with the knowledge that soon, when this is over, he may not remember.

Multiple times Logan has had the thought to fuck everything and just run away with her, take her anywhere she wants to go and start their life right now, to explore and give life to memories he doesn’t already know.

No matter how much he rationalizes, that idea doesn’t leave him—the high fantasies of what she’d look like, attached to him at the hip.

Of who they could be, before adamantium, before the X-Men, before—

And questions finally metamorphosize. A standstill, like after a hurricane—her chest is heaving, curls sticky with sweat. Memory recall tells him that his normal for her—she’s argumentative, by nature. Defends what she believes, is not so open. Doesn’t back down from a fight, which is why, in years from now, she’ll be his perfect match. His soulmate.

The one God designed for him, since the foundation of the stars and the bends of time.

It’s what makes her so her, a Wolverine. In a roundabout way. Another version of the same monster he becomes, but a holier one. If that’s possible—and he reminds himself it is, she becomes it. This young woman, on the cusp of living, will become everything Logan had only ever fantasized, more than he could ever conjure up in wild imaginations and greedy headdreams.

It’s surreal, sitting in this cab of this Bronco, watching windows film up with the heat of their breath. His knee knocks against the steering wheel, adjusting to glance at her milkwhite grip on the door handle. His eyes skate from hers to her grip, and he knocks his head back against the glass of the door’s window, a lazy smile turning up the corner of his mouth.

“Still don’t believe me, huh?”

After an eternity of silence, she side-eyes him.

“It’s only a little ridiculous,” exaggerated sarcasm drips like sour honey off her tongue, “I mean—put yourself in my shoes here, Logan.”

His heart flatlines and then resurrects—she’s called him Logan a handful of times, now. It sounds like it never has from anyone else—at points in his life before this, he’d always thought his name sounded so good, at its best coming from a woman he was balls deep in, hearing it chanted like a prayer.

But that’s gone, so anemic that it’s sick—it will only ever sound so orgasmic again if she says it. Nobody else is worthy, all graven images in comparison to the goddess she has become, him at her feet.

“It’s unbelievable.”

Whatever else she’s said fails to land. He can’t stop hearing his name in her mouth, consonants and syllables so delicious it turns his spine to jelly, stirs up his cock in a way that makes him adjust his leg on the floorboards. Suddenly uncomfortable, sardined into a too-tight space crowded with her and everything he wants, he rolls down the window with a few pumps of his arm. Forces air in, underneath his collar.

Logan swears he’s boiling alive beneath his jacket and shirt, there will be medically evident boils when he’s finished with her.

The Bronco rocks slightly with her moving to mirror his posture, back against her own door. Her knee knocks against the seatback, other leg bouncing anxiously against the floor.

Picking nervously at the buckle of her belt, Logan has to force himself to look up from the cut of her shirt, the way it pulls taut across her tits with the angle of how she’s sitting.

Aw, hell. Fuck him for being such a filthy, sexual creature.

Fairly certain he will die if he doesn't have her, he repositions—sits up, leans his arms over the steering wheel to knuckle mindless patterns into the fog hanging out on the windshield. She manages an uneven sigh that may as well rip open the world—Logan cuts her a look from the corner of his eye.

“You think I’m lyin’,” he sighs. Falls back against the seat.

“Hell yeah I think you’re lying.”

And if that doesn't make him laugh.

“You laugh, Logan-whoever-you-are, but—honestly. C’mon,” her hand extends to serve a point, “time travel? This isn’t Star Trek. You don’t just waltz up to someone and tell them that and expect it to be believable,” her hand flits, through the air, through whatever she uses to rationalize the anger creeping up into her words.

“And then, if that isn’t good enough, you tell me this, this Hollywood bullshit that I’m going to meet you in ten years in Canada, somewhere I’m not even ever planning to go—and that kicks off the next forty years and the survival of mutants in the future!”

Her hands fly into the air, as if trying to pull down reason from heaven, “That’s a bunch of bullshit, if you ask me.”

It’s quite the line of reasoning—he can’t fault her for it. Just chuckles, shrugging as he leans forward to pluck sunglasses off his dashboard, slip them along the cut of his collar.

Arms crossed over her tits, her chest rises and falls with nervous breath after breath, eyeballing him with enough force to rip the sun from the canopy of sky. He flicks off the heater, sweat between his shoulder blades sign enough that it’s too warm in here—she’s already damp, sweat raising the makeup on her face.

“That’s the highlights,” didn’t mention how you’re the love of my life, how I can’t hardly think straight with you sittin’ right there, he cards his fingers through his hair. “Not askin’ you for anything, sweetheart. I’m just telling you—it’s gonna happen, and when it does, you need to remember me, this moment right here, and trust that it works out.”

He lifts a shoulder, hand turning through the air in a so-so way, “It’s like—fuck. It’s kinda like a prophecy, right? I’m telling you what’s gonna happen, and you just gotta wait to see if it does.”

“Prophecy? You’re mocking me now, right?”

His sigh is excessive, roughs up the wind in the tissue of his lungs with more froce than he thought possible. Knitting his brow together, his fingers pull at the cartilage in the bridge of his nose.

