#i had this all written out and then i accidentally clicked away from the page 🙃 why am i this way

[absurdthirst]

Property of Dave York {Dave York x F!Nanny!Reader}

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 9.2k

Warnings: Voyeurism, video surveillance, masturbation, kidnapping, threats of violence, coercion, dub-con, derogatory language, gun play, spanking, oral sex (male receiving ) rough sex, choking, guilt, forced cuckolding, cream pie, anxiety, break up texts, murder, fingering, pussy slapping, sex toys, anal fingering, anal, double penetration, aftercare, forced imprisonment

Comments: Carol's offer of the York family cabin for a romantic weekend away for you and your boyfriend turns dark and deadly when Dave shows up. Unhappy with how you are being fucked and deciding to take you for himself.

🚨🚨DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT - this story contains dark theme of coercion, dub-con due to deadly threats, murder, imprisonment - do not read if this bothers you🚨🚨

Co-written with @storiesofthefandomlovers

**Follow @absurdthirst-writes and turn on notifications to stay up to date on all new fics.

|| MasterList || Dave York MasterList ||

Click Keep Reading only if you have read the Rating and Warnings and understand the warnings may not be complete to avoid listing spoilers. As AO3 says 'creator chooses not to use warnings'. You also agree that you're the right age to be consuming anything here.

“Are you sure?” You ask Carol, eyes wide as she offers to let you use the family cabin for the weekend. 

“Absolutely. I'm heading out of town to see my mom with the girls. Dave will be here and we want to reward you for all of your hard work. You’re so good with the girls and do so much above and beyond. We want to reward you.” Carol offers you a sweet smile. 

You shake your head, “I don’t know what to say.” You admit and Dave smiles, “just say yes.” 

You nod, overwhelmed by how good the Yorks treat you, “th-thank you.” You reply and they both smile. It’s a reward beyond your dreams to get to spend the weekend in the woods with your boyfriend at the York family cabin. Little do you know that Dave hates the idea. 

You were hired about a year ago to be the live-in nanny to the York family. At first, they seemed like any other suburban dream but you began to notice small details that tipped off the fact that maybe Dave isn’t the man he says he is. The blood stained clothes on the floor in the mud room late one night and he told you he cut himself yet that was too much blood for an injury you couldn’t see. Then the random calls which meant Dave would disappear for days on end after. 

The weirdest thing is the man’s internet history. When trying to search the computer for Molly’s schedule, you accidentally came across a page that detailed the internet history of the house and you, being curious, clicked on some of the links. Porn. But not your average vanilla stuff. This was bondage, it was BDSM. It was rough. Fuck, that must be Dave. The time stamp was the middle of the night and you know Carol can’t survive without her sleep. 

You hate to admit it but you touched yourself to thoughts of Dave treating you like that. He’s so sexy, authoritative, and secretive. Maybe that makes him sexier. Well, certainly when compared to Johnny, your sweet boyfriend who won’t even so much as spank you. Still, you can’t get involved in any way. This is your boss and you’d be risking your job and home and a mortifying rejection since you know Dave doesn’t want you like that. No, you’ll enjoy the cabin this weekend with Johnny and maybe you can get off thinking of dirtier things while your boyfriend sweetly goes down on you.

The smile on Dave’s face is a very practiced one. One that doesn’t show the anger, that only flashes for a brief second in his eyes before he blinks it away. Carol hadn’t talked about this with him and he wants to snatch the keys away from you as his wife holds them for you to take. Instead, he smiles. “Just say yes.” He watches as you sputter and take the keys to the cabin he had bought and was normally a weekend getaway from him and the girls. Often when he needed to recuperate from a rough mission or a job had gotten too close. Why the fuck had Carol decided to give his fucking cabin to the nanny for the weekened ot use as a fucking sex room? That dipshit you were dating wouldn’t know what the fuck he was doing. Could he even build a fire? He scoffs to himself and grinds his teeth, furious as he thinks about that fucker touching you. It’s bad enough when you have weekends off and you come home smelling like sex and cheap ass beer like you were at some frat party. Probably had been. “You know how to get there, right?” He asks you, knowing he hasn’t told you where the cabin is although Carol might have. 

You nod, “Carol gave me the coordinates. Johnny is pretty good at navigating so we shouldn’t have a problem. It’s okay if I take him, right?” You ask, biting your lip. Fuck, Dave wants to say no but he knows that won’t help him. Carol can’t get suspicious of his desires otherwise you’ll be gone and he can’t allow that. “Of course you can take Johnny.” Carol promises and you grin. 

“Thank you so much.” 

Carol nods, “don’t think anything of it. It’s all set, right Dave?” 

He swallows down his annoyance, “it’s all set.” He offers you a sickly smile that has your stomach knotting and Carol pats his hand, “excellent.” She winks and you grip the keys, eager to tell your boyfriend about the weekend away.

****

“You girls be good for your mother, and grandma and grandpa, okay?” Dave winks at Alice and reaches out to tug on one of Molly’s pigtails. 

“Daddy!!!” Molly shrieks, batting his hand away as she giggles and he chuckles. 

“I mean it.” He raises his eyebrows at them before moving up to the driver’s side window where Carol is already behind the wheel. “Drive carefully, honey.” He urges, knowing that while he might not love her like he probably should, she is important to him. Plus he wants his girl’s to be safe. While he feels like there is something missing inside him, not able to really connect with his wife, he loves his children. “Call me when you get to your moms.” He leans in and presses his lips to hers quickly before he pulls away. His plans for the weekend have changed and he needs his wife to leave on time, so he had helped her pack up the Mercedes. 

**** 

“Wow. This place is sweet.” Johnny grins as you enter the cabin. He’s carrying your travel bag and you admire the decor of the cabin. It’s simple but rustic and you love it. You love being out in the woods, the sound of nature, and of course, being there with your boyfriend. He’s sweet and kind and everything you should want and this weekend you’re going to try and remind yourself of that. Johnny sets your bags down, reaching for you to pull you close, his hands squeezing your ass. “And the best thing is not having to sneak around. We have the whole weekend to do whatever we want.” Johnny kisses along your neck and you smirk, knowing he’s eager to touch you. Has been since you left the York house.

The rustic charm of the house hides the sophisticated camera system. Hidden discreetly in areas that won’t be noticed by anyone who isn’t a trained operative. Carol had never noticed. Now, Dave watches you, glaring at the screen of his laptop as your boyfriend gropes your ass and slides his hand up to cup your tit as he tries to steer you back towards the sofa. “Asshole.” He hisses, jealous that you let this fucker touch you. His cock twitches, making him reach down to palm himself through his pants as he imagines himself with you on that couch. Showing you what getting fucked should be like. 

You let Johnny lay you down on the sofa and he’s quick to remove your shirt, tossing it down and you reach behind you to unclasp your bra, exposing your tits unknowingly to Dave’s gaze until Johnny takes your nipple into his mouth, making you moan. “Fuck. That’s good.” You sigh, running your fingers through his hair as he sucks but it’s not hard enough, not rough enough.

“Fuck.” Dave hisses, reaching up to slide the end from the belt buckle. His cock throbbing in his pants and he’s already decided that he’s going to jerk off, watching you get fucked by this pathetic excuse for a boy. There’s nothing really wrong with Johnny, Dave hates him solely because he wants you. Wants to use you and show you what you really want when you look at him with those searching eyes. Pulling his hard cock out, Dave spits in his hand and starts to smear it over the sensitive head. 

When Johnny slides inside of you, he’s asking if you’re comfortable and you want to roll your eyes. “Fuck.” He hisses in pleasure at how wet and tight you are and you want him to squeeze your throat. You want him to fuck you like it’s your last day on earth. You want him to ruin you but he won’t. You wrap your legs around him, trying to push him deeper. “Fuck baby. You’re so wet.” Johnny groans and you want to be spiteful and tell him you were thinking about Dave being in this cabin, imagining him fucking you, wrecking you.

Dave strokes his cock, hard and fast as he imagines how tight you would be. The squeals he would pull from you would be much better than those damn fake moans you are putting on for him. “You would cry for me.” He grunts, watching you wrap your legs around him. He wonders if Johnny actually buys your moans, if he believes that you are actually enjoying yourself. His cock is slick in his hand, gripping it harshly as he jerks off. 

“Oh my God, I’m cumming!” You cry, throwing your head back as you grip him inside of you, faking yet another orgasm. You moan, glancing up at the ceiling, letting out another fake moan as you wait for Johnny to cum inside of you. He’s grunting, his face buried in your neck, and you whimper, “cum for me baby.” You try to egg him on, squeezing his cock in your walls and you moan his name. 

“Gonna cum. Gonna cum.” He groans, thrusting into you a half dozen more times before he cums.

Dave grunts, holding his breath as he starts to cum. Ropes of his sticky seed coating the towel he had covering the steering wheel of his car as he cums. Stroking himself through the high and watching you as you lay under Johnny limply, helping him ride out his orgasm while very obviously not experiencing your own. He wouldn’t let that happen. Milking the last drops of his release before he sits back in the seat and pants, making up his mind on what he will do next. 

You are cooking when you hear the noise. Confused by the clicking sound and you turn the stove off and on again, wondering if that’s the noise. “Johnny?” You call out, wondering where he is. He isn’t usually this quiet. He’s usually annoying you by now, wanting to incessantly talk about his video games or the latest thing he read on Reddit. You turn off the stove, the pasta sauce is cooked anyway, and you will probably find Johnny lounging on the sofa. “Johnny, baby. I-” You scream, finding Johnny tied to a chair and a gag in his mouth.

A hand comes around your mouth, covering it and hot breath washes over your ear. “Ah ah ah, no screaming baby, not yet.” Dave hums in your ear, grinning at the furious expression on your boyfriend’s face. “Your boyfriend didn’t even lock the fucking door. Anyone could have wandered into the cabin.”

Your eyes widen at hearing Dave’s voice in your ear. Your heart pounds in both fear and arousal. His body is pressed against yours and you shiver against him. Your hands are gripping his wrist but it’s no use, he’s stronger than you. “Be calm and nothing bad happens.” He coos and lowers his hand from your mouth. 

“Please. Let - let us go. We will leave. I- I am sorry Mr. York.” You promise, aware to an extent of what he is capable of.

“What are you sorry for?” Dave asks you, “fucking on my couch? Or faking your orgasm.” He shakes his head. “It was pathetic, watching you moan like a whore when we both know you were counting down the seconds until he came and rolled off you.” He tuts and watches Johnny huff and tug against the ropes tying him to the chair in amusement. “So I decided I’m going to show him how you should be fucked.”

Your eyes widen even more and you step away from Dave. “Wha-what? I- Dave. I- don’t understand.” You shake your head and step towards Johnny. “I- I swear to you baby I had - I don’t know what he’s talking about.” You try to assure your boyfriend who is tied up and Dave chuckles, reaching for your wrists to grip them in his. 

“Don’t lie, baby. That’s not nice. You gotta tell him the truth. He doesn’t make you scream. He doesn’t make you writhe. I’ve seen it. I know it. You don’t soak his cock with your cum.” Dave declares and your cunt clenches at the deep words, the truth you’ve been too scared to say. Johnny laughs around the gag again and you wonder how the hell he’s so oblivious. 

“He’s not wrong.” You confess in a whisper.

Dave smirks and looks over at Johnny smugly. “Strip off your clothes.” Dave orders, squeezing your wrists before letting go. “First, I’m going to punish you for letting this boy touch you. You could have just asked and I would have bent you over my desk every night after Carol and the girls were asleep. Or maybe the washing machine in the basement. That way you don’t wake them up with your squealing.” He chuckles as he steps back and reaches for the hem of his shirt. “You cleaned his cum out of your cunt, didn’t you?”

You nod, knowing this is so wrong. It’s so wrong. You can’t fuck Dave in front of your boyfriend. “I- I showered.” You confess and swallow harshly at the sight of Dave shirtless, several scars litter his skin from his past and it attracts you to him even more. 

“I told you to strip.” Dave orders and you shake your head, “I can’t do it.” You choke, knowing this is wrong. Dave shakes his head, reaching into the back of his pants to pull out a gun. 

“If you don’t strip, I’m gonna spread your boyfriend’s brains over the carpet and no one will ever find him.” Your eyes widen, looking at Johnny’s frantic, scared look, and you know Dave doesn’t fuck around. You reach for your shirt, starting to strip off with shaking hands.

Dave watches as your plain bra is revealed, smirking when you reach behind you and shakily unclasp it. “Those are nice tits.” He hums. “Your boyfriend should have sucked on them more. Bitten them and pulled on them.” His cock twitches in his pants and grunts, “I will. Maybe I’ll get some clamps out for them. Make them really sore.”

You whimper at his words, avoiding the glare from your boyfriend who is shaking his head. He never sucks on your tits, always gets right to fucking you. Sometimes he will go down on you but it’s too sweet. It doesn’t make you gasp and writhe. You toss your bra down and hook your fingers in your leggings, pushing them down and kicking them aside so you are left in your panties. 

“Ah ah ah. All of it.” Dave tuts as he pulls his belt through the loops. You look at Johnny as you push your panties down, the gun is still in Dave’s hand so you kick the underwear aside to stand bare before Dave.

“You don’t deserve her.” Dave turns his comment towards Johnny. Shaking his head in disappointment. “She shouldn’t be able to walk, let alone make dinner after you fuck her.” He slaps the belt against his palm and smirks. “Shouldn’t be able to move.” He flicks open the button of his pants and motions to the couch. “Bend over. I’m going to spank you for fucking on my couch.”

You shake your head, glancing over at Johnny and Dave tuts, pointing the gun at the younger man. “Do you want me to blow his brains out?” You shake your head frantically and move over to the sofa, kneeling on it as you shiver in anticipation for what Dave is going to do to you, knowing it’s so wrong to already be turned on.

You shake your head, “please Dave.” You beg and he smacks your ass again. 

“Call me sir.” He demands and you nod, “sir.” He hums in delight and rubs your ass, making you arch your back. 

“Fuck. I need more.” You tell him, finally letting your desires escape, the ones you’ve concealed for so long.

He pauses for a second, grinning in triumph. “I knew you were perfect.” He groans, pulling his hand back so he can whip your ass with the belt, “you need me. Not some pussy.” He hisses, striking your ass every other work in quick succession.

You cry out. arching your back at the pain, but fuck if your cunt doesn't clench at the sensation. "Oh shit." You pant, trying to catch your breath while Dave caresses your ass. You inhale deeply. ignoring the pained look on Johnny's face as he helplessly watches.

“You like it, don’t you?” Dave asks as he draws back for another slap of the belt against your ass. “Don’t lie.”

“I love it.” You confess, unable to lie to him. He’s tearing you apart and you are unraveling for him, telling him your deepest darkest secrets. You cry out when he hits you again with the belt, your skin is on fire and you pant, trying to catch your breath.

Dave groans, smirking as he flicks the belt against your ass again. “Knew you would love it.” He hisses, his cock twitching in his pants. “You’re fucking dirty, my little whore.”

You collapse forward onto your elbows, ass aching. And you struggle to breathe, knowing it’s true. You’ve always been his. “Yes, I- I- fuck. I’m your dirty little whore.” You whimper, closing your eyes to ignore the hurt look on Johnny’s face, concealed by the gag.

Dave chuckles and drops his hand, reaching out and caressing the welts that are on your ass. “Get on your knees.” He orders you rightly, “I want you to suck my cock. Show you me how much you regret him touching you.”

It’s getting impossible to deny him, the guilt pushed aside by arousal as you shift onto your knees and hiss at the sting when your thighs press against your ass. You look up at Dave as he fumbles to pull his cock out, gun still in one hand, and when he manages to get his hard length out, your eyes widen. Fuck, he’s huge. Your mouth falls open in shock and he grips his length, playfully swiping the head along your lips until you take him into your mouth.

Dave groans as you take him deep, rolling his hips forward. “Fuck.” He hisses, watching as your lips stretch around his cock. He loves it, your eyes starting to water slightly as he pushes himself deeper.

You choke but he doesn’t pull back, continuing to push his cock down your throat, and he grabs the back of your head to stop you pulling off of him. “Take it all.” He demands and you gag but inhale deeply through your nose, concentrating on taking all of him.

You swallow and struggle but you manage to press your nose against the curls above his cock. Making him groan happily as he holds your head there for a long moment before he pulls back. Wanting to fuck your throat, use you for his pleasure, although he’s not filling your mouth with his seed. No. He’s saving that for your pussy. Wanting to replace your loser boyfriend’s seed with his and watch it drip from your folds.

You choke on your breath when Dave pulls his cock back, barely able to catch it as he pushes deep down your throat again. “Fuck. Oh fuck.” He hisses and you are dripping onto the floor as you watch him with watery eyes, loving the way he clenches his jaw. The gun is still in his hand. He looks deadly and that turns you on more than anything Johnny has ever done.

He can tell this excites you. The way that you lean into his thrusts into your mouth and the way that your thighs spread tell him how much you love this. In a few minutes he will be able to see your cunt drooling into the floor, your arousal leaking out of you and dripping down like the little slut that he knows you are.

You whimper around him, saliva dripping down your chin, and when he hisses your name, you slide your hands up to caress his thighs. He allows it, watching you with those dark eyes you’ve dreamed of far too often and you whine when he pulls his cock from your mouth after several moments.

“Get up and bend over the couch.” Dave growls, slapping his cock on the side of your cheek. “Want to cum inside you. after you’ve screamed my name so much that your throat is raw.”

You scramble onto the sofa, desperate to feel him inside of you, to get fucked the way you desperately want to get fucked. You look over at Johnny who has tears in his eyes and you mouth “I’m sorry.” It’s useless but you still want him to know how sorry you are. You’re an eager whore for Dave but he didn’t deserve to get caught in the mess.

Pushing his pants down, he kicks them off and kneels behind you. The barrel of the gun slides up your drenched slit and he chuckles when you stiffen. “I could fuck you with this gun. Click the safety off and shove the barrel in your cunt,” he coos, loving how you whimper. “But I’d rather feel you around me first.” He pulls the barrel back and presses it against your puckered hole. “Maybe next time.” He guides himself to your cunt with his other hand and only pulls the gun completely away when he snaps his hips forward and fills you up.

Your gasp echoes in the cabin, shocked at the abrupt way he fills you, stretching you out, and it’s unlike anything you’ve ever felt. Equal parts painful and pleasurable. It’s all you’ve ever wanted. “Oh fuck.” You choke, unable to breath as he doesn’t give you a chance to adjust around him before he’s pulling out to set a harsh pace, pounding into you like it’s the last thing he will ever do.

Dave hisses at how tight you get, pressing his hand on your lower back when you arch it up. “Fuck, that’s it. God, you love this don’t you?” He chuckles and glances over at where Johnny is sobbing in the chair. “This is what you should have done. You should feel how fucking tight she gets every time I rock into her.” He smirks. “But you won’t, because you can’t fuck her like I can.” He slaps your ass and thrusts harder into you, the slapping of his hips against your ass filling the cabin.

You cry out, his words shouldn’t turn you on but they do. It’s true. Johnny has never fucked you like this. It’s animalistic and you’re fucking breathless, panting as he slams his hips against yours over and over again, gun still in hand as he runs the barrel along your back.

“That’s it, taking it like the little slut you are.” Dave growls, enjoying the way you clench down around him. “My slut. Your cunt needed a real cock inside it. A man who isn’t afraid to hurt you, wants to hurt you.” He groans when you squeal and concentrates on that angle as he plows into you.

“Fuck! Fuck!” You whine, squeezing your eyes shut as he pushes deep inside of you, making you fall forward onto your elbows as you can’t remain upright on your hands anymore. “Yes. You. Needed you.” You know it’s wrong but you’re lost in the haze of lust and you can’t see Johnny’s heartbroken look as you wantonly moan for Dave.

Dave growls, loving how you just admitted that in front of your pathetic boyfriend. “You look so good.” He pants out, “split open on my cock. Be a good girl and cum and then I’m really going to make you squeal.”

You can’t hold back, even if you tried, you cry out when he smacks your ass again and you cum, clamping down on his cock and soaking him. You bite your lip, trying to smother your moan because you know Johnny is still watching you.

Dave growls, pissed that you would try to muffle your moans, and he reaches back to grab your shoulder, pulling you back against his chest. “Don’t you fucking bite your lip.” He huffs. “Or I’ll shoot your boyfriend and the last thing he will ever see is you cumming on my cock,”

You hate that his words make you clamp down even more on his cock. He’s so commanding, it makes you soak him, and he grabs your jaw, forcing you to release your lip. “I’m sorry.” You gasp, to both Dave and Johnny. The fact that you are getting fucked by another man in front of your sweet boyfriend has your heart breaking but your body is aching for Dave.

Dave huffs. Sliding his gun hand down as he continues to fuck you through your orgasm, the barrel nudging your clit and he smirks when you gasp and your body reacts. “No you aren’t. You love this. You wanted my cock for so long.” He tells you. “You don’t think I didn’t know you searched my history? Saw what I was into? What I imagined doing to you?”

You would be mortified that he knew you’d seen the videos but he’s making your fantasies come true right now and you can’t stop yourself from enjoying the way he fucks up into you, the cold barrel of the gun nudging your clit enough to make you moan again. “I- fuck - it was so filthy. The - the choking. The spanking. I- I want that so much.” You admit, knowing Johnny wasn’t capable of giving that to you.

“You’re gonna get it.” He promises, feeling your cunt start to relax and he pulls out of you to turn you on your back. Throwing your legs back up into his shoulders, Dave wastes no time slamming back into you to start pounding you into the couch like he imagined when he was watching Johnny fucking you, folding you over to make sure he can plunge deep.

“Shit. Oh shit.” You squeal, he’s so deep inside of you. You feel like he’s in your guts. “Fuck baby. Oh fuck.” You sob, sounding authentic, not faking it like you did with Johnny. “Oh my God.” You whine, cupping your tits as he fucks you like it’s his last day on earth.

“That’s it, fuck, you’re so slutty.” Dave hisses, loving the way your cunt just floods his cock with your juices, every time he thrusts into you more coats him. It’s dripping down his thighs and his balls. Reaching up, he slaps your cheek lightly, not enough to hurt you. “My whore.” He growls, grabbing your throat and squeezing like he had imagined so many times. He could never do this to Carol, she didn’t like anything but basic lovemaking, but you are different. You will give him what he needs.

You grip his forearm as he fucks into you, making you moan and writhe. He grips your neck a little tighter and it cuts off some of your air, making you choke but your cunt squeezes his cock. You love this. It’s filthy and everything you’ve ever wanted.

“You love this.” He coos mocking, grinning over at where your boyfriend has his eyes closed. “Open your fucking eyes.” He orders, pointing the gun back at Johnny and his pace falters slightly. “Watch her get fucked. Every second of my cock inside you, you watch. Knowing you can’t give her this.”

You gasp, hating that you’re so turned on by his authority, and you whimper when he hits something incredible inside of you. Johnny opens his eyes, the look in them is heartbroken and it kills you to know that it’s over between you. He’d never want you now and you don’t know if you would want him after experiencing Dave. “Shit. Shit. I’m gonna cum.” You squeal, feeling how close you are.

Gritting his teeth, your squeal just makes him rock into you harder. Wanting to see how hard you cum, Dave holds the gun up to your head and pulls the trigger.

Fuck, it’s wrong. It’s so wrong. But you cum when he pulls the trigger. The way your life flashes before your eyes as you wonder if he’s just killed you only to hear the click of the trigger and nothing else. It’s the sexiest thing that’s ever happened to you and you gush, soaking him with your cum as you sob his name.

Dave groans, feeling your cum soak him. Making him hiss, flexing his finger and dropping the gun as he lunges forward. Folding you over as he presses his lips to yours and buries his cock deep as he can get it, coating your walls in hot ropes of his seed.

You pant against his mouth, hands wrapping around his shoulders, and you pull him even closer, “Dave. Dave. Dave.” You whine into his mouth, his cock twitching inside of you and he pushes his cum out of you with each rock of his hips.

He practically grins against your lips in satisfaction. Feeling you pull him closer is his personal triumph, getting you to admit that you need what he gives you. Riding out his orgasm before he pulls back to see your body just sag into the couch as he admires his cum starting to well up in your abused pussy.

You open your eyes, looking up at Dave as he shifts off of you, leaning back to admire his cum after pulling out of your cunt. “That’s how you’re supposed to fuck her. That’s how she should look. Wrecked. Ruined.” Dave tells Johnny who is crying, blinking to stop himself from closing his eyes, fearful of Dave despite the gun being set aside.

Dave stands, starting to pull his clothes back on and picks up his gun. “You drove up here, so I’m going to take Johnny down to the bus station.” He tells you. “Safe to say he won’t be staying.”

You are too dazed to really think about it. You nod, knowing you will have to call Johnny and break up formally but you doubt he will ever talk to you again. "I'm sorry Johnny." You whisper, watching Dave untie him from the chair but not ungag your boyfriend who looks equal parts disgusted and scared. You know Dave will send him on his way and then you have no clue what will happen next. You can only hope that he fucks you again.

“Stay here.” Dave shoves Johnny towards the door but doesn’t give him a chance to stop and look at you. Opening the door and pushing him outside before locking it behind him. “Don’t worry.” Dave chuckles quietly as the other man starts to struggle against the rope around his hands. “I won’t leave her alone too long.”

You sigh, leaning back into the cushions of the sofa. The guilt is creeping up on you but the ache in your body pushes it aside. You’ve never been so satisfied and you’re eager for Dave to return, wondering what the next steps are. Part of you worries if he will kill you. You know he’s capable of it. Part of you wonders if he will simply leave you out here to make your way home.

Dave drives Johnny five miles away from the cabin, turning down an old dirt road that leads to an abandoned property. “You don’t have to worry.” Dave chuckles as he parks the car. “Everything will be fine.” He gets out and rounds the car, pulling an increasingly frantic Johnny out. “Shut up.” He hisses, pushing him up against the car and searching for his phone. He smirks when he pulls it out of his left pocket. “You are going to break up with her. Tell her that you never want to see her again.” He chuckles and puts the now loaded gun up to his temple and urges him away from the car. “Let me show you where I’m going to dump your body.” He taunts. “There’s a very nice, dry well. Perfect for you to rot in.”

Johnny cries, sobbing as Dave pushes him towards the well and he knows he has one chance to fight. He spins around, trying to knock the gun from Dave’s hand and he succeeds, deciding to run. He sprints, his hands still bound, and he can barely breathe with the gag in his mouth. “Fucker.” Dave hisses, scrambling to pick up the gun to run after the younger man. When he catches up, he aims and shoots him in the head, watching the body fall to the ground. “Had to make it messy, huh?” Dave huffs as he drags his body to the well. No one would find Johnny.

