#i have such villainous desires and i will be indulging in all of them tonight | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

yoongsisbae · 4 years ago

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Caught! House of Cards - Chapter 3

You joined a website to make some quick and easy cash. Men paying to look at you, harmless fun, right? Little did you know how dangerous the members of House of Cards were. Watch out! Houses built with cards come tumbling down…

OT7 yandere!BTS x reader / Namjoon x Taehyung x reader this chapter

Oh, I was dying writing this chapter so I think I wrote it well? Heh there’s a lot going on, so you have been warned lol. Also hope to post HOAL soon, that is if BTS would stop attacking me with all these sexy bad boy photoshoots that scream C!HOC mens. Sorry, but can you really blame me? :(

Warnings: 18+ dark themes, reader manipulation, scary yandere behavior, voyeur, masturbation, lots of drinking and drunkenness, dubcon, dry humping on the dance floor lol, this is pretty filthy, all of them are horny, dom!Namjoon, dom!Taehyung, Tae’s a lot, shibari, bondage, blindfold, rough sex, edging, multiple orgasms, threesome, degradation, Yoongi continues to be a meanie, slut shaming, extreme regret for reader that could be triggering I think, tell me if I need to tag anything else

PSA: to reiterate, this is a yandere fic, this is all fantasy, this is scary, no one actually wants this to happen to them irl. But I’m also here for you if you wanna enjoy some hot fictional villains, alright? I got u boo.

Word Count: 8.7k

Playlist: Rotimi - Push Button Start // Shenseea - Blessed (with Tyga) // ROSALIA - Con Altura // Sean Paul - Go Down Deh // Afro B - Drogba // Aya Nakamura - Pookie // DJ Nelson - PAPI //J Balvin - Amarillo // SUPA NYTRO - Tik Pon Cock // Paris Lain - Way (links here)

---

“P-please...”

“Please what?”

“Please let me cum, Daddy.”

He groans in your ear. “Hmm no.” He pulls his fingers out of you, you hold onto the banister as your orgasm escapes you. Your body shakes with need.

“You’ll come find me later tonight, won’t you, baby girl?” His warmth leaves your body, when you turn around no one is there.

---

Your legs are still shaking as you make your way downstairs. You tried not to think about the slick between your thighs as you descended each step, or think about RM’s warm breath against your ear. No, you won’t think about his deep voice that makes you shiver still, or the way he massaged your neck like he had done it a hundred times before...out of all the weird fucked up things you thought could happen tonight, never ever did you expect to meet RM again.

He reminded you of all the reasons why you allowed yourself to fall deeper into that kind of exhibitionistic lifestyle as a carded member. The money was good, but the sweetest rewards were corporal. The saccharine praise your admirers would give you became addicting. You even became close to some of them, for an extra fee.

What was it your old school counselor would say? It wasn’t about the destination, the real reward was the friends you made along the way. Except your new friends told you all their dirty filthy desires and watched as you would get off for them. You learned quickly your sexual appetite was ravenous, the more you indulged the worse it got. You had been starved for attention for so long, quarantine only amplifying your loneliness, and the dark site fed you well.

RM also reminded you of all the reasons why you left. You still don’t understand how you fell so deep so fast, let digital become physical when you promised yourself you wouldn’t. The House Rules made the descent into filth almost inevitable. During your only experience inside The House, you had been shown truths you didn’t want to face, depravities you enjoyed. After that night you went home, showered away your sins until your skin burned, logged out and never logged back in. It was the best way to end your addiction to House of Cards, end it cold turkey.

You were not prepared for this again. You were not prepared for how much you craved it.

---

The party became wild. Your body now hyper aware of everything after RM worked you up so skillfully and denied you any release. The music reverberates throughout the halls, the beats of the bass clashes with the pounding in your head. The smell of drugs and sex assaults your nostrils, and every time a dancer bumps into you, your body remembers RM’s touch.

So many bodies around you and you feel all alone like an outcast. Where’s Yoongi? You're beginning to miss that annoying smirk and the overconfident man attached to it, you could use some of that confidence right now.

As the room spins around you, your eyes find the place where you had been standing. You’re disappointed it’s empty. Not that you knew what RM looked like, but you feel like you’d recognize him as soon as you saw him, a man like that would look like walking sin.

You shift your upward gaze to the gold ropes hanging from the ceiling, eyes traveling down until you meet the glistening body of a woman. She’s so beautiful it makes you ache, arms secured behind her back, her leg extended and tied high, her other leg bent and pressed to her side and her spread open for everyone to see.

You play with the pendant around your neck, and you can’t help but imagine yourself in her position, tied up for everyone to see, for Yoongi to watch. You’re soaking. You need a drink.

---

“Hey,” you bump into Yoongi’s side as you sit down, grabbing his whisky glass and downing what’s left. The burning liquid makes you grimace, face scrunching up in distaste.

He pulls the glass from your grip, looking you up and down, sharp eyes narrowing, “Where have you been?”

“I got lost.” His arm snakes around your waist. His touch feels good, you don’t want to admit how much your body yearns for more, wants to be wanted. “Where are Jimin and Hobi?”

“Dancing,” Taehyung interjects as he gets closer to you, offering you another glass of champagne. You take it gratefully, sipping on the sweet liquid, anything to numb the ache you feel inside.

His eyes sparkle as he scrutinizes you up close, examining your dark makeup and tight dress. He wants to smear the red lipstick on your lips with his fingers, and his mouth, and his cock. He wants to stain your pretty black dress with his cum, let the milky white fluid drip all over the black silky fabric, between your breasts-

“I’m sorry, what is your name again?”

You ask him so innocently, Taehyung can forgive you for forgetting. Jungkook on the other hand, silently simmers with rage, especially when Yoongi smirks at him, sitting pressed to your side like a lover would.

“Taehyung,” The man gives you a big wide smile, “that's Seokjin,” he points to the tall man who keeps his distance, “and this,” he hits Jungkook’s chest and pulls him into a headlock, “is Jungkook!” Taehyung leans in to whisper in your ear, “a big fan.”

Your eyes go wide, did you hear him correctly? You watch the two play fight. Jungkook punches his older friend in the side a bit harder than he was expecting, earning a yell from Taehyung. They act cute, you think, Jungkook looks too innocent, you can’t believe he had watched you in his free time.

Hoseok and Jimin find their way back into the group. “Y/n, you’re back! Yoongi was about to send out a search party for you.” Yoongi rolls his eyes, and you lean your chin onto your palm, raising your eyebrows at him, trying to hide your smile at the way they tease him.

“Is that so?” His fingers pinch the flesh of your back at your retort, making you squirm at the ticklish sensation. When you try to pull his hand away, he takes the opportunity to intertwine your fingers together, pulling you firmly to his side.

You look down at Yoongi’s hand in yours, resting on your hip. Without the alcohol cursing through your veins you might have pushed him off you, but instead you sit buzzed and docile. He acts so possessive of you in front of the others, it makes your heart race. “Well I’m here now.”

“I’ll cheers to that!” Jimin fills everyone’s drinks. 7 glasses clang together and they cheer, making you giggle as you down the glass. One cheers becomes two, and then another bottle comes, until you're welcoming back that hazed state of mind that feels so freeing. The background fades away and the booming music around you becomes muffled as you try your best to focus on the conversation, until you realize you’re in Yoongi’s lap, his veiny hands dancing around your exposed thigh. He says something you can’t hear, so you tilt your head back, resting on his shoulder, whining out a slurred, “what!”

“You’re having too much fun.” He suppresses the urge to move his fingers higher, instead tracing lazy circles into your leg, making you twist in his lap, lips parting as you enjoy the sensation. Your body feels heavy from inebriation, so you lean your weight onto him more, focused on his cold rings against your warm skin.

You move your head closer to his. “You wanted to bring me here, right?” you laugh, and you swivel your body against him, grinding into his lap to the tempo of the music. Yoongi notices the others' heated stares, so he shifts his leg, pressing his hands into your thighs, opening your legs wider, and you’re too drunk to notice or care.

Yoongi tries to hold onto his thinning composure, how many times had he thought of you like this? So receptive and needy in his arms. He enjoys your torturous hip rolls, reveling in the fact that the sight tortures his audience even more. But you’re not really paying attention to that, your body only responding to how the music beat hits so well, his growing erection encouraging you to keep rubbing up against him like a cat in heat.

“Y/n, let's go dance!” Hoseok calls out to you over the music. His request pulls you from your trance. You sit up, shaking the clouded haze from your mind.

“Dance? Okay!” You let Hoseok pull you to your feet, stumbling slightly into him.

You turn to Yoongi, “You don’t mind, do you?” you ask, ready to start a fight. He glares at you. You sway on your feet and glare back. Such a brat, he thinks, you’ll just have to be taught a lesson later. Yoongi picks up his whisky and waves you off.

---

The dance floor is hot and alive with writhing bodies. You let Hoseok roll his hips into you from behind, your own hips following his movements. His toned arms lock around you, holding you, as he pulls your body lower and lower, until you’re crouched to the floor, your bodies connecting again and again as he rubs his hardening bulge into your ass to the beat.

It feels so so good, his warm body on you, seeking pleasure from one another. Every roll and buck helps to release the frustration RM did to you.

Hoseok’s hands pull your dress higher so you can spread your knees wider. He holds the bunched up fabric to your core to keep what’s left of your modesty, and your arms reach behind you to hook around his neck to keep yourself steady.

Hoseok is such a good dancer, masterfully guiding your loose body. You pull and push each other along to the sensual music, shifting your weight against your combined center of gravity as your bodies heat up in each other’s embrace.

Hoseok moves the hair from your neck away, blowing air on the back of your neck. His hand cups your breast, fondling you out in the open, “You like when I do this to you, don’t you Dahlia?” You’re too drunk to catch the pseudonym he uses.

You close your eyes focusing on his hands groping your body, your fingers fisting into his hair, pulling him closer, and his tongue licks off the sweat on your neck. Hoseok knows all the ways to leave you delirious with lust, hands running up and down your body, massaging your curves and leading your hips to meet his. If he’s making you feel this good with your clothes on, you can only imagine how amazing he’d be in bed, hips rolling against you as he fills you up with his stiff cock...

You’re so focused on Hoseok you don’t realize another body moving closer to you, another pair of hands on you, until Taehyung presses himself into your front.

The music fills your head, the dirty words being sung encouraging you to release all your inhibitions. Your arms reach out to run up Taehyung’s abdomen, up and up his chest, loving the feel of his muscles under your fingers.

He places your arms around his neck as he moves forward, his leg slotting between yours. With Hoseok grinding against your back and Taehyung rubbing against your front, you feel like you’re going to combust. The crowd around you is a blur, but everything about them feels so solid, so hard against you. Caged between them, you submit to every caress, every touch from both men.

Taehyung holds the back of your head to keep your eyes on him as Hoseok leaves open mouth kisses on your shoulder. Taehyung’s thumb caresses your cheek, “You’re so beautiful.” his mouth slides across your jaw, under your ear, licking and nibbling at your lobe, giving you goosebumps, “You’re the most beautiful woman here.”

You place your finger over his mouth pushing him away, too embarrassed to hear more, but your hips can’t help but push into him at the praise.

“Come with me,” he pulls you away from Hoseok, his friend winking at him behind your back, and you foolishly follow him through the sea of dancing bodies.

---

Pulling you into a dark corner, he cages you in before you can protest. Lips finding your neck, hooking a finger under your choker, pulling up, forcing your neck to tilt so he can reach more skin. Even if you want more, you still have some sense left in you to know letting Yoongi’s friend do this to you in front of everyone is a bad idea. “W-wait. Yoongi will-”

Taehyung’s arm slams into the wall. The noise startles you into silence. It’s Yoongi, always Yoongi. What about him? He steadies his breathing after noticing your wide eyes.

“Y/n, do you know who I am?” He leans onto the wall hovering over you, dark eyes peering down at you as he waits for your answer.

You feel your stomach drop under his intimidating gaze. “Should I know who you are?”

He answers your question with another question, “Do you know who Yoongi is? Do you really have no idea?” His interrogation takes you aback.

“He’s one of my...v-viewers...”

“Yes, who? You never thought to ask, baby?” Taehyung looks at you so accusingly, you feel ashamed that you can’t answer him.

“Who is he?” You ask.

He smiles, a twisted grin that makes you feel uneasy. Eyes lighting up darkly once his suspicions were proved right.

“How about this, since we both have so many unanswered questions, why don’t we play a game? I’ll answer one of your questions and then you answer one of mine. I’ll even let you go first.” His playful demeanor is back, fingers playing with the ends of your hair.

“Who are you?”

Taehyung smiles wide. You asked the right question. “I go by V.”

What? “You’re V?”

---

You log into the House of Cards website, open your account to a litany of unread messages. Your eyes skim through them, and one catches your eye. It’s V, the second highest donator from the other night’s stream.

V: you looked so beautiful the other night. I hope to see another broadcast soon...for next time?

V sent you an eighty dollar donation and a link to a lingerie set: pink lace, a sheer see-through pattern on the cups with a matching lace thong and garter belt.

You’ve bought lingerie for men before, for then boyfriends on your anniversaries or Valentine’s day dates, but you’ve never had a man buy you lingerie before. With shipping you’ll still have money left over, so you decide to add some more things in your basket to surprise him for being such a generous donor. It’s not because you had enjoyed his compliments the most during your stream, no. You found a cute pair of thigh high socks and some stick on rhinestones, coming up with a plan to get V’s attention. You squeal once the order goes through, ‘time to arts and craft in this bitch.’

You open his message again, fingers hovering over the keyboard, what should you say? Should you make it sound sexy or cute? ‘C’mon y/n, just flirt.’

Dahlia: Thank you, V. I will wear it for my next broadcast. Just for you sexy <3

Ew ew. No. Before pressing enter you delete the last sentence.

Dahlia: Thank you, V. I will wear it for my next broadcast. See you soon ;)

You go through all your messages, in a much better mood than you’ve been in a long time. You bop your head to the music that flows through your speakers in your living room while coming up with different replies to each new viewer.