Stubborn little thing, always, stubbornness was both a strength and a weakness—nevermoreso underestimated in her, right now, by him.

He nods out the window.

“This is a Bible school, right? Yeah, I know it is—you graduate here, in the spring,” the look on her face implies that he’s backhanded her, hinge of her jaw failing entirely to instead, sit there. Agog.

Rolling his eyes, he holds out a hand, begins counting off his fingers, “I told you, honey. You graduate, you get a job working for some lowlife newspaper editor–you fall in love with mutants, in that sick and twisted ADHD way of yours that you obsess about everything, and—” he stops, mostly to breathe. Halfway to bludgeon everything he wants to tell her to the point of pain, “—just listen. If you’re as high an’ mighty as you say you are—and you are, I know that about you—then you can’t say you don’t at least believe in prophecy, darlin’.”

Knifing a sharp smirk over to her, his brow lifts. “And last I checked, a whole helluva lot of unbelievable stuff happens in God’s history book, sweetheart—but I ain’t the expert.”

That’s why I have you, in a decade or so.

There is absolutely no time for his words to land anywhere other than nowhere.

Her dismissal happens swiftly, like sharp jabs. The laugh bites, more of a bark than anything. Bam.

“Oh, I so get it now.” She absolutely does not, but he tastes the first blood. Pow. “You’re a messenger from God—right. Yeah, yeah I’m sure,” her eyes roll. Angles to pop the latch on the door.

In one go she’s out of the Bronco, letting all the hot air and frustration of the moment out into the arctic wasteland the parking lot has become. Bam bam bam.

“I don’t say this very often, and pardon my language, but—fuck off, asshole.”

Shouldering her backpack, staring at him from the cresting daylight that bleeds into the cab from behind her—if Logan didn’t believe in the celestial, he would’ve, exactly now.

Near frantic—and Logan has never, in all his 200 years been frantic—his hand slaps at the door for his own latch, and he rips out of the Bronco like a shot, hustling to stalk after her marching across the parking lot to her car like a soldier with orders.

And he is.

Not so fast, tiger—that ain’t right, nah. Wolverine, you’re a wolverine.

My Wolverine.

“Honey, listen—”

He grabs for her arm again, but something whips her about-face of her own volition, stepping up into his chest like a powerhouse of pride, absolution.

Her eyes cut through his armor, what will someday be adamantium bones like knives, hot and thrilling as they grab him by the absolute balls. The ferocity at which her eyes scout through his is wild, sends his blood spinning through his ears. He can’t hear anything but the thrum of his heart and every one of the breaths she sucks into her chest.

There she is.

“I am not your honey, so quiet calling me that,” she bites, and it’s venomous—snapping fangs that sink deep into his veins, slavering at this soul.

And Logan should be upset with her, he should shake some common sense into her. Scream in her face the logic that she so lacks—but he can’t. He can’t move beyond the boundaries her eyes set, deep pools that empty oceans and rival the very stars hanging in the universe.

She could echo jump, and he’d beg her to know how high—and that may make him a fool. A pathetic shadow of the man he was hours ago, laying in someone’s bed, getting all the tit he wanted, without waiting.

“You say all this, this stuff about me—ok. We meet in ten years, sure. I’ll give you that. You’re hardly forgettable,” her eyes narrow, and Logan can’t miss how she shivers—how her lip trembles in the cold air, how snow clings to her lashes and sticks to her hair, carries it away across her features.

“Explain to me how you know everything about my life forty years from now, Logan.”

Oh, fuck. This entire thing could be wrong, but it feels so right.

Her eyes skate over him—down, up, and then back to his face. Like she’s summing him up—maybe she is. It would be the first time, but never the last.

Logan weighs the words in his chest, wishing for the first time that his bones were adamantium—that way, they’d cut through what to say. They’d bear the weight of her statement and haul them up the mountain-ing uncertainty he feels rising against the tail of his spine.

He’s never been so out of control, felt so out of his element than he does right now in the ripping wind of Minnesota cold and sunlight.

She’s lined up the shot for him. All he has to do is take it.

He does.

“We marry,” barely there, it’s the only thing he thinks to say. So much more happens, “A lot of shit happens, a lot of it bad, but a’lotta good— takes a while, but eventually I get my head outta my ass and marry you, like I should years before I actually do.”

“What?”

Logan isn’t ready for the look of surprise on her face, and she’d told him before that he wouldn’t be.

A series of emotions pass through her eyes that he’s able to earmark, he watches them fall like dominoes—denial. Anger. Disbelief and hurt and really? that knots his guts up like the Sesame gates.

And Logan could watch the revolution of the earth around the sun in her eyes for all eternity, but their clarity is clouded by a mist of tears that rise—-she drops her head away, reaching fingers to swipe at the sting in her eyes.

She goes to turn away, and that may as well rip every organ out of his body.

His heart leaps up into his throat, he snags her arm. Coming back willfully, he can’t miss how freezing her hand is in his. Logan pulls her close, against his chest, wraps his arms first around her shoulders, then around her waist, fingers gently skimming the rise of her jeans, the leather of her belt.

Her heart against his ribcage pistons like a locomotive, and he fears if it beats any harder, it’ll drive him into an early grave.