After he’s unlocked Johnny’s phone with the Face ID, he shoves the body into the well and smirks as he flips through your texts. Frowning slightly when he sees the exchange where he had been trying to convince you to leave your job with the girls, wanting you to move in with him. “Asshole.” He hisses, angrily typing out the breakup message to you, signaling the end of your relationship permanently. After he sends the message, he blocks your number and shuts the phone down, throwing it into the well, along with his body and hums to himself as he walks back to his car. Now he just needs to deal with you.

You stumble from the bathroom, having peed and cleaned up, when you hear your phone ding. Picking it up, you frown when you see the message from Johnny and open it. 

I’m sorry. I can’t do this. Knowing you’ve been his whore and let him fuck you shows what kind of person you are. You are disgusting and I never want to see you again. I hope he satisfies your slutty needs and he’s gonna break your heart. Good luck. 

The message makes you tear up, not able to refute his claims that Dave will break your heart. You know that. He’s probably on his way back now to do just that. You pull on your shirt and panties and sit on the sofa, typing a message back. 

I’m so sorry, Johnny. I do love you. He just gave me what I needed. Can we please talk? I don’t want to end things like this. You hit send and the message never says delivered. He’s blocked you. That makes you cry, mourning the safe, yet boring relationship you had with Johnny.

Pulling back up to the cabin, Dave is happy to see your car still there. Scoffing to himself because Johnny had been happy to let you whisk him away rather than him doing it to you. Knowing it’s slightly sexist, but he doesn’t give a shit. You need a man to take care of you, and Dave is going to be that man. “I’m back.” He announces, walking back into the main room and frowning when he sees you crying. “What’s wrong?”

You sniff, wiping your eyes when you see Dave. “Johnny broke up with me.” You gesture to your phone and Dave wants to roll his eyes. 

“And that’s a bad thing?” He asks and you bite your lip. 

“I- I don’t know. I feel guilty. I- I fucked you in front of my boyfriend and now he’s - oh God. Carol. And the girls. I- shit.” You start to panic, realizing how wrong this all is.

“Don’t.” Dave shakes his head, sitting down and reaching out for you. He doesn’t care about what you are feeling but he has to pretend like he does. “Fuck that loser, or- don’t fuck him. He couldn’t make you cum. And Carol isn’t going to find out about this.”

“How do you know? I - I can’t look her in the eyes when we go back home. She- she’s gonna know. I can feel it. Oh God. This was so wrong. You shouldn’t have done this. You were supposed to be at home and now I- fuck.” You cling to him, soaking his shirt with your tears.

“Hush.” Dave insists, rolling his eyes at your dramatics. Some people just can’t have a poker face and you are one of them. Not that it matters. His hand slides down into your panties and he pinches your clit. “Don’t think about it.” He growls. “Think about what I’m going to do to you right now. In my bed.”

You choke on your sob, his fingers rubbing your clit has you whimpering. The alternations between pinching and rubbing make you moan and your tears run down your cheeks but you stop sobbing. “Fuck. Dave.” You whine, turning your head to kiss his neck.

“That’s it, concentrate on how much you want it.” He groans, his flaccid cock twitching. He always has wanted to fuck someone after he’s killed and he’s going to get to, the gunpowder still fresh on his skin. “You need it. You need what I’m going to do to you.” He bites down roughly on your shoulder, sure that his teeth will leave impressions through your shirt.

"I do. I really do." You gasp, grinding down onto his fingers. He smells like smoke, something you can't put your finger on, but you love it. It smells like Dave. "More. Need more." You whine and cry out when he slaps your cunt with his palm. 

"Patience." He demands and you whimper, "please Dave."

Dave smirks, enjoying how eager you are for him. He pushes a finger deep inside your cunt and curls it up. “When I am here, you are to wear nothing.” He orders harshly, pumping his finger before adding another. “You will be ready to take my cock in whatever hole I want to fuck.”

“Yes. Yes. I’ll be ready. I’ll be ready. I’m yours. Have been yours. Just - I need more.” You beg, lost in the pleasure to really take note of his words. You reach out to squeeze his cock through his pants, wanting more of him.

Dave growls, rocking his hips up, “take your fucking shirt off before I cut it off.” He demands, wanting to bite and suck on your tits. Eager to leave his teeth marks on your skin. To make you feel him when he leaves tonight. He pushes his fingers deep and rough. “Now.”

You scramble to follow his order, pulling the shirt over your head to expose your tits to his hungry gaze. He surges down to bite down on your nipple, making you cry out in both pleasure and pain. His fingers curl deep inside of you and you’re so close. He unravels you impossibly fast until finally, you clamp down on his digits, his teeth buried in your breast.

Dave groans in delight, feeling his teeth break the skin and the coppery tang of your blood floods his taste buds. Not enough to really do damage but from the way you clench around him, you love it.

You pant as he slows his fingers, letting you enjoy your orgasm and your eyes are still closed when he tells you to look at him. “You’re mine now.” 

You nod, “I’m yours. I- I always have been.” You tell him truthfully.

“Good.” Dave pulls his fingers out of your cunt and shoves them into your mouth, nearly gagging you. “Now, your going to go into the bedroom and spread yourself on my bed, I need to get the toy you will have in your cunt while I fuck your ass.”

You shouldn’t shake with anticipation but you’ve never done anal before. None of your boyfriends were interested in the prep work and you wonder if Dave is the same. If he’s gonna just try to stick it in. You stand on shaky legs and make your way to the bed, kneeling on it and spreading your knees to display your cunt and puckered hole.

When he had come into the cabin, he had dropped a duffel bag near the door. All the supplies he needs inside, he unzips it, removing a toy, a bottle of lube and the handcuffs. The collar and chain are left in the bottom, along with the padlocks he had brought to secure the cabin. Taking them into the bedroom, he grunts in satisfaction when he sees you kneeling. “Has anyone every fucked your ass?”

You shake your head. “No. No one has.” You admit, hissing when he smacks your ass over the welts that are still sensitive from his rough treatment earlier. “You can. I want you to. Just - just be gentle.” You plead, knowing he won’t but maybe he will consider it.

He snorts, pulling your hands behind your back and slapping the cuffs on them. “Depends on how good you are for me.” He won’t be too rough, he wants you to anticipate him fucking you rather than trying to shy away. Leaning over and grinning, Dave spits on your puckered hold and reaches out to massage it into your skin.

"Shit." You hiss at the new sensation. No one has done this to you and you already fucking love it. "Fuck Dave." You pant when he pushes his finger a little deeper inside of you.  "I'll be good." You promise, arching your back and your abused cunt clenches around nothing.

“I know you will.” Dave coos, pulling his finger out and coating it with lube so he can push it back inside you. “You know what I’m capable of. What I could do to you.” He chuckles when your tight hole clenches around his digits. “You like that I’m a killer.”

You can’t deny it. It turns you on to know what he’s capable of. “Oh fuck baby. Yes. Yes I do.” You confess, “I love it. I want you to be the one to fuck my ass.” You tell him breathlessly and you gasp when he adds another finger to stretch you out.

The sounds are slick and you aren’t pulling away as he starts to pump and scissor two fingers inside your ass. Making him groan at the sight of your clenching cunt. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you are nice and filled up.” He grins, picking up the dildo he had formed from his own cock using one of those kits. “My cock will be the last one you have inside you. Even a toy.”

You hear him squirt lube onto the dildo and you gasp when you feel the silicone press against your cunt. You moan when he starts to push the toy inside of you. “Oh fuck!” You squeal, trying to relax around the girth and you realize that the toy is as thick as Dave.

He chuckles, admiring the way your lips stretch around the toy. “You look good like this, even better when my cock is in your ass.” He taunts.

You pant as he works the toy in and out of you, his fingers scissoring your ass open and you collapse forward, resting your cheek on the sheets, your fingers flexing in the handcuffs. “Please, baby. I need you inside of me.”

He chuckles again and pulls his fingers out of your ass. “You’re ready to be full, huh?” He slaps your ass, leaving the toy inside your cunt as he slathers his cock in lube. He wants it to be slick, for himself and for you taking his cock in your ass for the first time. 

“Yes.” You whimper, making him smirk as he slaps your ass and shuffles closer.

You pant as he presses the head of his cock against your puckered hole and you hold your breath as he starts to push inside of you. It hurts, but you can handle it. His hand caresses your back, “breathe.” He orders and you exhale shakily, inhaling deeply on the next breath. He’s so thick it stings but you want this. You try to relax so you can take as much of him as possible.

Unlike the first time he pushed inside your cunt, Dave takes his time. Works himself an inch at a time. Aware that this is new, plus you still have the toy filling up the other hole on the other side of the thin skin. He can feel the ridges in the silicone and he groans as he rocks into you. “Fuck- fuck you’re going to be so good for me? Taking this cock and a toy aren’t you? You’ll let me do anything I want to you.”

You nod, “yes. Whatever you want. I love - I love it.” You tell him, groaning when he starts to move inside of you. “Yes. Oh yes baby.” You pant when he starts to move faster and he’s gripping the toy, working that in and out too. It’s more than you’ve ever felt and you are already on the edge.

“Fuck, fuck you’re so-“ Dave groans, gritting his teeth and biting off his words when you spasm around him, close to cumming already. “Shiiiit.” He hisses, rocking his hips faster, slapping them against your ass as he works up to a frantic pace.

You squeal when he picks up the pace, pushing into you over and over again. “Yes. Yes! Keep - keep going. Keep going. I - fuck. You’re gonna make me - Dave. Oh Dave!” You clamp down on the toy, squeezing it inside of your walls and you squeeze Dave, shaking as you sob into the sheets at the intensity of your orgasm.

“God, you’re such a perfect little slut.” Dave groans, slowing down and rocking his hips a lot slower than before. He wants you exhausted by the time he is done with you. He needs you to sleep while he closes up the house. “That’s good baby, fuck, you’re so tight.” He praises, caressing your spine. “Want you to cum again. You’re gonna come for me again.”

You recover against the bedsheets, trying to catch your breath while Dave caresses your spine, until he starts to fuck you again. This time, he’s slower. Not as rushed as he rocks his hips, and you try to grind back onto him, arms aching from the handcuffs but you daren’t ask him to remove them.

Looking down, he watches his cock move inside you. Aware that he is recording this very moment on the camera system to keep and watch back whenever he wants. “Gonna fuck you every week.” He groans, twitching inside you. “First you’re going to suck my cock. Kneel down and take my cock down your throat while I finish up work.” He tells you, like he’s explaining how things will go. Because he is. “Then I’m going to fuck your cunt full.”

"Oh God." His words make you burn and you want that, you want him. Every fucking day. "Yes. Yes. My pussy is yours, Dave. I belong to you." You promise, tears stinging in your eyes as your wildest dreams come true. "I need you. I need this."

“You are mine.” He groans, rocking his hips faster and he reaches around you to slap your clit and rub it harshly. “Forever. You’re mine. Mine. You’re going to give me more kids.”

You wonder if he’s just babbling or if he means it. It’s hard to not give into the fantasy. You want him to knock you up, claim you in every way. But you know that if you were lucid, you would be terrified to get knocked up by a married man. “Yes. Yes. Gonna have your babies. As many as you want.”

He snarls, closing his eyes and gripping your hips harshly as he starts fucking into you harshly again. Rubbing your clit in a desperate effort for you to cum again. His control slipping at your acceptance of what he has planned for you. “Yes, fuck, yes, cum for me.”

You can't deny him, clamping down on the toy that is still inside of you, while his cock pushes deep and his fingers play with your clit. "Oh my - fuck!" You scream, almost blacking out from the pleasure. This is what you've wanted, what you've craved since you started working for the Yorks. Now you've got it, your entire body is on fire.

He feels your body give out, collapsing against the bed and flattening out so he just follows you. Still fucking into your ass like a man possessed and his hand trapped between you and the bed, rubbing your clit. He growls out your name, burying his cock deep and filling you with another load of his cum, pulsing deep inside the other hole he had claimed.

You can't open your eyes, you can't move. Knowing he's cum inside of you again, and the way he growled your name, it's more than you can bear. "Fuck. I- I love you. I love you. I love you." You sob, knowing he won't reply but you want him to know.

He doesn’t love you. He can’t. Not when he has the girls and Carol and all the shit that he does. But he does want you. You’re his. He rides out his high and starts to slowly ease out of you once he’s done.

You sigh when he pulls out of you, slowly removing the toy too and you feel so empty. His cum drips out of you, and you want him to take the handcuffs off and cuddle you but he won’t. He will probably uncuff you and then send you on your way. “Thank you.” You murmur, knowing how good this was and you know you’ll need him again soon.

Dave caresses your ass for a moment before he moves towards the bathroom. He needs to clean you up. “I’ll uncuff you in just a second.” He promises, grabbing the toy and bringing it with him.

You watch him come back in with the rag, hissing as he cleans up your abused holes, and you sigh when he unlocks the  cuffs, rubbing your wrists. “Did you enjoy it?” You ask him softly, wanting him to have loved being inside of you.

“Obsessed.” Dave answers with an honest smirk. He knows that you are going to want reassurance and intimacy so he motions for you to get under the covers and pulls them back to get into the bed with you. “I’ll be thinking about it when I’m not inside you.”

Your eyes widen as he slides into bed beside you and you are surprised when he wraps his arms around you. You smile, shifting back to snuggle into him, breathing him in. You don’t know what tomorrow will bring but you have him tonight. He strokes along your stomach and you are lulled into sleep, exhausted from the sex and the events of the day.

He waits until you are softly snoring, slipping out of the bed and picking up your phone to type out another text message, one that would be sent to his phone. Smirking to himself as he hits send, removes your SIM card and erases it. He’s had your password for a long time and now he’s used it. Redressing and stepping out with the bag and padlocks to start shuttering the cabin windows. With you inside.

****

You blink as you wake up, confused by your surroundings until you remember that Dave had fallen asleep beside you. You sigh and turn over in bed, frowning when you feel the cold sheets beside you. He’s gone. You knew he would leave but a small part of you hoped he would stay. You get out of the bed, shrugging on your robe that you’d brought with you, and you frown when you see the cabin is in darkness. You walk over to the window to open the curtains and you gasp when you find it shut up. Starting to panic, you go through each window, finding each one boarded up, and you rush over to the front door. Screaming when you find it locked, you tug on the handle with no use. You’re locked in. “Dave! Dave! Dave!” You shout, praying he’s still here and this is some kind of joke. You rush around the cabin but he’s nowhere to be found. “Oh my God.” You panic, chest heaving as you come to realize he’s locked you in.

Watching the screen, Dave sees you panicking. He picks up his cell phone to dial the cabin. He’s set it up so that only he can dial in, there are no outgoing calls to be made. He watches you jump when the phone peels and you rush over to it. “Dave! What- what is going on? What - why are you doing this?” You cry, making him exhale slowly, keeping his patience for now. 

“You said you’re mine.” He reminds you quietly. “You didn’t want Carol to find out. So this is perfect. You will stay here, I’ll be up to see you every couple of days and bring you supplies.” He rasps into the phone. “I can see you on the cameras and I’ll call you once a day. Tell me if you need me to bring you anything. And when I come, you can have me just like you said you wanted.”

Your hands shake as you look around the cabin, trying to spot the cameras and you think you see one in the corner. “Please don’t do this. I- I wouldn’t tell Carol. It would be our little secret. I don’t - please Dave. I can be a good girl. I won’t tell anyone. Just - just come and let me out. Please. I - fucking let me out of here!” You shout down the phone, losing your cool as you start to have a panic attack at the fact that he’s locked you in the cabin.

“Ah ah ah.” Dave tuts disappointedly. “A good girl wouldn’t yell about her situation.” He tells you. “I’ll be back in three days, baby. Don’t worry. I’ll bring those cookies you love. And you don’t have to worry about Johnny.” He decides to tell you the truth. “I killed him. And you texted me, telling me that you were quitting to move in with him. So Carol won’t wonder where you’ve gone.”

You sob, hearing the truth that Dave killed Johnny. He didn’t deserve to die. He was a good man. You nearly drop the phone, covering your mouth to smother your sob but know Dave can see it on the camera. “Don’t be sad. Now we can be together. When I want. I’m gonna have you forever. You’re mine now.” Dave declares and hangs up the phone. 

You frantically try to call back on the phone but the line is dead. You press the numbers over and over with no response so you finally slump down onto the floor. Dave killed Johnny and now you are his prisoner. Your selfishness has ruined everything, Dave has destroyed everything. You cry for Johnny, for your future, and you know you won’t make it out of here alive. Dave won’t let you go now. You’ll be his. Forever.

[the-greatest-magic-of-all]

Found this in a cardboard box in the rain :)

-------------------

Fabians routine settled back to normal in the few days after Aelwyns visit. An endless stream of meetings and paperwork and political manoeuvring that made the half elfs head spin that was only somewhat helped by his small guards presence.

He felt like he could shoot Aelwyn though, her comment about noticing Rizs armour in his room had spooked the goblin badly enough that he'd refused to sleep in Fabians bed overnight since. Instead posting himself up within arms reach of his King while still fully dressed on one of the plush armchairs he'd dragged over closer.

Fabian was sure it wasn't helping his recovery at all, wounds that bad could take upwards of a month to heal naturally and after a full day on his feet Riz would inevitably end his shift looking pale and ill. He was even more sure of this when he'd woken in the middle of the night and been startled by Sir Durden standing at his post near the door, the guard explaining that Riz would return soon but he'd headed to the infirmary after accidentally popping a stitch. He hadn't been able to sleep after that, dragging himself to the office adjoining his chambers to get a head start on his work for the day.

Riz hadn't reappeared until close to mid-day, slipping into his spot at Fabians side halfway through an audience with some lower member of the court without comment or fuss. It felt off though, the hairs on Fabians neck standing on end as they left the throne room and headed towards his study.

There was nothing that he could really put his finger on though, listening to the quiet click of claws on metal or the swish of his tail as Riz followed along silently behind him. Once the door to his study was shut Fabian had his sword out in an instant, the imposter getting grabbed by the front of their armour (wrong texture, clearly an illusion) and slammed against the door with some force.

"You are not Sir Gukgak."

The imposter winced but was grinning, hands coming up in a clear show of surrender as they dropped the illusion to show their true form. Fabian huffing in annoyance and releasing his grip as the amused form of one of his oldest friends blinked up at him.

"For fucks sake Fig I could have killed you."

"Man I really thought I got his mannerisms down this time. What gave me away?" The archdevil smoothed down her clothes from where Fabian had wrinkled them with his grip. Snorting a laugh when Fabian gave her a withering glare as he sheathed his sword but decided not to give her an answer.

"What in the name of all that's divine and infernal are you doing?"

"I owed Riz a favour and he decided to collect. Wants me to be him for a week or so, something about Durden doing too good of a job for his liking?" She dug in her pockets, withdrawing an envelope and handing it to Fabian with a flourish.

Poor Sir Durden was apparently on Riz's shit list after Fabian teased the goblin if he was cashing in favours with their archdevil friend to keep him away from him... Fabian made a mental note to find a way to apologise to the poor guard later.

Fabian took the envelope without comment, pulling out the short note inside along with the small object that had been inside with it. Eyes quickly scanning the page, noting their code phrase and verifying it was certainly Riz that had written it.

//Sorry. Short notice. Bad habits and old vices. One week. Don't let them know I'm gone.//

Fabian sighed, glancing down at the small object that had been included with the note and rolling it between his fingers. One of Riz's shed fangs, a canine judging by the shape and size, carefully carved with the tip of his sharp claws so that it's surface was covered in an intricate design. Goblins were superstitious, believing that holding another creatures’ bones would give you control over them even after death, and would fastidiously destroy any of their shed teeth just in case. Leaving one behind like this was both an intimate act of trust and a promise and Riz had only done it twice before in the entire time he’d known him. I’m going somewhere dangerous but I'll be back, hold onto this for me so I can destroy it later.

"Fair enough." Fabian sighed, waving for Fig to sit in one of the guest chairs as he sat down heavily behind his desk. Still fiddling with the sharp tooth in his hand as he looked at her. "So you'll be pretending to be him for a week?"

"Yup!"

"Any specific reason why one of the other guards he hand picked himself are unsuitable?"

"Something about him not liking how high strung you were after his little sabbatical... that and he knows you'd never be able to replace him with me." She grinned and flopped onto one of the guest chairs, her feet getting propped up on the table.

“Plus maybe I wanted to hang out with my dear friend for a few days. Stop people from killing him. Just like old times.”

----------

Fabian had to admit that Riz’s plan was sound. No one had picked up that ‘Sir Gukgak’ was not who he said he was at the moment and Fig was very adept at pretending to be the goblin. It wasn’t surprising, Riz had known her longer than he’d known Fabian and they basically considered each other kin. It helped that she was also equally as willing to bite people who threatened Fabians safety, something that she nearly manage to do when one of the ‘guests’ at one of the court functions he was forced to make an appearance at got a little too familiar for his liking. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on who you asked, they’d managed to yank their hand away fast enough that her teeth just clicked together loudly on empty air. It got the point across quite effectively though.

The half elf also found himself far less stressed out than when Sir Durden had been his full-time guard, able to relax in his old friends presence (and share knowing looks in reaction to some of the utter bullshit he had to deal with from snooty nobles, knowing they’d be able to laugh about it in private later). It wasn’t quite the same as having Riz at his side but it was a suitable short-term solution.

Honestly he thought he would have truly let himself become a mad king without a close friend nearby to help keep him grounded. The assassination attempt had thoroughly spooked the rest of his court, especially given he was completely without an heir. There had been talk of finding him a suitable match but, once his brain had caught up to the conversation he’d found himself in, he’d tried very hard to shut down that particular avenue of discussion. It didn’t help that Aelwyn had nearly choked trying not to laugh from where she was eavesdropping only a few feet away.

Fabian had excused himself at the earliest possible moment that wouldn’t seem rude, speedwalking away from the ballroom so that Fig (still disguised as Riz) had to almost jog to keep up. He’d at least managed to snag his secretary on the way out, telling them that he was headed to bed due to a terrible headache and that no-one was to disturb him until at least mid-day tomorrow. Waving off offers to go fetch a doctor and simply saying he’d be fine after a good nights rest.

He didn’t know why that conversation had rattled him so badly. He knew from the moment he took the throne that he’d probably have to settle for a political marriage at some point but he didn’t want to think about that right now. Elves usually went hundreds of years before they thought of marriage and children, sure he was only half elf but couldn’t they give him a little more time before starting to freak out? Maybe twenty… or thirty more years.

Fabian didn’t slow his pace until he was at the door to his receiving room, the guards outside looking surprised to see him as he swept past them, opened the door himself, and entered without saying a word. Fig slipping in, shutting the door behind him and trying not to laugh when the half-elf made a rather undignified noise of surprise and nearly drew his weapon when he discovered the room was not as empty as he expected it to be.

He relaxed almost instantly though, Riz looking rather pleased with himself for catching Fabian off guard as he arranged a rather thick stack of papers on the low table in front of the seats reserved for the king’s guests. The goblin had obviously not been back for very long, still dressed in his Solesian wear that he preferred whenever he was not working within the palace. It was a nostalgic sight for sure, Riz wearing his lighter traveling armour and comfortable button-down that had been his daily fare before he took his oath as Fabians nohecharei. He certainly wasn’t quite as put-together as he usually would be, his clothes looking a little travel worn (and when Fabian looked closer he could swear there were a few small specks of blood adorning one white sleeve) but it was still decently presentable.

“My King! I thought you would still be in the ballroom for a little while longer… forgive me for not being quite as cleaned up as I would like.” Riz grinned at Fabian before looking past him to his doppelganger standing guard near the door, Fig wiggling her fingers at him… HIS fingers at him… before dropping the illusion. “Did your week without me fair better than last time?”

“It was passable. Though I’d prefer you’d let me know in person before leaving next time.” Fabian sat in one of the plush chairs, reaching forwards to grab the first bound stack of papers Riz had been setting out when he entered. Riz bypassing Fabian to go greet the archdevil who picked his knight up to squeeze him in a hug that made him hiss and left his feet dangling in the air.

He wasn’t paying attention to Riz and Fig having a catch up behind him as he read, eyes going wide at the information within the report as he flipped through the papers all written in Riz’s impeccably neat handwriting. His knight had been busy, very busy, pulling all his experience as a detective to the forefront in his effort to nail down exactly who had sent that assassin after him.

“Sweet Cassandra. What in the nine hells did you get up to this week?” Fabian looked up from the report, not able to supress the snort of amusement he made when he saw Riz still dangling from Figs neck with his tail thrashing backwards and forwards happily.

“Gimme two seconds and I’ll do the full breakdown.” He nuzzled up under Figs chin for a second, purring loudly the whole time, before dropping back down to land on his feet.

“I’ll leave you two to it then. It’s been fun Fabes, call me again if you need company.” Fig gave Riz one last scratch behind the ears before snapping her fingers to summon a portal back to her own realm. The room briefly filling with the smell of sulphur before she stepped through and it snapped shut behind her.

“Better than Durden I hope?”

“The Ball, I promise I won’t replace you with Sir Durden. I was just teasing you when I said I would.”

“Not taking that chance. Plus, he stresses you out if he’s around more than a few hours, I count that as doing harm so I’m testing out new options.” Riz’s grin looked a little manic as he stepped back over to Fabian, the goblin pacing backwards and forwards on the far side of the low table from the half elf.

“Aelwyn is a…” Riz paused in his pacing for a moment, pupils narrowing for a moment as he thought before he resumed trying to wear a rut in the floor. “…person who I find unpleasant most of the time BUT I have to admit she has some amazing leads most of the time. I tracked down the person holding Daynes gambling debts in Leviathan, which lead me to this.”

Riz clambered up onto the couch next to Fabian, jabbing at the report in his hand before dragging his finger further down the page. From this close the half elf could feel the heat radiating off his small body but chalked it up to him having been moving around a lot while Fabian had mostly been sitting in the chilly office.

“THEN a blacksmith in Solace, then an enchanter and FINALLY to a mercenary who just so happened to have THIS in their possession.” He hopped down, reaching under the table to pull out a sword he’d stashed there in order to slam it on the table. Fabians eye widened as he stared at the weapon, leaning back and away from the table as one of the recurring elements of his nightmares sat plain as day before him. He’d seen this sword once before as it gouged out his eye, a wound that magic couldn’t heal that still caused him pain on bad days.