It feels good to be stress free, you think, while sipping on cup ramen because you’re still waiting until your earnings clear your account to buy groceries. You’ve managed to answer every message when a new notification dings. V attached a picture.

V: I can’t wait.

Holy... A picture of a shirtless man from the neck down pops up. He’s not overly muscular, but he’s lean and toned, with defined pecs and v-line. Mmm. ‘V’ indeed. His jeans are unbuttoned. His legs spread wide, as if he were inviting you to sit on his lap.

You’re being catfished, you surmise. This man has to be using someone else’s pictures. Or he has a face only a mother could love. Either way, you’ll play with this fantasy. it’s not like you’ll actually ever meet in real life.

So you decide to play along, it’s not like you had work to go to, or anything to do really. Locked up in your tiny home alone and slowly going stir crazy would lead to some unfortunate decisions for you. One of the worst, allowing V to get so close to you.

Abandoning your snacks, you grab your laptop and run to the bedroom, jumping on your bed. Your laptop opens to another risque photo, his jeans zipped even lower. Hand grabbing a very defined bulge resting inside his pants leg. Well fuck.

Dahlia: is that really you?

V: yes baby

V: I wish you were here with me right now. I would make you feel so good, just like you deserve.

V: How about you, am I turning you on?

You clench your legs together instinctively.

Dahlia: you are.

V: are you touching yourself?

Should you lie? You could. But the pictures and his words are doing something to you, you feel jitters and a quick pace and a throbbing core. Suddenly you have an idea.

Dahlia: why don’t you see for yourself?

You create a private room, aim your camera down, mirroring the same angle in V’s picture and send the link to him. You pull the front of your sundress down to show more cleavage and the hem up to show more leg, and you wait.

There’s a notification: ‘1 new viewer.’

V: you look so pretty, you look like a doll

V: I wish I was there.

“Yeah? What would you do to me?”

V: I would spread your legs

You spread your legs at his words. Your stream plays in Taehyung's bedroom, he watches intently, and when your panties come into view he pulls his jeans down to his thighs freeing his hard erection, slowly stroking himself to the sight of your body.

V: fuck, so good baby. being so good for me.

V: I would take off your panties. slowly

You follow his commands and slowly remove your underwear. You like being told what to do, you imagine he’s on the bed with you, telling you everything, guiding your pleasure.

V: touch yourself for me

V: you’re wet already? how cute

V: that’s a good girl, just like that

V: imagine it’s me. my fingers stuffed inside of you, giving you everything you want

V: you’re mine and mine only

V: you’re going to be mine to kiss and fuck. I’ll take care of you baby doll, make you cum all over my fingers. You want that too?

V: you're so pretty baby, you like putting on a filthy show for me? desperate little girl

V: open your legs wider

V: doing so well for me, stay just like that. you’re driving me crazy

V: cum for me

You pulse, moaning out loud, reaching your high. When your lust filled haze clears you don’t feel dirty like before, you feel good. Even better when V sends you another eighty dollar donation.

Taehyung played sweet and affectionate very well. When talking to other House members you’d try your best to keep things as vague as possible, but sometimes you’d let certain things slip with V, and he always listened so well. Shit, he treated you better than your ex. He’d send you sweet messages, gifts, and the hottest body shots. He would do that often, it made you needy for more affection. He was a part of a small group of viewers that you’d offer special private streams to. Little did you know your carefree playdates were Taehyung’s obsessions.

---

Taehyung feels a special kind of gratification at the way you gawk at him, stunned into silence. “Now my turn,” Taehyung’s expression goes from playful to serious in an instant, “Why are you here with Yoongi?”

You swallow, this was V all along. You teetered between happiness and unease, you remembered all the sweet memories you had with him, but this man was still a stranger to you. He keeps staring at you, is this how he looked watching you through the computer screen? Fuck, your imagination could not have dreamed up a sexier man. Oh right, he is waiting for your answer.

You explain to him what happened, Yoongi recognizing you at your job, the agreement you made with him afterwards. Taehyung moves from hovering over you to standing by your side. He listens intently as his eyes scan the crowd. You watch the dancers as you sober up, observing the debauchery you had just been a part of. Taehyung hums as you finish your story.

“Who is-” Taehyung doesn’t let you finish, his eyes staring at the second floor’s balcony. “You looked like you enjoyed yourself. You looked so pretty up there, with my friend’s fingers inside you. You were being such a cute little slut.” His eyes roll back inside his head and he opens his mouth sighing.

He saw you. Did the others- “Did Yoongi see?!” you pull on his arm to get him to focus on you.

“No, he didn’t, just me. My turn!”

You felt tricked, using your question up already.

He turns to face you, leaning his side against the wall. You can't help but notice how he stares at you like he’s undressing you with his eyes, gaze traveling down your body and pausing at every place your skin shows, your cleavage and your thighs. “He really worked you up, you looked so guilty when you came back,” Taehyung’s teasing tone back again, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Yoongi suspected something.”

Your eyes go wide with worry. “I’m willing to keep that secret for you if...” he bites his lip and leans in whispering, “I bet you’re still wet too. Can I have a taste?”

“R-right now?”

“Yes. That’s my turn again! And I’m waiting for my answer.” He gets closer to you, pressing up against you again, his hands brushing against your thigh. You look around, how far away are you from the crowd? How far away are you from Yoongi?

His lips brush against your temple as he leans his jaw against your forehead. “No one will see. Put your hands back on my shoulder, c’mon baby, be good for me.” His body blocks you from everyone’s view.

His head in your hair, taking a long inhale, breathing in your scent, Taehyung can’t get enough of you. Your shaky arms obey him, laying loosely on top of his broad shoulders. You lay your head on his chest, even if his words come out smooth, his heart is racing as he moves quickly between your bodies, dipping his long fingers inside you. You try to bite back a moan, but it feels too good.

Taehyung feels like he’s going to burst. You’re so wet, dripping all over his hand. He tries to fight his urges, there’s so many things he wants to do to you. Your soft whimpers sound so beautiful, so much better in person. You’re his to play with, all his.

He groans, pushing you hard against the wall. He looks like he’s going to devour you, your body tenses and you clench around his fingers. It only encourages him on. You grip his shoulders as he drives his hand upward, fingers pushing into you deeply as you fight against gravity, forced to stand on your tiptoes, struggling against him as his mouth attacks your neck, biting down hard. It’s too rough, too fast. “Tae-V-stop!”

His entire body stills against you, except for his fingers, teasing you still as they steadily press around inside your walls. You try to come to your senses, but everything about him unravels you.

He whispers against your forehead. “Last round, baby doll.” His voice raspy and breathing heavy as he holds himself back from tearing the clothes off your body. “One more question for each of us. I know where RM is, do you want to know?”

'RM,' who told you to find him, and V, who knows where. You gasp and nod your head, waiting but Taehyung smiles down at you in silence, fingers sliding out of you, making you whimper and grip the wall for support when he finally gives you space. He stays quiet as he brings his fingers to his mouth, licking the wetness off his palm.

Your legs feel like jello, your body buzzes with each shameless lick as you watch him. You swallow the saliva accumulating in your mouth, pushing the lump in your throat down. You know what he wants. You played right into his trap, and the worst part is you want it too.

“Where is he?”

---

“If you think you’re going to keep her all to yourself you’re in for a rude awakening!” Jungkook grits out.

Yoongi sits quietly with his arms folded as Jungkook starts hurling accusations at him. Jin and Hoseok try to calm the youngest down, but it’s no use.

He grabs Yoongi’s collar, the action making Yoongi finally snap, and without warning Yoongi punches him squarely in the face. Yoongi had taken advantage of his friends holding Jungkook back and distracting him, satisfied when the young man recoils, stumbling back.

Before he can really lose it, Hoseok and Jimin drag Jungkook away, as the youngest screams all the ways he’s going to make Yoongi pay, not even aware of the blood leaking from his nose. Jin pulls Yoongi away in the opposite direction, “We need to talk.”

Jin walks Yoongi outside so they can both get some fresh air and clear their heads.

“He needs to learn not to disrespect his elders,” Yoongi mutters, wiping the blood off his knuckles.

“You know how he gets,” Jin counters, “Don’t act like you didn’t want that exact reaction from him. You were egging him on all night with y/n.”

Yoongi scoffs. He can’t stand how Jungkook acts like you belong with him. Jungkook is crazy. He’s too hot-headed and oversensitive, the complete opposite of Yoongi. The youngest suffers from inexperience and naivety. All that bark, and he couldn’t even bring himself to talk to you. No, Jungkook doesn’t deserve you, Yoongi thinks, he could never take care of you like Yoongi could.

“What exactly are you trying to accomplish? You brought y/n back and we’re all happy for that, but if Jungkook is right, then I’m going to have to agree with him, brother.” Jin squeezes his friend’s shoulder and Yoongi shakes him off.

“I wasn’t going to keep her locked away.” Yoongi says dismissively. Not that he didn't think once or twice about it.

“How gracious of you.”

“Listen, I found her. She chose me before and she’ll choose me again. The last time you were with her, what happened, Brother? Hobi and Jimin, Jungkook and even you can fight over her all you want. In the end, she will come back to me.”

Jin smiles, he will let Yoongi think that. “And where is your y/n now?”

“I’ll go find her,” Yoongi goes to leave, itching to get you by his side again.

Jin’s hand on his chest stops him. Jin can’t help but smile at his poor friend’s situation, he had been tricked by the two youngest, a plan they orchestrated themselves and everyone else went along with. But Jin couldn’t keep his friend in the dark any longer, especially when revealing the truth would make the aftermath that much more entertaining for Jin.

“I have to tell you something.”

---

You stand in front of the door Taehyung had led you to, your nerves on high alert. Taehyung stands behind you, humming to himself. His arm reaches over your shoulder to rapt three knocks on the door.

As the door knob turns, Taehyung exclaims behind you, “Oh! I forgot.” His long fingers cover your eyes, as he pulls your head back, your body stumbling and crashing against him.

“Taehyung!”

“Shh. Calm down, it’s more fun this way,” he whispers in your ear as you hear the door creak open.

“What do we have here?”

“I brought her for you,” Taehyung purrs. You can feel his chest puff up behind you, he’s ecstatic, you played his game so perfectly, he was so proud of you.

“Good boy.”

You feel fingers wrap around yours as Namjoon brings your hands to his lips, caressing your knuckles. “And what about you? Are you going to be a good girl for me?”

---

Jimin tends to Jungkook’s bleeding nose as Hoseok pours himself a drink. “Thanks for taking one for the team, Kookie.”

Jungkook keeps his head tilted back to stop the blood, glancing over to Hoseok, lips curving in a smile, he’s happy that he accomplished his part of the plan successfully, “I’m going to kill that bastard.”

Jimin flicks him in the forehead. “No you’re not, unless you want y/n to never forgive you.”

“She won’t,” he pouts, “she acts like she hates him. I’ll be doing her a favor.” Jimin rolls his eyes.

---

The room is quiet, too quiet compared to the raucous party outside. So when Taehyung drags a chair from the corner of the room, the wood scraping against the floor sounds all the more foreboding. Goosebumps bloom on your body as if Taehyung dragged his fingernails along your skin instead.

You sit kneeling on the floor waiting, knees tucked underneath you. RM sits on the bed behind you, legs outstretched and you between them. You stare down at his shoes, shiny black loafers, and glance at his pants legs on either side of you. It's the first time you’ve ever seen a part of him. You want to look up so badly, the idea sits heavy on you, tensing every muscle in your body as you fight your curiosity. The only thing you want more is to find out what will happen if you obey them.

Taehyung pulls the chair right in front of you, facing the bed, you and RM. Another pair of shoes brush against your knees as Taehyung takes a seat.

RM’s fingers rest atop your head and keep your head tilted down while he waits for his friend to situate himself. Until eventually RM moves behind you, fingers fisting your hair and pulling you to your feet. “Go sit on his lap.”

Taehyung sits looking at you like he's just been given first place prize, smirking pridefully as you walk towards him on shaky legs. His shirt is already unbuttoned, tan skin and taunt muscles in full view. That's V, all right. Your insides ache for him, his seduction luring you in like a firefly to light.

Your dress stretches around your thighs as you straddle him, his hands grabbing at your ass and pulling your body into his.

You hear RM’s low voice growl behind you, “Kiss him.”

For a moment you think about the intense quiet man who brought you to this island, his piercing eyes flashing through your mind until Taehyung’s lips crash into yours and you can only think about how sweet the man devouring you tastes, and you kiss him back, exploring his mouth with your tongue.

His hands grope your body, pull your face closer, force away the fabric of your clothes. His touch is everywhere, keeping you distracted only on him as RM sets things up behind you.

RM pulls off his tie as Taehyung’s hands move to either side of your face, and he pulls you away from him, leaving one last peck on your lips, “You’re doing so well, baby doll. You don’t know how long I’ve wanted this.”

“V...Taehyung, I-I’ve wanted this too.”

“Will you do what I say?” You feel RM’s hands unzip the back of your dress, the fabric lowers and exposes your chest. Taehyung’s grip on your face tightens as you’re momentarily distracted, bringing your attention back to him.

“Yes.”

“I want you to fuck RM while I watch.”

He what who?

Taehyung brings his hips up causing you to lose your balance when he senses your hesitation, his hard length rubs against your aching core, “Don’t you want to? You wanted so badly for me to take you to him, didn’t you? All you have to do is say yes.”

His thumb traces your jaw as RM lowers his black tie across your eyes. Your heartbeat races, your thighs clench around Taehyung’s legs making him moan and buck into your heat. You shudder and RM secures his tie behind your head with a tight knot.

“Tae...” your fingers tighten into the loose fabric of his shirt at your sudden loss in vision.

Taehyung clasps his hands around yours, holding your wrists together as RM presses himself against your back, and you feel ropes being wrapped around your wrists. “You’re so pretty like this, remember last time?”

You do remember. Fuck, how did you end up like this again? This is all Yoongi’s fault.

RM’s hand wraps around your neck and his deep voice speaks in your ear, “Answer him, baby girl.”

“I-I remember.” You want to cry, you want to cum, you want them to stop this torture.

“Let us make you feel good again,” Taehyung’s voice lowers even deeper than RM’s.