When her head lifts to consider him, she isn’t crying. There’s a whimsical, faraway look on her face. He’s never seen it before, and somewhere deep inside the places you don’t show anyone but God, it terrifies him. Watches her swallow thickly, her tongue fill the pocket of her cheek. How it skips over her bottom lip, accompanies the way her eyes subliminally move back and forth, looking for him in the depths of his.

And Logan can see the thoughts spinning alive in her brain, wheels that have no place to go—that turn, over and over, looking for memories, thinking. Grasping at straws, clawing for the surface.

Her eyes flick beyond him, back to the Bronco. Taking his hand as if she’d been doing it her entire life, she tugs him behind her, back to this Ford. Logan opens the door to tuck her inside.

Slipping in, she drops her backpack at her feet and shifts in the seat. And before he can bat the door closed, her fingers find the front of his leather jacket. Twisting into the leathers, she pulls him forward until his thighs brush the frame of the truck—until he’s flush against her chest, closer, somehow, than before.

A hairline moment and her lips find his, soft and curious but starving.

Jumpstarted to life, every organ in his body flings forward against bone, fighting for air as she sucks the very breath from his lungs in the best way he could ever fathom.

He can tell she’s never kissed before. The way she moves, clumsy like a new calf. Can’t breathe. Her teeth knock against his, and despite how hard he tries to urge her tongue forward to meet his, it retreats. All thumbs and clumsy, it would be humorous if lightning bolts weren’t rocketing down his spine, if he wasn’t burning alive.

And fuck, if it isn’t enough to wake up every part of him he’d been fighting to bury.

Insane, how even so foreign to him she could feel like home, like everything he’s ever been missing. His missing rib, created from dust.

Nothing aside from God’s grace keeps him composed, keeps his mutation leashed to the walls of his prison—God’s grace and how he absolutely is not actively ripping at the leather of the Bronco’s bench, nails buried so far that they ache.

Fingers find her hair, playing through brunette curls he knows will never be this long again—wraps them around his fists, nails gently pulling at her scalp in a way that makes her hiss, arches her forward against him.

And if she doesn’t mean for that little mewl to be so lascivious, he’ll never know—it punches him low, in his dick, enough that rips a groan from the back of his throat, rattling around his teeth. She breaks first with a wet pop, a string of sticky saliva drawing him back to her in a way that leaves him stunned and breathless.

All traces of the frigid world gone, her skin coats with a sparkling sheen of slick sweat, she almost glistens. Racked with ache that he wouldn’t be able to admit in therapy, he drinks in every one of the shallow breaths she releases, as if it’s the air he needs to live.

It’s not far removed.

Her eyes hold his captive, enraptured in his attention before they flick down to his mouth, the heave of his chest. Logan is fairly certain that fire laps up the heat in his blood, wolves eating away at the marrow of his bones, hungry in a way that nothing short of her will ever touch.

Her teeth snag her bottom lip, gnawing cautiously, and her fingers curling into his jacket are the only greenlight he requires—his hand at the back of her neck pulls her in for another kiss, a part two he’ll never stop writing, as his other hand slips behind her knee, gently guiding her down to the seat so he can slip in over her.

It’s worship, how he crawls up her body—an altar that, memories recall, he worships at like it’s religion. She’s a fast learner, picks up the cues like a champ, finally allows him to French her in a way that should be unforgivable.

This him has never done this with her, doesn’t know her like he wants to—but memories. Fuck him, the memories; movies, their own future pornography feeds him just how she’ll react, what she likes.

In his mind, a life he's never lived, he can hear her crying out his name. Sobbing as he splits her wide open, body and soul—stares at her heart, takes everything God had given her. Greedily, he takes—he wants, desires, lusts for everything now, in a time that isn’t right, and can’t be, for the next decade.

His hand anchored on her hip is enough to arch her back, her head tipping back into the leather of the bench, brow pulled taut into a hard line that makes his head reel. Keening, Logan angles to run his nose along her jaw, tongue lathing at the pulse pounding in her neck like a racehorse, steady like the sun.

And it takes willpower not to touch her the way his body demands, the way he lusts after. Instead his nails bite into the back of the seat, others far too busy playing with the hair he prays she never changes but knows she will.

“Oh my god,” Logan isn’t sure it’s a prayer to him or heaven itself, but—he won’t complain how it rousts his blood, stirs his cock something good. “It’s—you’re, Logan—-shit,” His smile is wolfish, of the devil.

Perverse and twisted, he sinks his teeth into the words vampirically, rips the lifeblood from them like it’s soulworthy.

“I can’t breathe,” he knows she can’t. He knows, in some deep and faraway downs part of himself that this is all so new—so living color, so all over the place.

Part of him, a more rational Logan, knows that overstimulation stalks.

But he chuckles all the same, brushing aside the collar of her buttoned shirt to suck hard at the soft flesh of her collarbone. Lathes his tongue into its pool, tastes her sweat. Dies, resurrects to taste it again.

“You can and you will,” he prays it into her skin, hopes it takes, “hmmmm—-just feel, darlin’.” And it hurts, the way he absolutely wants. Knows he can, but won’t. Fuck, fuck, “Fuck, yes—just, honey, just feel.”