“That’s-“

“I know, I’ve been looking for that bastard for years.” Riz snarled and bared his teeth, hackles raising on the back of his neck and tail thrashing from side to side. “I killed them, by the way, but not until after I made sure I had all the information I needed from them.”

He glanced at Fabian, expression softening and tail stilling as he calmed down. “It has the same enchantment on it as the assassin’s dagger. We were right about who sent them but we can’t move against them just yet. Seems Lady Everpetal was rather pissed off about me biting her fiancé…. I should have taken a finger or two.”

That made Fabian release a breathy laugh, the report getting placed on the table as he gestured for Riz to come closer. The half elf placing a hand on each of the goblins shoulders when he was close enough so he could look him sternly in the eyes. He was going to say something about how good a job he’d done, and admonish him for running around so much while he was still recovering from his wound, but the words died in his throat. The rogue tended to not wear very much armour when operating outside of his duties as Fabians knight which meant the only thing between the half elf’s hands and Riz’s skin was his thin shirt and he was concerningly warm.

Fabian lifted a hand to Riz’s cheek instead, the goblin giving him a quizzical look as he tried to work out if Riz was actually warm or if his hand was just cold. He instead opted to press their foreheads together, hoping to get a better gauge of his knights temperature that way.

“You-“

His sentence was very suddenly cut off when Riz lifted a hand to his cheek, taking their proximity as an opportunity to tilt his head to brush their lips together. Fabian was too stunned to do much more than freeze at the unexpected contact until Riz pulled away. Sure Riz would allow Fabian to pet him, and sleep in the same bed, and even cuddle on occasion but he’d never once tried to kiss him before so the suddenness of it was too much for the half elf to process so he just… didn’t.

“You… You have a fever.” Fabian managed to stammer out, Riz squinting and flicking his ears before bringing his own hand up to feel at his forehead.

“Oh. I… sorry. I think I do.” He laughed but it didn’t sound genuine, ducking out from under Fabians hands. “Fuck, I must be a little delirious. Sorry about that.”

Riz took a step back, his entire demeanour shifting as he dropping to kneel and bow his head. “I think I’ll take my leave, my King. I’m sure the healer in the infirmary will have words for me about overworking myself when I go get this fever seen to. I’ll have Sir Durden come relieve me.”

“Understood. Rest well.”

The goblin gave his tail a little flick before standing, picking his way between the table and the plush armchairs and heading for the door.

“Goodnight Fabian.”

God, this took a while! But I finally gathered enough words to compliment the ones you found me!

-- part 1 | part 2 | part 3 --

It’d been a couple of days after Sir Riz’s return (and that kiss), but he’d yet to assume his nohecharei duties.

At first, Fabian was glad to hear that Riz had made it to the infirmary and that his fever was being tended to. He was less glad to hear that his fever had worsened, according to the Head Nurse Mistgift. When Fabian visited Riz in the dark of night, Mistgift insisted that he be out of commission for the next week, maybe more. Looking upon Riz’s sallow yet flushed face and hearing his laboured breaths, he was inclined to agree.

As an act of reassurance, or maybe just kindness, Head Nurse Mistgift had assured him that if the moment his illness took a turn for the worse, she’d summon the High Cleric of the Galician church. High Priestess Níniel Mallorn né Lomenelda. Fabian had met his aunt only a couple of times before becoming king. Quiet, gentle, a little preachy, but far less intimidating or scatterbrained than his other Aunts. Nowadays, he sees her more often (whenever he is expected at church) and receives invitations to dinners even more often. If things did get worse for Riz… well… He’d be accepting more of those invitations.

Even with some of the most powerful divine magic on standby, it hurt that he couldn’t spend every waking moment by Riz’s bedside. Instead, he stuck a hand in his pocket and ran his thumb over Riz’s shed fang whenever possible. He’d have given it back if it weren’t for the…

No, no, no.

Couldn’t spend the moments thinking about that kiss either. Instead, he had to attend meetings, audiences, parties, and preparations for the Blue Moon’s various festivities and religious functions, which he had to lead.

Like right now.

Unable to sleep, Fabian sat in his darkened office, with only a single candle for light, and worked his way through a stack of letters. Some were from his advisors trying to delicately sway him on an issue concerning the need to upgrade and update various constructs around the Kingdom. Others were from nobles attempting to curry favour and possible political power by inviting him to see their various estates and territories. Even one from House Everpetal asked after his presence at some of their Blue Moon celebrations—the gall of them.

“Your Majesty,” came the serene voice of Zayne, his secretary, after a rapt knock at the door and the click of it opening. Before Fabian could even look up from the letter in his hands, Zayne’s gauntly pale hand came into view, placing a stack of papers in front of him. Glancing up at the young man’s angular face and the tiny rodent familiar always perched on his shoulder, Fabian only had to arch a brow before Zayne launched into an explanation. “I’m sure you know that, after the attempt on your life, the entire Court of Stars is… worried about the line of succession so soon after…”

“The crown refused to sit upon any of the late King Meneldur’s children’s heads, and the five of them proceeded to curse, imprison, and kill each other? Leaving Fallinel on the brink of a civil war in a way the world hasn’t seen in eons?” Fabian asked with a weary sigh as his tired eyes drifted across the stack of papers. Unable to focus long enough to read the jittering letters on the page.

“Indeed,” Zayne answered, trading glances with his rat and looking slightly shocked at Fabian’s candour but not disapproving. Maybe even a little intrigued by it. Interesting. “I do hope I’m not out of line when I present you with this. These are your marriage prospects within the Court of Stars. Every single one.” Whatever lingering exhaustion was jolted out of Fabian all at once. Sitting up straight, he started to leaf through the pages of names, ages, and affiliations of what did look like every eligible bachelorette of noble or merchant blood in Fallinel. “Most have already been presented to the Court, though some are—”

“Five months old?”

“—while others are—”

“Over a thousand years old?!” Fabian asked, bringing the page closer to his eyes to make sure they weren’t broken. Umberlee below! She was five times older than his mother. “Zayne?!”

“If it got out that I left anyone out of the consideration, there would be words, your Majesty. Courtly outrage and indignation lasting who knows how long,” Zayne said uneasily, his posture rigid as his rat slipped from his shoulders into his fidgeting hands. His whole body tensed as if anticipating a punch or a yell.

Only then did Fabian realize he must’ve been glaring at the poor guy. Sure, he and Zayne hadn’t ever been on casual speaking terms since he’d been appointed as his secretary by recommendation of Aelwen’s, but he didn’t want Zayne to fear him. He didn’t want any of his servants or subjects to fear him. In that regard, he wasn’t his father’s son.

So, deliberately softening his face and voice, Fabian nodded as he said, “When you’re right, you’re right. Good thinking.”

Thankfully, some of the tension in Zayn’s thin frame eased, and a small smile grew on his lips. Placing his rat back on his shoulder, he leaned over Fabian’s shoulder to point out some of the marks beside certain names on the list. “I’ve taken the liberty of marking the choices that would be most appealing to your allies, your enemies, and…” Zayne paused. He took a step back and clasped his hands behind his back. A war behind his narrowed eyes before it dissolved, leaving behind a timid confidence as he continued, “And, I hope, yourself.”

Fabian could appreciate the sweet sentiment despite how the sight of the list turned his stomach. “Thank you for this, Zayne. Your hard work is very much appreciated.”

With that, Zayne bowed to him before whisking him and his rat away to work in his office in the lower parts of Fabian’s tower, his dark robes fluttering as he went.

Leaving Fabian alone (well, not completely alone. Sir Durden was present, as always.) to stew over the list of names in front of him. After staring at the list for five minutes, a creeping feeling of deceit sunk its claws into his entire being. Just the thought of making this decision without Riz making his stomach turn.

Which was ridiculous!

Fabian’s a grown man.

He’s a King!

Fabian didn’t need his best friend whenever he needed to make a big decision, as a toddler needed their security blanket! He could decide without him. That blasted kiss was just an action of a delirious Riz; it didn’t count. He wasn’t somehow betraying Riz by taking charge of his life and picking a… Queen. She’d be ruling by his side, and his opinion should be the end-all and be all on the subject.

Yes…

After all, he could run it by Riz once the poor thing was feeling better.

Pushing past a grim sense of dread, Fabian combed through the list of names, taking Zayne’s marks into account. Crossing out the definite ‘no’s, like one of Penelope’s cousins. Desperately raking his brain to put faces to these names. He at least got a chuckle when Aelwen’s name popped up with a star and a question mark beside it.

Fabian allowed himself to slump a bit in his seat.

Ugh, this was all too much for him to think about right now. So, hastily and haphazardly, he picked three names from the list that didn’t completely displease him just to have something written down. Lady Wynryth Aspencloud, Countess Maggella Vundran and… Fuck it, the daughter of one of the last remaining majority Wood Elven territories, Lady Ivy Embra.

There.

It was done.

Except, after he lifted his quill from the page and laid it to rest in its inkwell, he found no relief in completing this task. It wasn’t like he was expecting to be excited, yet here he was. Still sitting in his office, ever under watchful eyes. An impending marriage on the horizon like an incoming warship. A potential usurper with a husband that maimed him for being foretold by prophecy. And that kiss, brief yet world-shattering. Had it been an accident? Did he want it not to have been if it was?

Umberlee below, he needed advice, but the person he’d turn to was both indisposed and one of the things he needed to talk about. No, without Riz, there wasn’t a single person on the island with whom he could work through this. Luckily for him, there was a vast and varied world beyond the shores of his kingdom. Filled with wondrously intelligent people who he was honoured to call friends. He needed advice from one of the other smartest people he knew.

He needed to talk to Adaine.

Using the speaking mirror in his bed chamber was out of the question. Yes, it was secure. No one else in the world could listen in on the conversation he had over it. Hell, the entirety of the Alcethmeret was covered in non-detection runes, and it was unscryable. Yet none of that mattered if Sir Durden was still in the room as he spoke.

Using spell scrolls of Sending was out as well. Who knew how many he needed to finish their conversation twenty-five words at a time.

No, he needed a way to actually speak to her.

Preferably telepathically.

Ugh, ironically, Adaine would know how to do this. Her and all of her wizardry and Elven Oracleness. You know, it’s hard not to feel like the dumbest person in the world next to her and Ri—wait.

She’s the Elven Oracle.

Surely, past Kings of Fallinel had ways to speak with the Oracle even when they weren’t on the continent!

Fabian shot up and out of his seat with renewed purpose. He must’ve startled Sir Durden with his sudden and hurried movements as he raced to his bed chambers if the tiny “whoop, alright” he let out was any indication. There might also have been a question, but Fabian waved it off as he pulled an ancient wooden Chest of Holding out from deep within a closet. Letting it thump to the ground before wrenching it open to reveal a veritable hoard of diaries and journals of past rulers of Fallinel.

Reading had never been Fabian’s strong suit (the letters jumped and moved about the page far too much), but at this moment, he kept at it. Flipping through tome after tome, searching for any mention of the Elven Oracle in each King’s writings. The sun was beginning to rise above the horizon when he found it. A recount of one of his predecessors, King Edrehasivar VII, venturing to something called The Oracle’s Summit. A tower deep within the snowy peaks of Fallinel’s tallest mountains, the Elven Oracle’s keep. Reading on, it sounded like he managed to speak with them despite the Oracle not being in Fallinel.

This was his best shot.

Shoving the rest of the journals and the chest back to where they belong, Fabian kept the winning journal in hand as he searched through an Atlas of Fallinel for a map of and directions to the Summit. Thank the Stars; it was only a day’s ride from the palace.

Within the hour, Fabian was dressed, Sir Durden had summoned a handful of guards to join them, and his beloved hellhound steed, The Hangman, was readied for the journey post haste. Thankfully, upon hearing that he was attempting to seek wisdom from the Elven Oracle, his advisors, councillors, and courtiers happily cleared his schedule to give him time to do so.

Fabian and his guards travelled through ancient yet well-worn paths lined with snowy evergreens and craggy rocks. They only stopped once to set up a small camp underneath a stone overhang for a short rest in the middle of the night. The orange glow of their fire was a beacon of warmth as snowflakes drifted on the wind in a forest of cool greens and slate blues.

It was around noon the next day when they finally arrived at the base of a looming tower made of frosted deep blue, perfectly symmetrical stones and huge quartz crystals. Abandoned, it seemed as Fabian walked the Summit’s chilly, silent halls, flanked by Sir Durden and the other guards. The layout confirmed some of King Edrehasivar VII’s writings of how the Elven Oracle used to have servants, apprentices, and even guests of both common and noble blood in their keep. He couldn’t help but smile at the thought. Knowing how Adaine would appreciate the equalizing of social stations.

At the end of a long, wide corridor, draped in deep, dark blue fabrics and silver ornamentation, sits the Elven Oracle’s central sanctum. Almost religious-like in nature, the chamber had vast vaulted ceilings. Along its rounded walls, many tables and podiums stood with empty candlesticks, scrying mirrors, glass bowls filled with water despite the temperature, and various divinatory trinkets. Finally, at the chamber’s heart sat a looming throne of quartz, left empty for who knew how long.

Well, not for much longer.

Unsheathing Fandrangour, Fabian kneeled before the throne with it in his hands. Here goes nothing. Voice reverent and words steady, Fabian called out, “Oracle of the Elves and Mistress of this Tower, I am King Fabian Aramais Seacaster of Fallinel, first of my name. I come begging for your impartial guidance and limitless wisdom. Please, oh, Oracle, hear my plea.” A beat of silence went by as his words echoed off the tall, tall walls of the sanctum. Wincing at the possibility of this all being for not, Fabian closed his eyes and whispered, “Adaine, please. I need you.”

Another agonizing beat.

Then, in a flash of blinding light and a swirl of freezing air that attempted to buffet Fabian and his guards back, the Elven Oracle appeared.

“King of the Elves and Master of this realm, I hear your plea,” Adaine Abernant said in a nigh thundering voice as she hovered over her rightful throne with the semi-blank expression he’d seen her wear when she received a vision.

She was composed of spectral silvery blue light, her hair ever billowing in an unseen wind, glowing pupilless eyes staring into the world only she could see. She was utterly awe-inspiring and ethereal if you ignored that she was wearing a worn-out, tied werewolf t-shirt and thrifted bell-bottom jeans.

As if noticing the dissonance herself, Adaine’s brow furrowed as she muttered, “Wait, hold on.” In a blink, Adaine lowered herself to the ground as she momentarily inspected her projected translucent form. Satisfied, she finally caught Fabian’s eye with a smile. “This is a bit much, wouldn’t you say?”

“Only the best for you, Adaine,” Fabian answered, flashing a charming smile.

“Sure,” She shot back, unconvinced. “What’s up?”

“Umm, if we could speak—” Fabian discreetly tapped his temple. “—Privately, that would be great.”

Adaine’s eyes drifted over his head and clocked all of his guards. “No, yeah, of course, your Majesty,” She said as she began to cast Telepathic Bond. As Fabian watched her perform the verbal and somatic components for it, a warmth spread through him at the familiar sight. One moment later, he felt her hands slip into his and her concerned voice in his mind. “Fabian, what’s wrong?”

Free once more to speak his mind, Fabian felt a weight lift from his shoulders as he allowed himself to sound as stressed as he felt. “Adaine, I don’t know what to do! The most insane thing happened a couple of days ago, a-and I’m at a loss as to how to respond to it.”

“Is this about the assassination attempt?” Adaine asked, holding his hands tighter as she threw a suspicious look toward Sir Durden and the rest.

“Oh, no. Honestly, that’s one of the only things in my life that does make sense right now. Penelope Everpetal wants me dead, nothing new,” Fabian said with a chuckle, tugging on Adaine’s hand to bring her down from any righteous fury against his guards. “No, it’s about Riz.” Adaine’s eyes shot back to him, but she didn’t speak. Waiting for him to give more context with a silent intensity. One that forced Fabian to gulp down a sudden bout of bashfulness that brought heat to his cheeks and ears. “H-he kissed me.”

In a flash, Adaine’s face lit up like a Solstice tree with excitement and vindication as she eagerly said, “Finally! Tell me everything!”

Hold on a minute.

“Finally?” Fabian asked. A slight frown on his lips.

Now, it was Adaine’s turn to be confused. Her head flinched back as she slowly said, “You said Riz kissed you.”

“Yeah, he kissed me because he had a serious fever,” Fabian said, hoping that would bring her up to speed. Yet still, Adaine looked at him as if he’d grown a second head. “He was delirious, Adaine! I mean, he really needs to stop pushing himself so hard because, I’ll tell you, he was absolutely burning up. I told him so right after.”

“Okay, hang on,” Adaine said, holding up a hand and taking a breath. “Tell me everything from the beginning.”

So, he did.

It took a few minutes, but Fabian recounted most of the last month. Beginning with Riz taking that wretched dagger for him and ending with him watching as Riz left for the infirmary after the kiss. At first, he could tell that Adaine was, at the very least, following his timeline of events. Nodding and humming every so often. He knew he lost her near the end, though. And by the time he finished, she had her eyes closed with two fingers rubbing her brow.

“Let me get this straight,” Adaine said before taking a deep breath, holding it for a handful of moments, and letting it out. The moment she opened her piercing glowing blue eyes, Fabian couldn’t help but shrink away from the Oracle’s fury. “The two of you were cuddled up on a couch. Riz had just done his favourite thing in the world, aka infodump, about a hardwon case to you. You put a hand on his cheek. You touched your foreheads together. Then he kissed you… And all you said in response was that he had a FEVER? What wisdom could I possibly impart on you fucking moron!”

“Well, I mean—I, you see—” Fabian did his best not to rear back, but it was hard not to in the face of a furious Adaine Abernant. All he could do was sputter and try to find a line of thinking she might follow. “—The Ball agreed with me! He apologized for it!”

Adaine had never rolled her eyes harder. “Yeah, no shit! You basically rejected him! What else is he supposed to do other than backtrack?”

“I didn’t reject him!” Fabian shot back, not knowing why it felt like there was a very important distinction to make. He’d just… not wanted to think about everything, bad or good, a kiss like that could lead to, especially if it were a mistake. “I was concerned for his health. He was clearly not of sound body or mind!”

“Not of his—? He’s been in love with you for years, Fabian!” Adaine said, unable to stop the hand still holding his from digging her nails into his. He was thankful for the pain, though. It was easier to ignore what she said and how it made his heart leap if he focused on the pain. “That’s probably the most honest he’s ever been with you or himself.”

“Adaine, don’t be ridiculous. You and I both know he can’t stand that stuff,” Fabian scoffed. “The man can’t even stomach it when the topic of me taking a Queen comes up. Not that I entirely can either.”

“Oh, King of the Elves, have you ever thought that maybe two thoughts may be true at once?” Adaine asked mockingly in a way he knew he’d heard Aelwen use before. “That perhaps, yes, Riz cringes at the thought of your future marriage not only because he finds romance and sex mostly distasteful but also because you’d be kissing someone that is not him?” Fabian supposed that could be true, though he couldn’t wrap his head around Riz wanting him like that. Too bad Adaine wasn’t finished. “And! And! Maybe you can’t stomach it for the same reason?”

Now, that, Fabian couldn’t take.

As if repelled by magic, he stumbled to his feet and took a few staggering steps back and down the stairs. Almost immediately, he heard Sir Durden and the other guards draw their weapons and felt Durden hurry to his side. Fabian held out a hand to stop him.

“Your Majesty?” Durden asked, hesitant but willing to stand down if Fabian willed it.

“At ease, Sir Durden,” He answered out loud with a firm nod at Durden before doing the same to the rest of his guards. “At ease. I’m quite fine.”

A loud silence filled the chamber as Fabian found himself lost in thought because… that’s it, right? That’s the thing he didn’t want to process when Riz kissed him. Didn’t want his heart to even hope for a second that it could have Riz in every way it desired. At the end of years and years of pining and yearning, maybe, just maybe, Riz had been doing the same thing. He didn’t want the out-of-nowhere suddenness of that kiss to have been a fluke. And yet, that’s not all of it.

Because his life is not his own, not anymore.

Fabian whispered over their telepathic bond, as quiet as a mouse, “I have to produce an heir, Adaine.”

“I know, but—”

“There is no but, it’s one of the first rules of ruling. You keep the army happy, you keep the nobles happy, and you secure your power by knowing who it will pass to upon your death.”

“You’re being dramatic. Kings take mistresses all the time,” Adaine shrugged, her face as solemn as she could keep it for a few moments before breaking into a giddy grin. Waggling her brows, she quipped, “It’s not like you can get him pregnant with any bastards.”

For a brief moment, Fabian was pulled out of his gloom enough to be scandalized. “Adaine!”

“What?” She said with a cheeky smirk and a giggle. “Imagine if you could? Just a bunch of little half-goblin children running around Fallinel asking, ‘Do you know who my Papa is?’ Ha!”

With his pout out in full force now, Fabian grumbled, “Yes. Ha. Ha. I’m glad you’re having fun while I’m in anguish. How are you so unhelpful?”

“You called me!” Adaine said in half-hearted outrage.

“Exactly, I called you to help me! You’re the Oracle! Aren’t you supposed to be all-knowing and some shit?”

Letting out the last of her giggles, Adaine settled herself down, though the smile didn’t leave her face. “Fine, fine, I’ll be helpful,” She said before clearing her throat and looking him dead in the eye. “Do you love him?”

Fabian sat with the question for a moment. Reflecting on every smile or fondly exasperated look Riz threw his way. Every full-hearted laugh. Every desperate look of worry. Every bombastic back and forth. Every quiet moment spent in each other’s company. He couldn’t help the small smile that grew as he said, “I went half-mad after a week without him, and I carry his fang in my pocket for moral support. If that’s not love…”

“Weirdo,” She couldn’t help but mutter before walking down the stairs to meet Fabian and put a hand on his shoulder. “Then you’ll figure it out, man. You’ll figure out how to deal with any future Queen and heirs later. And you’ll do it together, as a team. But you have to tell him first. Stop trying to figure out your every move before the fight starts.”

“Well, if I could see what I was up against…?” Fabian started, looking up at his friend with pleading eyes.

Rueful smile and all, Adaine shook her head. “If you’re asking for a vision, you know it doesn’t work like that.”

“I know, I know.”

“However, I do think I could—if you give me a little more time—Aelwen’s in town, yes?” She held a finger up. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

One moment she’s there, in the next, she’s gone in another flash of wind and light. Leaving Fabian alone with his guards once more. With Adaine’s humming and murmurs still playing in the background of his mind, he checked in with Sir Durden on whether or not they needed to rest before heading back to the Palace. By the time rations were handed out and eaten, and the rest of the guards, excluding Sir Durden, were sent out to ready their mounts for the journey home, a familiar bright chime of spellcasting hit his ears.

Closer to the throne, just behind him and Sir Durden, the outline of a silvery door carved itself into being. Perfectly precise in every way. Before long, it opened up to reveal the inside of another eclectic Wizard’s tower and a harried-looking Adaine with a large duffle bag slung over one shoulder and Boggy the Froggy on the other.

“Whew, alright. Runestaff’s tower will be fine without me for a couple days, so I can help you mor—” Adaine bit her tongue, almost forgetting that Sir Durden was present. “—your Majesty and his allies find a way forward that’s best for the Kingdom.”

Nice save.

“Many thanks, Oracle,” Fabian said with a bow and a knowing smile. Sir Durden followed suit, kneeling and bowing his head in deference.

Adaine looked almost too pleased at the sight. With a pep in her step and her chin held high, she passed by Fabian on the way to the door and whispered in his ear, “I could get used to that.”

“Trust me, you’ll get sick of it,” Fabian whispered back as he led her out of the keep. “Speaking of what you are owed, even if you stay with Aelwen, don’t forget that there is an apartment in the palace designated specifically for the Elven Oracle.”

Hook.

“How big?” Adaine asked, looking more than a little intrigued.

Fabian grinned. “Pretty big. Full of books and other wizardly trinkets as well.”

Line.

A beat as she readjusted the duffle bag on her shoulder before, “Okay, maybe a couple of weeks then.”

Sinker.

It’s good to have his Wizard back.

Now, to get his Rogue.

[necronatural]

Yaoi Essay: It was Ice Age Okay

My friend @tshirt3000 organized a friend zine where we talk about yaoi that was formative to us. It's a sizeable 80 pages, and you can read everyone's formative yaois in the digital copy here.

My essay was written in a single night and primarily primes you to pattern-seek so you can see my vision. My divine truth.

Before I speak, I need to prime you with the knowledge that you understand me. Even if you think you don’t, you actually do. So.

In seminal AO3 fandombait television program Teen Wolf (2011), the main point of fascination is Stiles Stilinski; a doe-eyed ADHD obsessive who chases his every thought with a frenetic intensity that often steals the scene he’s in.

Stiles being a fascinating little creature means that people want to ship him. I’d say he has three main people to do that with, and the big ship on campus was none of them. It was practically mandatory to ship him with Derek, the dark, brooding werewolf anti-hero.

I don’t think the suffocating pervasiveness of this ship is really that deep. Derek is a sexy paranormal tall dark and handsome boytoy. I’ve never seen the Vampire Diaries but I’m sure he wouldn’t be out of place in the cast. And hey, everybody is already obsessed with Stiles. I don’t think people actually care about the text of the show, just the pretty men they’re fixated on. The shit they made in their heads is so obviously just a gay version of every romance ever at the time.

But there is a secret recipe at play. Because in 2011, alongside Teen Wolf, a film was released. It was called Thor. You know, from the MCU? In Thor, the titular character’s treacherous baby brother (adopted) imprisons Thor on earth to steal his position. On Earth, Thor meets the love of his life, her father, and a zany bit character added for comedic relief. 

Now I love Loki an abnormal amount for someone who cares as little about the MCU as I do. I love pathetic men and pathetic villains. As an avid fanfiction reader, I spent a lot of time trawling AO3 for Loki content, realizing they don’t think he’s pathetic, and clicking away. And over the years, I began seeing a weird pattern. Loki/Darcy. The comic relief girl. Her quirky antics were somehow enough to warrant a ship in a fandom that only blows up mandatory Two White Guys couples. And Loki is clearly NOT a brooding paranormal romance boy, but the ship had that Sterek stink on it anyway. A lot of it.