“I...okay.”

“You’ll let RM use you?” You nod your head, grateful you can’t see them. You let yourself hide behind the makeshift blindfold.

“Use your words, I want to hear you say it,” RM demands.

“I want you to use me,” you sit and wait, embarrassed the words left your mouth so easily. The lack of response makes your insides churn, you can’t see the way they smile at each other. If Yoongi wants to make you only his, they are just going to have to destroy you for any other man.

RM’s grip around your neck tightens, arm wrapping around your body as he lifts you off your feet. You land on the soft covers of the bed, you have no time to adjust to the drastic change of orientation before you feel harsh tugs as RM works to undress you, throwing the clothes over to Taehyung who takes his time breathing in your scent, licking the moistness from the fabric.

Namjoon pulls on the rope wrapped around your wrists placing them high above your head, his weight bears down on top of your leg as he grabs your other leg and spreads you wide. The way Taehyung moans reach your ears you suspect he has full view of your naked body. You wiggle against RM’s hold as best you can.

“Mmmm so needy and I’m not even doing anything yet.” RM’s hand leaves your wrists as he moves lower, resting his upper body on top of yours, effectively pinning your lower body down. Having full reign to play with you in this position, you feel his fingers teasing at your entrance. Your tied hands explore the expanse of his back, his shoulders so wide you can’t reach around to end his teasing, you can only moan and whimper at his slow ministrations.

“Ahh so wet,” RM massages everywhere except the place you want him most.

This is mean, this is tortuous, you’ve obeyed them and they still tease you. You cry out in frustration, clenching every time his fingers poke at your hole, RM’s grip on your thigh is too tight to move even an inch. You shove his back with your tied hands and RM laughs.

“Tae, help me out.” You feel fingers finally pressing into your aching clit, rubbing slow circles, making you cry out. RM’s fingers continue to drag across your lips, gathering the wetness that drips from your core. They slowly and steadily work the tension out of you until you’re numb with pleasure.

You let out a scream when your orgasm finally hits you. After being tortured all night, teased until you were delirious, the release becomes so intense you black out, and when you come to RM is pumping his fingers into you roughly. Your body seizes up again, racing into another orgasm. He rocks his hand into you, thumb rubbing your sensitive hood, and you release again. But RM doesn’t stop. He takes and takes, leaving you breathless. The sounds of your wetness fills the room, mixing with Taehyung’s grunts and moans at your helpless state.

“I c-can’t...too sensitive!”

“This is what you wanted, for Daddy to use you. Take it.”

Your tied hands try to move RM’s body off of you, but he is like a boulder on top of your body, unaffected by your hits. You struggle until his pleasure overtakes the pain, and you fall back, losing yourself in the way his fingers fill you up, hitting the deepest parts of you so skillfully. You stop fighting and accept the power he holds over you, he is making you feel so good you want him to take it, the thought sends you hurtling into another orgasm, tightening again around his fingers.

He can feel how close you are. “Be a good girl and give me one more,” RM groans, “that’s it.”

You’re wailing in pleasure now, unable to stop your cries. Your weak body shaking in his grasp. You feel something wet hit your outstretched thigh. Taehyung’s deep grunts of release finally undoing the coil inside you, and you orgasm for a third time around RM’s fingers.

RM lets go of you finally and you lie boneless, breathing ragged, blind and numb to the world. The air feels cool on your sweaty body as you come down from your high. You feel the bed dip as RM joins you again. Before he had been fully dressed, now you can feel his warm skin against your slippery body.

He lays himself between your legs. His lips finally meet yours, they feel full. You moan into his mouth as his tongue plays with yours. You want to touch his face but your arms are still tied together, so you caress his hair instead, the back of his neck, his muscular shoulders, trying to feel as much as you can.

His hard length brushes against your oversensitive core, his mouth swallowing your whimpers as he pushes himself in. You’re so wet there’s no resistance, but the stretch still leaves you gasping. His thrusts are hard and deep, you focus on how the weight of his body feels on top of yours as he uses you to reach his high. “You’re taking Daddy so well, baby.”

“T-Thank you, Daddy,” you stutter out between moans.

RM holds your wrists down as he finishes, releasing deep inside you. You feel every pulse from his cock, the pressure almost becoming too much as he fills you up.

You hear the familiar scrape of the chair again as Taehyung comes closer, fingers wiping away the tears on your face making you feel cared for. You don’t see how he licks your salty tears off his hand.

RM lifts your tired body in his arms, cradling you to his chest. He puts you in his lap as he takes a seat in the vacant chair.

“Tae has been such a patient boy, I think it’s time for his reward.”

RM moves your body so your back is flush against his, pulling the rope on your hands around his head, locking your arms. His hand massages up and down your legs, putting his knees in between yours.

“Kneel.” You realize RM is addressing Taehyung. He spreads his legs to make room for Taehyung, forcing your legs open in the process.

“RM-” Namjoon places his hand over your mouth, the same way he did at the party, stifling your scream as Taehyung buries his face into your pussy.

Taehyung eats you out while RM keeps you open, until you’re shaking in his lap, until you can’t form anything coherent anymore, until you’re so sensitive Taehyung’s lips around your clit is the only thought in your head, the drag of his tongue pulling away from you the last thing you feel before exhaustion sends you into the deepest sleep of your life.

---

You wake up alone.

You pull the sheets closer to your naked body as you look around the vacant room. Everything is moved back to its place, floor empty. You search the ground for your clothes but there’s nothing there. You pull yourself out of bed, trying to ignore your aching joints and pounding head. You look for your clothes but there’s nothing. You search the entire room, the closet is empty, the dresser is empty, there’s not even a towel in the bathroom. Where the hell are your clothes?!

You make your way back into bed, pulling the covers over your body.

Oh fuck, what are you going to do?

What time is it? They just left you and took your clothes. What kind of sick game is Taehyung playing now? Tears well up in your eyes.

You feel more confused than ever, Taehyung had been so sweet to you before, you had often fantasized meeting him, but he was so different in person. You hadn’t expected this. He’s going to come back, right? Right?!

You are pulled away from your thoughts at the sound of the door creaking open.

“I see you’ve been a very bad girl.” Your eyes widen as Yoongi makes his way into the room, closing the door behind him. He looks as smug as ever, holding a hanger over his shoulder.

“A-Are those my clothes?”

“Are these the clothes I gave you last night? No, looks like you fucked yourself out of those.” You pull the bedsheet closer to you, gritting your teeth, blinking away your tears.

“Yoongi...”

“Hmm?” He leans against the bedpost, the clothes hanger hanging off one finger. You want to punch him, but you know you're walking on thin ice already.

“P-please help me.”

“You lost the clothes I got you. Why should I give you more?” You can tell he’s itching to humiliate you.

“So you’re just going to leave me here naked?!” you yell at him.

His eyes narrow. He grabs the bedsheet and pulls, dragging it off your body before you can stop him. You wrap your arms around your chest and pull your legs together.

“I should, after what you did!” Yoongi screams, “Whoring yourself out to my friends. Two at the same time, enjoy yourself? Fucking slut.” His words sting you. How could you fuck up so badly, you just let yourself become overtaken by lust.

“Now look at you. You let them take advantage of you. They used you and they left you with nothing. What would you have done if I didn’t find you?” He crosses his arms, his cold eyes glaring at you.

You burst into tears. Is he right? Is that what they did to you? “I’m-s-so-sorry,” you manage to say between sobs.

He sighs, “I’m here now.” You need him, he’s going to make you see that. He moves closer, lifting your chin to look at him. “If they had taken this,” his hand brushes your choker, “I would have killed them.”

You look at him pleadingly, trying to silence your sniffles. He offers you the clothes hanger, “Change into this.”

---

You unzip the clothes bag and pull out a dress with a light flowery pattern. The fabric is sheer and flowy. The matching lingerie set is pastel pink and strappy. Well, even if he is an asshole at least you can count on Yoongi to make you look good. You clean up your makeup and style your hair as best you can in the empty bathroom, removing what's left of the smudged dark eyeshadow, pushing thoughts from last night away. The more you try to make sense of what transpired, the more confused you become, and remembering just makes you feel hot all over.

Yoongi pushes himself off the wall when you open the door.

There is still music playing, still people dancing, a lot less than the night before, but you’re amazed there are any at all.

“Does the party ever end?” you think out loud.

“Only if you want it to.”

Yoongi leads you outside. When you reach the backyard you realize the party truly never really ended, only moved. Partygoers lounge by the pool, drinking and eating.

“Is that a fucking mermaid?” Girls dressed up in tails lay about the pool, you're about to run towards them when Yoongi pulls you away from the pool. “Let’s eat before you decide to go make friends.”

You walk in step. He looks put together as always, wearing simple light clothes, a white shirt tucked into tan pants, an unbuttoned collared shirt on top.

“Is everyone here a House member?” You ask, finally sober enough to start learning some things.

“Yes, I thought it was obvious. It’s nothing official. Just a get-together after our quarterly meeting, something for our investors.”

Right, never did you just have a ‘get-together’ like this. It's annoying how out of touch they are.

You see the familiar faces of his friends sitting in a secluded area. Before you and Yoongi get within earshot he grabs your arm.

“If Taehyung and Jungkook try to touch you again, let me know, will you?”

Wait, Jungkook is RM? What? No way, that doesn’t make any sense. He can’t be, he was downstairs when you first met RM. But why does Yoongi think you fucked him? Jungkook is not RM. Though, you remember how he never spoke to you.

His grip on you tightens when you don’t answer, “Y/n…”

“Okay, okay.”

---

Jungkook watches you and Yoongi whispering to one another. You look flustered when Yoongi places a soft kiss on your cheek before breaking away.

He takes a deep breath, rubbing his temples to take the tension away. When he looks up again, Yoongi and you are walking towards the group, your eyes fixated on...him? Jungkook breaks eye contact and looks back at you...and you’re still staring at him. He keeps eye contact with you, face going redder and redder.

He watches as you greet his friends, eyes glancing his way too frequently to call it a coincidence. What the fuck did Yoongi tell you to make you look at him like he grew three heads?

---

“I’ll be right back.” Yoongi makes his way to the far end of the party where Seokjin is talking to another man. You watch as Yoongi embraces the stranger, it’s one of the few times you’ve seen Yoongi smile, not a self satisfied smirk or a threatening grin, but a genuine smile showing off his gums that make the intimidating man look actually cute. The stranger gives him a dimpled smile in return.

“Who’s that with Seokjin?” you ask Jimin.

He looks over to where you're pointing, Jimin's expression full of mirth, “That’s Namjoon, looks like he made it to the party after all.”

“Oh.”

Jimin pulls on your arm, turning you to him, “Let’s go swimming!”

“Oh, but I don’t have a bathing suit.”

“That’s okay, you can go in your underwear,” he wiggles his eyebrows at you, making you giggle.

“I’ll, um, be right back,” Jimin whines as you get up, and you promise him it will only take a minute. You know you’d never get a chance to talk to Jungkook with Yoongi by your side, the two of them seem to have an odd tension between them. But now that Yoongi is distracted with Seokjin and Namjoon, it’s the perfect opportunity.

“Er hello?”

Jungkook’s wide doe eyes looks up at you. “Hello...”

Okay, he definitely doesn’t sound like RM. “Hi, I didn’t get to talk to you last night. I just wanted to say hi.”

“Oh, hi.”

“...hi.”

This is painfully awkward. You study his frame...he is built. The tank top he’s wearing shows off his broad shoulders and muscular tattooed arms, he looks strong like how you imagine RM. Maybe if you kiss him...

Jungkook watches as you peer over his back. “Dahlia…”

“Hmm? Oh, just call me y/n.” you insist, the alias making you feel self-conscious.

“I missed talking to you...so much.”

“We talked?” Is he really RM? No, it doesn’t feel like him at all.

Jungkook bites his lower lip. His front teeth pressing into his round lips makes him look cute, you think, like a scared rabbit.

“Yes, we used to talk a lot, before...” he bites back the words so he doesn’t make you uncomfortable. “My username is..” Ugh, Jungkook can’t believe he’s saying this to you out loud, why did he have to choose such a dumb username? “PlayboyJK.”

“Oh, oh! I remember you!” You remember your conversations with him. He was a good tipper, a bit unconventional in his requests, but he was always one of the first viewers to your stream.

“Honestly, I can’t believe you would watch me.”

“Why?”

“You’re just so...handsome? I’m just surprised, I guess!”

Jungkook’s ears go red at the compliment. You’re so perfect, you’re a goddess. He’d watch you all day every day, he’d watch you sleep. How could you think he wouldn’t want to watch you?

“I think you’re so beautiful, I like you a lot.”

“T-Thank you,”

“Are you going to start streaming again?

“Ha no no. I put all that behind me. Well, I thought I did,” you say after noticing Jungkook’s confused expression. “Um, it’s a long story.”

“Oh, you don’t have to join again. I could, um, pay you directly.”

“You’d pay me? For what?” you laugh, but you're curious to hear his answer.

“For anything, I’d pay you...just be with me.” you look into Jungkook’s wide eyes, so determined. Maybe if Yoongi had asked you this way, you would have considered it.

“I-HEY!” You squeal as Hoseok lifts you out of your seat. Jungkook gives Jimin a look of dismay as he pulls the younger man to his feet too.

Somehow you ended up in the pool with your dress still on. The sheer fabric doing little to hide the lingerie underneath for all the men to see.

---

The sun has already left the horizon while you sit on the deck of Yoongi’s yacht, drying off your body from the day's watery fun. You listen to the waves hit the walls of his boat as it sloshes around in the water, the rhythm like a whispering melody. The twilight casts everything in blue, the smell of salt and fresh air along with sound of the sea's waves is just so relaxing. What you wouldn't give to experience this all the time.

“Come back with me.” Yoongi's hushed voice breaks your trance.

“And be what, your personal servant?" you scoff, "I don’t think so.”

"What about those girls at the party? You could be like them, always having fun, the center of attention."

You bite your lip. "I don't want that." You wonder if Yoongi will believe you when you don't even believe yourself.

"Or I could just give you all my attention." He gets closer to you. "All this could be your life."