Her hands buried in the front of his shirt pull him back from the haze, from where he’s lost. Kiss him again. Again and again, he drinks at her well like a man who will die, and he will.

Logan will die if he doesn’t have her, if this isn't real and is nothing but a sick and feverish nightmare plagued upon him like the dead firstborn in Egypt. She’s already ripped open his chest and clawed out his heart, balancing it raw in her fingers where it bleeds out all of his will, his absolution.

There’s a chance he doesn’t remember this.

If he dies from thirst of her, he’ll never know why.

That’s sick.

Absently, his finger tugs over the waist of her jeans, dips beneath the denim. Grazes the buckle of her belt, investigative. She gasps, breath cut short as her back arches off the seat as his knuckle brushes her sensitive skin—she arches so far that he fears she’ll snap.

But the low of her belly is soft, inviting—inferno. He can feel her womb from here, the kiss of her cervix that memory serves is so good.

Breathless and hard, a light tug at the waist of her jeans makes him groan—all the way from the depths of his soul. It’s so familiar, so easy—he expects her to acquiesce, but it’s demonic. Torturous.

Fuck yes, this is right—

His drifting hand snaps her eyes wide open. She’s propped up on an elbow so quickly that it sends him for all of a heartbeat. Her hand shoves at his shoulder, off, and he falls back on his heels, breathing hard.

Unable to catch his breath, cut his eyes from the swell of tit peeking up over the top of that barely-there tank top she dares to call a piece of clothing.

“No,” and there it is.

Absolution and righteousness that could strip him of his skin, if she desired.

Embarrassment sets in as she wrangles out from beneath him, to the farthest side of the Bronco that she can get. Unable to breathe, unable to think, her hand shakes as it settles over her stomach, her other propping her head up in the heel of her hand.

“Logan, I—”

He knows. Doesn’t cure the sigh. Reaching behind him, he pulls the door closed and traps them both in the sex swirling through the Ford, unfilled and thick.

Guilt plants deep stakes into the soil of his soul, and he scrubs his hand down his face—looks out the window. Shifts against the seat, ignores the absolute agony of a hard cock festering low between his legs.

They sit.

It’s a full silence ready to give birth, until she sweeps her hair up into a high knot, off her neck, twists to sit fully in the seat, fingers slipping through the slots on the steering wheel. He noticed when her breathing levels, when the cardio rhythm in her blood bleeds away into a normal heart rate—but it takes time. A full minute or two.

And he doesn’t know what to say, how to bridge this chasm—how to proceed from here.

“What happens ten years from now?” She’s quiet, doesn’t look up from her hands for a few heartbeats, until sapphire eyes cut to him with a raised, interested brow. “You coming here to tell me this—does this change what happens to us when I find you, in the future?”

The question of the ages, indeed.

“Dunno. Might not remember this, might not know you,” leaning across the seat, he moves his hand to take one of her curls, rubbing it gently between his fingers.

His other takes her hand, his thumb skipping over the familiar ring anchored firmly on her right hand—a ring she will gift him in the future, a ring that he will wear through time and space, should it be asked of him.

“Or I might. Not quite sure how the memory’s thing works when I wake up in our future, honey.” It doesn’t answer her question, and he knows that. He doesn’t have answers, never has. “Not sure how it works for you, either.”

“Wow. You’re so helpful,” she teases.

He cracks a small smile. “It don’t improve, trust me.” He gently brushes a knuckle over the apple of her cheek, her angling into the touch a little farther. “Still as pretty as you will be the first time I see you, sweetheart,” she said she’d need to hear this, that this alone will spare so much of the pain she has yet to live.

“You remember that, yeah? ‘Member that someone out there wants you, even if he doesn’t know it yet.”

She slips across the seat to brush shoulders with him, her palm along his cheek guiding him for another kiss—this time, it’s what he expects. Soft, sweet, young. So her, so familiar. He could die a thousand deaths to experience this, over and over.

Softly carding his fingers back through her hair, she breaks firs. Curls a finger beneath his chin to draw his attention to her. He gives it, willingly, up unto the half of his soul and any kingdoms he possesses.

“Are you still in love with me?” Want me, Logan—do you want me?

He smiles, nods. Presses a kiss to the inside of her wrist, her lifeblood. The very pulse that will bring her back to him, that carries him away.

“I’ll love you in every time, sweetheart. Just say the word.”

taglist: @thevoicefromanotherworld @sidkneeeee @misscrissfemmefatale @permanentlyexhaustedpigeon88 @eternallyfrustratedwriter@ayamenimthiriel @pandapetals

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podcastenthusiast · 8 months ago

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Dead Boy Detectives Fic Rec List

Mostly payneland <3 I will update as I find more fics.

“I don’t like this, mate,” Charles muttered.

The Things We Can, and Cannot, Do by MDJensen

Paul Rowland is dead. It's not just that, though.

Oh, Lonely Bones, Have You Forgotten? by DontOffendTheBees

“No,” Edwin agreed, gravely. “Nor do I.”