It seemed so mysterious, yet I remember, now, that Sterek wasn’t just popular with paranormal romance swooners, but people who just like funny ships. A zany idiot tormenting that brooding villain. A genderless mass appeal. An Entrapta and Hordak. The raw impulse for Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint readers to pair Kim Dokja and Yoo Joonghyeok before they started developing any chemistry at all, simply by nature of the kinds of characters they are. 

Okay. Listen man. I need to talk to you about Ice Age.

If you’re unfamiliar, Ice Age is about a cynical mammoth named Manford taking a great southern migration as a chance to be alone. When he rescues criminally annoying sloth Sid, he’s forced to share his newfound alone time with him. He is not happy. Meanwhile, a pack of sabertooth tigers is on a vengeance quest against the humans who hunt them by eating their tribe leader’s baby. One of them, Diego, accidentally lets the human mother jump off a waterfall to escape, delivering the baby downriver to Manny and Sid. Diego presents himself as a tracker who can hunt the humans down, and the three of them decide to travel together to bring the baby back to the humans, one way or another.

I will be clear; the homoeroticism exists, and it exists between Manny and Sid. The chemistry exists, and it exists between Manny and Diego. Manny is the heart of the film. And I don’t care. Baby’s First Yaoi, the thing that really boiled my brain, was Diego’s extremely intimate threats to Sid’s life and Sid baiting him like a barking dog. I’m sorry.

The film never really stops insisting that Sid is genuinely annoying — it starts with his entire family leaving him behind and ends with him being kind of a fuckup too — but he’s key to the synergy regardless. There’s no great moment that announces ‘well maybe they weren’t seeing Sid’s true value!’ because he doesn’t have any. He’s a lazy, annoying, unempathetic, impulsive, smug little womanizer. He never learns. The film proposes that well, he doesn’t really have to— Manny is a deeply isolated person (mammoth?) who drives people away, and he needs someone who’s annoying and can’t understand boundaries to teach him to open up again. No matter how much he swats Sid back, Sid is confident in their friendship. Just like how no matter how many times Sid’s family abandoned him, he still went looking for them. They are lonely people, and Sid being an obnoxious little pissant forces them together.

On the other hand, I can’t imagine a film with just Manny and Diego. They get along well and have a great rapport, with Diego’s bad boy fun uncle attitude and Manny’s asshole with a heart of gold routine. But the thing is that they are two dudes who mind their own business. They are only casually uniting, and Diego is only doing it so his pack of evil sabertooths can eat the baby. The warmth of friendship doesn’t exist, and it has to bleed from Sid terrorizing them. They need their idiot to unite against. And since they don’t actually dislike Sid, it can only become camaraderie.

Diego is aware Manny is a smart guy and will take any threat extremely seriously, but he acts like himself from the beginning with Sid. After a while, it becomes clear Manny doesn’t care if he threatens Sid — because Sid is annoying, and he himself has threatened Sid plenty of times — but he also doesn’t intend to leave Sid alone where he can get hurt. Diego is 100% serious, but after a certain point he finds his own threats also becoming empty teasing. By the end of the movie, he’s openly endeared and friendly. He gives death threats like he gives a noogie. 

There is something so unreal, to be honest, about forcing a born killer to hold you in his teeth after he repeatedly threatened to kill you, and him holding you there against your will because he thinks it is so funny.

Diego’s heel-face turn is obviously inspired by Manny, but over the course of the film, it’s clear that he, too, was lonely, and he, too, benefits from an extremely annoying person filling his loner life. His pack is dog-eat-dog, ready to abandon him if he doesn’t do his job, but Manny is willing to die for him, and — this is key to my childhood brain — Sid trusts him unconditionally despite doing nothing to earn it. Sid would follow Diego all year if he suddenly abandoned him for migration. He is just that kind of person.

That’s the secret recipe. What made Sterek mandatory even for people who have no interest in paranormal romance hunks. Why Darcy was thrown at Loki. This underlying vein of True Yaoi, of a dynamic based less on actual relationship and more on the core of the kind of people they are, and the kind of synthesis that is possible between those two ingredients. The zany idiot and the villain have this chemical reaction you could see from space. TO ME!

You need a zany person to do a whole lot of impulsive shit, and you need that zany person to be stupid enough to not notice they’re unwanted, or in danger, or that their dynamic is shifting, or the subtext of anyone’s behaviour. You need the person tormented to be a genuine threat, and they need to not melt, but be worn down. The simple pleasures of having your day-to-day life filled with life and noise, your every interaction with the world commented on, to the point you allow yourself to be defanged.

Sid does this to Manny, sure but it didn’t click even with the gay jokes because Manny is a kind, caring Dad Friend kind of guy who would fold for anyone. Diego is a fucking baby-eating tiger. But he trusts Manny, and Manny is endeared and receptive to Sid’s constant noise because he is lonely, and because of that, Diego, who is also lonely, allows himself to be endeared too. He had Sid’s throat in his mouth, and all he thought was that it was a funny thing to do.

My friend Hyde tagged me in this post.

[the-invisible-queer]

Actual conversation I just had:

Eddie calls me.

Me: heyo

Eddie: what ya doing?

Me: nothing...

Eddie: nothing? You're always doing something

Me: well I just posted my last IG post of the day and I was transitioning to writing my fic so I was literally doing nothing when I picked up the call

Eddie: what was your last IG post about?

Me: Kevin and Danielle Jonas....why?

*he starts laughing as well as someone else with him*

Eddie: that's crazy

Me: why?

Eddie: I told [friend] that I could call you right now and you'd start talking about the Jonas Brothers and you proved me right in 47 seconds

Me: well I'll have you KNOW I haven't listened to the Jonas Brothers all day because I listened to Beyonce's new album and I'm obsessed

*then we reminisced about Beyonce's old music and he said something about his current divorce drama*

Me: you know what's crazy? If you'd have asked me about what I'm writing instead of IG I still would have talked about the Jonas Brothers because it's my Joe fic I'm working on

Eddie: *to friend* see!

Me: but you wanna hear something crazier? I'm at 87,978 words

Eddie: BITCH HOW?!?! How many pages is that?

Me: I don't know because I'm using a writing software...I'll show you when you get home

Eddie: are you posting it online?

Me: NO! Because I don't post RPF anymore

Eddie: but you've written a whole novel

Me: I've written more than The Great Gatsby

Eddie: so post it online

Me: no because I don't need Joe to accidentally find it

Eddie: who cares?

Me: Mikey already knows about my Instagram. That means he's 2 clicks away from my Tumblr. I don't need Joe to know what I want to do to him. Unless he's into that but now he's in a relationship so I don't think he would be and I like Stormi and I respect her *I just am rambling monsense*

*they're just laughing their asses off in the background*

Eddie: are you gonna be up when I get home?

Me: you need to give me a full update about last night. I'll wait up all night for you if I must.

*We said out goodbyes and that was the end of the call*

[eddies-hid3out]

Fuck it. This has been stuck in my head since I posted it so take my 6am brainrot that I've been too embarrassed to post until now. Written on mobile so apologies for any errors.

Male and female masturbation. Minors please leave.

Word count: 1025

It's fucking embarrassing really, the near pavlovian response Eddie has to his phone going off. A simple tone alerting him to a twitter notification has him chubbing up in his jeans like he's a teenager and not some grown man in his 20s. It's not even a notification specifically for him, just a post from the one page he only really bothers with social media for these days, an update from his favourite page, from you.

He'd stumbled across you one night. Browsing nsfw twitter without really paying too much attention when he'd accidentally opened your uploaded audio. He'd meant to click away but your soft voice and sweet little whines had drawn him in, and he spent the next few days scrolling through your page, listening to old audio files and reading every depraved thought you'd ever posted until eventually you became his only source of jack off material. He doesn't even know what you look like, and he hates it. You never upload pictures of yourself, and he doesn't begrudge the anonymity you so obviously crave but some nights when he listens to you begging to be fucked, to be so full you can feel in your throat he wishes he could see your face. So yeah, fucking embarrassing.

He's still quick to pull his phone from his pocket regardless. You hadn't posted anything for the last couple of days so he's keen to see what will be tonight's material. What he doesn't expect is to see multiple new posts fresh on his timeline. The first is a new text post from 2 hours ago, nothing dirty just a simple tweet that reads

Going through my followers to make sure the minors are staying away and I just need to take a moment coz some of you are really fucking hot 💦 

The second is a picture, his stomach swoops before he realises it's still not one of you but what greets his eyes has his dick twitching in his pants. It's your bed, the sheets ruffled and clearly showing a large wet patch, that Eddie will readily admit he wants to bury his fucking face in, and an impressive looking dildo laid to the side, still glistening and sticky from the slick of your cunt. The caption reads

Thought about one of you while recording my latest audio. If only you could come and take responsibility 

He can't stop the loud groan from leaving his throat as he reaches down into his worn cotton boxers and starts teasing the tip of his leaking cock. God Eddie would take responsibility for it if he could. Shove you face down next to your own mess so you can smell your pussy on the sheets while he makes you squirt all over his cock.

The final new post is your latest audio. It's not very long but that doesn't bother Eddie. He reaches for his headphones, cranking the volume upupup before he hits play. He can already hear the sounds of you working the toy in and out of you pussy, the wet schlick schlick schlick the only noise before your voice comes through, all soft and sweet, almost giggly as you start.

"Fuck, I knew you'd feel good. Knew as soon as I saw that pretty face you'd split me open, just how I need it." Your voice breaks off an a choked moan and Eddie pulls his boxers off, spitting on his dick so he can stroke himself in tandem with the sound of your toy. "Want to feel your hands-god-wrapped round my throat, and your mouth painting bruises all over me." Eddie moans, unashamed of his volume and never more thankful for Wayne working nights. He would, he'd leave you a necklace of bruises if that was what you wanted, fingerprints and teeth marks littered all over you. He loses himself in the sounds you make, tugging desperately at his aching cock as the volume of your wants and pleas grows louder and louder. You're begging by the end, desperate cries of "Please. Please I wanna cum all over your cock. Want you to cum with me. Fuck I want you to cum inside me. Fill me up until it's leaking out of my pussy. Can you do that? Be my good boy and cum with me?" It's enough to have Eddie whining, nodding his head and mumbling to himself that he can, that he wants to be good for you as your words become slurred and all you can do is moan and moan until finally you cry out your release. 

He swears his vision whites out, he feels his cock twitch erratically as he shoots rope after rope of thick cum all over his chest. He lets the rest of the audio play out, the soft sounds of you coming down from your own high enough to help him regain focus until the audio stops and he knows that's his cue to get up and clean himself off. He takes one last look at his phone, only just now spotting the comment you'd left underneath.

If the person who inspired this one happens to like this post, I might just slip into their dm's 😘

He laughs, mentally congratulating the son of a bitch who got you so worked up from what he assumes was a couple of pictures. Liking the post is automatic at this point, he always does, and although part of him wishes you'd drop him a message that's not why he does it, he knows he isn't that lucky. His phone is dropped to his side as he hauls himself out of bed, making his way to the bathroom for a quick shower to clean himself off before he's climbing back into bed, under the covers this time, sleep already tugging at his eyes. He picks up his phone one last time, ready to set an alarm so he's not late for work the next day when he catches sight of a new notification and his breath all but stops. It's a private message, from your screen name with five simple words.

Hope you liked the audio

Obsessed with modern day virgin Eddie. I just know that boy would be on nsfw twitter every damn night because the amateur shit gets him going 100 times more than any staged porn.

God and then he discovers all the audio posts out there and it drives him wild. I strongly headcanon that Eddie's the type of person to enjoy all the dirty nasty sounds that happen during sex so finding like, asmr stuff where he can just close his eyes and make his own visuals while he gets lost in the noise of it all. He'd fucking love it. He'd absolutely get unreasonably attached to whoever his favourite creator is too. Doesn't even know what they look like but no one's voice has ever sounded as sweet as theirs.

[buckleys-diaz]

hi!! your coloring is always SO BEAUTIFUL and i’m so sorry if i’m overstepping but i was wondering if you had any coloring tips? ofc no pressure to respond and anyway your sets are absolutely stunning!!! <3

hi!! first of all that’s so sweet of you to say, wow thank you so much 🤧 and yeah, for sure!! under a read more bc it got kinda long and rambly but i hope this helps!! 

ok so this one might be kind of obvious, but i rely on the selective color adjustment layer so heavily!! like i kid you not i usually have at least 10 of them on any given gif, it’s just so versatile!! i usually focus on reds/yellows/neutrals/blacks and sometimes greens!! knowing how the colors affect each other, for example if you’re editing the reds, knowing that adding cyan will help cancel out the red and mute it or adding magenta if theres a green cast to the gif (i’m looking @ u lone star) is super helpful. 

right now i’m into kinda desaturated coloring for gifs and gradient maps set to different blending modes really help achieve that effect!! i usually use a gray to white gradient map set to soft light and a black to white one set to exclusion for that effect. but different colored gradients maps set to different blending modes can give you really interesting results!! luminosity is another blending mode i like. also definitely remember to change the opacity if the effect is too strong, sometimes i have them set super low like 15-20% but it can still really add to the overall look. also!!! be mindful of skin tones!!! going back to selective coloring after you’re happy with the general coloring to make sure you aren’t whitewashing is important. 

i like photo filters!! they’re excellent at warming up or cooling down a scene but are also fun with just color fills like pink or purple to add a light wash of color if you’re going for something more stylized!! 

this kinda goes with photo filters, but i think just noticing what needs to be done to a scene to get it to a more neutral coloring is really important. for example: season 1 of 911 is super yellow toned, so before i do anything else i usually add a cooling filter or bring down the yellows in selective color to neutralize it. the color balance adjustment layer is also really good for this for the midtones and highlights of a gif. and for lone star, it’s usually really dark and gray, so adding vibrance and brightness and bumping up the reds in selective color usually helps things look better.

USE CURVE LAYERS. this is such an easy way to white balance gifs!!  open the adjustment layer > click on the white dropper next to the graph > then on the part of the gif you want white. i almost always drop the opacity down to like 20-30% but it really helps the overall look imo

these are all kinda overall tips and ofc it’ll vary from scene to scene and show to show but if you ever have more specific questions or want me to elaborate on something please feel free to send an ask or dm and i’d be more than happy to help you out!! and thank you again for the kind words!! :)

[juneberrie]

you always have been

thinking thoughts. *ೃ༄ this is very self indulgent im not sorry <3 btw the formatting is terrible 😭 also this is 1.5k words im so proud of myself its literally the longest fic i've ever written

pairing: jj maybank x fem!reader

fandom: outerbanks

warnings: swearing, mentions of being drunk, reader kind of pushes jj away, insecure!reader, stressed out!reader, mentions of jj's trash dad, fear of abandonment, sort of a smau? science hw (yes thats a warning science hw sucks), love confession, hurt/comfort <3

jj's instagram is a mess. it alternates between pictures of random objects, pictures of himself, and pictures of our friends.

lately, all of his pictures have been pictures of him and the pogues at keggers and on the boat. without me.

the most recent one is a blurry shot of him and kie at the boneyard. his hair is dripping wet and kie is holding up a red solo cup, beer sloshing over the side. the caption reads, "my brst girl 😋 ilysn kier.carrera" its so misspelled its obvious hes drunk, even without looking at the picture.

—————

↳ comments

-> jb.wifirouter ong your so drunk. ↳ heywpope its "youre" not "your" 💀 and you're durnk too ↳ sarahcamer0n lmaooo durnk

-> kier.carrera lol ilyt jj 💀 ↳ kier.carrera wsit wring emoji ❤️

—————

i groan and shut my phone off. kie knows i like jj. she's heard me rant about him since eighth grade. its fine, though. i need to focus on school. i get up and silence my phone, putting it into a drawer at my desk before going back to the papers sprawled on my bed.

science isn't my best subject, but i need this extra credit to bring my grade up. and, no pressure at all, this stupid extra credit is due by monday, at its literally sunday night. at least its pretty easy. all i have to do is write an essay about newton's laws and how they function in the "real" world. i sigh and open my textbook to the page on the first law, inertia.

as im scribbling down the beginnings of the paragraph about f=ma, my pencil breaks. well, how fucking dandy. i get up and head to my desk to grab a sharpener, and i pass the mirror next to my door.

i cringe away, then force myself to look back. the girl staring back at me is... not kie. not sarah. she's wearing a big oversized t-shirt she stole from jj and some shorts. her nail polish is chipped and her hair is practically crying for escape from the worn scrunchie.

i tear my gaze away and grab the sharpener. the clock on my desk reads 11:11 pm. i remember something kie said about making wishes at 11:11, so i think, why not give it a try? i squeeze my eyes shut and hope my wish gets to whatever magical star angel being is listening.

after i finish my essay, its 12:23 am. i grab my phone from the drawer and see a flurry of texts and instagram notifications assaulting my lock screen.

i ignore the texts — six from kie and eight from jj — and click open instagram.

my homepage is filled with pictures of the pogues at the kegger they're at. i can't help the pettiness that surges up inside me and i click on jj's most recent story, a video of him, kie, pope, john b, and sarah screaming the lyrics to bohemian rhapsody around a campfire.

—————

you replied to their story

yourinstagram looks like you're having fun :)

—————

i feel slightly terrible, but whatever. every single kegger they've been to this past week, i haven't been invited.

a text notification comes down onto my screen. it's from kie. the preview reads "im soo sorru"

what the hell? i immediately click on the text and i almost start crying.

—————

kie kie ml ♡

bro so dnt be mad but like i accidentally told jj that u liked him

im sorry

answer me please idont want yu to be mad

i dd;t mean to i swaer

y/n?? are you mad??

y/n pleeaas answre

im soo sorru

bro wtf.

ik im sorry but we were playing truuth or dsre and plpe asked if i had acrush on anybody and i sadi no i didn't but ik you did and the n jj asked who and im sorry :)

:(*** SORRY

whatever. go enjoy your kegger.

—————

what the everloving fuck. i specifically told her not to tell anyone, especially jj, and she goes and tells everyone and their mother. i've gotten a flurry of texts from pope, john b, sarah, and other pogues i suppose are at the kegger, all asking me if it's true i like jj. and, speak of the devil, jj himself has been texting me nonstop for the past thirty minutes.

—————

golden retriever lookin' mf 😋

haha kie jus told me the funnist shut

wait is she for real

wait n/n yuo like me

like fr fr?

brp answer me pls

y/nnnnnn

are you asleepo r somethinh 💀

y/n if you dpn't answer rn rn im going ovet to yiur house

—————

shit. jj can't come over right now. i look like a mess, and now im fucking crying. my gaze drifts back over to the mirror; my eyes are red and puffy and tears are streaming down my face and dripping down onto my (jj's) shirt.

—————

golden retriever lookin' mf 😋

jj please dont come over just stay at the kegger and have fun

nooo y/n im already on my wsy so its fine

—————

shit shit shit.

i throw my phone across the room and scream into my bedsheets. the pogues already didn't like me anymore; they had been going out and having fun without for weeks now, and now kie tells jj i like him? my life is fucking falling apart.

a knock at my window wakes me up from whatever sad haze i was trapped in for the last twenty minutes. jj's peering in and he smiles when he meets my gaze. i shake my head and turn away from him.

no bother letting him in, he'll probably just tell me that he doesn't like me back and to never talk to him again.

another knock, persistent, sounds from the window. i sigh and turn back.

i open the window but leave the screen up, so jj can hear me but he can't get in. "go away, j."

"nooo. wait, why are you cryiinggg?" he asks, the booze slurring his words.

"nothing. no reason. go away, please, jj," i say, my voice cracking.

his face softens and he seems to sober up a bit. "n/n, please tell me what's wrong. i hate seeing you sad," he whispers. fuck. i can't, i can't with the fucking blue eyes and the soft looks and the whispers. i open the rest of the window, and jj climbs in.

i crawl under the covers of my bed and face away from jj. i feel the bed dip next to me and he lays a warm hand on my back. its so casual, so domestic, that i want to laugh.

"sunshine, what's wrong? is this about what kie said?" he asks, gently rubbing my back.

the dam breaks. tears start flowing out of my eyes and i started shaking.

"it is about what kie said. i like you, jj, i really like you. no, i- i love you! i love you so much. i've loved you since i first saw you in mrs. williams' science class in eight grade and you laughed when she said that iron was discovered by the hittites. and i know you'll never love me back because— well— look at me! im not like kie, im not like sarah. i'm just... me! and i've been trying to pretend like you guys going to keggers everyday without me isn't a big deal because, hey, i'm swamped with school, even though its fucking intercession. and i knew if i told you, you'd hate me and you'd never talk to me again," i sob into my pillow.

jj is silent for a few seconds, still rubbing my back.

"i love you too, sunshine. i've loved you for the entirety of the time i've known you. and, you're right. you're not kie or sarah, but you're you. that's what i love about you. you are unapologetically yourself. and i'm sorry for not inviting you to the keggers. i just, i knew you were swamped and i know you don't really like parties 'nd drinking and shit. and i just want you to know that im so proud of you, honey, and— jesus, y/n. you're the only one for me. you always have been. you're the person who's been there whenever luke did something shitty to me, you've helped me with my homework, and gosh, dare i say it, you've helped me be a better person."

he chuckles. i feel him press a kiss to the back of my neck and gently bring me towards him so i'm basically in his lap. he wraps his arms around me and lays his head in the crook of my neck. we stay together in a comfortable silence for a few moments.

i sniffle. "i'm sorry, j."

"you're not the one who should be apologizing, sunshine. i love you, so much. i'm sorry if i made you feel like i'd never talk to you again or like you weren't enough; you are enough. you always have been."

[esmeriandreamer]

Just saw someone call AO3 a "cp-website" and I'm gonna just-

Like I know every time the Archive has a fundraiser some people will crawl out of the woodworks and spout bullcrap, but geez-

If you don't like AO3, fine, that's your opinion. But don't call it a "cp-website", nor demonize people who donate to their fundraiser, from which a large part of the funds goes to KEEPING THE SERVERS AND HAVING PROPER LEGAL PROTECTION.

You know one of the main reasons why AO3 was created? Because in the "old days", if someone didn't like the fact that you, I dunno, wrote some wholesome gay fic online, they could report it and you might just lose your whole fic without warning, because think of the children, right? And to really put icing on the cake, your account might be deleted too. 🙃

Or, like I experienced, it won't just be one or three reports that get your fic taken down. Critics United for example was a group of these ~lovely~ people who would go on people's fics and suggest (harass) the author on how to change their fic to be "improved upon" (aka sanitize the fuck out of it so there is no trace of what they saw as gross/bad/wrong/cringe/sinful/etc.). If they didn't manage to harass you into deleting, they'd just mass report you.

I got literal death and rape threats for writing a Spamano version of Beauty and the Beast, told I was a criminal and that my parents should've killed me in my crib.

ALL OVER A STUPID LITTLE SELFINDULGENT FIC.

They even went so far as to track my username down from Fanfiction.net to Wattpad, and only once I got it on AO3 was the story able stay up because they had no way of harassing or reporting me like they could before, because I could easily turn my comments off to "registered users only" or even to "moderate comments." and that scared them off.

This was in 2016 by the way. Not even a decade ago. Now I could even block people if I want on AO3, so it gets harder to harass me, even if I did care.

But like yes, I agree on the fact that fics with cp are allowed on the site is rather gross. I would never write nor read it. But you know what helps with this?

AO3 HAS THIS TAGGING SYSTEM IN WHICH YOU CAN TAG AND FILTER OUT THE THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE, SUCH AS FICS WITH THE UNDERAGE WARNING :D

And guess what? It works great! I never have to see fics with cp in it, because I filter my fics. And even if I see that I accidentally clicked on a fic like that? I click out of the page and move the fuck on.

People on AO3 can and have written the most repulsive shit known to man, but more often than not, it's tagged with big warnings in the description. I have read cringy and horrifying fics that still made me nauseous to think back on, that have changed how I look at certain characters. And guess what?

THEY STILL DESERVE TO EXIST AND BE READ BY OTHERS.

Besides, there is a very fine line as to what some people define concepts like cp. Like I define it as minors being forced/manipulated into sexual situations, while others might look at an adult anime character who looks like a little kid and say that they shouldn't be sexualized. We are both correct in our own digital space there.

I don't like "shota/lolita" nsfw stuff, others do, and so I am just letting those people be and I avoid that content. Same with scat, or watersports, or cnc. Avoid, click away, goodbye. I don't demand that all "they look young but they're actually an adult!" types of media should be banned, nor that people who enjoy (reading about) sex with bodily fluids should be publically shamed, or that people who consentually enjoy the dark fantasty of being forced should be treated like an actual rapist.

And that's really what this is about. Don't like it, don't read/look at it. This whole "but they are allowing xyz and I don't like that!!" argument is basically becoming the same right-wing argument as "but I see xyz as wrong/bad/a sin and therefor nobody should be allowed to enjoy it."

If AO3 were to be forced to ban one thing, like people dealing with their childhood SA by writing a fic about it, who is to say they won't be forced to ban something like CNC next? What about kink? Queerness? Because that is the road a lot of right-wing people want you antis to take.

It's a main reason AO3 has fundraisers. For the servers to stay up. For legal support when a company claims fanfic is bad. For times that those things might get more expensive to maintain.

And because AO3 is of the few websites that allow everyone, especially queer people, to make art and have that art be protected from those that wish to destroy anything they do not like. And yes, that protection includes protecting work made by "bad" people.

So chill, skip over that fic you don't want to see, don't donate to or interact with AO3 if you don't want to, and maybe touch some grass? That would be great.

Rant over uwu

[13uswntimagines]

The One Where Lindsey *Actually* Accidentally Breaks the internet (Lindsey x Medic!R)

Remember a million years ago where we wrote the fic about lindsey accidentally breaking the internet? 

Well, there was a cliffhanger there. Kind of. And @literaryhedgehog​ and I saw each other for the first time in forever this week, started going through all of our favorite fics that we had written and realized we had to continue this one. 

So without further ado- the fic that no one asked for:

2022 had been a very stressful year thus far. Not the disaster that was 2021 or the complete implosion of time that was 2020, but stressful. Enough that you were incredibly glad to have the opportunity for a break. 

Between everyone’s ACL’s suddenly deciding to rip and players kneeing each other for funzies you had your hands full. 

And Lindsey. Well Lindsey had found success reclaiming France, which just so happened to be nine time zones away from you in Portland. So you were very thankful to get one week of her pure, undivided attention on some deserted European island. Plus she looked absolutely amazing in the little blue bikini she had chosen (and you may or may not have been caught… admiring… her anatomy one too many times. You were a medic. It was PURELY professional curiosity.)