"Maybe I like my life-"

Yoongi laughs at you, earning himself a glare.

"Or I could just keep you here." He smirks down at you.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Don’t dare me.”

You stop glaring at him, turning your head away. You watch the lights on the mansion turn on as the night settles in.

“Do you really want to go back to that boring job?” You roll your eyes at his words. “Don’t you want more? To have fun? I’ll give you everything you want."

"I don’t think you could give me everything."

"Just try. You can always go back, I’m sure that manager friend of yours would rehire you."

You sigh, breathing in deep the salty air.

“I would have to put in my two weeks...”

---

Hobi’s scene was fun to write, I haven’t been to parties or dancing in so long I was like what the hell happens again? Now I wanna dance! Reader who said Yoongi will throw her into the sea last chapter you made me laugh so hard I almost considered making him do that lol. I guess there’s still some time to piss him off enough! Do you believe Yoongi? What do you think (or want) to happen next? <3

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littlefreya · 4 years ago

Text

Penny Dreadful

Summary: Sherlock is cold, troubled and upset, his mind is fixed on cracking an unsolved murder. It’s the worst time to disturb him. But his hot-blooded little succubus wants to drag him into sin.

Pairing: Sherlock Holmes x OFC (First-person POV)

Word count: 2.5K

Warning: 18+, smut, teasing, bratty behaviour, ass-smacking with a cane, slight cane play, primal play, unprotected rough sex, biting, slight size kink, MaleDom, drug use. Lots of curly hair descriptions.

A/N: Not canon to books Sherlock, obviously, but seeing the photos and teaser Henry as Sherlock just sets up the vibe. So I had to. Many thanks to my beta @agniavateira !! Sorry for the ugly cover art :D.

Title: Penny Dreadful

Sherlock’s study was a bleak, musky chamber deprived of heat, notwithstanding the many candles that burnt at every corner. Perhaps it was the pristine heaps of snow that piled on the ledge of the window, or maybe it was his sullen mood that gave the room a sense of icy wilderness.

Fumes rose from his mouth, vaping into the air. The tawny light kissed his thick mane of luscious, chocolate curls while he stood at the fore of his desk and leered at some parchments that troubled his brilliant mind for whatever reason.

Fist seizing the golden tip of his cane, his thumb stroked the engravings that embellished the metal. Cases that he couldn’t crack often left him frustrated to the point of madness. Those wicked, sly obsessions made him even more irresistible.

My nails bit into the wooden doorframe. Consumed by yearning, a blaze licked up my soul with its monstrous tongue. I often wondered how something so pure as love could be dangerous, to which Sherlock would reply,

“Love is the greatest villain of them all.”

Unlike him, I didn’t care for evil.

The detective unclipped the small chain he kept fastened to his vest and opened the silver locket, gathering a wisp of white powder on the tip of his pinky finger and pressed it to his nostrils. A small grunt escaped him, his eyes turning glassy. The “fairy dust” tended to sharpen his perception and elevate his stamina.

I dropped to my knees at his sight, crawling on the floor. The black silks of my dress made a brushing noise as it dragged on the Persian carpet; my breasts peeked as my corset shifted with every move. Sherlock often said we must imagine ourselves as animals once we let desire play our strings.

Accepting my inner wildness, tonight I was a cougar stalking her prey.

By nature, his senses were sharp as blades, though the substance that streamed through his veins made a more heightened grip of the reality that surrounded him. He noticed and yet ignored me, letting his hot-blooded harlot crave for his attention.

If I was to be the feline predator, Sherlock was the hunter who pursued me for sport. An unfair game, yet nevertheless my favourite.

Bathing in my own little fountain of mischief, I allowed my fingers to sneak toward his cane, brushing up and down the mahogany in slow, languid motion. My slender digits licked along the shaft and my bosom followed, pressing against the hardwood. I dragged myself up slightly to glimpse at my master from below: my Sherlock, always a sight for a famished girl; a colossus, intimidating, and breathtaking. Like a moth to a flame, I inched closer dazed by the light, wanting to bask in its radiance.

The muscle in his cheek tensed, thick brows furrowing. A little squared wrinkle appeared above the bridge of his nose as he brushed through his dark locks with agitation.

“What ills that glorious mind of yours?” I hummed, playful fingertips climbing further up at the length of his cane.

“Something I can’t grasp,” he spat, not giving me the time of day. But I knew he noticed every detail of my wanton behaviour, it was evident by the way his breath swiftly became heavier. Sherlock might have solved crimes by profession, but all women were natural detectives; evolution granted us with a definite survival instinct, learning to read men between the shadows.

“You can possess me,” I offered, fingers scraping over his thumb as it pressed onto the cane’s golden tip. My voice dropped to a whisper while my hand left the cane in favour of his thigh. The muscle flexed and twitched under my sinful touch, the fabric of his breeches stretched as his cock grew with its natural need to fulfil the wet, convulsing void in me.

“You’re distracting me,” he warned, voice low and stern. His lashes hardly even fluttered to my direction.

Every delicate little hair stood up at the sound of alarm yet instead, I inhaled the soot of peril, allowing my hand to travel further and meet his hungry girth. It rose to my touch with gratitude, flinching even harder at the clutch of my claws. The flavour of desire was honey and salt on the tip of my tongue.

The low animalistic vibration of his voice wavered through his solid form. I felt it shudder all the way down to his swelling cock. A cautious man, Sherlock was measured and forbearing to a point that made me wonder if he even liked women at all before we fell into the vicious pit of decadence and violent delights.

It was the contrary that was true: Sherlock loved women very much, his desires were simply… of a certain quality.

His groin was warm and firm against my cheek. The crystalline-blue glare finally graced me with a sight so brooding my bones clattered.

“Later, I need to work.” By the drop of his voice, I knew there won’t be a third warning.

“Later, Later…” I taunted, rolling my chin over his aching need. “All work and no play…”

The gasp that pushed out of my lungs nearly whisked the candles off as Sherlock hauled me up by his hand and bent me over the desk.

“Should I teach you how to respect my time?” He snarled, throwing the skirts of my dress over my head like a cape of the midnight sky. Stars collapsed under my skin at the sensation of his touch exploring the curve of my bare ass. Talons ruptured the tiny blood vessels, squeezing with the affirmation of his ownership.

“No undergarments?” Sherlock growled dangerously while his thumb brushed over my silken entrance, toying with the rich elixir and smearing it further down my anticipating petals. I answered with a deep moan, stretching on this desk with a succumbing plea.

“You came here aimed at disturbing me while I work.”

Settling onto the surface of the desk, I reached forth one arm lazily and chuckled. “You are a great detective, I… oh!”

Something cold and solid caressed my dripping lips, driving between them in slow, calculated strokes. Throwing my head over my shoulder, I noticed Sherlock holding his cane against my sacred cove, staring at it as if I was yet another piece of evidence to be explored. The golden arched-tip pushed-slightly between my petals and entered just enough to make me hiss. For a mere second I wondered if he was going to fuck me using nothing but his cane.

“Look away; this is going to hurt.”

I hardly had time to protest when the first smack hit the pillow of my cheek. A wheeze of disgrace shot from my throat, husky and embarrassing, but not as degrading as the sting the metal left at my burning backside.

“Bad girl,” Sherlock ticked his tongue and lifted the cane midway in the air, a flare of noxious desire bursting in his pale-blue orbs. This time I turned away and shut my eyes, gripping the edge of the desk until my knuckles turned dead-white. If only it did anything to dull the pain, the sting was even more prominent, shooting all the way up to my spine where it coiled and forced a strident yip from my clamped lips.

Yet the throb in my cunt was unmissable.

Sherlock knew very well that the hurt allied with pleasure, enhancing it even, like his powdery magic dust.

Another smack and my nails scratched at the wood. Like a sinner nun indulging her own beating, I rode the waves of pain as they broke onto shores abundant with pleasure. There were hidden cracks in our public figure, the place where I burnt and Sherlock ascended as we pried our claws into mortal deadly sins. My senses rose to conflict with every smack and Sherlock took joy in every involuntary squirm of my body.

Tongue pressed between his lips, he hummed as he admired his handiwork, painting my ass in obscene hues of violence. “Had enough? Or want to see which will break first, the rod or your arrogance?” Sherlock chided and pinched my sore cheek to further increase the pain.

Embers whispered beneath my flesh, my legs jolted from the intense beating and by god, the trickle of my juices rolling down the back of my thighs made even a sultry woman such as myself drown in white shame.

Sherlock’s breath was a heavy guttural waft. His cane dropped to the floor and I heard the sound of metal clicking as he fumbled with his belt. I would be damned if I let him fuck me from behind. To have those eyes look away as he entered me was a vice I wouldn’t stand.

“No!” I yelled, bracing on my wobbly elbows as much as I could and turned to face him.

Sherlock’s glare widened, a chill of ice blew through his eyes and his pupils dilated like a crazed feline. “You’re saying no to me?”

“Yes!” I heaved and reached my hands to cradle his skull, pushing myself against the hardness of his body and forcing my lips on his. My kiss was feral, bruising the plush skin on and around his mouth, nibbling and biting until we tasted iron on our tongues. It was not long before I was shoved against the wall, our mouths still united, sharing one breath.

Or rather stealing it from one another.

We were pleasingly unequal. Sherlock was all iron and stone; a bulky, tall man who could tear me apart with his bare hands. I was a little lush thing, so tender, so easily bruised. Despite his power, the desire to claim the tiny wet hole between my legs was unquenchable, reducing him to a savage thing that spoke in raw inarticulate sounds.

He tore his mouth from mine and swept me up from the ground, hiking the skirts of my dress urgently to expose what he coveted the most. I felt the supple velvety texture of his hardness grind against my thigh, smearing the pearly drops of his arousal onto my skin. We both moaned at the sensation and moved to the rhythm dictated by our most primal instincts.

“You want my cock?” He growled and gnawed his teeth at my neck, biting deep enough to break through the skin. I whined in pain, my voice rising a pitch as I writhed against him to ignite the smallest of frictions and serve the demon of desire in me.

“Fuck me!” I begged, sliding my fingers through the mass of soft curls and tugging them with need.

Answering my plea, Sherlock speared into my unruly cunt, brutally spreading me open like he would tear the petals from a flower. I yipped into his luscious hair, my nails tearing into his nape as his intrusion claimed everything my body had to offer. I always found it odd how my flesh would resist and beg for him at the same time, my succulent canal fighting to push him by instinct yet he only further rutted into me. He reached his hands to my sore ass to squeeze my cheeks apart.

“Such a tight little harlot,” he groaned, engulfed by my garden of mysteries. Moaning so loudly, our duet reverberated through the corridors of the house. His lashes fluttered with ecstasy as he pulled back only to force me down on his imposing cock, attempting to rip through my denial. Or it was to tame me as I clenched around his girth, accepting and resisting him at the same time. I was nothing but a vessel for him to fill, and he did so with a fiery passion, glaring straight to my eyes while thrusting deep and hard into me.

Books fell from the shelves nearby as we battled against the wall, my legs sliding up and down his waist, spreading helplessly in the air until my boots pressed into his arse. One of his hands reached for my corset, tugging on the ludicrous outfit to expose my breast. Ravenous, he licked his bloodstained lips, giving me a stare that made my cunt clutch him harder before he sank his fangs to pierce cavities in my tit.

“No!!!” I cried out and gasped as he thrust deeper to punish me for my protest. His heavy cock hit a spot so deep inside me that tears instantly emerged and fell down my cheeks, the pang bringing through a spasm of odd relief.

Blood and saliva smeared along my cleavage as he dragged his lips further, licking and then kissing every patch he bruised. I moaned breathlessly, throwing my head back against the wall as his nimble fingers surveyed my neck, laying small threats to show me how easy he could simply suspend my very basic need.

But my survival instincts already flew out the window the moment he penetrated me.

His lips hovered above mine as he fucked deep into my body, our cries creating an obscure symphony as he continuously slammed into my hilt, harder and more urgent with every plunge. The tears that fell down my cheeks were tainted with the conflicting aphrodisiac that pain brought through. In that instant I was whole, gratified by the friction created of the collision of our wet organs.

“Do it!” I gasped and nodded through glossy stares, swallowing hard to gesture what he already knew. With a swift snap of his hands, his fingers were bruising on my neck and he slammed into me at a furious pace, giving no care for my broken screams.

Euphoria tore through my soul, crashing like hot waves of eternal fire. I came apart around his thick rod crying for God and Satan at once. Sherlock never slowed down, not even as he felt the tightening of my ring around him. It only made him fuck me harder, burying his face at my collarbone, chasing his own rapture at a punishing speed, grunting like a beast. Finally, he shuddered and pumped me full of his thick, silky milk. The muscles of his behind flexed and he ground his hot load into my warm cavern, making sure I received every drop. My hands reached to squeeze his taut ass as my legs clutched him still, wanting to keep him inside me.

As if he had any intentions of leaving as he moaned and spasmed inside me.

Smoke filled the room as few of the candles died; the scent of ash and the musk of our sex seeped through our noses while we remained entwined, shaking in each other’s grasp. Breathless and damp with sweat, Sherlock lifted his face from my neck and glanced at me looking so vulnerable, almost appearing lost. I moved my trembling hands back to his face, my thumbs caressing his sharp cheeks.

“I know I am harsh…” he murmured, his eyes digging into my heart with nothing but a gaze of despair, “but please don’t ever leave me.”

My face fell at the sound of his words, my lips parting with awe. My detective could solve the most outrageous crimes, and yet he couldn’t realise I was shackled to him for all eternity.

#henry cavill #henry cavill x ofc #henry cavill fanfiction #sherlock holmes fanfiction #sherlock holmes x ofc #henry holmes #sherlock holmes

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laal-ishq-diaries · 4 years ago

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showering with them || mha guys

december 26, 2020

writer’s note: nothing to say about this. little blurbs on what it’s liking showering with some mha men. i just love showering and self-indulgence.

warnings: implied intercourse (tagged under #pyaas). descriptions of the female body. hurt/comfort.