Frankly, taking this case was probably an unwise decision. The meagre payment offered by the sickly-looking ghost of the old groundskeeper would fall far, far short of the emotional cost of the expedition. And yet when Edwin had looked over to Charles and met his eyes, there had been no doubt, no hesitation. Perhaps it was the notion of unfinished business; that mysterious force that compelled ghosts to sites of personal trauma as sirens compelled sailors to the unforgiving rocks. Perhaps they were both mere gluttons for punishment.

Either way, they were here now. It was with heavy hearts and wary eyes that on the evening of June twenty-sixth, Edwin and Charles – along with Crystal – set foot once more on the grounds of St. Hilarion's School for Boys. In which a very, very old case is re-opened.

Mom Says It's My Turn to Jump on the Grenade by RoseGanymede95

Charles tried to pay attention, because Edwin was really upset, and Charles still didn’t understand why, and it seemed like this might be important. It was just, they’d been at this for a while, and Edwin kept asking him the same questions and not leaving him time to answer, so. His mind may have wandered a bit to how he would reinforce the next cricket bat. His attention snapped back to the present when Edwin said, “This can’t happen. You can’t risk this, I can’t be the reason you risk it. You have to move on.” “Move on?” Charles repeated blankly. “Move on from what?” “From here, Charles!” Edwin shouted, suddenly furious again, suddenly shouting even though his eyes were filled with tears. “You have to go with Death! You have to leave!” “I don’t want to go with Her,” Charles said, nonplussed. “Fine, that’s your business, but you can’t keep hanging around me!” Edwin snapped. Charles’ world suddenly tilted on its axis, sending everything askew. “I can’t?” he asked, his voice small, his heart wide open and exposed.

Let me bleed instead of you by mellxncollie

The question rang like a cracked bell in what had only just become someplace Edwin had started to contemplate calling home. “What was Hell like?” - Charles and Edwin keep secrets from one another. The list isn't long, but it's not empty. Eventually, they start tumbling out in soft whispers, in tear-reddened eyes, in shocked expressions, in choked up phrases.

Or, 40 years and 8 secrets.

Indelible by Arisprite

Charles is feeling a lot and also not much at all in the immediate aftermath of returning from Hell. He also can tell Edwin is wearing thin from holding himself together. Who wouldn't be, after that? It's okay, though. Charles can take care of him, and he always always will.

Done Running by Asidian

Charles has gone a peculiar off color, all the blood blanched from his cheeks. He glances to the arm, and then back up to Edwin's face. "Any break's a bad break, innit?"

"Some have more drawbacks than others," says Edwin, detached and scholarly. "For instance, unless the nerves are compromised, it is possible to make use of the injured arm in cases of extreme –"

"Bloody hell," breathes Charles.

Joi de Vivre by olympus_mons

Edwin Payne crawls out of Hell twice. Somehow, his problems begin in the aftermath.

so many ways to give in by piilu

“I think there’s something really wrong with me, mate,” Charles sobs, the remains of the bat falling from his hand. ---- Charles struggles with his anger issues. Again.

A Room of One's Own by DarkStars (Worlds_Okayest_Goalie)

Crystal is so tired of watching Charles and Edwin stare longingly at each other. OR 5 times Crystal tells Charles and Edwin to get a room and 1 time they do.

Shape Me by dearheartdont

At least twice a year Charles and his mum packed their cases and caught a train to Birmingham, leaving his dad behind with a freezer full of carefully labelled Tupperware.

Charles Rowland and his relationship with his extended family and heritage.

(Part of a series of snapshots of Charles’ life in the 1980s.)

half of my soul, as the poets say by thegirlofthorns

Edwin existed, just as Charles had. Charles, who occupied a space in loving memory. A much-deserved space – Edwin would have wanted it no other way – but the core of him wanted to scream that he had been here, too. He never would be again, but he had lived, and he had breathed and laughed and moved with too much frippery and frill to continue on breathing, and he had been a whole person, once. And it had not mattered. So looked at CHARLES ROWLAND through tears, allowed himself to. Even Charles's hammer on metal on stone was not enough to dull the pain, but it was enough to remind him that he was still here, even if he was no longer living. It was an awful sound, a jarring sound, and tears shone in Charles’s eyes as he focused intently on carving out the A in his surname, but it was something. They were there, together, and they were feeling.

- Or, Charles finds Edwin's unmarked grave and will, in the lightest of terms, not be having it.

Terrible, Horrible, No Good, and Very Bad by hibye

It was about the torture. The torture he was experiencing presently, and also every minute of every hour of every day, standing alongside Edwin Payne and saying nothing out of the ordinary at all.

O Spirit From The Great Beyond! by InTwainFiction

Edwin is ignoring Charles.

They haven't spoken in almost twelve hours, and all because of a little incident involving some puppies. Yes, said incident may have been Charles' fault, but he has apologised a million times.

Charles is getting desperate to find a way to get Edwin to talk to him again, and a little walk away from the office provides just the thing Charles needs.

He hopes it will get Edwin to talk to him, but at the very least it will be a laugh.

a beautiful day to say goodbye by ofstitches

“The house is… sad,” the client responds.

“Again, we can’t help with selling the house. Maybe try some decorations. That’ll brighten the old place up,” Charles suggests.