“I think you can rent little catamarans down by the beach, if you wanted to spend the day doing that, instead of just sitting by the pool,” She said putting another layer of sunscreen on her nose. “Or we could go paddleboarding, or on a hike up to see the view from the top of the hill.” 

You rolled your eyes at her. “You athletes always want to do something… athletic. What’s wrong with just sitting by the pool and admiring the view? You already made me do a sunrise hike with you for like the last 3 days?”

Lindsey raised her eyebrow at you. “Because the only view you’re admiring is me.” 

You shrugged, turning the page of the book you were reading. “It’s a good view.”

One of the hotel’s servers came over with a tray of drinks to offer you both. You eyed his silver tray, “Do you have any extra shots to add to those painkillers?”

Lindsey saved him from having to respond, calling out as she dropped her sunscreen back into her bag and rifled through it, “You can't get drunk if we’re going to go sailing.”

“But I'm on vacation,” You whined indignantly, uncaring of how much like a child it made you sound. With half your players out with injury, you figured you deserved to let loose a little bit. 

“If you get sloshed, trip over one of the lines and fall off the boat and die, you won't have a vacation,” Lindsey said, rolling her eyes. Honestly, with how little alcohol you usually had during the year – since you were always on call for team injuries – you didn’t need the extra shots in your drinks. You practically got tipsy just from smelling your first pina colada this trip.  “Plus, you’re the one with all of the medical training here. All I could do to help you is put some triple antibiotic on it and call it a day,” 

“You’re no fun,” You pouted. Lindsey rolled her eyes at you, but kissed your pout away nonetheless. 

“Oh, I’m lots of fun,” She smirked, passing her phone to the waiter and signaling for him to take a picture. “Get your ass up and take a picture with me, so we can remember how amazing our vacation was.” 

The waiter caught her phone easily as she yanked you from your very comfortable caban chair. You playfully tried to protest, forcing her to pull you in front of her with a laugh. She draped her left arm over your shoulder in a teasing restraint, with a hand splayed across your chest. You smiled at her and put a quick kiss under her ear before leaning back into her and smiling forward as the waiter cleared his throat.

“Now smile,” He said, holding out the phone in front of him. 

You rolled your eyes at the request, suddenly feeling like a 5 year old at a family get together, but Lindsey pinched your side, earning an actual giggle light, airy and filled with total elation from you. You heard the camera click in time with Lindsey’s low chuckle in your ear, forever cementing the moment in time. 

“Should we edit them later before posting?” Lindsey asked, after thanking the waiter and taking her phone back. 

You peeked over her shoulder, glancing at the photos. You looked so happy, and she looked happy too. “Do what you want with them. I don’t mind either way.” 

“So definitely post them to make Sonny, Rose and Sammi jealous?” She sent you her signature eyebrow quirk. 

“Absolutely! Here,” you took the phone and opened the instagram app, quickly typing out a caption. Just enjoying the sun, drinks, and beautiful company. Wish you could be here {at}saucysonnet, {at}RoseyPosey, and {at}sammybananas :D. Lindsey shared your grin and hit the post button, before tossing her phone back in her bag.

 You reached out to take her hand, pulling her into an embrace. “Now, I could be wrong, but I believe you said something about a boat?”

“A catamaran,” She clarified, smiling fondly at you. You were more into books than the outdoors, but you tried for her. “It's a kind of boat with two hulls, so they’re more balanced and harder to tip over.” 

“Whatever,” You grumbled dramatically, rolling your eyes as she smirked at you pretending to be in a bad mood. “Do you still want to do the thing that I have to be sober for? Because if you don’t I can definitely find room for you on my exam schedule.” 

“You always have room for me on your exam schedule,” Lindsey huffed. “And yes. I’d like to go sailing. There's a super cool reef not too far from here I thought we could explore.”

“I’ll drop our bags in the hotel room and grab the snorkels. See you in the lobby in five?” You asked, gesturing towards her purse and your backpack. No need to get the phones and valuables wet.

“Thanks, babe.”

****

You looked up when you came back to the hotel room a few hours later, trying to spot whatever bee was the source of the incessant buzzing that had greeted you the second you opened the door. 

It was loud, and annoying and a total buzz kill on your reward for taking on the unforgiving seas. Lindsey’s hand had been making its way to locations not fit for the public eye, but it had paused in its migration at the sounds coming from inside your room. You were all for saving the bees, but if this one didn’t find its way out of your room you were going to find a flyswatter. 

“Just ignore it,” you said, scanning the room. It didn’t seem to be in the vicinity of the bed, which was where you had been going anyway. 

“But I’m allergic,” Lindsey said, looking pointedly at you as she stood in the doorway, unmoving.

“But, not all of them have stingers,” you pointed out. Only female bees could sting. “And most people only get an allergic reaction to honeybees. Other bee venom just causes local swelling.”

“And you’re willing to take that chance with me, the love of your life?”

“Well,” You started, puffing out your cheeks as you contemplated the decision. Surely there was only a very small chance that you would get stung right? You blew out your breath. “I guess not.”

“Just a guess?”

“...No.” 

“Very convincing.” 

The buzzing started again, drawing your eyes towards your bags. You dove for them. The faster you could get the bee, the faster you could move on to… better activities. 

“Ah ha, it’s not a bee. It's just our phones,” You cheered, holding up the offending devices like they were world cup trophees. You turned them on silent and tossed them back into your bags. “Totally worth ignoring.”

She simply raised an eyebrow at you, entirely unimpressed. 

“Oh come on,” you whined, sighing and taking out her phone. You handed it to her and grabbed your own, muttering under your breath about how it better be a life or death situation preventing you from getting laid by your… Oh no. You scrolled through the team groupchat, which was now at about 1000 missed messages and climbing. Lindsey was listening to her own phone, wincing at the volume of the voicemail she was presumably listening to. You thought you heard Sonnett’s dulcet tones, yelling something about a ring in the picture.

“Did we accidentlly murder someone and forget to tell the team?” 

“No,”Lindsey mumbled, scrolling through the messages. “It’s much worse. We forgot to tell them that we’re engaged.” 

“Were,” You corrected without really thinking about it, already beginning to type out your reply. “We were engaged.” You hit send, and turned your phone back on silent before tossing it back in your bag. Linsey looked at you blankly as suddenly her phone started buzzing so violently in her hand that she dropped it. 

“Really? That’s how you decided to tell them we eloped?” She asked, exasperated, but – based on the twitching of her lips – also highly amused. 

You shrugged. “You outed us over livestream in an argument with Sonnett. It just seemed fitting. Plus now they can't do anything about it for at least another ten days, unless they want to fly here.”

“I wouldn’t put it past them,” she said, reaching down to pick up her phone and rejecting Sonnett’s facetime request before turning her phone off and setting it on the bureau. 

“Well I might have mixed up Naxos with Nassau when I was explaining our trip to Kelley.” You said nonchalantly, holding out your arms to her as you sat down on the bed. She smiled slyly, coming and sitting sideways in your lap to look at you. 

“Is that why you were saying something about wanting to be like Jack Sparrow for the week?” 

“Maybe,” you agreed. “I can say a terrible line here about how pirates know something about stealing booty.”  And really you were looking for a little inspiration. Lindsey snorted.“Now I think you were complaining about an ache somewhere from all that hard work you did on the boat? Did you want me to take a look?”

“Aye, aye captain.”

[wardensantoineandevka]

What's up with the encyclopedia? Is something wrong with the cr wiki?

The encyclopedia is a fork of the CritRole Wiki at Fandom due to a series of disagreements in the editorship over many things, including the admins at the Fandom wiki being incredibly resistant to change, improvement, or complaints—reluctant to do away with the generally unpopular chapter system (they agreed to get rid of it only because one editor and myself brute forced it), slow to implement a main page redesign, lack of interest in implementing any sort of organization, non-responsive to even basic editor requests for small quality of life changes (like moving the section headers to be auto-bolded in the CSS instead of having to manually bold them, this is very small but this request was made several times over years and it's ludicrous it still was not implemented), insistence that plagiarism is perfectly fine if it's Matt's voice to the point that trying to clean up prose to increase clarity and coherence was at times actively fought against, still refuse to delete the small selection of Kit Buss' personal non-official fanart (and fanart of a handful of other C1-era artists) the wiki does not have permission for because "well, it's not used on ARTICLES anymore so it's fine to keep". Like, this is sort of comical:

This is tip of the iceberg, frankly. The wiki at Fandom's relationship with the fanbase has often been fraught, and there have been so many contentious adminship decisions that I've forgotten most of the conflict the wiki at Fandom has had with much of its former editorship and with the fanbase at large. I'm sure others have many stories that I have forgotten or overlooked (or even purposefully left out bc it's so difficult to present many legitimate grievances in a way that doesn't look like fan in-fighting, they're legitimate but just so hard to explain in a way that doesn't accidentally diminish it).

Just, generally, many of the regular editors at the wiki at Fandom left for the Encyclopedia for a reason, and at least some of us did so because we felt that the adminship was obstinate and disinterested in actually managing the wiki at Fandom to facilitate actually building and maintaining a repository of knowledge about Exandria. Personally, I've felt the main admin there to be obsequious and overly interested in clicks and popularity, even if it meant churning out poorly written articles to reap that.

I've also covered some other things in this post last month. Fandom itself is also an awful platform that see editing communities as spaces to derive profit from. At one point, Fandom tried to pressure the wiki into reskinning itself to promote The Legend of Vox Macina on specifically Amazon's behalf and the Fandom liaison speaking to us implied that we were being ungrateful for disliking this, which was resisted by all (including the admins I'm complaining about, the one good thing they did), and that left a bad impression on many of the editors who have since moved to the Encyclopedia.

[sameheart-sameblood]

All To Myself

(gif by @captainrexs​)

pairing: captain rex x f!reader

summary: bath time with rex usually means trying to get him to relax, but tonight it's your turn to let him help you out

words: 3.1 k

warnings: 18+, smut, bathtime shenanigans (f receiving), rex being the giver we all know he is

a/n: this is purely self-indulgent as i love baths. i would give up all my earthly possessions to take one with rex. this is my first attempt at smut (which is probably obvious lol). kind of didn’t want to release this but got tired of it staring at me whenever i opened word

read on ao3!

Your evenings were usually spent alone. At first, that had bothered you. Rex had come into your life and you wanted nothing more than to be in his presence. The calmness and kindness he exuded was unlike anything you’d ever experienced before. Being around him made you crave his presence all the more, like spice coursing through your system. You knew his job meant he was needed off planet most of the time. But was it really too much to ask that you see him occasionally while he was back on Coruscant? 

As your relationship went on, you got used to it. Being numb to the canceled dinners and missed special occasions was just what seemed in store for someone who loved a captain in the GAR. Which is why you barely batted an eyelash when he had commed you earlier in the day, rushing an apology about not being able to see you that evening. You might be resigned to the fact that Rex’s life was his job but it still didn’t make it easier to stomach the thought of another night alone. 

The two of you had planned an evening on the town, dinner and dancing. Well, at least you dancing while Rex swayed self-consciously next to you. He hated it and yet he never tried to talk you out of going. It was one of the many things you loved about him. It was these things you remembered when your loneliness got the best of you. So what if Rex couldn’t always be around? Whenever he was with you he made you feel like the only person in the world. 

You contemplate calling your friends to see if they’d like to join you for your planned activities. But you’re feeling sorry for yourself and if you can’t be with Rex, then you’d rather just be by yourself. You decide to keep things simple and take a bath. The thought instantly puts you in a better mood. It’s one of your favorite past-times. 

******

When Rex had first seen your bath routine, he’d been in shock. As someone who was usually only afforded about two minutes to bathe, the thought of taking an hours long bath blew his mind. You’d insisted he try it for himself. He watched as you drew him a bath of his own, adjusting the temperature just right and properly dissolving a few handfuls of epsom salts. 

Before leaving him, you’d dimmed the lights, lit a few sweet smelling candles and turned on some light background music. Lowering himself into the tub, Rex thought the experience might be alright. But after a minute, he was ready to get out. He had tried to understand it, really he had. But as someone always on the go, he couldn’t easily relax, constantly fighting the feeling he should be doing something. 

He didn’t begrudge you taking your baths. After all, he saw how happy they made you and he wanted nothing more than to see you content. But for a soldier, the experience felt like an indulgence he didn’t deserve. 

He had shyly called you back into the bathroom. “I don’t think I’m doing it right, love.” You’d gone in to find him sitting there, looking confused, as if expecting something more to happen. “There’s no wrong way to take a bath, Rex.” Sitting down next on the edge of the porcelain, you’d motioned for him to keep trying. He’d sat back, shoulders tensed towards his ears, staring straight ahead, eyes wide, his whole body on alert. 

You had to stifle a laugh as you watched. “Ok, apparently you have found a wrong way to take a bath.” He’d looked so forlorn at his failure that you had no choice but to shed your clothes and get in, taking a more hands on approach to showing him how to relax. He’d liked baths much more after that…

******

Easing yourself into the water makes you instantly relax. Knowing you’ll most likely spend the rest of the night in here, you make sure to get everything prepared that you might need. Feeling cheeky, you also bring over of your favorite vibrator. You’re not going to be getting any from Rex tonight, so might as well try to have some fun. 

You get to catch up on the book you’re reading, feeling satisfied when you finish the last page. Settling back, you let your mind wander, hands playing at the surface of the water. An accidental glide over your breast sparks something in your belly. You pause, then do it again, imagining it’s Rex’s larger, calloused hand teasing you. You grab the vibrator, placing it next to you. 

Before you delve in, you turn the water on to return some of the warmth the bath has lost. 

Over the roar of the tap, you don’t hear the door open. Someone clears their throat and you whip your head towards the noise. Rex greets you, shoulders slumped with fatigue. “Sorry, love, didn’t mean to scare you.” 

And you must look scared too, you’re eyes double their usual size. You glance at the vibrator, wondering if you have time to hide it. Rex isn’t against your use of toys, in fact he encourages them. But you’re still embarrassed at being caught just about to put it to use. He follows your eyes, his own widening slightly. 

“Ah, so it was going to be that kind of bath?” He chuckles, expression darkening slightly as you squirm under his gaze. He just stands there, looking at you. Oh, he’s actually expecting an answer. “Well, I just figured, you weren’t going to be home, and I was bored and lonely and…” 

You’re rambling now but you can’t stop, even as you watch him slowly remove his armor. He does so tantalizingly slow, nodding along with mock sympathy as you continue. 

“I thought I would be alone for the night and I missed you so much, Rex, honey, I miss you.” 

His face softens at your wavering tone, your sincerity written all over your face. He finishes stacking his armor neatly in the corner. “I missed you too.” He strips out of his blacks, folding them as you openly gawk at him. He allows himself a smirk at your neediness. Finally ridding himself of his clothing, he kneels down next to the bath. He runs his thumb over your cheek. “I’m here now. You don’t need to be lonely anymore.”

That night you had first introduced him to proper bath-time, you’d sat behind him, guiding him on just how to really relax. But tonight, he wants you to be taken care of. He motions for you to scooch forward, then sinks in behind you, groaning softly. You settle into each other, just reveling in the closeness for a moment.

Rex exhales a ragged breath and you feel some of the tension go out of his body. “Tough day?” He pulls you closer, your back pressed to his chest. “Just the usual. Nothing I can’t handle.” You know him well enough now to hear the pain in his tone. He feels you tense, knowing you want to ask him to elaborate, always trying to solve his problems. Rex rubs your arms slowly, soothing you “Not to worry. Everything’ll be fine.”

Rex’s hands continue their hypnotic rubbing. Up and down, leaving goosebumps in their wake. You allow yourself to relax once again but don’t let the matter drop. “You had a long day, Rex. Let me help you unwind.” You try and get out of the bath so you can switch places. But he’s having none of it. He holds you gently in place. “Taking care of you will help me relax, love.”

When you had first gotten together and he would say these kinds of things to you, it was hard to believe him. Could he truly be this selfless? It felt in some way like you were taking advantage of him. As your relationship progressed, you’d come to see that he truly meant things like that. Rex had many love languages but his favorite was acts of service.

Sighing in defeat, you settle back against him. He chuckles at your small sounds of mock protest. Rex nuzzles his face into your hair, inhaling your familiar scent of pine and Alderaanian blossoms. For a moment, he breathes you in, forgetting about the world. But as his eyes slowly open, he’s greeted by the sight of your long abandoned vibrator. Rex reaches for it, toying with it. You see what he’s doing and turn towards him. “It’s ok. I’m fine. Let’s just lay here.” 

Your captain may be tired but he’ll be damned if he doesn't fall asleep knowing you've been satisfied. “That’s right. You just lay there. Let me do the work.” The tiny thing clicks on, a buzzing filling the room. Rex lowers it into the water, the vibrations sending out tiny ripples. He pauses hovering above where you need him most. 

“What do you think of when you use this?” You’re so caught off guard by the question that you only let out a confused garble. He gives your thigh a squeeze, chuckling at the state you’re already in. “I haven’t even started yet, love. Use your words.”

After that, there’s no hesitation. “You.” The word comes out in a needy rasp. Rex is right. He hasn't even touched you yet and your body is already wound up so tightly in anticipation that you’re sure you might combust at any moment. “It’s always you, Rex.” You can’t see but his face softens, still so surprised someone would ever care for him like that. 

He rewards you with a lingering kiss on your shoulder and lowers the toy to your already swollen clit. You jolt at the sensation, body automatically trying to get away from it. Rex’s free arm tightens around you, forcing you to stay still and power through the first few seconds of overstimulation. You’re still whimpering, but you soon relax, leaning your head back onto his shoulder. 

He studies your face, your eyes screwed tight and mouth slightly agape. “Is this what you needed?” All you can do is nod but he prompts you to continue, rubbing the vibrator slowly up and down through your folds. Gasping at the new sensation, your eyes pop open to meet his. “I-I…” The arm that had been holding you tightly against him loosens. His hand moves to your breast, massaging gently.

It’s been so long since you’ve had time to take things this slow. Usually he’s only got a few minutes free, leaving time for a rushed rendezvous and nothing more. But tonight you have him all to yourself. No comms beeping to steal his attention, no duty calling him away. It’s as if there’s nothing outside of these four walls and you know it’s an opportunity that won’t come along often. 

Your head lolls to the side as he continues his ministrations. The coil in your belly is tightening quickly but you fight against it, needing something different. Your voice eventually resurfaces, your words on the tail end of a moan. “I- I need you!” Urging life back into your limbs that have since turned to jelly is difficult. But you manage to move your hand to cover his, clicking off the vibrator. 

Rex stills for a moment, trying to figure out what he’s done wrong. Turning your head to look at him, you see his confusion. You reach up to stroke his face, eyes pleading with him. After a moment, you see him understand. It’s something you always want, without fail. He smiles down at you, leaning over you to gently press his lips to yours. 

The vibrator is quickly abandoned on the side of the tub. With both hands free, Rex can really touch you, hands roaming about at his leisure. You sigh contently as his rough fingers trail along the sides of your body, then upwards to tease your nipples. The embers in your belly that had dimmed slightly are now burning brightly once again. He senses this and lowers a hand to your clit. 

At first, he just runs his fingers through your folds. He doesn’t mean to tease, he just hasn’t been able to feel you, to truly appreciate you in so long. But your whine pulls him out of his trance and he begins to rub circles that leave you gasping for air. He begins slowly, making sure you're happy with the direction things are going. 

Rex holds in his chuckle as he peers down at you. Your head has once again tipped back against him. But now, your face has gone slack, no tightness or tenseness to be found. Only pleasure. His free hand moves between your breasts, squeezing, massaging and tugging, making sure neither is neglected. He sees just how much your chest is heaving and decides to give you your reward. You’ve been so patient for him. 

His hand tugs at your thigh, pulling you out of your daze. “What are you - “ He lifts your leg and hooks it over the edge of the tub, spreading you wider for better access. You moan pitifully as the hand that had been rubbing circles delves back in. There’s so much more of you he can touch now and it makes you tremble. He beams down at you proudly, seeing how much this slight change is bringing you closer to the edge. 

You're tensing under him, back beginning to bow. Your sudden movement brings attention to his erection that’s been slowly growing. He can’t help when he automatically begins to grind against you. But Rex knows you well enough now to realize he only has a few more seconds before you're toppling into oblivion. His release can wait. 

Abandoning your breast, his hand slides up to your neck, applying the slightest pressure. You keen at the feeling. It’s not a show of dominance. It’s Rex reminding you that he’s there for you, a comforting presence that makes you feel perpetually taken care of. 

You twist your neck so you can gape up at him. The hand on your clit continues it’s work, doubling down its efforts. Throughout the experience, you’d been gripping the sides of the tub for dear life. But now, you bring one up to cover Rex’s hand that’s enclosed around your neck. Even through your haze of lust, your heart aches at the pure love radiating from his eyes. 

You're too far gone, unable to form words. All you can do is moan and hope he can decipher it. If you weren't in such a compromising position you would have to laugh. Asking someone to be able to decipher your desires without words. But thankfully Rex knows you like the back of his hand. He knows what you're asking, what last thing you need to make you let go. Loosening his grip on your neck, he uses it to hold your face, crashing your lips together. 

The kiss doesn’t break, even as you writhe under him. You try to turn away from him as you come, but he holds you to him, needing to feel you as much as you needed to feel him. The water is sloshing over the sides of the tub, your once full bath almost halfway empty. Rex breaks the kiss, letting the aftershocks of your release play out. 

He rubs soothingly against your thighs, watching as you twitch. You collapse onto him, finally beginning to break through the fog. The ability to form a coherent sentence seems to have left you. All you can manage is a weak sigh of his name. It’s the only thing you can remember and, in all honesty, you’d die a happy woman if that was the only thing you could utter for the rest of your life. 

“Was that what you needed, love?” Rex nuzzles into your neck as you chuckle. “Apparently more than I realized.” The rubbing at your sides pauses. You look to Rex to see what’s wrong and find his face twisted with guilt. “This isn’t right. If I can’t give you the attention you need then I don’t deserve you.” This isn’t the first time you've had this conversation and you're sure it wont be the last. 

But you’re happy to reassure your lover, as many times as you need to. “You give me everything I need, Rex. You’re smart, brave, funny, kind, supportive, sexy.” He lowers his eyes at the last word, smiling demurely. “I don’t know how I got so lucky. You give me everything and so much more. And I mean, if you don’t believe me, just look.” You laugh, gesturing at your bathroom, now in a state of disrepair, water on the floor, shampoo and soap bottles scattered, candles burnt down to messy puddles. 

Rex chuckles but looks contrite, rubbing his neck shyly. “Guess we got a little carried away.” He’s already made you come once, and spectacularly at that. But just the sight of him has those butterflies in your belly stirring to life again. You bat your eyelashes. “Now will you let me take care of you?” He closes his eyes, sighing tiredly. His cock, still hard against your back is evidence enough, but his muscles sag with fatigue.

“I want you more than anything. But I think I have just enough energy to clean this mess and then fall into bed.” Shaking your head, you gently extricate yourself from his arms. You stand on shaky legs as you hold out your hand for him. “Everything else can wait. Let me show you how much I missed you, Captain.” 

His eyes widen, lust beginning to cloud his gaze. You don’t use his title often, knowing how riled up it gets him to hear the word fall from your lips. But you need the big guns tonight, refusing to leave him wanting. Rex grabs for you and lets you lead him through the ruined bathroom and into your bedroom. 

He takes one last look at the state you’re leaving the room in. “But we should really clean this…” You lead him to the bed and softly push him down on to it. He looks up at you with doe eyes as you straddle his hips. “We will, honey. But no sense cleaning up now when we’re just about to make another mess.”

[quinncupine]

Yo imagine being in the general class of UA and being recovery girl’s little apprentice/intern and one of the 1A boys constantly getting hurt (whether its on purpose or accidentally ) as an excuse to come visit; I’m imagining todoroki or kaminari because I’m in a mood for those 2 and Deku wouldn’t need to an excuse 🙄

Ha, of course Deku wouldn't need an excuse!🙄 That's his second home at this point. I’ve never written for Kaminari before so this was a fun little experience! Sorry I’m answering this so late, I took a little writing break last week, but now I’m back on the grind! (Also I tried to keep this gender neutral as well!)

Word count: ~2.8K

Wanna request something?

Quinns Masterlist!

Midoriya, Kaminari, and Todoroki with Intern!Reader

Midoriya

"Midoriya, Midoriya, Midoriya," a soft voice sighed in mock exasperation. "How did I know I would find you here yet again."

Izuku flinched and looked up from his spot on the bed to see you casually leaning against the doorframe. That signature white lab coat draped over your form suited you perfectly. You looked like a real doctor standing there with the little clipboard tucked neatly into your waist and that warm smile radiating off you. To say that your smile had an effect on him was an understatement.

"Uh," he chuckled with a nervous smile, "sorry, I know I was just here yesterday."

"Yesterday? Midoriya, you've been here every day this week." Hopping off the door frame, you crossed your arms. "Do you wanna see me that bad?"

It was only a joke, but his face flushed a bright crimson at your words. Suddenly, every spot other than you seemed much more interesting to stare at, so he didn't catch that smirk lighting up your face as you stepped into the room.

A quick flip through the probably too many pages in his chart that he'd racked up this year alone, "So, what's it this time?"

"Just a sprained wrist," he held up said wrist. "I thought it was fine, but then it started to swell so I, uh, thought I should come here…just in case."

"And how did it happen?" you set the chart down and pulled the little wheeled stool to sit in front of him. With gentle fingers, you prodded the bruised skin.

At your touch, he stiffened. You were so close, eyes solely focused on his wrist. While you were examining him, he took the opportunity to stare at you with those giant green eyes of his, cataloging every inch of your face. When you began your internship with Recovery Girl, he was shocked the first time he walked in here to see you instead of the older woman. Not that he was complaining. You were way more amiable with him and although you didn't appreciate him injuring himself so much, he'd come to quite like these little meetings with just the two of you.

"Lucky for you, it's not too bad," you decided, looking up to meet his deer-eyed gaze. One which he promptly looked away from. "Ice it for twenty minutes a few times today and the swelling should go down. I'll get you a compression bandage." When you stood up to root through the doors for the bandage, you glanced back at him. "What'd you do, punch a brick wall?"

"Concrete actually," he stuttered out. "I missed my opponent, couldn't stop my follow-through in time."

The power he held always amazed you, but you were always the one to see the after-effects during training. He was strong to a point of recklessness. Something he really needed to work on. Finally finding the bandages, you walked back to your stool.