KAI CHISAKI ~ OVERHAUL

when kai, who usually showers all by his lonesome, requests your presence in the bathroom one evening, you know he’s craving some sweet, sweet intimacy. you head into the shower together and bask in the warmth emanating from the water for a few minutes before he pushes your back against the wall of the shower and drops to his knees in front of you. making eye contact with you, kai lathers you up with your body-wash. he starts from the soles of your feet before moving up and using his strong touch to ease out the tension from your body. by the time he’s lathering up your inner thighs and hips, you’re leaning against the shower wall with your eyes closed and in absolute bliss. your eyes snap open when you feel a cool substance being dabbed onto your cheek and realize that it’s body-wash and the damn culprit is now standing in front of you with a cheeky grin of his own. one playful huff of indignation later, you take the opportunity to wash your face—an excuse to do something other than quietly melt under his touch—as he skillfully kneads the flesh of your bottom, abdomen, and breasts. afterwards, he turns you around and presses your front into the wall in order to wash your back and arms before taking the removable showerhead and washing the suds off your entire body (all the while pressing kisses across each newly cleansed patch of skin). showering with him is a rare blessing given your busy schedules but he still makes you feel desired and every atom in your body is now screaming at you to return the favor.

KEIGO TAKAMI ~ HAWKS

you’re already in the shower when keigo comes home from a particularly stressful mission. he quickly undresses and joins you. all he does is wrap his arms and wings around your body and inhale your scent—he missed you so damn much so just let him have this for a few minutes. in return though, it is up to you to initiate any actual bathing. your arms stretch to grab shampoo (yours, because keigo loves how you smell) and massage a generous amount into his unruly hair. his satisfied coos and chirps spur you on as you wash away the physical and mental grime of the mission. as you rinse the suds and condition his hair (also, with your conditioner), he curls into your body even more and his wings twitch in satisfaction. you make a mental note to give his wings some TLC after your shower but you settle for massaging the base of his spine where his wings emanate, for now. similarly, keigo’s avian instincts urge him to take care of you; he massages body-wash into whatever skin he can reach while you are still in his embrace and nonsensically murmurs loving sentiments. i got you baby, let’s stay like this, and you’re so soft all tug on your heartstrings and, god, what you wouldn’t do for this man. go give him some love, birdboy deserves it!

SHOUTA AIZAWA ~ ERASER HEAD

this man is extremely stressed and sleep-deprived, so your showers are supposed to make him lethargic and ready to curl up in bed. these showers are in the middle of the night with the lights off; the only source of illumination in your bathroom is from the city lights and moon shining through the windows. the water is nearly on its hottest setting and the steam is fogging up the windows and mirror. there’s a thin layer of sweat on your bodies but you’re both shivering, whether from the cold only body heat can neutralize or in anticipation. shouta is clingy, but not too much. he still has an air of aloofness and mystery, and you don't know what his intentions are tonight. hell, you don’t know what your intentions are. the warm water was supposed to lull him to sleep, not your body. but you can’t complain when he kisses and strokes and bites with so much adoration and lust. you can take a proper shower in the morning; his only concern right now is intertwining with you and wearing you both out until you’re dozed off under covers.

TOUYA TODOROKI ~ DABI

surprisingly, dabi is not touchy at all. the two of you do your own thing in the shower and make a little bit of idle small talk but your backs will be to each other while bathing. other than enjoying quiet time, showering together is so emotionally intimate that dabi is truly at a loss for words. occasionally, you two will turn around and kiss each other and bump noses playfully. there is nice, soothing music in the background, which he always lets you pick because he loves making you happy (even if it’s just the little things). showering with dabi is so peaceful because this is his relaxing time away from the league of villains, hero society, and his fucked up family. it’s just him and his girl vibing. at times, he glances at you with those eyes that scream you’re the most precious thing in the world and that he’d do anything to protect you. his heart bursts even more when you end up making eye contact and smile or tilt your head in confusion. at that point, he needs to feel more of you. the touches start small—when you begrudgingly go under cold water to rinse your hair, dabi will lightly activate his quirk and rub your sides to warm you up. when you’re done showering, he’ll take your towel and pat the moisture off your body and dry your hair. in turn, you’ll gently moisturize his skin. any other time, dabi would've cracked a joke about you wanting to feel him up and being “too clingy” but not right now. he has completely lost himself in your love. there are parts of him that just want to leave this life and take you away to keep you safe. but he knows he’s too far in to walk away. and you’ve accepted that. the only time he feels in control of his circumstances are these quiet, little moments he steals with you.

#laal-ishq entries #pyaas #kai chisaki x reader #overhaul x reader #keigo takami x reader #hawks x reader #shouta aizawa x reader #eraser head x reader #touya todoroki x reader #dabi x reader #bnha x reader #mha x reader #mha entries

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thosewickedlovelies · 4 years ago

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An Ode To Marcus Moreno’s Arms

Pairing: Marcus Moreno x GN!Reader

Rating: Mature

Summary: You’re a training specialist in swordsmanship at Heroics Headquarters, so you see a lot of Marcus Moreno.

Tags: Reader has a vivid (sexual) imagination, but there’s only a few brief sections.

Word Count: 2,272

A/N: This started out as an ode to his arms, but his arms are connected to the rest of him, so. Alternative title: In Appreciation of Marcus Moreno

My assumption/headcanon of his powers are telekinesis, plus general exceptional physical prowess and weapons skills? Idk, we weren’t given much, but those feel like solid abilities for someone implied to be the super among super heroes. Idk what this is but I regret nothing.

More content/worldbuilding set in this universe 💗

Marcus Moreno’s arms were capable of many things.

You knew this because you saw them on an almost-daily basis. You were one of the training specialists at Heroics Headquarters, one of a large, ever-expanding staff of instructors who were experts in their respective fields of combat or weapons. Your job, essentially, was to be a superhero minus the powers- and use your abilities to keep the Heroics in top form.

Your expertise was swordsmanship, which meant you spent more time with Marcus than any of the other heroes. All of the physical trainers and specialists sparred with the Heroics in mock villain showdowns, but you also helped them hone specific skills. You were here because your skillset and abilities matched Marcus’s.

So you’ve had plenty of opportunity to behold his arms at work.

One would think that they’d be most enticing mid-action, but it was a cosmically ironic fact that there was never really a wrong moment to ogle. How that man could make merely unsheathing his swords so erotic was beyond you.

But by now you’d seen it from every angle. You were as familiar with Marcus’s technique as you were with your own, and knew well the cycle of muscle contractions which rippled up his whole body. It started with his legs: setting his stance, primed and poised on the balls of his feet. Then every muscle in his torso, his clinging t-shirts sliding over taut flesh as they rode up with the lifting of his arms- his arms. Biceps suddenly incredibly present and visibly straining past barely-existent sleeves, tendons flexing rigid and obvious, a tangle of pathways you wanted to map with your tongue.

This show was best when he had started his day with tactical theory sessions, because then his expressive face got involved. Oh yes, it wasn’t enough for him just to be built the way he was, his face had to go and be attractive as well.

Tedious strategy debates with Miracle Guy during these sessions never failed to get under his skin- you could always tell how much steam Marcus had to let off based on the clench of his jaw. Or the way he’d drag his bottom lip over his teeth, nostrils flaring in an almost-snarl. When that happened you knew he gripped the hilts of his swords a little tighter, because you’d see the ridges in his wrist dip and pull like piano strings perpendicular to the line of his gloves. The blades would sing little sharper on those days, his arms freeing them in a jerk rather than their usual smooth, deliberate slide.

It was amazing you ever made it beyond unsheathing your weapons.

But oh, were you glad you did, because watching Marcus Moreno fight was truly a treat. The control he had over his body was remarkable; even when his limbs flung and stretched, they were to ready to contract again at a second’s notice. “Fight” was really too limited of a term for it- Marcus manipulated his body in an incredible harmony of mind and muscle, using his weapons- including his telekinesis- as extensions of himself.

You wondered sometimes how fine his control over his telekinesis was- if he could use it on himself. If he did use it somehow to give his blows that devastating extra speed and strength.

It was easy to understand, after witnessing him, why battle is often described as a dance.

On particularly ruthless training days, his tan skin would gleam with sweat. It would bead and trickle along the pulsing veins in his arms, drawing your attention even more, and salacious scenes would flash behind your eyelids: those same glistening forearms visible in your peripherals as they box you against a wall, that same intent glitter in his dark eyes as they come closer and closer, breathless, his chest heaving into yours-

You never let on to any of this though. You were a master of the blade, and had trained too thoroughly to let the appearance of an opponent get to you. Besides that fact, you would never do anything to risk your place with the Heroics. Although you were an authority figure, they were still superheroes, and thus unlike anyone else you’d worked with- it made for a challenging, stimulating dynamic in which you were constantly both instructor and student.

Even outside of the training arena, Marcus’s arms were a sight.

Holding data pads or writing utensils as he led the Heroics in discussions of group tactics, deftly manipulating characters onscreen or scribbling things on a whiteboard. Sometimes he would go to these sessions straight from physical training, and the cooling sweat on his skin would raise goosebumps all along the smooth flesh.

You observed how gently his arms could move in yet other circumstances.

Training specialists often joined in when the Heroics were given new gadgets to play with. And although these days tended to be slower, they still made you sweat. Watching the caution with which Marcus handled the gear at first, the slow care he reserved for things with which he was still becoming familiar. The precision and that control he always kept- even when his frustration slipped out in the form of snarky remarks, he was always conscious of his movements. As he gained confidence, the surety would return to his motions, his shoulders squaring in quiet triumph- his broad, broad shoulders, which you had imagined far too many times propping up your thighs while his hands and mouth were otherwise engaged between them.

You wondered if Marcus would treat your body like something new he had to master. If his hands would probe and caress with the same thoroughness. If the same wicked delight would steal over his features as he learned how best to coax you toward his desired goals; if his fascinated smirk would change after the thousandth time he had taken you apart.

It didn’t help that these sessions highlighted that he was a kind, competent teacher. His teammates exasperated him sometimes, but Marcus was the first to step in when one of them was struggling. A light touch to rearrange their stance, an encouraging word or smile. If you hadn’t personally felt the power thrumming under his skin, you would have never guessed that such a soft man was capable of his immense abilities.

Occasionally you had to remind yourself not to get all dopey-eyed when he was instructing the kids. If you thought he was patient with the adult Heroics, it was nothing compared to how he interacted with their younger counterparts. Equally firm and joking in turn, he taught them every trick he knew while desperately hoping they would never have to use the knowledge.

Some days were easier for him than others- the times they practiced with weapons could have unexpectedly diverting consequences. Marcus let Guppy hold his katanas, once- she was fully capable with her shark strength, but the vision of the diminutive girl brandishing swords that were taller than she was, her face aglow with a ferocious grin, had all the others in fits.

You swore he was suppressing laughter himself as he carefully took them away from her. His hands, already distracting enough, looked comically vast compared to hers as he delicately maneuvered them to pluck the swords from her grasp. Something about the sight of his thick fingers, resettling themselves around the hilts with reflexive ease, made your mouth dry.

His fingers squeezed other things, too, and it made flames leap low in your belly every time.

Lime wedges, on the rare occasions he indulged in drinks stronger than wine at the Headquarters bar. His friends’s shoulders, in affection and farewell, after relaxing with them at said bar following hard days. You longed to be one of those who Marcus slung an arm around in jest, a laugh shaking his shoulders and sparkling in his eyes. Would his skin be as warm as it was while swinging a weapon? What would his body feel like softened in mirth, instead of vibrating with focus?

You didn’t blame him for his more formal attitude during work hours. His days were busy, and you rarely saw him off the training mats. You had shared a few evenings with him on nights when the bar was quieter, though. He was perfectly friendly, treating you just like anyone else he was getting to know.

Tonight was one of those quieter nights, but you didn’t do more than cast a quick glance at the small group sitting in the corner before slumping to the bar. You were worn out today, and just wanted something strong and solitary before going home.

You sighed into the numbing wash of your drink, your eyes drifting shut. Nobody would bother you this evening; it wasn’t that kind of atmosphere.

Except- the barstool next to yours scraped against the floor.

You inhaled deeply, preparing to politely rip into whatever idiot was assuming you needed company- only to have the words struck off your lips by the apprehensive brown eyes of Marcus Moreno.

“Hey,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’m sorry to bother you. You can tell me to march right back to my table if you like, but uh, I just wanted to see if you were all right. After today.”

You could see that he genuinely meant it- he was perched only partially on the barstool, ready to take off again if you said the word. But his gaze was curious, concerned.

You brow furrowed. “After today?” you echoed, too caught off-guard to think of anything else. What could he mean? Nothing special had happened today. He’d disarmed you, sure, but it wasn’t the first time that had occurred in the eight months you’d been working with him.

Marcus shifted uncertainly. “You just seemed...tired. Reflexes slower than usual,” he noted wryly. “And, well. We have matching bags.” He pointed to his face, where dark shadows were visible beneath his eyes. He offered a self-deprecating, tentative smile, conscious that he was treading in new territory.

It takes you a minute to process. In all the time you’ve spent observing his fighting techniques to perfection, you’d never considered that he could have been using those same opportunities to observe you. It provokes a funny feeling in your chest, twisting your breath up in your lungs like tangled ribbon.

“Oh,” you murmur, surprised but unoffended by his mention of the bags under your eyes. “Well...I am tired today, I guess.” You took a sip of your drink, gauging his interest, hesitating before continuing. “My sister broke her hip, so she just moved in with me for while she heals. It’s been...a stressful transition,” you admitted.

He angles himself toward you, attention fully committed and eyes widening in sympathy. “Oh gosh, that’s terrible. Do you need some time off? I can clear it with the boss for you, work with Santino for however long you need.” He seemed to straighten up, as if ready to spring away and take care of it the moment you answered.

“No, please,” you chuckled in appreciation of his earnestness. “I might need a few shorter days, but neither of us need me fussing over her 24/7.” Both you and your sister were strongly independent. It meant that you had often been at odds when you were younger, but you were all each other had now, and had made efforts to improve your relationship.

Marcus nodded in understanding, settling again. He seemed at a loss for if he should leave or say something else, so you made the choice for him.