“No, you misunderstand. The house doesn’t look sad. The house is sad. It is depressed.”

“How do you figure?” Edwin says, sitting up in his chair now that the client has said something potentially interesting.

or A new case brings up old feelings, and maybe something more.

A Heaven Like They Talk About by LikeMmCookies

After managing to piss off yet another witch, Edwin and Charles are cursed as punishment. Bewildered, powerless, and lacking answers, they face their greatest challenge yet: being human again.

With Edwin doing novel things like picking out shampoo and wearing different pants, Charles finds his body reacting in strange ways to his best friend. He questions if these are new feelings, or if they'd been there all along.

But the biggest question remains - do they stay alive or do they find a way to go back?

being unknown by The_IPRE

Edwin does know Charles, or at least he likes to think that he does. He knows that Charles is far better with the clients than he is, quick to offer a smile or extend sympathy while Edwin is far more interested in delving deeper into the details of the case. He knows that Charles has a wicked swing with his cricket bat, but prefers to leave that as a second resort when he believes there's a way for them to come to a compromise. He knows that Charles chooses to hope for the best from people, even after having seen the worst they have to offer–and in fact, having been killed by it.

As Charles sits in front of him, the strain in his shoulders at odds with the easy grin on his face, Edwin wonders how much of his friend he is failing to see. -- 5 times Edwin didn't press the issue, and one time he did.

The Kind of Light That Means Just Love (When My Baby Smiles at Me) by DontOffendTheBees

“Charles,” Edwin admonished, gently closing his book with a finger tucked between the pages to hold his place. “I have asked you to stop fooling around with that contraption and get some work done.”

“I have been!” Charles defended, gesturing broadly at the higgledy-piggledy array of items around him. Evidently, taking stock of the contents of his bag of tricks was an expansive task. “Taking a break.” He snatched the small square of paper from the Polaroid camera and began to shake it with abandon. In which Charles partakes in some amateur ghost photography, and Edwin (fondly) bemoans the futility of the exercise.

The Good Left Undone by plutosheaven

Help comes from unlikely places when Edwin is once again faced with a threat worse than death.

the phantoms here will never have their fill by ahyperactivehero (ahyperactiverhero)

Poltergeists are created when a ghost experiences extreme emotional distress. Poltergeists are notoriously hard to reign in, and they almost never gently move on. Neither Edwin nor Charles ever imagined it would happen to them.

Basically, five times where the Dead Boy Detective Agency dealt with the threat of a poltergeist.

XXX

“Once you choose to go down the poltergeist route there is no coming back,” Edwin said. “And I will have no choice but to follow you.”

“You can’t do that mate,” Charles said. His voice had cleared up some, his form less wavy.

“Then do not go where I cannot follow,” Edwin said.

Form 239, Schedule L by sanctuary_for_all

At the top of a small pile of papers was a copy of Form 239, Schedule L, filled out with achingly familiar handwriting. At the top, the word "Approved" was stamped in large red letters.

This Darkness, Enduring by kickingtheladder

“Your son is gone,” they tell her. “It was… an Act of God.”

She cannot think of a single thing to say for a very long moment. And then she has many things to say, most of which are not at all appropriate for polite company. --- Edwin Payne's mother, before and after.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by kickingtheladder

“Your son is gone," they tell her. "He ran away." She doesn't say anything. --- Charles Rowland's mother, afterwards.

dreaming of the things you said / hoping that it's meant by ohmyfuckinggod420

Edwin turns away with a deep breath, ignoring the fluttering in his stomach. His non-existent, ghostly stomach. It seems so ridiculously cruel and on theme for his current situation. Not only is he in love with his best friend, and not only does his best friend not love him back, but he’s feeling things that he shouldn’t be feeling on top of things that he physically should not be able to feel. or

The gang is back in London. Niko is gone, Crystal is on the cusp of a breakdown, Charles is still a flirt, and Edwin is... trying his best.

Oh, and he keeps feeling his pulse. As a ghost. A very dead ghost.

The trouble really never ends.

the ghost of the past that you live in by ObsessedWithFandom

It didn’t start as much. As anything, really. Charles noticed him in the hallways only because he was new, which was rare in Year 11, and because he smiled shyly whenever Charles said hi. Aysar, he’d introduced himself, and Charles liked the way the syllables formed in his mouth. He wanted to be Aysar’s friend.

Or: five boys Charles didn't date, and one he did.

Aftermath by sophisticatedyet

“What are you humming?”

Charles’ polo muffled his question, and the pause before Charles answered was so long that Edwin wondered if he hadn’t heard him at all. But then he said, "A lullaby.”

The answer made Edwin smile bemusedly. “Why? I can't fall asleep.”

“Yeah, duh, I know. It's just meant to soothing.”

“Oh.” Edwin rested his head back against Charles’ chest. “I suppose I do feel quite soothed.”

Dance the Night by Gruoch

“What is that?” Crystal asks, looking Edwin up and down with an expression of abject befuddlement that borders on disgust.

“It is my disguise,” Edwin replies a little stiffly in response to her tone. “You told me to wear a disguise.”