"Well, I hope you kicked that wall's ass then." Grabbing his hand, you locked eyes with him, "just don't overdo it too much. You only have two hands so try and keep them for at least a few more years yeah?"

Izuku was only half-listening, too entranced by your touch to keep up with the conversation. As you carefully wrapped his wrist, he sat back, taking the time to take in your image. This was really the only time he ever got to see you. The support department was on the opposite side of campus and those classes rarely ever teamed up. Besides, you were part of the relief support courses, not tactical, which meant the two of you would never train together while here. And while you were great at this part, patching him up right quick, and sending him on his way, he couldn't help but wish you were slower. All he wanted was to just sit here forever with you, injuries be damned.

"Right then, here we are," Straightening up, you finished wrapping the limb, and with a double check to make sure everything was in order, you smiled up at him. "You know, I should start charging each time you come in here. I bet you'd be able to cover this entire department's budget in a week.

"Oh, you think so?" the way he cocked his head, that cute little innocent widening of his eyes seemed to inject serotonin straight into your veins. The boy was just too adorable for his own good and he didn't even know it. "Sorry, I don't mean to be a bother."

"A bother? You?" An airy laugh blew past your lips. "My day would be so boring if I didn't have my favorite patient to keep me company." He tried his best to hide that all too obvious blush creeping up his neck. "Although, I could do without all the injuries you seem to be racking up."

Izuku turned his focus to the newly wrapped wrist, biting on his lower lip. He couldn't even bring himself to look at you or he might combust on the spot. When you left his side to go wash your hands, he finally sneaked a peek. Now that you were done, he was going to have to leave. He didn't want to leave. He liked being here with you. For whatever reason, anytime you were near him, his heart raced and he felt lightheaded, but also a million times better, even with whatever injuries he was sporting. If he didn't already know your quirk, he would've thought you had the ability to heal with just a simple smile. You were an adrenaline boost he always looked forward to.

"You're not always here, right?" the words left his mouth before he even realized he said them aloud. "I, uh, I mean, you do other things outside the recovery ward?"

"Sure," you shrugged, drying your hands. "You're not always training, right?" With a pause you shook your head, "wait, don't answer that. I think I already know that answer." Casting a smirk at him, he looked down at his shoes, a smile of his own taking root. "I'll have you know I do do other things besides patching up one Mr. Broken Bones Midoriya."

"Oh yeah, of course, you do!" he tripped over the words as they spilled from his mouth. "I just mean that your really cool and stuff but I never really see you other than here and I know the campus is big, but I just thought that maybe you, or I, or, or…uh…" he was running out of gas and confidence so he decided to abandon ship and jump to his feet, intent on escaping this sinking boat. "Um, anyway, thanks for the uh-thanks for this!" Waving his wrist, he made for the exit but before he could make his hasty getaway, you stepped in front of him.

"Geez Midoriya, calm down," it was like trying to corral a frantic bunny. The boy's eyes were darting all over the place, probably looking for a different escape route. "Tell ya what, when that wrist heals up and if you don't get any more injuries before the weekend, let's see if we can change not seeing each other around."

Izuku froze, the words processing in his mind a few times before they finally clicked. "You mean like a-a…"

"Just try not to get hurt for at least a few days? You placed a hand on his shoulder and lead him towards the door. "Think you can manage that?"

He'd never been so motivated to stay this healthy before. A furious nod and you sent him off with a wink. When the door closed, he slumped against the wall outside, bandaged wrist against his chest, trying to stop the mini horse race trampling through his chest. What he didn't know was that you were on the opposite side of that door, one hand to your own chest, the other trying to combat the heat on your cheeks. You'd been working up the courage to do that all week because god knows when Midoriya would ever find the courage to do it. An all too excited squeal rushed out of your mouth before you could stop it. This was going to be an interesting week.

 KAMINARI

You could hear the babbling from down the hall before you saw him. That stupid deep-fried laugh was synonymous with one person and one person only. Dropping the pen and whirling around in your chair, you leaned your elbow on the armrest as two of the school's med bots ushered Denki in. Thumbs up and that dopey smile plastered on his face had you trying your best to contain the giggle building in your throat.

"Well, look what the cat dragged in," you smirked at the blonde who'd been sat on one of the beds. "Go over your limit again Kaminari?"

"Yay…" he mumbled and fell back on the bed with a groan.

It wasn't the first time he'd come in with a fried brain and if there was one thing you knew about him, it wouldn't be the last. The good thing is he usually just needed to sleep it off for a bit. But being the ever diligent medical intern, you came over to check him over.

Denki laid sprawled out on the bed, hands finally giving out and falling to his side. After a quick examination, he appeared to be in working order, just needed a bit of a recharge, so you returned to your paperwork and let him be.

A half-hour later, he sat up with a loud groan, rubbing his head, "Uh, that majorly sucked."

"Ah, so sleeping beauty finally rises," you didn't even turn to him but still felt that charming smile bounce off your back.

"You really think I'm a beauty?" he grinned, standing up to stretch. "You know I'm still pretty sore, I could always get back in bed and we can see if a kiss will make me feel better."

"Tell me," a playful tug on your lips as you twirled in your chair to face him, "do any of those lines ever work?"

"That's for you to answer and for me to find out."

"Sorry to disappoint bud, but I don't think you're gonna like my answer." Satisfied with his little pout, you turned back to continue your work. "You're fine Kaminari, you can go back to class now."

"Aww, but being here with you is so much better," he trudged over to your desk and leaned on the back of the chair. "Can't you write me a doctor's note so I can stay here with your beautiful face for the rest of the day?"

"And what would you even want to do here with me for the rest of the day, hmm?" you hadn't meant it to sound like an innuendo, but judging from his flushed expression, he'd taken it that way.

"Don't tell me you're interested in the medical field now?" it was your attempt to gain control of the conversation again. "And after all that hard hero training you do."

"Uh, I…" a small spark shot between his hands as he tried to think of something to say. You must've really thrown him off this time, although that isn't very hard to do. After a few moments of fidgeting, he deflated and dropped his head. "All right, I'll go back to class."

"Aww come now, don't look so down," you laughed, leaning back in your chair. "I'm sure Mr. Aizawa is much more fun than I am."

"Yeah, if you think torture is fun," he pulled his hair with a whine and slogged towards the door. When he reached for the handle, he paused and glanced back at you with a forlorn look. "Not even a kiss for the road?"

"Hmm," tapping your chin with the pen, you smirked, "maybe if you come up with a less cheesy pick-up line, then I might be more inclined."

That perked him up more than any jolt of electricity could do. "Well you're in luck babe, I've got plenty of 'em!"

"Let's hear it then, I'm all ears."

"Okay, okay…" he scrunched his face and crossed his arms. You could practically see the gears turning as he thought it through. "Damn," he spoke after a moment, trying to hide his smirk, "you're so beautiful you made me forget my pick-up line."

You chucked the pen at him with a snort, which he narrowly dodged, hopping halfway out the door in the process. "Oh my god Kaminari, I said less cheesy, get out of here!"

That dorky grin back on his face, he held up his hands. "Fine, but don't think I'm finished here. I will find one that works." With a wave, he disappeared, yelling through the door, "mark my words!"

TODOROKI

Honestly, the scrape wasn't even that bad or that deep, but he still found himself marching towards Recovery girls office in hopes he'd find you there. Ever since you became her intern, he seemed to find himself injured more and more frequently…by total accident of course.

"Oh, Todoroki," you smiled as he walked in. "What brings you in today?"

"I injured my arm during training today," he said flatly, holding the appendage up. There was a sizable gash under what looked like scorch marks. "I thought it best to get it checked out."

"Geez, who were you fighting this time?"

"Bakugo," with a shrug, he glanced at his arm.

"Well, that makes sense," you waved him to one of the beds, "come on, let's have a look then."

Silently, he sat down on the examination bed, the stiff paper ruffling as he scooted back slightly when you approached. His whole body was stiff, eyes staring everywhere but your face. It didn't look much different from his usual self, but internally, he was having a slight meltdown from your mere proximity alone.

Sliding the stool over, you sat down and twisted his left arm back and forth to get a good look, muttering a few things before giving it back. "the cuts shallow which means no stitches, so that's good. Should heal on its own in a few days. I'll just clean it and wrap it, then you're good to go."

"Oh," the word unintentionally slipped out.

When you looked up at him, you noticed the tiniest of pouts forming on his lips. "Unless something else is wrong?"

"No!" he said a little too quickly.

Something else was definitely wrong. Throwing him a quizzical look, you headed for the drawers that held your supplies. "That's good I suppose," you said lightly, "It seems like I've been seeing you almost every day this week alone."

"Sorry," he muttered.

"I didn't say I was complaining," with a grin, you sat back in front of him with sterilizing pads and gauze.

Those words alone were enough for his left side to flare up. When your fingers touched his arm to clean the wound, you flinched away.

"Uh, hey Todoroki," you cocked your head, trying to maintain that professional demeanor Recovery Girl kept pestering you about (although the old woman should take her own advice) and not crack a smile. When his eyes finally met your own, you pointed to his arm, raising a brow. "Might wanna tone down the heat there."

He blinked. Then blinked again before realizing what the problem was. His cheeks flushed almost the same color as his hair and turned his head in embarrassment, rasping out a quiet apology.

"Are you sure everything's okay?" dapping the wound after the skin cooled down, your eyes wandered up to his. "You seem a little worked up."

"Something like that," he mumbled, watching your hands delicately work, using that as a distraction to keep from staring at your face. The same face he could easily find himself lost in if he gave himself the chance. So he decided to change the subject. "It's quiet here." Yeah, way to go, man, real insightful.

"Yeah, Recovery Girl gives me the quietest shifts until I gain enough experience." Once the soot was cleaned off, you grabbed the gauze. "You don't always have to be injured to come visit me, you know." Sparing a quick glance up at him, you started wrapping the limb. "I wouldn't mind the company."

"Am I even allowed in here without an excuse?" It was just a curious question but your frown caught him off-guard, wondering if he said something wrong.

"Couldn't hurt to find out," you mumbled, "I mean we are in an infirmary." Tying off the gauze, you patted just below the cut with a small smile. "Okay, you're all patched up. You're free to go."

"Does it have to be here?" Shoto suddenly stood up, eyes meeting your own.

"What?"

"You said you wouldn't mind the company," he furrowed his brow. "Does it have to be here?"

"Well, no, I was just saying…wait, you wanna see me outside of here?" you gestured around the room, a little baffled.

He nodded, looking less confident by the minute. "If that's alright with you."

The smile that lit up your face was brighter than any flames Shoto could ever hope to produce. "It's more than alright with me."

...

taglist: @dorki-time @awilddreamerwrites @peachsenpie @thecindy @miriobaby @kiyoobi @dragonsdreamoffire @amive2567

[bucky-hues]

stucky fic recs

here are some stucky fic recs! as always, be sure to read the warnings for each fic <3

one shots

finding home | @thedamageofherdays

cap steve x modern bucky

After he is caught in a terrible rainstorm while hiking, Bucky is glad to find shelter at the cottage Steve shares with his daughter and his dog. Bucky ends up finding so much more than just a safe place to spend the night.

x | @dreadlockholiday

steve x bucky

Request: Bucky looking through a glossy magazine and saying something like "God, can you imagine being paid for just looking cute?" And without thought Steve replies, "you'd be a millionaire" and Bucky just blushes furiously while Steve's all like 😳 *oh no, I just said that out loud*

x | @dreadlockholiday (18+)

steve x bucky

Bucky finds his BFF Steve's sketchbook... and it's full of nothing but sketches of Bucky... naked.

sweethearts | @musette22

steve x bucky

Steve confesses his feelings to Bucky using sweethearts

my moon, my man | @musette22 (18+)

steve x bucky (modern au)

AU meet-cute. Strangers on a Train, but with less murder and more sexual tension.

make it till you fake it | AggressiveWhenStartled (AO3)

steve x bucky

“Ned,” Peter said, like a drowning man sighting land. “Ned. Captain America and the Winter Soldier are fake dating right now and it is the most painfully awkward and obvious thing I have ever seen, all of us want to die, Ned.”

things my heart used to know | Nightwing11 (AO3)

steve x bucky

In a world where soulmates can communicate telepathically with their partners, Steve Rogers has always had Bucky Barnes with him, a calming voice in a sea of turmoil. And, when Bucky falls off the train during World War II, Steve experiences deafening silence for the first time.

Now, after crashing a plane in the Arctic to save the world and being frozen for 70 years, Steve’s still trying to figure out how to live without Bucky there. His new friends are trying to help him adjust, to move on. And he thought he was doing better, he really did.

So, why is he suddenly hearing Bucky’s voice again?

catfish | @buckmebxrnes (18+)

steve x bucky (modern au)

Steve Rogers is a famous movie star, known for his role as Captain America. Bucky Barnes is a bored law student who drinks too much wine. Bucky gets on match.com to boost his confidence. What he doesn't expect is a guy using Steve Rogers' pictures on a dating profile. Bucky decides to mess with the guy. After all, what idiot uses Steve Rogers' pictures on a dating site?

Not like it's really him, right? Bucky may need more wine.

let's go have fun | @sebastanbucky

steve x bucky

“Nat wanted me to-” Nat clears her throat and he rolls his eyes. “I wanted to tell you something.” He looks at Steve with a look he hopes says ‘play along’. “Okay. What did you want to tell me?” Bucky has to take a deep breath to keep from laughing again, it helps with his performance as Nat nods encouragingly at him. “I’m gay.” He says, making his voice sound shaky and weak.

the way you came around | sokaless (AO3)

steve x bucky

After a while, Bucky says, “You know, this song sounds like it was written for you.” “That's funny,” Steve remarks. “I chose it because it reminded me of you.” Steve gives Bucky an iPod full of his favourite songs from the 21st century to help him deal with his nightmares. Bucky has a new mission- to find out who Steve is in love with, because there are a few too many unrequited love songs on that iPod.

stuck on you | wearing_tearing (AO3)

steve x bucky (modern au)

“Bucky? You don’t look so hot.”

Bucky makes a tiny little sound in the back of his throat, only to start coughing. Of course he doesn’t look hot. He’s sick and he’s dying and Steve obviously isn’t attracted to him.

you have the place next to my place | justanotherStonyfan (AO3)

cap steve x modern bucky

prompt: “We live in adjacent apartments and our bedrooms are on opposite sides of a very thin wall and one night I heard you crying and talked to you through the wall” AU

Captain America helps the Vet next door.

you’ve got (30) new matches | williamkaplans (AO3)

steve x bucky

When everyone finds out Steve's bi thanks to Bucky's recovering memories, Natasha kicks up her match-making into high gear. Steve has zero luck, but Natasha won't give up, especially when Sam (jokingly) suggests online dating. It isn't long before Steve finds someone, a someone who seems eerily familiar.

perfectly right wrong number | melonbutterfly (AO3)

cap steve x modern bucky

It all starts because Steve is too dumb to handle his smartphone.

A wrong number AU in which Bucky Barnes doesn't enter Steve's life (meaning: Bucky wasn't born until the eighties, but Steve is still Captain America) until Steve accidentally dials the wrong number. Wherein there is a lot of texting, some advice via Natasha and Darcy, a bit of pining, and a first date in an amusement park. Oh, and on top of being a disabled veteran, Bucky is a professional catwalker. Literally.

put your number in my phone | MacksDramaticShenanigans (AO3)

steve x bucky (modern au)

Steve tucks his phone back into his pocket and turns back to the computer. He only has to click a few times before he finds the link to the questionnaire and opens it, inputting the participant number before hitting next. The beginnings of the consent form fills the page, and all Steve has left to do now is wait for the participant— one James Barnes, according to the website— to show up.

Thankfully, Steve doesn’t end up having to wait very long. James Barnes shows up ten minutes early and knocks on the door before cracking it open and peeking in.

“Oh, hi,” he says, when he spots Steve sitting at the desk. He pushes the door open all the way and steps into the room just as Steve spins in the chair to face him.

“Um, I’m, uh, a bit early, but I’m here for the decision making study,” James continues, clear blue eyes flickering around the room before landing on Steve again. The skin between his eyebrows crinkles up a little, and god, Steve probably shouldn’t find his uncertainty as cute as he does. “Am I in the right place?”

wouldn’t it be nice | MacksDramaticShenanigans (AO3)

steve x bucky (modern au)

"You are never going to believe what just happened," Bucky bemoans, shaking his head. He's at Steve's side in a moment and doesn't bother to give any warning before he dramatically falls into Steve's lap. Steve just barely manages to save his book from getting squashed.

"What is it?" Steve asks, matching Bucky's dramatic tone. "What am I not going to believe?"

"I just got off the phone with Natasha," he starts. "She cancelled on me!" Bucky throws his arms up, nearly smacking Steve in the face in the process.

Steve carefully places his hand on Bucky's forearm and lowers it away from his face.

"You're kidding," he says, a frown curving onto his lips at the news.

"I wish I was," he sighs. Bucky presses his lips together into a disappointed line and deflates against the back of the couch, slinking down Steve's thighs a little. "Who goes to Coney Island alone? How pathetic is that?"

Steve snorts, earning a glare from Bucky, and pats Bucky's thigh. "Aw, don't be such a sourpuss, Buck," he says. "Who said anything about going alone?"

all jokes aside | darksknight (AO3)

steve x bucky

"Before we know it Banner’s gonna be makin’ insinuations.” (Everyone "jokes" about Steve and Bucky being in a relationship until, eventually, they admit that they are.)

barnes & rogers and the goddamn truth

steve x bucky (teacher au)

There are three well-known facts at Shield High:

1. The history teacher Mr. Barnes is a stone-cold terror, and it’s not even because he only has one arm. 2. The other history teacher, Mr. Rogers, is a mysterious enigma, and it’s something to do with the body of a Greek God and contradicting stories of his past. (They’re all rumours, anyway.) 3. Mr Barnes and Mr Rogers hate each other.

Bucky wouldn’t have it any other way.

in the shadows | DragonWannabe (AO3) (18+)

steve x bucky

Five times they thought they were almost caught, one time someone found out, and one time they didn't have to hide.

OR:

Bucky and Steve grew up in a time when people like them went to jail.

single and looking | Jaiden_S (AO3) (18+)

steve x bucky

"Bucky held his place with his index finger and turned the magazine over to check the date on the cover. It was brand new, just out this month. An unexpected cord of anxiety tightened in Bucky’s chest. Single and looking? Frantically, he flipped back to the article. What exactly was Steve looking for? According to the article, Steve’s dream girl should be intelligent, altruistic, well-versed in current events and have a wicked sense of humor. Oh, and he had a thing for high heels and red lipstick. Bucky’s stomach churned as he re-read the article. Was that really what Steve wanted? Make-up and stilettos?"

A slightly sappy tale of two utterly besotted super-soldiers who excel at miscommunication.

these american dreams (ain’t no white picket fences left for me) | kariye (AO3) (18+)

steve x bucky

In which Bucky has a house, a dog, an herb garden, and a serious case of insomnia. Welcome to Havensport, Indiana (population 8,294), where Tom’s Neighborhood Grocer stays open all night, little old ladies call the car shop to get their refrigerators repaired, and the heat of summer days and the length of summer nights can make you think that this perfect world will last forever.

i’ve been careless with a delicate man | paraxdisepink (AO3) (18+)

steve x bucky

Steve lets SHIELD think he and Bucky were boyfriends so they’ll let him see the Winter Soldier in medical.

knock on wood | 74days (AO3) 

steve x bucky (modern au)

Steve Rogers lives a quiet, steady life, until his next door neighbour moves in and starts having incredibly energetic sex every night. All Steve wants is for him to move his bed away from the wall so the damn headboard doesn't knock a hole through his wall.

progressively bigger keys | spinawren (AO3)

steve x bucky

“A very little key will open a very heavy door.” ― Charles Dickens, Hunted Down

Steve and Bucky, it appears, have less need for a key and more use for a battering ram in trying to come out of the closet.

(The one where Steve tries to do one thing (one thing!) without causing a national ruckus, but the press are determined to see Bucky as Steve's best friend. And nothing more.)

stucky discover gay rights | Alicia_Borealis (AO3)

steve x bucky

“Then, why-” Steve stopped himself and looked at Bucky, who had tears rolling freely down his cheeks. “We’re- we’re not sick?”

“Wait, what?” Tony asked.

“Being a homosexual, it isn’t… wrong?”

-

The story of how Steve Roger's loved and lost Bucky, then how he got him back and then how he realised he was allowed to love him after all.

thursday nights with bucky barnes | Ellessey (AO3)

steve x bucky (modern au)

Steve has a comfortable, well-worn routine for his Thursday nights, until the old man who runs the laundromat breaks his hip.

Then Steve has Bucky instead.

to seek a nood-er world | jehans (AO3) (18+)

steve x bucky

Send noodz

Steve has been staring at his phone for the last six minutes, eyes narrowed so much they’re almost closed at this point, trying to figure out what the hell Bucky means. Noodz? What the fuck are noodz?

Listen, Steve is at least marginally aware of modern pop culture. He’s heard of nudes — not that nudes are exactly a modern invention; artists have been creating them for millennia — and he does know that people tend to misspell words to be cute or funny. They did that when he was young, too. Because time is a flat circle, apparently.

But, wait—does that mean…?

No. Not possible. Bucky isn’t asking Steve to send him…nudes.

Right?

tied ‘round your throat | sleepypercy (AO3) (18+)

police officer steve x serial killer bucky

Steve's a small-town police officer trying to track a serial killer who's been in Steve's bed the whole time.

much tattoo about nothing | Deisderium (AO3) (18+)

cap steve x modern bucky

Steve Rogers gets a lot of email requests, but never one like this: James Barnes wants to use his healing factor to practice tattoos.

Turns out tattoos give Steve boners.

the perfect man | Ellessey (AO3) (18+)

steve x bucky (modern au)

Setting up a dating profile is decidedly not in Bucky's skill-set, but against all odds he manages to connect with someone who makes the one-night stand he thought he wanted feel like not nearly enough.

kiss me and take off your clothes | steveandbucky (AO3) (18+)

steve x bucky (modern au)

Steve Rogers is dared to send a dick pic to a blog which critiques dick pics (run by none other than Bucky Barnes). Hilarity ensues.

i can’t dare to dream about you anymore | steveandbucky (AO3) 

steve x bucky (modern au)

Steve considers himself to be a pretty open-minded guy, which is why he can't quite understand why he feels so uncomfortable whenever he sees his gay roommate kissing guys. He's not homophobic, but how else can he explain the way his stomach twists at the sight?

It takes him a while to catch on.

exam room b | steveandbucky (AO3)

modern steve x nurse bucky

“Wait, what do you mean he asked for me?”

“He asked if the cute male nurse with the ponytail was working today. I assume he meant you.”

kickstart my heart | Kalee60 (AO3) (18+)

doctor steve x modern bucky

Bucky’s Wednesday wasn’t off to a great start. Not only did he wake up in a hospital with his annoyed best friend staring down at him, his treating Doctor just happened to be way too familiar, and the reason for that was slightly mortifying.

With misunderstandings in the air, a snarky nurse who is a pain in his butt and the ugliest neck brace known to man attached to his body. There was no way his Wednesday was ever going to improve. Could it?

you make me feel.. | kalika_999 (AO3) (18+)

cap steve x modern bucky

All Steve wanted was to take a breather, decompress after a mission and go out for a jog in the rain. He wasn't expecting to hide out in a bookstore filled with new and used books or that the employee that worked there thought he was an absolute loser and didn't even realize he was insulting Captain America.

nothing in the world that could stop it | rainbow_nerds (AO3) (18+)

steve x bucky (modern au)

Bucky just wanted to send his best friend a picture of his cat being an idiot while he was taking a bath. Was it really his fault for forgetting the full length mirror right opposite the tub?

rescue me and hold me in your arms | 74days (AO3)

steve x bucky (modern au)

Bucky is on the worst date of his life, and what he really needs of for this waitress to get the message he's sending her with his mind to rescue him. She doesn't, but she does send someone to extract him from a night of torture...

odd ways | peterbparker (AO3)

steve x bucky (modern au)

“And it would have been an amazing night with my son if he wasn’t distracted by the hot guy on the other side of the room,” Sarah sighed, shaking her head. “He’s been looking over at you for the past fifteen minutes.”

Bucky choked on the mouthful of beer he had just taken.

“What?” he croaked. Things were starting to make a little more sense now.

“Right?” Sarah said, waving her hand towards her son. “He completely ignored my garden stories because he’s been making eyes at you so I decided to come over and introduce myself.”

series

rare is this love (keep it covered) | @musette22 (18+)

cap steve x modern bucky

It’s 2014. Captain America has been out of the ice for three years and is trudging along, saving the world and trying to get used to living in the future. Steve thinks he knows how the rest of his life is going to pan out – a life of duty, which he chose when he signed up to be Erskine’s science experiment. But then, he meets Bucky Barnes: the out-of-this-world-gorgeous mechanic and war vet, who turns Steve’s life upside down and makes him question everything he thought he knew. Slowly, Steve comes to realize there is more to life than duty and punching Nazis. Just one problem though: how on earth does a 96-year-old virgin who only just realized he may not be entirely straight make the transition from crush to relationship? Cue healthy amounts of self-doubt, awkward flirting, pretty blushing, existential crises, emotional growth, and maybe, possibly, a sexual awakening.

coming up easy | @musette22 (18+)

steve x bucky (modern au)

“Listen, I was just thinking,” Steve says, his face open, eyebrows raised in a tentatively hopeful expression. “Why don’t you come stay at my place for a while? I’ve got an office that I barely use, and a change of scenery might do you good, right? Help you beat that writer’s block?” With a crooked smile, he adds, “I promise I’m not a serial killer.”

While Bucky would normally crack a joke about how that’s exactly what a serial killer would say, right now, all he can do is blink at Steve in surprise, heart tripping over itself in his chest. Steve wants him to come and stay at his place. In Massachusetts. Just the two of them.

"Oh," Bucky croaks. "I- Wow."

“I mean, no pressure,” Steve says hastily. “Totally fine if you don’t wanna. I just thought I’d offer, in case it might help, y’know?”

“Yeah.” Bucky ignores the little voice in his head that sounds an awful lot Nat and Becca, telling him he’s setting himself up for heartbreak. “I mean, if you’re sure, that would be amazing.”