“Tired of getting your ass kicked in my lessons, Moreno? You know Santino doesn’t work you as hard.” Your fellow swordsmanship instructor was slightly younger, a newer hire who was still a little bit in awe of the Heroics.

You didn’t usually speak so flippantly to him, but his eyebrows arced high at the challenge, a smile tugging on his lips. “Sounds like somebody needs a reminder of who kicked whose ass today, ma’am.” Rolling right along with your apparent newfound playfulness.

You pinpointed, suddenly, what was different about him tonight, why this interaction felt different compared to your others. There’d always been an air of deference about him before, as if even outside of the arena he considered you a superior. But tonight he was just treating you like a peer, a regular person. Maybe it had taken your excessively dragging day for him to come to terms with the fact that you were a regular person, but the ice finally felt like it had broken between you and you just...talked, after that. For longer than both of you probably intended.

“Shoot, I have to go get Missy,” Marcus realized, catching sight of his watch. “But you- you’ll be here again? I mean, I see you here a lot.” He stumbled over his words.

Did he? It was true that you were often at the bar at the same time, but for him to acknowledge that meant that he actually noticed you. Remembered your presence.

“Yeah, I’m here pretty regularly,” you confirmed, cautiously hopeful.

“Good. I mean, I’ll see you, then- next time.” His voice rasped low, but there was a nervousness in his expression. He twisted his jacket between his large hands.

He wanted to see you again. “Yes.” You smiled at him, surprise and pleasure shining through. “I’ll see you next time,” you said with conviction.

His eyes crinkled in answer, and your breath caught. Your ordered yourself not to watch him leave the room.

You drove home with a quiet grin on your face.

#we can be heroes #wcbh #wcbh fic #marcus moreno x reader #marcus moreno x you #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters #NOBODY LOOK AT ME

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pseudofaux · 5 years ago

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Tracassin {Comte/MC}

Nothing scandalous, but the desire is heavyyyyyyy. Kinda angsty. Please enjoy if that sounds like your thing! This gripped me in one of those creative MUST DO MAKE WORDS WRITE LONGING fevers. It’s been awhile, so I was happy to let it happen!

“Is it... Marcel?” she murmurs, back to the game they have been playing for weeks, always with much more space between them.

Rumpelstiltskin, Tracassin, she had suggested in the garden on one of her first happy days in the mansion, if you will not tell me your name, then let me guess! He had agreed, so eager to indulge her and feeling some relief that the game put him in the villain’s place. He could be her entertainer and friend, and of course he would protect her. But he could not orbit her like a lover would. They’d smiled companionably over their cups from the fine set of Limoges, the brilliant white space in the pattern reminding him of her unpointed teeth. He had been confident she would never guess his name. And he had thought it such a neatly-arranged way for her to pass the time, close but not too close.

She is being shockingly bold, but moreover needy, she is needy over his body there in the chair in the hourglass room, and she has said her need is for him, good Lord—

“Comte,” she whisper-whines, plump lips moving softer than her word over his cheek, his jaw. He would have sworn before this moment that he knew what it was to suffer, in life and in lust. Of course she would be the one to show him better. She has revealed so many of life’s joys to him already, clarified tastes like lemon juice in jellies and lifted cloche after cloche off the delights of Paris he may never have found without her. How could she do anything but make his despair a sharper, deeper cut? What will be left if all his rules bleed out of him through the split she is making in his heart? That is the true and most dangerous question.

Because it is so dangerous, he will resist her, he will gently extricate himself from the chair and he will get up and usher her out or leave the room himself. He will... he will remember his plan as soon as she moves her mouth from his jaw, the very second she stops sowing a soft line of kisses there, so precise that the gardeners of the Grand Trianon would weep to see the elegant devastation she is working against him. He has not felt flush on his own skin in such a long time but it is there now: inelegant, blotchy, lurid. A mockery of mortality. It makes him nervous in a way that is juvenile, as he remembers the first time he ever courted, the fumbling declarations, the warmth of love in youth, tender and unwise. Her face interposes itself between memories of learning to dance and kiss. He wants to groan but worries if he makes a single sound, he will break more than his own silence.

“Is it... Marcel?” she murmurs, back to the game they have been playing for weeks, always with much more space between them.

She is quite close now, the expanse of her skirts allowing the knee she has put on his chair to cage him in. The wingback could hide them from the world, if they were really lovers. Her body leaning to his, the sweet honesty of her seduction, these things have stunned him.

She pauses for his response, but before he can use the time to gather himself and move, she moving herself, shifting over his lap and making another guess. “No, not Marcel. Adrien?” She exhales a little laugh. The sound blooms from her throat, below the blood place. He can smell it, precious as butter and salt, and he is grateful he has never needed to see Lear’s folly to know the value of these things. Le comte de Saint Germain knows what makes a table and a feast, and though he will not have it, he knows exactly what he wants spread out before him on the lacquered rosewood surface where the mansion takes its meals.

There is a kindness to her hum, a milky sweetness, when she lifts away from his skin. Only far enough away for the lonely beast in his heart to yelp pathetically for her return, please, anything, go far away or come closer and truly ruin me and it is all silenced with her words. “I don’t think that’s a yes,” she says. “But you are not giving me any real answers at all...” And she returns to kiss his jaw again, her bold but ever-gentle hand cupping the other side of his face. He is surrounded by the feminine pressure of her, but he cannot surrender and he absolutely cannot allow his thoughts to list toward any consideration of feminine pressure.

He feels her arms under his hands, the slight supple muscle of her upper arms tense from contact that has surprised them both, and he is grateful his body is faster than his mind. Her name is a warning on his breath, but it is so heavy with his own need he must yet again keep himself from groaning. If he heard her say his name with as much passion, nothing would keep him from her.

“No more guessing tonight, ma chèrie beauté,” he begs her as he pushes her away. “You must rest.”

She is looking at him with an assessing sort of fire in her eyes, but still she is kind. She has kept her hand on his cheek even as he moved her to stand on the floor in front of the chair.

“Will you tell me?” she asks with transparent, honest hope. If timeless ones had her grace, their lives would not be ones of melancholy.

“I would not take away your game,” he says. Her gaze becomes reproachful.

“It is our game,” she whispers, and she moves to lean in again, has even closed her eyes. But his hands hold her. The hurt in her face wounds him. He wishes it only wounded him. He is not good enough to receive her, let alone reject her-- that is why he must lean on the crutch of this farce and play at disinterest. He releases her arms to pat them and the second time manages to make it more of a quick touch than a caress.

“Shall I call Sebastian to take you to your room?”

He hates himself. For a moment she looks like she hates him, too.

“Non,” she says with emphasis, suddenly French to her toes, and it is a new torture not to smile at her. He tries to focus on not moving forward as she finally draws her hand away, fingertips sliding over the muscle in his jaw that jumps to maintain contact with her. He wonders if even she has limits to her grace, if she is doing this on purpose to twist the knife in his heart.

It is there as a plug, that yelping animal whines, craving her understanding as much as her self. It is there to keep you safe.

She does not look at him as she walks away, but at the door she turns. She is reproachful and a little prim, but no longer angry. “In my time, women take lovers,” she tells him. “If you do not want me for one, it is courtesy to tell me so.”

“I have told you I do not want you for a lover,” he says immediately, and the syllables are so wooden and lame he can see every way her face transforms from pique to victory.

“Goodnight, Monsieur,” she says softly. The door traveler is gracious in her laurels.

He bids her the same, and asks her to forgive him for remaining seated. She only nods, sparing him further ruin. When the door clicks closed, he counts her slippered footsteps as they soften to silence in the hallway of his home. At twenty, he allows his hands to destroy the rests of his chair, splintering the fine frame underneath leather and stuffing.

Rouge and Blanc are both in reach, and both completely unappealing. He shakes the dust from his palms and undoes one cuff. Cleanly, he rolls the sleeve to his forearm, cream against his skin. He thinks of going to find Leonardo for company instead of being so maudlin, but decides against it. Melancholy men find one another eventually, and he’s convinced the other man loves her, too. They all do, damn them. For tonight, he’ll keep his hurt and his blood and his regard for her to himself. He has a terrible sense of dread that these things will see sunlight long before he would like.

She did not touch his sleeve, but her scent is unmistakable over his own, perhaps haunting the air around him. Butter, salt, lemon, lilacs, life. He sucks it in through his nose as he pierces the vulnerable skin inside his arm. The adoration for her is too strong to even imagine biting her and he can taste his own blood so it would be useless to try, but the smell of her stays with him as he punishes and soothes himself. She is the golden light of summer, unavoidable as midday sun. If hers could be the only sunlight to see how weak he is for her, he might dare to reveal himself. She will burn him if he is not careful, and oh, she makes it so hard to be careful. But without her in the room he is cold, and desires her warmth like a winter beggar, even more than when she was there.

#ikevamp comte #ikevam comte #ikevamp fanfic #ikevam fanfic #twisting that knife in my heart too ya big beautiful desire-denier #hi sometimes I DO make words

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swanslieutenant · 5 years ago

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from the sea - chapter nine

Summary: When Emma becomes sheriff, the pressure of running a department with a dwindling budget becomes nothing but an exercise in frustration. That is, until she finds an unlikely ally in the town treasurer, a man who her kid Henry is convinced is not an ally at all, but rather a villainous enemy. Season 1 AU, Cursed!Killian.

Rating and Warnings: Teen.

Catch up: ch1, ch2, ch3, ch4, ch5, ch6, ch7, ch8

Read on AO3

Note: apologies for the major delays! Hope you all enjoy this chapter.

______________________________

On a particularly boring night shift, with the station so silent that each squeak of her chair is startling and nearly deafening, Emma spends her time leant back in her chair, throwing her pen up in the air and catching it again. She’s counting how many catches in a row she can get up to before dropping it.

In Storybrooke, night shifts feel about twice as long as the day ones, and the mundane activity is the only keeping her occupied tonight. Hardly anything ever happens in this town overnight; sometimes Emma gets a call to collect some patrons of the local bars who have over-indulged or to break up some fight. Tonight, however, even those aren’t happening.

Emma catches the pen from its latest flight (number forty-eight), her expression twisting into a frown. Thinking of the bars makes her recall the night before, with Wes and his own episode of overindulgence.

She’s been thinking about him all day in one manner or another – what he said about Henry’s book getting to him, the ship painting on his wall identical to the one in the book, to his out of character drinking. A low bubble of unease has been roiling through her stomach all day, something she hasn’t felt since the week leading up to Graham’s death.

Emma had woken up to a polite text of thanks from Wes for getting him home, but her follow-up message to see how he was doing went unanswered. All morning she’d had to resist the urge to drive over to Town Hall to ask him about his strange comments and make sure he was okay. It was only the raised eyebrows of Mary Margaret at the breakfast table and a gentle “you can go check on him if you’re worried” that made her put her phone down and focus on her day ahead instead.

She lets out a deep sigh, and tosses the pen up in the air again. Fine, Mary Margaret is right – she’s worried about him. He was like a different person last night. Sure, everyone gets drunk once in a while, but to then go about Henry’s book and weird dreams?

The similarities to Graham’s behaviour before his death is niggling at the back of her mind again, and the more she thinks about Graham and the circumstances around his untimely death, the worse the churning in her stomach becomes.

Emma tosses the pen up in the air again, forcing her thoughts to count again her repetitive catches instead of swirling into the abyss of uncertainty. Fifty. Fifty-one. Fifty-two. Fifty-three…

She’s up to number eighty-four when the old landline on her desk rings, shrill and demanding, the sound so loud and sudden in the office’s silence that Emma nearly falls out of her chair in surprise. The pen clatters to the ground as she shifts her weight to reach the phone, her chair slamming hard back onto the linoleum as she lifts the receiver.

“Storybrooke Sheriff’s Department, what’s your emergency?” Her voice comes out breathless from her surprise, and she clears her throat. “This is Sheriff Swan speaking.”

“Yes, hello,” replies the voice of a man, half-bleary with sleep but clear with annoyance. “This is Arnold Scuttle, caretaker of the Maritime Museum. I got an alert that the security perimeter around the museum has been breached.”

Emma’s heart sinks. The museum? With its current exhibits full of pirate regalia, where the old timey pirate ship in the painting on Wes’s wall and the storybook is currently moored?

Seriously?

The caller takes her silence the wrong way, huffing out, “You are the sheriff, aren’t you? You see, I’d go myself, but it’s late out and who knows what kind of hoodlum it could be!”

Emma rolls her eyes, but she steadies her own annoyance at the caller before answering. “Yes, I’ll go check it out.” She hangs up before the caller can add anything else, and clambers to her feet. She kicks the stray pen out of her way, distracted by what – or rather, who – she already knows will be waiting for her down at the docks, and sprints out into the quiet night.

______________________________

The harbour is calm tonight, the lapping of the waves against the docks a gentle rhythm. Wes leans against the rough wooden beams of the fence, staring out at the ship moored only a few feet away. He couldn’t see the ship clearly from the main road, but now he can see her, the looming masts and rigging illuminated by the amber glow of the museum’s security lighting.

The entire day he’d spent lost in thought, his head pounding both from a horrible hangover and the thoughts swirling through his mind. A growing feeling of unease and strangeness has consumed him, progressive and insidious, ever since the dreams began, but after seeing this ship that day at the museum with Emma and Henry, it’s magnified tenfold. His day had been fruitless and pointless, his usual accounting numbers a blur, and when he’d come home and when it came time to lie down to sleep again, he’d only slipped into another nightmare.

This one had been of the ship itself. He’d been walking up a gangway towards it, his footsteps barely audible amidst the chirping seagulls and calls of working men, greeting him as the captain of the ship. It was a hot day, and when he’d stepped foot onto the rough wooden planks, an ease settled over him, the most content and peaceful he’d felt in a long time.

But the dream had twisted soon afterwards, to a dreadful storm that sent the ship rocking and the peace evaporating into dread and terror. And, as usual, that had been the cue for him to jolt awake from the dream in a damp sweat.