“You look like Margaret Thatcher,” Crystal says flatly. “You’re going undercover at a nightclub, not a library. This—“ she plucks at Edwin’s long tweed skirt, her lip curling— “is not appropriate nightclub attire. You’re gonna attract too much attention.”

“I thought attracting attention was the point of this ludicrous exercise,” Edwin snaps back.

“Yes, the right kind of attention,” Crystal stresses. “This—” she waves a hand broadly at him—“will get the wrong kind of attention.”

In which the gang returns home to discover something sinister stalking London’s party scene after dark, Edwin lets his hair down, Charles’ confidence is shaken, and Crystal pursues a new lease on life (and hopefully doesn’t die in the process).

Everywhere, Everything (wanna love you) by WildCookieKeef

Freedom, as it seems, is suffocating. Decades spent running away from death herself and yet now more than ever does Edwin feel restless. Hell is behind him for the second time. He might’ve escaped his fate of eternal torture, but rabidly approaching are revelations he would’ve kept buried for far longer.

He’d never be so flustered and disorganized if it hadn’t been for Crystal or the Cat King or Monty or the Night Nurse or that horrible witch Esther or Simon, god not Simon, or practically reenacting old Greek tales with his best mate or. . .

No. It’s no one’s fault but his own. If he could sleep he’s sure he’d have nightmares.

Of what? There’s lots to choose from, but he can just feel it. Maybe some spirit malady has taken root in his body. He can sense the tension under his skin. Aches of pain that he knows aren’t physical.

He never should’ve told Charles. What was he thinking?

or After the end of S1, Edwin reasons that Charles rejected his confession and fears the worst while trying to suffer silently. Charles is very bad at letting Edwin suffer in peace.

the eight layers of hell, reversed by Zairielon

There's a lot that Edwin and Charles don't talk about. Frankly, after 30 years together, you don't have to say much for the other person to get the point. But Port Townsend and Crystal and Niko knocked their dynamic off-kilter, and by the time they return to London and finally get back to "normal," "normal" has changed. "Normal" is now Crystal's bright laughter, Niko's earnest affection, and Edwin's faint smiles. "Normal" is an unnameable ball of emotions tangled up in Charles' chest. "Normal" is Edwin looking at him, and Charles hearing those words all over again.

Charles, I'm in love with you.

OR, Charles figures out what it means that Edwin is the only person in the world he'd run into Hell for.

When We Walk Together We Tend To Walk Alone by UneducatedAuthor

She’s never unexpected, but she’s always a surprise. And when Charles meets her, it's nothing like the nightmare he's built up in his own head, being split away from Edwin and cursed to an afterlife without him. She's kind and gentle and familiar, and she gives him a chance to say goodbye to his mother.

Or, the one where Charles meets Death. They have a lot to talk about. But it's okay. They have time.

it's you that i hold on to by lrvzender

A pair of lips press shakily on his temple. Charles Rowland’s blood definitely runs hot, Edwin decides, definitely.

“You’re not asking anything, mate. But you have to understand that you are worth saving, a thousand times over. You are worth knowing, Edwin.”

Something bigger than the whole, wide sky. Something bigger than death, perhaps.

(where Edwin does not ask to be known, but Charles knows anyway)

and your song, it haunts me like hunger does the crow by kay_cricketed

After they return to London, Charles notices an escalation in people approaching Edwin with their attentions. Which is fine! It's not that Charles is jealous. He wants Edwin to be happy and to have a chance at a fulfilling relationship, yeah? The problem is, Charles is aware that Edwin is unpracticed with these kinds of emotions and other people, and it would be very easy for someone to take advantage. And that’s not going to happen, not on Charles’ watch.

To make matters worse, the admirers are getting a little too intense. And Charles is starting to suspect there's more at work than everyone realizing his best mate is brills.

(Or: In which the damage to Edwin's soul across years of torture has had an unusual effect, and Charles needs to fix it before he's compelled to violence. Again.)

trína chéile, le chéile, claochlaithe / entangled, together, transformed by theroyalsavage

Edwin Payne and Charles Roland are not Orpheus and Eurydice. They are not tragic figures of myth, children of gods and spirits, immortalized in verse by the poets of old. They’re nothing special at all – just two boys too stubborn to move on. With that said, however… Edwin must admit that there are certain similarities.

Came up from that lake of fire by ghostinthelibrary

"Are you a zombie?” Niko peers into Edwin’s eyes. “Because the Night Nurse told me zombies exist. Do you hunger for brains, Edwin?”

“Hardly.” Remembering being splattered with gray matter in the not-so-distant past, Edwin shudders. He cannot imagine consuming it. “I’m not a zombie.”

“What about a vampire?” She almost looks excited by the prospect. “We’re only a couple of hours from Forks. It would be perfect!”” When they’re caught during their escape from Hell, Charles and Edwin have no choice but to make a deal: they have one hundred days to find and entrap a powerful, malevolent spirit, or both of their souls are forfeit. But when they’re both temporarily restored to living bodies to aid in their search, being alive brings with it a host of new feelings, which neither of them know how to cope with, especially as their deadline looms closer and their quarry proves increasingly dangerous.