4 minute window | @cesperanza

steve x bucky

"Look, if they catch me," Bucky muttered, "they're either going to kill me or they're going to put me in a box with a little window and—Steve, I can't."

swapped | writeonclara (AO3)

steve x bucky (modern au)

if u wanted my number u couldve just asked

u didnt have to steal my whole phone ;)

Steve stared down at his phone, confused. He didn't recognize the number – except, oh wait, he really did. That was his number. On his phone.

He flipped the phone over, then slid one hand down his face. Not his phone.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

[stupid fucking] brooklyn hipster bros | relenaflanel (AO3)

steve x bucky (modern au)

Bucky's mother gives him an ultimatum. Bucky doesn't respond well.

All Barneses are stubborn assholes, Steve observes, as though he doesn't see the irony of calling someone else stubborn. Or an asshole.

And Bucky can't even deny he is a total asshole for lying to his mother about dating Steve just so he doesn't have to bring someone else to her wedding, but damn if he's not going to give the lie everything he has.

brought to brightness | eyres (AO3)

cap steve x modern bucky

Army veteran Bucky Barnes has fallen in love with Steve, a guy he met online a few months after he returned from Afghanistan. Only problem is, he doesn't know Steve's last name or even what he looks like.

When his sister helps him send his story into MTV's Catfish, he's hoping they can help him meet Steve or, at least, let him move on with his life if Steve isn't real. Little does he know, Steve and Captain America have more in common than just a first name.

slide to answer | relenaflanel (AO3)

steve x bucky (modern au)

"What do I do?” Steve appealed into the phone. “I’m freaking out.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. It lasted so long that Steve pulled the receiver away from his ear and frowned at it. Pay phones were old. Maybe this one wasn’t working despite the obvious dial tone when he picked up.

“Ok,” a stranger’s voice said over the phone. “First acknowledge the fact that you dialed the wrong number, but be quick about it because my cab is a few blocks away from my own plans and I’m about to drop some truth bombs on you.”

how to woo the winter soldier | writeonclara (AO3)

steve x bucky

“I think I’m ready to date again,” Steve said.

“What,” Natasha said.

“What?” Clint said, lowering his binoculars. He blinked at the dumbstruck look on the Captain’s face, then followed his gaze to where he was staring dopily at—at the Winter fucking Soldier.

“Steve, no,” Clint groaned.

Or: Steve courts the Winter Soldier.

all these things that i’ve done | @not-withoutyou 

steve x bucky

Steve was the patron saint of waiting too long. Bucky was atoning for his sins. Maybe they’d both been forsaken, abandoned by the light. Maybe they’d find a way back to each other again.

Post civil war, if things had gone differently.

find a way (to make it back home) | belwrites (AO3) (18+)

steve x bucky (college au)

Fresh off a year abroad, Head Resident Assistant Steve Rogers finds his senior year of college to be full of changes, and he's not just talking about the growth spurt. He's more concerned with the fact that his best friend...isn't talking to him? Is dating his ex? May or may not be missing an arm?

In which Steve has no fucking clue what's going on, but he's trying, Bucky learns how to communicate with his best friend again, and everyone quietly panics about the future.

is it pretending if i already want you? | OhCaptainMyCaptain (AO3) (18+)

steve x bucky (modern au)

Based on prompt: Pretend Boyfriends AU where one of their families is always wondering why they're never in a relationship, so the other offers to pretend to be their boyfriend for some family event

the roommate | layersofart, Niitza (AO3)

cap steve x modern bucky

In which Steven G. Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, gets a roommate. Who rapidly turns into his "roommate"—in the euphemistic sense of the word.

It takes SHIELD and the rest of the Avengers an absurd amount of time to notice.

dear mr. postman | odetteandodile (AO3)

steve x bucky (modern au)

Steve and Bucky revive an old friendship, get married (but totally just as friends, for reasons), and navigate a few of the many trials of the heart that come with falling in love with your best friend.

fate will play us out | steveandbucky (AO3) (18+)

cap steve x modern bucky

Bucky has landed himself a job with Stark Industries. He doesn't know yet that the job is actually being the PR manager for the Avengers.

Bucky has also started dating Steve Rogers. He also doesn't know yet that Steve is Captain America.

Bucky's life is about to get a whole lot more exciting.

the avengers hate club | notebooksandlaptops (AO3)

pop star steve x modern bucky

Bucky falls hopelessly for Steve and starts an Avengers hate club with the lead singer of the Avengers.

songbird | chicklette (AO3) (18+)

modern steve x musician bucky

At 43, James Barnes is a washed up old man. He’s got a dozen Grammys in the hall closet, an agent that can’t get him a deal, a decade-old case of writer’s block, a moody teen-aged daughter, and the gorgeous actress Natasha Romanova for an ex-wife. Well, one of them anyway. He’s a man who’s given up on finding joy in his life, and if it wasn’t for his kid, he’d have probably found a way to quit the world a long time ago.

Enter Steven Grant Rogers, struggling twenty-something, orphan, and someone who has no idea who Barnes is, other than some musician his mom liked a lot. The two men meet by accident, doing nothing more than passing the time in a quiet bar. But when a pap gets a shot of the two men embracing, Bucky takes it as a chance to finally come out as bisexual, and his agent makes him a proposition: Ten new songs and one very sweet boyfriend will get him a new record deal that will maybe, just maybe put him back on top.

Now all he has to do is write the songs, convince the kid, and not fall in love. Should be easy, right?

the right partner | LeeHan (AO3) (18+)

cap steve x ws bucky

Steve meets a beautiful man with a bright laugh on a sunny day in Italy. Captain America meets the elusive Winter Soldier moments later.

Date Bucky Barnes. Defeat the Winter Soldier. Bring down Hydra. How hard could it be?

[peach-pops]

Amorentia || Kuroo Tetsurō

summary: amorentia has a different scent or aroma for anyone who smells it and the potion, if done correctly, can remind the user of things or more specifically someone they find most attractive, even if the said person is oblivious in their attraction. 

word count: 3.1k

warnings: none 

authors note: i dont know why i always end up writing for kuroo but this dude just speaks to me on an inspirational level ya know? kuroo is a ravenclaw in this but the reader is gn and i didn’t specify what house the reader is in to make it a bit more inclusive. credits to @rhymewithrachel​ for the picture of kuroo which you can find here and pls check out their page for more amazing art! also i def feel like i’ve written the last few lines on like another piece i’ve done but oh well if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it

The library was eerily still for a Thursday morning but you relished in how quiet it was. You had found the perfect sweet spot; not too late where you would forget breakfast but early enough to where you would avoid the morning rush of students who would try to find a quiet spot to study. 

The lowly lit lanterns were useless since the sun was beginning to peak its way through the windowpane behind you and the small semblance of light drew your attention to the dust that was floating lazily in the air.

Even though there were hardly any students around you, you felt as though you were tucked away from the world as you spread your legs out against the leather couch with a Magic Potions: Basic for Beginners textbook settled in your lap. Besides the ever so often sound of a few students rustling their papers, it was truly peaceful. 

“ Good morning beautiful, mind if I join you?” 

Bloody hell. 

You looked up from your textbook to see Kuroo standing over by your legs that were neatly crossed over each other. You would be lying if you said you weren’t slightly taken aback by seeing him so early in the morning but even if he did manage to wake up on time for class, his hair was still a disheveled mess from his horrid bedhead. 

“ You’re up early,” You replied normally as you turned your attention back to your book,” by the way, your tie is crooked, might want to fix that, yeah?” 

You and Kuroo were both in the same year but you two didn’t officially get acquainted until your fourth year when he had “accidentally” spilled butterbeer all over you and then attempted to wipe it off with his bare hand. 

“ Shit, I-I am so sorry! Let me just-”

“ Can you stop feeling me up and get me a napkin instead, you creep?” 

“ A creep? I’m nothing short of a gentleman- speaking of which, are you dating anyone by chance?” 

“ Are you joking? As if I would be under the accompaniment of a clumsy Ravenclaw like yourself.” 

Your vow was fully ignored and by some weird alignment of the planets, you two had been inseparable since. Of course, Kuroo still spent his time over the past two years trying to woe you in some way and while you used to find yourself flustered over his charm, you managed to get used to the constant flirting between the two of you. 

Who were you kidding, the flirting was mostly one-sided unless you weren’t exhausted trying to think of witty comebacks to try and get him stumbling over his words like the first time you two met. 

However, you weren’t blind. You were bold enough to admit to yourself that over the years, Kuroo got progressively wittier, taller, and yes, possibly more attractive. You would never admit it out loud but there was a slight possibility you were starting to see him in a different light.

Nonetheless, you figured feelings like those would just come and go, and surely you didn’t actually have feelings for him. 

Kuroo looked down at his tie and shrugged nonchalantly before fixing it,” I was tossing and turning all night, poor Akaashi had to sleep in the common room because I was keeping him up too. Quidditch tryouts are this afternoon and I’m hoping we can get a strong team together so we can keep up our legacy.”

“ First-year as captain and you’re already nervous,” You clicked your tongue against your teeth as you took another bite of your raspberry scone, utilizing the silence between the two of you as you finished chewing,” hopefully Ravenclaw will get some wins this year. You know, for your own sake and my sanity.” 

“ Okay ouch, first of all, you know you’re not supposed to eat in the library it’s forbidden,” Kuroo crossed his arms playfully over his chest as you only hummed in response,” and second of all, maybe if I had someone special cheering me on, I would do immensely better.”  

You knew he was only being smug since you always showed up to his games but nothing was more entertaining than watching Kuroo practically gush over Quidditch only for you to act somewhat disinterested. 

“ Aw, do you want me to show up with some blue and bronze paint over my face? Maybe even bring a poster with your name on it with little hearts decorated on the border because I have sooo much free time on my hands?” You teased as you played with your hair while pouting back up at him, relishing in the way he shifted from side to side,” honestly Kuroo, you know I have better things to do than to watch you fly around like a lunatic.” 

Kuroo smirked to himself but said nothing to retaliate as he offered his hands to help you out of your seat once he saw the time,” Come on, you know Slughorn will throw another fit if we’re late again and by the looks of it, you can’t afford falling behind.” 

For a moment, you thought that maybe you had gone too far. His response was almost disappointing in contrast to how he would usually retort with something wittier of the sort but it was out of your control now. 

You closed your textbook and grabbed Kuroo’s hands so he could help you off the leather couch but once he got you up to your feet, his strong grip on your hands didn’t release. 

Your chests were almost touching and the distance between you two was so small, you could distinctively smell his signature vanilla aftershave that he put on every morning. You looked down at your hands that were fitted perfectly against his as Kuroo leaned down close to your ear, his breath tickling your neck.

“ Don’t act so coy, Y/N. I know you would love nothing more than to wear my jersey so that everyone else could know you like me.”

You could feel the heat rise from your chest to your ears as you slipped your hands out from his to hold your textbook to your chest, as if it would cool you down. You fiddled with the spine of the textbook as a distraction as Kuroo smiled back innocently at you to give you time to compose yourself. 

“ D-Don’t say things like that, you’re my friend and that’s all,” You stammered as you slapped his shoulder to make the tension less thick,” and wipe that grin off your face, you look like an idiot!” 

Kuroo laughed, easing whatever tension was left in the air as he bumped your shoulder with his, “ Fine, fine, I’ll stop but only because you’re my special friend.”

“ You’re the worst.” 

“ And you love it.”

“ Are you sure we’re doing this right?” You asked Kuroo as he sprinkled in the powdered moonstone while you stirred the concoction slowly. 

You surveyed the room as you watched your fellow classmates fail miserably at the assignment at hand, some being greeted with thick clouds of smoke while others potions just combusted into flames. 

You flinched at the sound of shrieking and looked up to see Sugawara and Daichi backing away from their cauldron as a mass of black tar started to slither out towards them. Slughorn had warned everyone that this potion was tricky to master but you didn’t think it would be this difficult and as time passed, the more anxious you grew. 

Kuroo, as unbothered as ever, looked down at the instructions for a moment before turning his attention back at the cauldron,” Yep, triple checked it and everything. You sure are nervous today.”

“ I’m always nervous during this class, you know I’m awful at potions. Plus look what happened to Oikawa, he’s in the hospital wing because of this lab.” 

“ He’ll be fine, the flames weren’t too high, he probably just lost an eyebrow,” Kuroo teased, trying to keep your mind at bay,” are you sure you’re not nervous because we’re concocting Amorentia?” 

You continued to stir the mixture carefully as you only scoffed,” Why would I be nervous of a silly little love potion?” 

“ First off, Amorentia is one of the most powerful love potions in existence so show some respect,” Kuroo said as you only rolled your eyes back at him,” And second of all, maybe you’re nervous because this will finally prove that you have feelings for me.” 

“ Knock it off before I send you to the hospital wing nerd,” You replied hastily as Kuroo put his hands up in defense,” Are you sure you’re not the nervous one? You’ve been acting weird since class has started...like more mouthy than usual.” 

If you didn’t know any better, you could’ve gone the whole lesson completely oblivious to Kuroo’s nervous tics, but after years of being friends, you knew better than to pass them off as normal tendencies. 

Kuroo rubbed the corner of the textbook page between his fingers as his eyes read the directions over again to try and ground himself in his thoughts. He had re-read the same step of the last instruction for the past couple of minutes to look occupied but his facade was starting to fall apart. 

“ If you paid more attention to the assignment instead of me, maybe you would pass the class, huh?” Kuroo smirked to try and ease your mind but the action only made you feel more annoyed. 

“ Enough with this back and forth, are we almost done? You’ve been reading the last step for a while now, is it that hard or are you just stupid today?” You nudged Kuroo out of the way and bent your body over the table to read the last step, wanting nothing more than to get this class over with. 

Kuroo watched as you began to stir the concoction slowly, his eyes trained on the top of the cauldron to watch for any sign of steam. 

“ What color are the spirals supposed to be?” You asked as a dark, pink-colored steam started to slowly rise from the mixture,” did he say pink was right or purple? Maybe red I don’t even remember.” 

Kuroo carefully leaned closer beside you to get a better look at the steam,”Looks right to me. You smell anything?” 

“ The only thing I can smell is that god awful aftershave of yours so back up.” 

You leaned your forearms on the table and took in a deep breath of the potion. Almost instantly, you felt a comforting warmth spread throughout your body that started in your chest and moved all the way down to your head and toes. You felt your body completely relax and it felt almost similar to the feeling of submerging yourself into a hot bath after a long day. 

It would make absolutely no sense to describe the scents as something so oddly familiar and distinct while not being obvious at all yet that was where your headspace was as you tried to identify the scents. 

Almost immediately, once you pinpointed one scent, the rest came flooding in one after another,” I smell something like cinder-a burning logfire...and....I know what this is it’s kinda like- oh, broomstick polish!” 

You took into another deep breath to try and identify the last scent but you couldn’t put a name to the scent which only made you more frustrated. 

“ Kuroo, can you help me? I can’t figure out the last scent,” You sighed as Kuroo closed his eyes to take a turn, even though he could already pinpoint a few scents from his spot,” do you smell the logfire too?” 

Kuroo only smiled to himself as he felt the warmth spread across his body before shaking his head,” That’s not how it works. Our scents would be different for example, I smell…freshly clean linen, old parchment paper, and… butterbeer froth.”

Once the words left Kuroo’s mouth, he opened his eyes and turned to you to read your reaction. He looked for something, anything behind those eyes of yours to watch it all click in your head but as usual, you were completely oblivious to the huge hint he had given you. 

“ Lucky you, I wish I could smell what you can- this is harder than I thought,” You pouted as you noticed some of your other classmates were getting distracted by you and Kuroo’s Amortentia,” maybe we did this wrong.”

“ We did it right, don’t worry,” Kuroo cleared his throat as he gave you a nudge with his shoulder which only made you nudge him back even harder,” maybe you should try again, think really hard. Try to see where you recognize the scent instead of what it is.” 

You closed your eyes and just like before, the same warm sensation flooded your body but this time, you could feel yourself leaning closer and closer to the cauldron, almost as if the potion was pulling you in deeper. 

“ Burning logfire, broomstick polish and…” You took in another deep breath but you were only meet with more frustration,” for the last time, can you give me some space, Kuroo? I swear all I can smell is your-.” 

You opened your eyes and practically pulled yourself away from the table once an unsettling realization had started to develop quickly in your mind. You knew exactly what the scent was but there was that lingering sensation in your mind that still tried to convince itself that for once, maybe you were wrong. 

Kuroo let out a breathy laugh as the back of your neck and ears began to grow hot,” Something the matter-”

Without thinking, you grabbed Kuroo’s collar and pulled him down to your eye level. Kuroo’s face started to grow red as you brushed your nose against the side of his neck to get a better smell. You had to be going crazy, there was no way- it all had to be a trick. 

“ Are you sure we did this right? You’re absolutely positive?” You asked softly as you let go of his collar. 

Kuroo smoothed out his collar and nodded as he looked back at the cauldron,”I’m absolutely positive- why are you freaking out?” 

Because I smell your stupid vanilla aftershave. 

“ I’m not freaking out,” You lied through your teeth as you turned your attention to Slughorn as he dismissed the class for the day,” You know what, I’m actually not feeling well- Can you clean up for me? I’m feeling a little lightheaded.”

“Y/N-”

“ I’ll see you around,” You gathered your things quickly but as you reached for your potions book, Kuroo snatched it off the table and held it behind his back,”enough Kuroo, give it back.” 

“ Clean linen, parchment, and butterbeer froth,” Kuroo listed as you tried to grab your book from behind his back but Kuroo was quick to hold it above his head,”did you hear me?” 

You looked up at how high he was holding your textbook and as embarrassing as it was, you decided to hold on to the little dignity you had left and not jump up and down for it. 

“ Yes I heard you but I don’t care.” 

“ You do care and you’re not listening to me. I smelled clean linen, parchment paper, and butterbeer froth so now it’s your turn, what did you smell?” Kuroo asked, this time a bit louder. It was obvious in the way he was enunciating his words that he was trying to lead you down a certain conversation but you were slow to pick up on it. 

You didn’t want to tell him, all you wanted to do was go back to bed and pretend as though this day had never happened. The idea that all this time you actually had real feelings for Kuroo only made you feel flustered. 

It wasn’t that you were ashamed of liking someone like him but for years, you had convinced him and seemingly everyone else that you would never have feelings for Kuroo. In reality, you couldn’t have been more wrong. 

“ Do we have to do this right now?” You asked softly as you nodded over to Slughorn who was dusting the corners of his desk but it was obvious he was eavesdropping on the conversation. 

Without missing a beat, Kuroo nodded and lowered your textbook back down to hand it to you.

“ You’re right, we should discuss this someplace quiet and private, how does dinner sound?”

You shook your head at the boy as you tried to grab your textbook from him but you couldn’t pry it off his strong grip,“ Quit flirting with me, now isn’t the time.” 

Kuroo couldn’t take it anymore; the years of endlessly flirting and being ignored was taking a toll on his pride and he couldn’t stand it. He knew you were prideful but this was on a whole different level.

“ Now is the perfect time since now I know you like me after all.”

“ How- I do not-”

“ You’re a terrible liar Y/N, the aftershave was a dead giveaway and I don’t know whether or not I’m more hurt by the fact that you’re too embarrassed to admit you like me or that you think my aftershave is god awful,” Kuroo said as he loosened his grip on the book so you could take it from his hands,” aren’t you tired of pretending you don’t have feelings for me?” 

You carefully took back your textbook as if it was a fragile vase and held it close to your chest as if you were shielding your heart. 

“ For the record, I don’t think it’s god awful, I just think you put on way too much,” You mumbled as Kuroo stood up straighter,” and I’m not tired of pretending, maybe I don’t like you or maybe I do have feelings for you.”

“ But maybe you like me more than you dislike me, am I right?”

You opened your mouth but quickly closed it after thinking his words over for a moment,“Emphasis on maybe...but don’t let it get to your head. You get one date so don’t ruin it.” 

Even though it wasn’t the confession Kuroo wanted, it was the only confirmation he needed to hear from you to let him know that the feelings were mutual. 

Kuroo couldn’t help but wear a huge goofy smile on his face as he collected his things and followed your lead as you both started to walk out the classroom. You and Kuroo politely nodded and said goodbye to Slughorn, who was pretending to read the textbooks along the shelves. 

Once you two left the classroom, Kuroo’s hand slide down beside yours and started to play with your fingers carefully. Your hand recoiled from the feeling but once you made sure the hallway was clear of any onlookers, you let your hand slide back down and let his fingers intertwine with yours. 

“ You know, I knew you really liked me, I called it since day one-” 

“ Okay, that’s enough Kuroo.” 

“ You said and I quote,’As if I would be under the accompaniment of a clumsy Ravenclaw like yourself’ and look at you now, holding hands with one!”

You shook your head at him and wondered to yourself if this is how things would be now yet you still couldn’t bring yourself to hide the small smile on your face,”You’re the worst.” 

Kuroo squeezed your hand in his and shared the same lovey-dovey grin on his face,” and you love it.” 

taglist: @goopyartiste​, @sugas-sweetheart​, @kirislut​, @estridries​, @hannahalanib1​, @art0saurus​, @shoutamajiki​, @yee-harr​, @animatedarchives​

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

Stalker X Stalker, Part 5

First

Previous

Next

Perma tag: @nathleigh

Stalker x Stalker taglist: @aespades @jayjayspixiepop @blueslushgueen @fan-written @seraphichana @nerd-nowandforever

Marinette listened in on Tim for three days.

Not actively, of course, she didn’t hang onto every word he said. She just let her consciousness drift in and out of the conversations he had while she worked on finishing up the outfit she had designed for Audrey...

And, yeah, she was getting to the point where she was willing to bet on him being an okay guy. Better than okay, even. He was just so… genuine?

The first two days he had come in sick. She knew the signs of working while sick by heart, the trudging around and the groaning and the constant banging your head on the desk when you pass out randomly, and damn she was pretty sure even she wasn’t as bad as him. He probably shouldn’t be working at all, to be honest, he was CEO and there was nothing stopping him from taking the day -- or even just a few hours -- off. But, no, from the sound of it he was drinking ungodly amounts of coffee and calling it okay.

And despite the fact that he seemed absolutely miserable, he hadn’t taken it out on anyone. She had yet to hear him be impolite to anyone, not even the people that worked under him. His secretary had made a scheduling mistake and he had not only assured her it was fine but didn’t even require her to fix it.

Even when he was talking to himself while working he never once said anything questionable. And he talked to himself a lot. It was like a podcast, honestly, just hearing him rattle off numbers and weird business terms she hadn’t learned because she was self-taught. He talked almost constantly and he should have slipped up by now, yet here she was three days later with nothing to show for it except for a whole lot of guilt.

Marinette hadn’t thought much about it on the first day, everyone had their good days from time to time. On the second day she said ‘oh, it’s a coincidence’, but on the third day she had to call it: her paranoia had been a little unfounded.

Literally the worst thing about him so far was that he didn’t seem to care much about his own health… and that wasn’t really a bad thing about him as much as it was a bad thing for him.

So, yeah, it looked like she had no real reason to listen in on him anymore.

… but…

Something about him was nagging at her. He was a nice guy and she’d like to be his friend… it was just that, sometimes, she could swear she recognized his voice.

And it wasn’t like there were a lot of people she knew in America, she knew who he probably was.

Her hand itched towards the tiny device hidden under her window seat. One click (and maybe a little researching) and she’d know for sure who the bats were. The only thing stopping her was the knowledge that, if she did know their real names, she’d accidentally call them by them once and immediately get thrown either into a cell or out of Gotham. She was a meta (kind of), she was already on thin ice. She didn’t need the paranoid idiots that were the bats being more wary of her than they already were.

So, she left it alone.

She kept the bug, though. Mostly just because she wanted to hear it directly from him rather than just guessing by his voice. After all, voices can be similar. If he were to directly talk about bat business while she was listening in, though… that would definitely be a point towards her theory, to say the least.

And, yeah, she knew it was kind of messed up. She could be listening in on some innocent guy for all she knew, but it was… morally kind of okay? The whole thing about stalking is that it makes your victim feel unsafe. If he was Red Robin then he had found the bug and hadn’t felt unsafe enough to remove it and if he was a civilian then he would never know about the bug and therefore couldn’t feel unsafe. Therefore, it wasn’t stalking, not really.

… yeah, that makes sense.

She glanced at her sketchbook and yawned. She really needed to get a new outfit idea soon. Good thing Tim said he was taking her out tomorrow --.

Shit, Tim was taking her out tomorrow.

She jumped up from her spot at the window and ran to her closet. What to wear, what to wear...

Frenchie: where are we going tomorrow

Spiderman: It’s a surprise.

Frenchie: fuck your surprises tim what do i need to wear

She heard his laugh crackle through her earpiece. Rude.

Spiderman: Casual clothes.

Frenchie: there are LEVELS of casual tim

Spiderman: Oh, so we’re breaking out the capital letters. This must be serious.

She scoffed. Of course it was serious.

Frenchie: just tell me what to wear

Spiderman: A t-shirt and jeans is fine.

Kwamis, send her strength. Like she was going to wear a t-shirt and jeans. Did he even know who he was talking to?

But at least she had a gauge on how casual she could go. She picked out a light pink button down and black shorts for herself and then, because she had a little bit of foresight, she added some black tights.

She smiled faintly and dropped back in her bed.

She couldn’t wait to see where he was going to take her.

She found out the next day. Because that’s how things work.

She raised her eyebrows. “There’s no way it’s actually called a ‘space museum’. You’ve gotta be lying.”

Tim shrugged, a grin poking at his lips. “Do you really think I’d make it up?”

“Well, considering your outfit, I’d say you aren’t the most creative of guys so maybe you did,” she teased.

Tim looked down at his outfit and pouted. He was wearing little more than a black turtleneck and pants under a white jacket. “Must you make fun of every outfit I wear?”

“Only the bad ones. Seriously, would it kill you to wear a little bit of color?”

He rolled his eyes. “At least I thought to bring a jacket. It’s thirty degrees!”

She had forgotten that Americans used Fahrenheit, sue her.

Of course, she was never going to admit to this. She stuck her tongue out at him. “Maybe I’m just not a wimp.”

He snickered. “Oh, so you’re not cold?”

“Not at all.”

“Then stop hugging that coffee cup.”

She looked down at the coffee cup that was her only source of warmth and happiness in this cruel world that had two different measuring systems (three if you counted Kelvin). She gripped it tighter. “... no.”

He rolled his eyes again and, after a beat of hesitation, shrugged his jacket off and offered it to her.

Marinette normally wouldn’t give in this easy… but she really was cold and his clothes were far thicker than hers were and she knew that her teeth would start chattering soon which would have been so embarrassing...