He was restless, and instead of lying in his bed for countless hours with his mind drenched in nightmares, Wes ventured out into the night. He had no desire to repeat last night’s episode at the bar, which he can only vaguely remembers if he’s being honest. Instead, his feet had led him here, down the small gangway leading to the museum.

Standing here now, in the peace of the night, he’s calmer than he had after the bustling dream. He lingers, leaning against the fence and watching the gentle rocking of the ship. His mind remains unsettled, and not even the sea, which usually relaxes him, is enough tonight.

These nightmares … they’re becoming realer and realer with each one he has. They’re vivid and intense, the latest as clear as if it was a memory. He’s sure that he’s losing his mind but some days, his life as the treasurer has begun to feel more like the dream, whereas the nightmares are the reality.

Bright headlights swing into view from behind him, disrupting his train of thought. A car door slams shut, and Wes squints against the bright light as someone walks down the path towards him. He doesn’t recognize who it as they approach, silhouetted as they are by the headlights behind them, until their voice calls out.

“Wes?”

“Swan?”

It is indeed Emma, her figure coming into view as she steps closer towards him. She’s frowning, one hand lingering at the gun on her belt, and her eyes dart behind him to the ship and back again.

“What are you doing out here?”

Her voice is curt and cool, suspicious and mistrustful, and Wes’s defense rise, rattled at her tone.

“I’m not doing anything. I’m out for a walk.”

“At two a.m.?”

“Is that illegal, Sheriff?” he counters, crossing his arms over his chest, shifting his weight away from the fence. There it is again; the growing indignation at being questioned rearing its ugly head, just as it had at the market a few weeks ago.

Emma shakes her head wearily as her stern expression fades, breaking the growing tension between them. “No, of course not. You tripped the museum’s security alarm, and I got a call to come and see what was going on.”

“Oh,�� he says, and some of the fight evaporates. He glances over to the museum, to the silent ship at the docks, and he shakes his head, trying to return to his senses. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to disrupt your evening. I was just getting some fresh air; I must’ve gotten too close to the museum and set it off.”

Emma regards him silently for a beat, enough to make Wes feel like she’s trying to read his mind, before she inquires, “Are you okay, Wes?”

“I’m fine,” he replies, automatic and insistent. “Why wouldn’t I be?” She raises an eyebrow, glancing at the ship again, and he sighs. She’s perceptive, he’ll give her that. “Well, I suppose I haven’t been sleeping well lately. I was hoping the fresh air may help settle my mind.”

“Still having nightmares?”

Wes starts, blinking once in surprise. “Nightmares – how do – did I tell you?”

“Yeah, you did. Last night.”

He shakes his head in annoyance. Not at her, but at himself. He’d indulged in a vice he thought he’d banished years ago, and of course, he cannot remember a damn thing about the night, other than random flashes of memory – drinking to excess at the bar, Emma’s concerned expression when he almost fell off his stool, her accompanying him home. If he told her about these dreams, who knows what else he may have told her.

“You said they were – they were about Henry’s book,” Emma prompts, though her own voice is hesitant. “With ships and pirates.”

“Aye,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I know it’s stupid, but these dreams … they really are disrupting my sleep.” His brow furrows, feeling at once silly for even letting something like dreams and nightmares affect him so much, and he steps away from the fence, without a backwards glance to the ship. “I’d better go, you’re right, it’s late. Sorry again for disrupting your evening, Emma.”

She is watching him, closely, her eyes slightly narrowed, but then she nods. “That’s okay. Do want a ride home?”

He shakes his head, feeling guilty enough. She must think he’s lost his mind – drinking to a stupor, losing sleep over dreams about a children’s book, and now coming to see an old ship in the middle of the night.

“No, that’s okay. I’ll walk.”

He starts back up towards the main street, and Emma falls into step beside him. “I’ll walk with you,” she says, and she elbows him playfully in his side, and adds, “Lest I get another grumpy call from Mr. Scuttle about someone breaking into take the ship for a midnight sail.”

He rolls his eyes, but does grin to himself as they leave the small pathway leading from the museum, heading back up to the main road. Perhaps she doesn’t think he’s too mad after all then.

Emma turns off her car and lock it as they pass it, the headlights winking out and leaving them in the amber light of the streetlights overhead. They walk in silence for some time, leaving the boardwalk and the museum behind them. His mind is still troubled, even though Emma’s presence at his side feels steady and warm.

The night is dark around them, with heavy clouds obscuring the moon and the stars. Wes, who always had a knack for telling when storms are approaching, can feel rain in the air, and wonders if taking Emma’s car would’ve been a better decision.

He’s proved right only a few minutes later, as they’re reaching the main street of Storybrooke. A blinding flash of lightning explodes in the sky above them, followed instantaneously by a grumbling roar of thunder. The heavens open up above them, rain drops the size of marbles falling heavily from the sky.

“Oh hell,” Emma swears, holding her hands over her head, her hair already drenched by the storm. “Come here, let’s wait this out for a minute.”

They duck into a nearby alcove of one of the shops, but it’s a shelter only for a few minutes. The rain is getting heavier, the streets misty and foggy from its intensity, and the wind is starting to swell and sweep the rain into to the alcove.

“This may go on for a while, so I’ll go on my own,” he says, pulling up his jacket collar to protect himself best he can from the rain without a hooded jacket. “Thanks for coming with me this far, Emma –”

“You’re going to walk in this?” Emma asks dubiously, casting a look out to the street. Another flash of lightning illuminates them, both pale and soaked, before thunder cracks above them again.

“It’s not far,” Wes replies stubbornly. “I’ll make it.”

“Don’t be stupid.” She tugs back him towards her, and points to a building across the street. “We’re so close to my place; come in and wait out the storm. I’ll go get my car when it calms down a bit and give you a ride then. Okay?”

Wes hesitates, but then nods. “Okay.”

______________________________

Emma leads the way through the pouring rain, darting across the main street and avoiding the growing puddles as she goes. Wes follows her zig-zag motion, into the warmth of the lobby. They ascend the stairs together, and Emma unlocks the front door quietly, hoping they don’t disturb Mary Margaret.

Inside, the loft is dark and quiet, the pounding rain echoing heavily against the old windows.

“Mary Margaret?” Emma calls quietly, stepping further into the apartment. A bright flash of lightning, followed by a crack of thunder, illuminates the rooms. In the nook where Mary Margaret sleeps, her bed is empty, her blankets still neatly folded.

Emma frowns at the sight. She’s never known her roommate to be out late at night – Mary Margaret is essentially the definition of a homebody – but she shrugs it away. Emma is sure she’s fine.

“She must be out,” Emma says, and she flips the light switch on near the front door and ushers Wes in. “Come on in.”

Emma takes off her drenched jacket, Wes mimicking her actions. The warmth of the loft is welcome, but her body is chilled from the rain and Emma shivers.

“Do you want a hot chocolate?” Emma asks, hoping that will ease the chills.

“That sounds great,” he replies, and Emma notices he is shivering a bit too. He’s removed his jacket, but his shirt is soaked underneath too.

Emma pauses – she has an old Boston University sweater upstairs that’s always been two sizes too big for her, purchased on a whim several years ago when she was out late one night on a sting in a short dress in the middle of winter.

“Hang on a sec,” she says, and darts up the stairs to her bedroom. She grabs the sweater, after shuffling around in her drawers. Her hair, which she’d been wearing down, is soaking her shirt, so Emma twists it up onto a bun at the top of her head and changes into some dry clothes for herself too before returning down to the kitchen.

Downstairs, Wes is standing near the kitchen, leaning against the counter. He glances over as Emma comes down the stairs, and Emma is struck suddenly by the sight of him there in the middle of her kitchen. In his dark pants and black t-shirt, his dark hair messy and fly-away from the rain; this time when she shivers, it’s not because of the cold.

“I started the water,” he says obliviously, indicating the happily whistling kettle on the stovetop. “But I’m not sure where you keep the hot chocolate mix.”

Emma straightens, and continues down the stairs. “Oh, I’ll get it. Here – this is for you.”

“Thanks, love.”

Emma busies herself with pulling out the hot chocolate powder and two mugs, while Wes pulls on the sweater. When she turns back around, he’s leaning against the counter again, the sleeves of the sweater pushed up to his elbows. The elaborate brace holding his prosthetic is visible now, but instead she’s drawn to the elaborate tattoo on his inner right forearm.

It’s unlike anything she would expect the proper Wes Newport to have – a curved, silver dagger through the centre of a blood red heart, a script of the name Milah wrapped around the heart itself.

“Who’s Milah?” Emma asks, and he glances down to the tattoo. A shadow crosses his eyes, and he shakes the sleeve down over his arm, frowning.

“Someone from long ago,” he responds, voice low. “She’s gone.”

Gone. He doesn’t say the word ‘dead’, but Emma hears it as loudly as if he had, and Emma regrets asking, regrets bringing up the past. She hates when people inquire about her past, and she can tell by Wes’s expression that he is just like her.

“I’m sorry,” she says, for many reasons, and she rests her hand on his left arm. He nods in acknowledgement, a small smile to her.

They sip their hot chocolate in silence for several minutes after that, listening to the heavy rain and the rolling thunder. Seeing him sitting at the kitchen bar, it’s inevitable that Emma’s thoughts return to the night before and his strange statements. She glances over to Wes. He’s twirling his spoon in his hot chocolate, eyes fixed on the kitchen counter, lost in thought.

“Wes,” Emma says cautiously, “Yesterday at the bar … what did you mean when you said Henry’s stories are getting to you?”

Wes’s cheeks redden, and he pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s silly, Emma. I had too much to drink. Forget I said anything.”

But Emma is not going to drop it so easily. She raises an eyebrow at him, and he sighs resignedly.

“Well, I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately. Nightmares, more like. And they’re … well, they remind me a bit of his book. I know he’s troubled and they’re only stories,” he clarifies at Emma’s expression. “But I can’t shake it. These dreams … they’re more than dreams. Makes me wonder if …”

His sentence trails off, but the implication makes Emma’s temper rise. “Don’t say that,” she snaps, setting her mug down, hot chocolate splashing onto the counter. Wes is taken aback, eyes widening, and she continues, her voice shaking with anger, “It’s all – they’re dreams, Wes. Nightmares. People get nightmares, okay? Henry’s book is full of stories, and that’s it! You can’t – you can’t be seriously entertaining –”

“I know that,” Wes interrupts indignantly. “I’m not saying they’re real, Emma –”

“They’re not real,” Emma agrees, raising her voice louder. “They’re just stories! Stories of evil queens and princesses and pirates.”

Wes flinches at the last word, and that’s the last straw for Emma. She moves to the other side of the counter where he is leaning, standing closely opposite him, and demands, “Wes, what are you trying to say?”

“I don’t know,” he replies softly, and there is true, genuine anguish in his voice now. “I don’t know how to explain it … but the dreams they feel real to me, Emma. Like – like they’re not just dreams.”

Emma takes a deep breath, trying to steady herself. “But Wes … the stories aren’t real. This is real. Storybrooke. Here, now. Not – not whatever the hell is in that book.”

“I know,” he says, “I know, Emma.”

Her anger and frustration fades out of her as quickly as they came at his voice, and she is left with a hollow emptiness. She is ashamed – of course, Wes knows the stories aren’t real. Whatever is going on with him is something else, some problem linked to sleep deprivation or stress, not fantastical stories her kid just happens to believe to be real.

Wes is staring at her, his eyes guarded as he waits for her reaction. Emma’s stomach turns with guilt; whatever is going on for him, Wes doesn’t need his friends accusing him of believing in a fantasy either. She swallows hard, and decides then that no matter what, she was going to help him figure this out.

She steps closer to him and rests her hand firmly on his left arm, just above the prosthetic’s brace. “Wes, we’ll figure out what’s going on, okay? I’ll help you figure this out.”

He nods, and his voice is soft when he says, “Thank you, Emma.”

As he looks at her, his blue eyes deep and mixed with relief, Emma realizes how close they are. The air between them seems electrified, as charged as the storm outside, and normally, Emma would break this tension. But as Wes leans closer to her, Emma doesn’t pull away. She’s been skittish when it comes to men for so long, but this feels different. It feels right. Her eyes close as she rests her forehead against his, his damp hair brushing against her skin and sending goosebumps down her arms.

“Emma.”

Her name escapes his lips on a sigh, and he lifts his hand to her face, his fingers cool on her cheek. She angles her face, her lips nearly touching his, and then she becomes vaguely aware of the sound of the front door opening behind them.

There’s a very loud squeak of alarm, and Wes springs away from her like he’s been burned. Emma’s eyes snap to the source of the shriek, and she whirls around, her face starting to burn.

It’s Mary Margaret, standing in the open doorway, an open umbrella in her hands dripping onto the floor, her face beet red and a hand pressed against her mouth.

“I am so sorry,” she says, her eyes as wide as dinner plates as she looks between Wes and Emma. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here.”

Emma is frozen, but Wes is already halfway to the door, picking up his damp jacket and swinging it on, over the Boston University sweater. He looks back to Emma and manages a small smile that has Emma’s stomach filled with butterflies, even in her current state of mortification.

“Goodnight, Emma.”

He turns around and collides right with Mary Margaret, who squeaks again. Emma wants to bury herself alive at this point, and she can’t even watch as Wes and Mary Margaret have a several second awkward dance of trying to get past each other. Finally, Wes manages to sidestep Mary Margaret and with a quick, “Uh, goodnight to you too, Mary Margaret,” he hurries out of the loft, the door shutting firmly behind him.

“I am so sorry,” Mary Margaret says breathlessly the next moment, her eyes wide as she steps further into the apartment. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your date, I didn’t know you guys would be here, I thought you were at work tonight –”

Emma chokes. “This – this wasn’t a date.”

Mary Margaret’s expression shifts from traumatized to amused, and she sends her a very un-Mary Margaret-like glance; Emma’s cheeks burn even more.

“It wasn’t a date!” she insists further. “He was out at the museum, I got a call from the … listen, it’s a long story. And then it started raining, so we came in here to get out of it and talk –”

“Uh huh,” Mary Margaret hums. She leans closer to Emma, a mischievous glint to her eyes. “Talking very close together.”