Unbreakable by Asexual_Enjolras

Edwin feels as though he owes Charles an apology because he cannot offer support to his best friend in the same way that Crystal can. And Charles tells him exactly where to stick that apology the moment he does.

Or, Edwin feels like he is broken and Charles does not agree.

after the insects have laid their claim by lolotr

“Where are you buried, do you’ve any idea?”

“My body was never found,” he replies softly. “There is a memorial marker next to my parents’ graves, but my remains are not there.”

The idea is so horrifying that it stuns Charles into silence for a couple seconds. “I didn’t know that. Why didn’t I know that?”

Edwin’s shoulders tense. “The whole thing is bloody tragic enough as it is.”

Grabbing his wrist, Charles begins marching them back in the direction of the pond they used to get here. Edwin doesn’t resist, but he does argue, because of course he does. “Charles, where are we going?”

“St. Hilarion’s. We’ve got a new case, don’t we?”

Hold This by RoseGanymede95

“Alright, listen,” Charles said, after trying not to think at all for at least five minutes. “Hear me out.”

“Any ideas?” Edwin asked, not looking up from his page.

“It’s just. What would actually happen if you cut my hand off?”

Edwin jerked his head up so fast, Charles wondered that he didn’t brain himself against the stone wall. He looked more offended than he had when he found out about the live snake in Charles’ bag.

“What the hell kind of a question is that?” He hissed.

“I’m not saying we should do it!” Charles backpedaled. “I’m just curious! These cuffs make us proper solid, don’t they? We could probably lop it off and get me out.”

“No,” said Edwin emphatically. “We are not discussing this. I don’t want you getting any ideas and chewing your own arm off like a trapped weasel.”

“Not my whole arm, just my hand.”

the start of something beautiful (the spoiler-free remix) by KiaraSayre

Four cases from the Dead Boy Detectives casebook, featuring amnesia, corporeality, a time loop, and a chill hang sesh.

If I'm Batman, You're Robin by ahyperactivehero

Charles misses a lot of things from life. One of those is the movies. Edwin volunteers to go with him.

XXX

“Batman Returns?” Edwin asked, reading the title. “What sort of creature is a Batman?”

Charles couldn’t help the bark of a laugh he let out. “No, he’s not a creature, mate. He’s a superhero.” At the totally blank look on Edwin’s face he tried again. “He’s like a detective. But he fights crime with his fists, too.”

“Ah,” Edwin said with a knowing look. “One of your heroes, I see.”

offer me that deathless death by websters_lieb

It takes the better part of two days for Charles’s body to even be found, and in the end, Edwin is forced to turn on all the lights in the gymnasium attic where Charles had died in order to get a janitor to come upstairs. No one had even been looking for him, yet. - or Edwin and Charles attend a funeral, look for a gravestone, and decide to become detectives.

Edwin's Payne tolerance by RabidWatermelon

Charles knew Edwin had a high pain tolerance. How could he not, having endured the tortures of hell? He just didn’t expect it to be so… useful.

AKA I want to write drabbles about Edwin's pain tolerance because I think it's something that would come up over thirty years together and be mildly concerning to someone who went through abuse in life. No fixed plot or posting schedule. Will update tags as chapter come out w new content.

The Case of Edwin's Missing Notebook by thewalkingstone

Edwin forgot his notebook at the office.

Not a problem. He prided himself on having an excellent memory. He certainly liked to jot down notes as he worked, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t work without it. He would just have to remember things until they returned to the office.

It was fine. He was a professional, and professionals did not delay an investigation because they forgot their notebook. OR Just months after escaping Hell, Edwin accidentally forgets his notebook on a case. He does not handle it well. Luckily, his new best mate is there to help him out.

The Scenic Route by DontOffendTheBees

"Cheer up, Edwin," said Charles, brightly. "Might never happen."

Edwin gave Charles a look so haughty it had its own title. "It very much has happened, Charles." He sniffed and straightened out his newspaper with attitude, the rustle of it loud and sharp as a whip crack. "I don't see why we couldn't have simply hopped through the mirror and met Crystal there."

"At this point, Edwin, I'm in total fucking agreement," said Crystal, not opening her eyes. She was burrowed under her coat like a blanket, doing her best to make the uncomfortable upright seat look like a cosy bed. Fortunately this train car was basically empty, so she had space to stretch across two seats – and no one close by to comment on the floating newspaper across the table and the fact she was having a barney with it. "You're like, the worst person to travel with." In which the agency takes the scenic route to their next case; and Edwin finally receives some answers he's been waiting for.

what some circumstance stole by Chrome

For a magic-user intent on siphoning pain for power, both Hob Gadling and Edwin Payne represent unique opportunities. United in dire circumstances, a man incapable of dying and a boy long dead forge an unusual friendship--and try to survive the experience. --- “When you died,” Hob said. “How old were you?” “Sixteen.” “That,” Hob said, “Is awful.” Edwin shrugged. “Life is, I’m afraid,” he said. “Can be wonderful, too,” Hob said. “I promise.”

#dead boy detectives #dead boy detective agency #dbda #edwin payne #charles rowland #payneland #crystal palace #dbda fanfic #cj's fic recs

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