So she blushed faintly and slipped the jacket on. It smelled like ungodly expensive cologne. “Thanks.”

He grinned. “I’m taking your coffee as payment.”

“No --!”

~

After dropping by a cafe so Marinette didn’t kill him, Tim took her to the space museum (yes, that actually was what it was called).

He thought she would have missed the night sky. Gotham hardly ever had a clear night due to the thick smog that hung over the city like a curse. And they spent quite a lot of time outside at night, she must have been feeling a little homesick.

So, he rented out the museum for the day. Yes, the whole museum. He was rich and mildly famous and what was the point of that if he wasn’t going to use it to make the people he cared about happy? He doubted she would be able to enjoy the sights as much if people were constantly taking pictures of them and asking about their relationship.

She raised her eyebrows just slightly but otherwise didn’t acknowledge the lack of people.

They slipped through the rooms quietly in search of inspiration.

Many of the rooms were your typical museum things: exhibits showing off different space rocks and explaining stars and supernovas. They didn’t stop much here, obviously, there was little to be inspired by. The most that happened for a long while was Marinette stopping from time to time to take a picture of a nice color that she wanted to try and replicate later.

And then she had stopped to look at a spacesuit. She blinked a few times before breaking into a grin and flipping to a new page in her sketchbook. He could barely make out the name ‘Jagged’ from where he was fiddling with his camera a respectable distance away.

So, Marinette, at least, was having a productive time. Tim was… a little stressed, to be honest.

Tim was having a particularly hard time getting ‘inspired’.

It had been years since he had picked up his camera, which was certainly a problem but it wasn’t the problem.

The problem was that he had never been one to take pictures of locations or objects. Sure, there was the occasional picture of the Gotham skyline, but he had always had a tendency towards taking pictures of people. Batman and Robin working as a team to take out a bunch of thugs, Robin and Nightwing racing each other across the rooftops, Batman and Nightwing stopping for ice cream after a particularly long patrol… and now he wanted to take pictures of Marinette.

But that would be weird because a) the first day he had implied he took pictures of attractions in order to alleviate suspicion about why he just so happened to be on the same rooftop as her and b) she probably wouldn’t think they were close enough for him to take pictures of her.

He kind of wished he could just go back to the old days where his subjects didn’t know he was there and he wouldn’t have to worry about what they would think about him if he took a picture of them.

His fingers itched towards the camera hanging from his neck because she looked so cute with her tongue poking out of her mouth and her orange, yellow, and white colored pencils sticking out from between her fingers like little Wolverine claws and he loved the way his jacket looked on her and --.

“You can stop staring, I’ll be done as fast as I can.”

His brain shorted out and the only response he could come up with was a squeaky: “Sorry?”

She looked up from her work with an awkward smile. “I’m sorry it’s taking so long, I just… if I don’t do it now it’ll slip my mind. I’m working as fast as I can, though.”

He was rebooting. Give him a minute.

Ah, there it was.

Wait, she thought he was being impatient?

“Nononono take your time, it’s fine! I just...”

He trailed off before he could finish the thought because this was the second time they had hung out he couldn’t make things awkward between them already.

… but she was giving him a confused, vaguely concerned, look and he was pretty sure that if he didn’t come up with something soon it would be awkward anyways.

“IwasjustwonderingifIcouldtakeapictureofyou?” He blurted out before he could stop himself again.

She blinked once. Twice. And then a blush spread across her face.

“Oh. Uh… sure?”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said.

“It’s fine. A little sudden but… fine,” she said with a tiny smile.

Tim couldn’t keep the smile off of his face.

Not one to be blushy for long, apparently, Marinette flashed a wink. “Should I call up my friend Adrien for modeling tips or…?”

He rolled his eyes and schooled his face back into his usual grin. “It’s fine, just keep working. I’ll figure out angles and stuff.”

She tipped her head to the side confusedly. “Don’t you need me to be still?”

He didn’t look up from messing with the settings of his camera. “Not at all. You’re probably going to be one of my easier pictures.”

“... thanks…?”

“I do mostly nighttime photography. Capturing things in motion without it blurring requires a --.” He cringed. “Sorry, um… basically, when you want to take photos of things that are moving fast, you need a lot of natural light.”

“... you can talk about it more in depth, if you want.”

He shrugged. “I’d bore you.”

“I like your voice,” she said… then she seemed to realize the implications because she cleared her throat and did her best to backtrack: “In comparison to every other American I’ve heard so far, at least. Why do your accents… sound like that?”

“Ah, yes, because everyone knows that French people have the best accents.”

“Excuse you, I have been told by many people that my accent is actually very nice.”

He grinned. “By whom? Half-drunk men on the street?”

She gasped as if offended. “I get my information from much more reliable sources... like drunk women in bathrooms, thank you very much.”

“I see. My mistake. I apologize.”

“As you should.”

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Don’t you have a design to make?” She looked down at her sketchbook and a silence stretched between them as she squinted at her design.

“You forgot what you were doing, didn’t you?”

She groaned and rested her head in her hands.

He took a picture of her exasperated pout.

~

Marinette ended up with two outfits.

One was for Jagged, based off of the spacesuit she had seen. She had figured that, with all the songs he wrote about being free, there was bound to be one about how he ‘finally had his own space’. It was good to be prepared.

The other was for Cassandra Wayne. Marinette hadn’t thought much about it, to be honest. She just knew that Cassandra liked the color black with designs on top of it, and that the planetarium had a nice star pattern that would work for that. It would be super expensive, what with all the gems she would need, but it wasn’t like the Waynes couldn’t afford it.

… and then she looked up to see Tim pouting.

She giggled, resting her head on her hand. “What?”

“My sister is getting a dress and I’m not.”

Oh, so he was an actual fan. Interesting.

She brushed that conversation aside in favor of teasing him: “You want a dress?”

“Yes! No? Yes? I --.” He huffed and took a seat in the chair next to her. “I have faith anything you make will look nice.”

She felt a blush rise to her face and she rolled her eyes. “Hm. Telling the person in charge of your wardrobe ‘I have full faith in you’ is a terrible idea.”

“Oh? I don’t think you, in good conscience, can make and give me anything bad.”

She squinted at him for a minute before breaking into a grin. “Wanna bet?”

He leaned back in his chair, scrutinizing her for a few moments, before smirking. “Sure, how about we put five thousand on it?”

She choked. She’d forgotten he was rich rich.

She was quick to backtrack: “Nah. With all your fashion choices so far I can’t trust you not to wear it to some Gala or whatever it is you rich people do.”

“Damn, there goes that plan.”

She grinned and looked down at her sketchbook. After a few seconds she flipped to a new page. She squinted at his outfit for a few moments before starting to doodle something.

“What’re you making now?”

“I’m making you something with some color.”

He huffed. “Excuse you, I’m a goth in a family of goths. I can’t wear color.”

“Yeah, yeah. Trust me, I know. I’d say Richard is the black sheep of the family in that aspect but he’s the one wearing color.”

He laughed a little. “So Dick is the white sheep, then?”

“Yea --.” She stopped and then squinted over at him. “Dick?”

“It’s what he insists everyone calls him.”

She looked down at her sketchbook for a moment, processing, and then shook her head. “Your brother has a degradation kink.”

Tim brought his hand to his mouth in stunned silence before pulling his phone from his pocket and definitely not informing the family group chat of his discovery.

She snickered and went to work on the outfit again. It was a simple one, because she didn’t want to go too far out of his comfort zone, but there was no way she was going to be friends with a monochromatic idiot.

She leaned over until her head rested on his shoulder. He tensed up just a little before resting his head on top of hers.

~

When she had finished he took a picture of the planetarium to keep up pretenses and they had made their leave.

… but first, they stopped by the gift shop. Because why not?

Tim could have bought everything there for Marinette -- and probably would have, if asked -- but, considering she had freaked out about five thousand dollars earlier, he figured maybe he should keep that more or less quiet.

Instead, he followed her around while idly bouncing a Saturn shaped bouncy ball. It was a terrible shape for a bouncy ball and he kind of loved it, to be honest. Not to mention the little smile Marinette made behind her hand every time the ball would try another mad dash for freedom was pretty cute.

And then they hit the t-shirt section. And her lips twitched as she reached out and picked up a bright blue shirt that said ‘May the F=MA be with you’ in white text.

“It’s awful. It’s perfect.”

He grinned. “Wow, look at you. You know one of the simplest physics formulas by heart, aren’t you smart?” He joked.

She bowed. “I know, I know.”

He held out a hand for it and she stared at him for a few seconds in confusion.

“I’ll hold it until we get to the front desk.”

She squinted at him. “I’m paying for my own shirt.”

“I can afford it,” he said with a sigh.

“So can I.”

“Either you let me pay for it or I’ll keep track of everything you buy while with me and add it to your commissions.”

“... either you let me pay for it or I’ll never make an outfit for you ever again. I know your measurements and style, Timothy, you won’t be able to get past me.”

They narrowed their eyes at each other, daring each other to call their bluffs…

And then his shoulders sagged. “Fine.”

He’d just have to use his connections to lower prices on fabrics for her. Did he mention that he was rich and mildly famous? Yeah. It was pretty cool.

~

She smiled as she leaned against the doorframe to her apartment. “Thanks for taking me out. It was fun.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled back. She was determinedly ignoring the way his smile made little butterflies flutter in her stomach. She patently hated butterflies. They weren’t allowed.

“I had fun, too. Want to do it again, sometime?”

“... sure, I guess you passed my test.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Your test?”

“Oh, yeah.” She waved him off. “If you had made any creepy comments today I would have blocked you.”

He seemed a little relieved by this information, though she wasn’t quite sure why. “That’s a pretty good test to have in Gotham.”

“I know, I’m pretty smart,” she said jokingly.

He shrugged. “Yeah.”

Damn it, now she was blushing. Shit.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Do you flatter every girl you take to the space museum? Is this your strategy?”

He snickered. “Well, considering you’re the only girl I’ve taken, I’m going to have to say yes.”

She hummed. “I’m glad I’m so special to you, because that means you won’t drop me when I never give you this jacket back.”

He huffed. “You can’t just do that.”

“I can and will,” she teased. Then, because she wasn’t a completely cruel person, she reached up to her coatrack and pulled down a red scarf for him. “Here, take this so it’s more of a trade than stealing.”

“If I don’t?”

“Then you get to walk back to your house in the cold like that.”

He snorted. “What happened to not wanting to steal?”

“At least I offered!”

He rolled his eyes and leaned down so she could wrap the scarf around his neck.

She looked up at him, a blush spreading across her face, and then carefully draped it over his shoulders. “There. Now you have a splash of color.”

He smiled at her. “Ah, I see, this was all just a plot to get me to wear colors. It all makes sense now.”

“Of course.” She tugged him down more by the scarf to press a kiss to his nose. “You should wear red and black more often. They’re totally your colors.”

He smiled a little dopily. “You have no idea.”

She pushed his face away. “Weirdo. Go be cryptic somewhere else.”

“Fine, fine. See you in a few days.”

“See you then.”

~~~

Bonus Batfam group chat stuff

Timtamalam: What if Dick makes everyone call him that because he has a degradation kink?

LetMeLeaveTheChat: i fucking hate this family.

BloodSon: This is exactly the kind of lowbrow humor to be expected of you, Drake.

Timtamalam: I’m unappreciated in my time.

CAss: :0

Timtamalam: See, this is why Cass is the favorite.

YouDontSeeMe: DickJoke please respond

DickJoke: I raised each and every one of you and this is the thanks I get

LetMeLeaveTheChat: sucks to suck, dickwad.

DickJoke: That’s it when I get through all this dumb Heartless stuff I’m coming back to the manor and we’re all going to have family time

CAss: :(

ItsEggplantNotPurple: damn it

YouDontSeeMe: crap

LetMeLeaveTheChat: fuck. and an extra “fuck” on duke’s behalf.

BloodSon: Look at what you have done, Drake.

Timtamalam: Sorry guys.

[angelofthequeers]

Ladybug and Reine Nuit: chapter 24

Volpina I

Disclaimer: I don’t own ML.

So, um…I’m back? I had chapters up to 43 written but I was getting stuck even with my plan and felt like I was falling into the trap of just copying canon with a few changes, so I took a step back and worked on other fics. And it took all this time to figure out what I wanted to do with it.

Not sure yet whether I’ll turn this into a series of fics or just leave it complete at 44 chapters and see what I write for it next but either way, I realised that where I stopped writing was actually the perfect point to end a first part. So, that’s what’s happening, and I’ll see how I go from there :)

Chapter 23 | Chapter 25

“Of course you’re bothering me! I was right in the middle of something very important! What do you want?”

Adrien, who’s just come jogging down the staircase into the mansion lobby, pauses at the sound of ranting wafting out of his father’s atelier. Frowning, he tiptoes over to the door and peers inside. Gabriel is pacing in front of his desk in front of an open book, but Adrien can’t quite make out the details from here.

“What? Unacceptable! We sent you a file with all the measurements! You just had to follow my instructions! Imbecile!” Gabriel picks up the book and flips it shut with one hand, then crosses over to a small opening in the wall and deposits it inside before shutting the door…and then the massive golden portrait of Emilie Agreste. Wait. What? “What am I supposed to do now? The show is in three days! No, no, no, not him, he’s incompetent. Contact my assistant Nathalie. She’ll give you some other names.”

Adrien leaps away from the door as Gabriel approaches, ducking behind a nearby pillar just before his father leaves the room. Once Gabriel’s gone, Adrien slinks inside and over to the painting of Emilie to pull it open and reveal the door in the wall. Since when does Gabriel hide things behind it? He reaches out to the safe…but then withdraws his hand.

“I shouldn’t,” he says. “My father would be so angry if he knew. And I don’t even know the code. But…”

Common sense and respect battle curiosity. In the end, curiosity wins out; Adrien punches in his father’s birthday, but he’s denied access. He tries his birthday and even his mother’s, but they both fail too. What else could the code be?

“Mama, what was yours and Papa’s wedding like?” little Adrien says as Emilie pulls the covers over him. Emilie smiles and kisses his forehead.

“Well, it was a warm spring day – April twenty-sixth, to be precise…”

Holding his breath, Adrien types 2604. The breath escapes him in a punched gasp when the safe door clicks and swings open, and he tentatively pushes it open a fraction more to reveal the contents. There’s a photo of Emilie, a book on Tibet, an old flyer from a hotel, a blue-green peacock brooch…and the book that Gabriel had been reading.

“What is this?” he mutters, pulling the book out. In the process, he accidentally knocks the peacock brooch, but he doesn’t notice it tumble into his bag as he’s too focused on the page he’s turned to: a drawing of a woman in ancient Chinese ladybug-patterned clothing, with an enlarged picture of earrings next to her and writing in a language he’s never even heard of before. “Ladybug?”

On the next page is a picture of a man in black, cat-like clothing, next to a black ring with a green cat’s paw on it. Are these…the Miraculouses? But what’s his father doing with a book like this? Does Gabriel even know the significance of this book?

The picture of a man in a purple suit with a silvery butterfly mask on his head on the next page makes Adrien freeze. Hawkmoth? What is Hawkmoth doing in a book of superheroes? Maybe…the Butterfly Miraculous is just being misused, and this isn’t its true purpose? To be fair, Adrien could imagine how the Ladybug and Black Cat could be misused just as easily if he really tried.

Which again begs the question: why does Gabriel have this book, and does he understand the importance of it?

The sound of footsteps makes him jump out of his skin. He slams shut the safe and painting, shoves the book into his fencing bag, and dances halfway across the room just as Nathalie enters with his bodyguard.

“Adrien? You're going to be late,” Nathalie says. Adrien scratches the back of his head.

“I was…looking for my homework! I left it in here.” He chuckles nervously. But Nathalie doesn’t ask questions, so he counts his lie as successful.

.

After his fencing class, Adrien makes sure that everyone else has left the changing room before he decides to investigate the book. But when he fumbles around in his bag for it, his fingers meet cool metal, and then there’s an explosion of blue light inside his bag.

“What the –?” He yeets his bag across the room, accidentally hitting Kagami in the face when she opens the door at just the wrong moment.

“Why did you throw your bag at me?” she says, catching it before it can hit the floor.

“There’s something in there! Glowed blue! Gah!”

With a frown, Kagami brings Adrien’s bag back to him, and he reaches back inside with trembling fingers to locate the cool metal that seems to be the source of the blue light. He blinks when he pulls it out. The peacock brooch? But he hadn’t taken it out of the safe! Had he? Maybe it had fallen? He jerks and nearly drops the brooch when it once again glows with vivid blue light…and this time, a tiny creature that looks like a deep blue peacock with pink tail eye spots materialises in thin air with a yawn.

“What. The. Heck,” says a wide-eyed Kagami.

“Woohoo! Freedom at last!” the peacock creature trills and starts to zoom around the locker room.”

“What the –?” Adrien shoves Kagami behind him, ignoring her irritated look in response. “Who are you? What are you?”

“My name’s Duusu!” The peacock creature floats down to rest in Adrien’s palm, beaming. “I’m a kwami and that’s my Miraculous!”

“Miraculous?” Adrien hands the brooch to Kagami so that he can grab the book out of his bag and flip through the pages until he lands on a blue and green superhero. Sure enough, next to the Chinese woman is the very brooch that he’d just given Kagami. “This book was in my father’s safe, along with your brooch. Wait, so, like…you give powers like Ladybug’s earrings and Reine Nuit’s ring?”

“The Ladybug and Black Cat?” Duusu’s eyes – dark blue with deep pink irises – widen. “But they haven’t been active since the fall of the Guardians! I would have felt it!”

“Yeah,” Adrien says. “I think because of Hawkmoth. He’d have the Butterfly Miraculous, right? Akumatisation? That’s how he’s sending supervillains after Ladybug and Reine Nuit all the time.”

“Supervillains? Poor Nooroo.” Duusu sighs and snuggles into Adrien’s palm. “He’s the sweetest one of us, even though he’s the kwami of chaos. You know, butterfly effect! Wait, what year is it?”

“What year – wait, how long have you been, uh…asleep?”

Duusu shrugs. “Hard to say. I know I was in Tibet, and I vaguely remember some blonde woman using my Miraculous a few times, then, uh, nothing? I guess I got renounced!”

“As pleasant as this conversation is,” Kagami says, “what should we do with you, Duusu? You mentioned that there was a fall of Guardians? Does that mean that there’s someone who cares for the Miraculouses?”

“We?” Adrien says.

“Of course,” Kagami says. “You mentioned these were in your father’s safe. I highly doubt that you took them with his approval.” She smirks rather scarily and says, “If I’m going to have my typical teenage rebellion, I’d rather it be helping a little magic creature like this.”

“Yes, there’s a Guardian!” Duusu says after a moment of frowning. “I can sense him! Wang Fu, probably – I remember him when he was just a boy, yes! But I can’t tell where he is, no! Ladybug and Reine Nuit will know, though! If not them, their kwamis!”

“Aww,” Adrien says. “I was totally gonna keep you and help Ladybug and Reine Nuit fight akumas! Imagine! Me, a superhero!”

“Oh, no, no, you can’t do that!” Duusu cries before Adrien can slip too far into his fantasy. “There’s something wrong with my Miraculous! I can feel it, yes!”

“Wrong with your Miraculous?” Kagami leans in to examine the brooch with narrowed eyes. “How does that even happen? Is the damage magical?”

Duusu nods vigorously. “I don’t remember how, but yes! If you tried to use me to create a sentimonster, your body would start to break down with every use!”

“Sentimonster?” a bewildered Adrien says.

“I’m the kwami of emotion! I create sentimonsters based on someone’s emotions!” Duusu says, her tail feathers fluttering. “My holder has to imbue a feather with energy and turn it into an amok! Very similar to Nooroo’s akumas, yes!”

“Well, we’ll get you to Ladybug and Reine Nuit as soon as we can,” Adrien says, stroking Duusu’s little feathery head. “Then the Guardian can help you.”

“Won’t your father notice Duusu’s absence?” Kagami says. “If I had a Miraculous that was activated upon touch, I wouldn’t be inclined to just forget about it.”

“Yeah, but…what was he even doing with Duusu in the first place?” Adrien says. “Duusu, you said a woman found you in Tibet and used you, right? Mother and Father did go on loads of trips there…” Adrien’s eyes widen. “Do you think – was Mother in on it too? Was she the woman who used the Peacock and is that why she’s missing? I’ve thought she was dead, but what if she’s not?”

“You can’t exactly ask her,” says Kagami, blunt as always, popping the balloon starting to inflate Adrien’s insides. “And you can’t really ask your father either. I mean, if this book exists then it was written by someone, which means that others know of the Miraculouses. It could have just been an eccentric hobby of his, except that these magic artefacts actually exist.”

“Maybe…” Adrien says.

“We can talk about this later, okay? Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.” Kagami hands Adrien back the brooch for him to stash in his bag with the book. After a moment of thought, he opens his shirt to hide Duusu inside a pocket.

“You’re the best, Kagami,” he says.

“I know,” Kagami says. “Maybe that will teach you to make sure you’re completely alone before you pull out magical jewellery.”

The minute Adrien leaves the changing rooms, he runs into an unfamiliar girl with long brown hair, tan skin, a black romper, black tights, and a red jacket. When she gasps and looks up at him, her olive-green eyes widen.

“Adrien Agreste! Oh, I am so sorry!” she babbles.

“Oh…it was nothing,” Adrien says. “I’m sorry, I should’ve been looking where I was going. You’re new, aren’t you?”

The girl smiles and runs a hand down his arm. Oh, great. She’d better not be one of those fans. “Lila Rossi. I just got here today. My mamma is a diplomat from Italy.”

“That’s cool…” Adrien steps away, but Lila just shuffles closer.

“And my name is Kagami Tsurugi.” Kagami holds out a hand, effectively forming a barrier between Adrien and Lila. For a split second, Lila seems to glare at it, but then she’s smiling sweetly and shaking it. Adrien blinks and wonders if he’s imagining things. After discovering Duusu, he’s not all that sure what’s real anymore.

“Pleasure to meet you!” Lila says. “Are you Adrien’s best friend?”

“One of them.” Kagami looks down at the courtyard, where Marinette, Alya, and Nino are watching with narrowed eyes. Lila follows her gaze.

“I can’t wait to meet your other friends, Adrien,” Lila says. “Or should I say, Ladybugreste?”

“You follow the Ladyblog?” Huh, maybe he’s just been reading Lila wrong the whole time.

“Of course! Ladybug and I are like this.” Lila crosses her fingers. “She totally saved my life once and now we’re besties!”

“Didn’t you say that you just got here today?” Kagami says.

“The akuma attack last week, silly!” Lila says. “We’ve been settling in before I started school, obviously.” She smiles at Adrien and says, “We’ve both been saved by Ladybug, right? We’re more alike than I thought!”

���I was saved by Ladybug too, but you don’t see me advertising that fact,” Kagami says. Lila just smiles at her but says nothing.

“We should get going,” Adrien says. “Class is going to start soon, and I still have to put my fencing gear away –”

“You fence?” Lila attaches herself to his arm again. Adrien shoots a pleading glance down at Marinette and Alya, since Kagami’s in an unusually foul mood right now and he doesn’t want Lila to get ripped to shreds. “Oh my gosh! What a coincidence! I’m descended from the legendary Italian fencer Salvator Fabris!”

“Wait, really?” Kagami gasps and covers her mouth with her hands. Lila beams and nods.

“Yes! Of course, I don’t like to brag about it…”

“Which of his children are you descended from?”

“Oh, it would’ve been…Amedeo Fabris, I believe.”

“Hmm.” Kagami tilts her head. “To the best of my knowledge, Salvator Fabris was unmarried and childless. You must be a miracle of conception.”

Lila pales. “I – well, no one knows about Amedeo! He was an illegitimate child, but his history was passed down through my family.” She smiles at Adrien, having miraculously recovered from being called out. “I know I only just met you, but I feel like I can trust you to keep that a secret.”

Why is Lila lying to him? To try and gain favour with a celebrity? Doesn’t she realise that he’s pretty friendly with his classmates – perfectly ordinary people – and she doesn’t need to lie to be his friend? “I’ll have to ask Kagami’s mother for a second opinion,” Adrien says. “The Tsurugi family are master fencers, did you know?”

Lila pales once again, while Kagami gives her a rather shark-like smile.

“Adrien!” Marinette – sweet, blessed, angelic Marinette – arrives with Alya and Nino at that moment and hugs him, then waves at her nose exaggeratedly. “Phew! Smells like you had a good fencing class.”

“Excuse me but I showered!” Adrien huffs. Marinette giggles, and the sound is like a choir of angels to his ears. He waves at Lila and says, “I hope I can get to really know you, Lila!” before walking off with his friends.

.

Chloé’s totally not a dumb blonde. Sure, she’s loud and stubborn and proud, but she’s got a sharp brain when she actually puts it to use and proves the people who underestimate her wrong.

That’s why, when she spots Adrien and his…ugh, “friends” …walking away from the new girl, whose fists are clenched, she seizes the opportunity that’s practically been gift-wrapped for her.

“That Marinette girl sucks, doesn’t she?” Chloé drawls, drawing level with the new girl. The new girl squints at her suspiciously.

“I’m much less a fan of Kagami Tsurugi,” the new girl says.

“Pfft, her. Thinking she can waltz in and steal my best friend Adrikins from me just because she fences.”

“Adrien’s your best friend?” The new girl’s eyes narrow even further.

“Was. Ever since Dupain-bloody-Cheng got her claws into him, he hasn’t wanted a bar of me. All because I show people their place and I’m not afraid to speak my mind. He never had a problem with it before.”

“So, Marinette would be the bigger threat here?” the new girl says.

“Yeah,” Chloé says. “Tsurugi’s close and all, but she’s the ice queen. Dupain-Cheng is the sickeningly sweet Disney Princess that everyone loves.” She holds her hand out to the new girl. “I’m Chloé Bourgeois, not that you wouldn’t know that – actually, you might not if you’re new and all. My daddy’s the mayor of Paris.”

“Hmm. Pleasure. I’m Lila Rossi.” Lila shakes Chloé’s hand.

“How about I cut you a deal, new girl?” Chloé says. “I want my best friend back. You want his “friends” out of the way. I want that baker’s girl away from my Adrikins. I think we could come to an agreement.”

The brunette smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Chloé just knows that Lila’s going to backstab her at the first available opportunity; but that’s okay, because Chloé’s planning on getting in first.

“I think I’d like that, Chloé Bourgeois,” says Lila Rossi.