Emma feels like a goddamn teenage girl, caught by her mother with her boyfriend, and that is a feeling Emma has never felt before in her life. And also – Wes is not her boyfriend.

“I’ve got to get back to work,” she mumbles, desperate to get out of the loft, sidestepping Mary Margaret and grabbing a dry jacket from the hook near the door. “See you tomorrow.”

Mary Margaret is still grinning, but Emma ignores her as she leaves the apartment and down the steps. Outside it’s still pouring, but she’d far rather be out in this torrential downpour than the apartment, where Mary Margaret’s eyes are far too knowing.

______________________________

As dawn approaches, the town of Storybrooke is quiet and sleepy, the only remnants of the previous night’s storm the damp road and dripping street signs. No one is out for the day yet, so Regina walks freely down the main street, jingling her heavy key ring in her hand as she approaches Gold’s pawnshop.

Regina had spent the night in her vault, researching and reading, and she has nearly all she needs to be rid of Emma Swan, once and for all.

She needs one more thing, and she knows exactly where to get it – the pawnshop. The man who has been collecting items for centuries, who knows more about lore and spells than anyone else in all the worlds. After all – he was the one to suggest the curse to her in the first place; if there’s a loophole, he’ll be the one to know.

The little bell above the door at Gold’s pawnshop tinkles as Regina slips her own key into the lock and pushes the door open, ignoring the obvious closed sign hanging in the window. The shop is quiet, dust floating gently through the faint light filtering into the shop from the streetlights.

Regina steps carefully into the shop, the floor creaking under her boots. The shop has always creeped her out – puppet dolls sit under a unicorn mobile, scattered jewellery, and dozens of paintings of various locales and individuals on the walls. All objects from the townspeople before they lost themselves.

Something flashy catches her eye on the central counter, and Regina moves towards it. Amidst scattered objects and papers, resting in a glass display case, is a curved and lethal silver hook.

The hook.

So this is where it ended up; she supposes she shouldn’t be surprised. He’s always liked to collect trophies, and no doubt that this is one of his most valuable. Curious, Regina lifts the lid, but as her fingers brush the hook, a voice speaks from the shadows.

“It’s early for a visit, Madam Mayor,” the slippery, cool voice of Mr. Gold greets. He’s standing in the doorway to the backroom, dressed to the nines in his usual suit and tie, leaning on his cane. “I swear I locked the front door.”

Regina smiles coolly, though she withdraws her hand from the display case. “This is my town, Gold. You know a locked door couldn’t keep me out.”

He smiles back at her, and slinks further into the shop. “Of course, Madam Mayor. Hence, my appearance here this morning. Ah,” he adds, inclining his head at the hook as he steps closer and notices the open display case. “Ms. Swan was here the other day … I was trying to make a point.”

Regina scowls at him, the comment making her temper flare, but she reins it in. He’s taunting her, and she won’t allow him the delight of seeing it get to her.

“I need something from you.”

“I’d gathered as much.”

Regina pauses, choosing her next words carefully. As she explains her plan, that it’s the only way to save Storybrooke in its current form before more damage is done, Gold watches her silently.

When she’s finished and when the proposal is laid out on the table, Gold turns and pulls at one of the framed pictures on the wall. It swings forward to reveal a safe, embedded in the wall itself. He enters the combination and opens it, the door creaky as he opens it. Regina catches a glimpse of a white china teacup and a ratty beige blanket before Gold is shutting it again, a small box in his hand.

“I suppose I have something that can help you.” He places the small box on the table, next to the hook in the display case. “Take this and the hook, and you have what you require.”

“And the hook?”

Gold nods, his eyes flashing. “Something from the world that was – to make sure all goes to plan.”

Regina picks up the small box, which is surprisingly heavy for its size as it fits comfortably in the palm of her hand. “And what do you want for them in return?” she asks coolly. “There’s always a price with you, Gold.”

He chuckles, already beginning to slink back into the shadows of the backroom. “No charge for the items, Madam Mayor. Just remember … magic always comes with a price.”

Regina glares, as her skin prickles and her heartbeat quickens. Magic – it’s the first either of them have acknowledged the word in more than 28 years. They’ve lived in an uneasy alliance for nearly three decades as mayor and pawnbroker, and here they are, more queen and sorcerer than they have been in years.

“Well, whatever the price is for this, I’m willing to pay it. It’s worth it.”

“Infamous last words,” Gold murmurs, with a wry grin. He disappears through the curtain, his final words floating out after him into the quiet shop: “Good luck, your majesty.”

______________________________

For the first time in a long, long time, Wes Newport feels alive.

He’d hardly slept after returning back to his apartment, drenched to the bone from the heavy rain, and all morning he’s been running on too many cups of coffee and adrenaline-fueled sleep deprivation. He went into the office early, but his mind is whirling and he’s unable to focus on his work. Instead, he’s thinking about the night before – about Emma. About her finding him at the docks, taking him back to the loft, giving him her sweater. And, most importantly about her about her promise to help him figure out what is going on.

Sitting at his desk, his fingers hesitate over Emma’s number on his phone, but he changes his mind. She’s probably still asleep after her night shift, and besides … he’s not sure what he’d say over text to her. He’d rather speak in person.

A knock at his office door interrupts his thoughts, and he glances over. It’s Sidney Glass who, without preamble, announces, “The mayor wants to see you.”

Wes resists a sigh, and slips his phone into his jacket pocket. “What’s it about?”

But Sidney Glass is already walking away. A summoning by Regina is never a good sign, but she’s been in a particularly foul mood lately, and he hopes he’s not about to be lectured about the budget again. He knows his work has suffered the past few weeks, his mind scattered and distracted, but he’s in no mood to deal with Regina’s snide remarks about it.

As he’s walking to Regina’s office, lost in thought, suddenly the strangest experience takes over him. Instead of walking down the old oak hallways of Town Hall, he is in a draughty, stone corridor with flickering torches against the walls in the place of fluorescent lights.

He pauses, taking in his surroundings, before his feet begin to move ahead, of their own accord. There are two men standing in front of a two-storey iron door, dressed in all black with swords at their sides. He continues towards them, his step echoing loudly against the cavernous walls around him.

“Halt!” one of the guard shouts, one hand out to stop any further approach, the other to the sword at his belt. “Her Majesty is receiving no visitors today.”

“I am expected.” The words come out of his mouth, unbidden, as if someone else is speaking them.

The guards exchange a look, and one of them grounds out reluctantly, “From where do you hail?”

“From the sea,” he says easily, sauntering towards them without a pause. From the sea, no loyalty to a kingdom, to a ruler, to anyone but himself and the vast ocean.

They are unimpressed, and both shift to block the doorway and his path forward any further. “Not good enough. You could be the god of the ocean himself, but our orders are clear. No visitors.”

He smirks, though he does come to a stop, arms crossed pointedly over his chest, his left arm angled to be very apparent. “As I said, gentleman, your queen is expecting me, and it would be quite the pity for you if she learned you’d tried to delay me.”

One guard’s eyes widen, while the other scowls. They mutter with each other, casting, casting a glance at him, before one shrugs and the other sighs in defeat.

“Fine, go in. If she bites your head off, though, that’s on you.”

He rolls his eyes as they swing open the heavy door, its creaking echoing through the hall. He walks down several more corridors, until he enters a grand chamber, with balconies open down to the dark forest below and rich, gold-encrusted furniture scattered about the room. Regina stands in the centre, on a thick rug, dressed in a red velvet dress with a glittering ruby tiara amongst her long black hair.

“There you are,” she says, irritated. “I’ve been waiting all morning.”

He steps further into the room, but a sudden sense of dizziness overwhelms him then that blurs his vision and makes his head swim. The floor beneath him sways, and he leans heavily against the wall.

“Are you okay?”

He shakes his head, trying to clear the dizziness. It subsides slightly, and when he opens his eyes again, he’s no longer standing in the long hallways of the stone palace, but instead in Regina’s richly decorated black and white office.

“Wes? Are you feeling okay?”

It’s Regina, standing opposite him, just as she was a moment ago, but now she is dressed in her usual black pant suit with short, cropped hair, the gown and crown gone. Her face is twisted in unease, and he blinks.

“I – what just happened?”

“You came in here and almost collapsed. Are you alright?”

He shakes his head, trying to clear his mind – great, so now he’s starting to have dreams – hallucinations? – during the day now too?

“Sorry, no I’m fine. I, uh – you wanted to see me?”

“Yes, I did,” she replies, and she gestures him to step further into the office. “Come in, have a seat – you’re looking pale.”

“What’s this about?” he asks, eager to get out of here and back to his own office as he settles into the rich leather chair opposite Regina’s desk.

“Are you sure you’re feeling alright?” Regina says instead, as she takes her own seat, and Wes resists the urge to sigh.

“I’m fine, really. Just a bit – bit tired this morning.”

Regina regards him, but then nods, apparently satisfied. “Okay. Well, I was reviewing payroll, and I realized your vacation for this year is about to expire. You’ll lose it if you don’t use it, so why don’t you take the next few days off?”

“A vacation?” he echoes, and he frowns. Regina has never suggested he take a vacation before – she’d rather have her employees work 24/7 if she could.

She nods, smiling, but goosebumps rise on his skin at the sight. It’s true, he does need a break – his nightmares and the surrounding events need to get sorted out, and he knows his work has been suffering because of it. But his haunches rise at Regina’s smile – sickly sweet and dark all at the same time.

“You’ve been working hard lately, and deserve a break,” she continues. “Take some time for yourself. Relax, read a book, get some rest.”

Wes has known Regina for many years, has been at her side for her many schemes, and he knows when she’s up to something. Whatever this ‘something’ is, it’s apparent she wants him out of the way here for the next few days. This is what she does when she wants someone out of her way – she sends them off until she’s dealt with whatever is irritating her this time.

There’s no point in questioning her, or arguing. She’s made up her mind, and changing that is harder than changing the tides of the sea.

“Perhaps that is a good idea.”

Her smile widens, warm and gentle, though her eyes remain cold as ever. “Yes, I think so. Go on, head home. I’ll see you in a week’s time.”

She’s beside him then, helping him to his feet as he rises from the chair. Her hands are cold on his arm and at his side even through his jacket, and he sends her a funny glance – Regina is not a touchy person – but she’s stepping away from him just as rapidly, watching him with concerned eyes as if she expects him to collapse again.

He steps away from her, turning back to say goodbye, and then, for another brief, terrifying moment, he’s back in the large stone chamber with its wide balconies and luxurious furniture, Regina dressed as a queen in front of him.

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay, Wes?”

He blinks again, and the image disappears. Regina is watching him, eyes slightly narrowed, and he nods and smiles as reassuringly at her as he can.

“Of course. You’re right, Regina – I think a holiday is just what I need.”

He departs her office without another word, hurrying back to his own. When he’s there, shutting the door firmly behind him, he collapses into his chair, thoughts swimming and swirling. That image of the stone chamber – a palace? – is emblazoned in his mind. It’s familiar, like the ship is … and so familiar Wes is sure that he has been there before.

He doesn’t know what Regina is up to or what this latest dream/hallucination is about or if they’re even connected, but he knows one thing by the twisting of dread in his gut – whatever is going on, it isn’t good. He’s been teetering on the edge of being able to handle this, but now, now that he’s been to this dream world during the day, he knows there’s no more avoiding it. Dreams or not, he needs to figure out what the hell is going on, and he needs to do it now.

#cs ff #cs mc ff #cs fic #captain swan #ouat #from the sea #almost 1 year later i've shown up with starbucks and a new chapter haha #enjoy!!#this chapter was really tricky which is why I think it took me so long #hopefully it's ok

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fucking-zawa-sensei · 6 years ago

Text

Turn on the Stars

Title:Turn on the Stars

WC: 3k+

Summary:

They had a routine.

Hizashi wasn’t quite sure when it started.

They’d never talked about it.

It was just one more thing that made Hizashi feel lucky, one more thing that made him look at Shouta and think the world doesn’t deserve you.

Notes:

This is a belated birthday fic for a dear friend @lisaveeee who is truly deserving of it. Lisa, you are an enormous delight, and I only wish I could bottle up all my love for you and somehow give it to you, show it to you, so you could see just how truly cherished you are. You are incredibly strong and funny and talented. You are always there for me when I need you. You listened to me when I was at my lowest and encouraged me to take chances. You have given me so many smiles and I hope that this fic is able to give you one as well! Happy Birthday, Lisa!

Read it on AO3

Turn on the Stars

They had a routine.

Hizashi wasn’t quite sure when it started. He’s pretty sure it was back when they first decided to room together post graduation, before their separate crushes had been revealed through fumbled, messy confessions and their lives were filled with nothing more than sleepless nights and restless days spent repeatedly trying to make a name for themselves as new pros. In all honesty, age and experience hadn’t changed those habits much. They both still barely slept, were almost constantly overworked, but at least they’d managed to find the time and courage to add some jewelry to their fingers and a mortgage to their shared expenses.

Back then, in their early twenties, he’d barely paid attention to it. He simply knew that when all the caffeine had finally drained from his system, and the crash was coming faster than his heavy limbs could stand, Shouta was always easy to find. When he just couldn’t shoulder the thought of slipping into sleep when people were out there still getting attacked on the streets, when his hero agency had sent him home, telling him “if you really want to keep this internship, you also have to keep your head,” but all it did was remind him he still had so much to improve, Shouta was there.

Time after time, he’d knock at his roommate’s bedroom door and be greeted with a grunt of acknowledgment. He’d push it open and step inside, shucking his jacket and gear and glasses, and crawl up onto the bed. He’d find his place beside his friend, trying not to think about how the few inches between them were still too much for him to bear, and sink into the pillow. Without a single word exchanged, Shouta’s lips would part and he’d begin to read aloud from the book in his hands. They weren’t particularly entertaining stories. There was never any adventure, always some sort of practical book or something to do with history or science. To Hizashi, they were incredibly boring texts.

They made his mind feel numb.

That was exactly what he needed in those moments, as Shouta’s soft voice recited line after line until Hizashi’s eyelids fell shut and his body finally, finally got to rest.

At the time, he’d simply assumed Shouta read before bed every night.

When they’d finally started dating, and sharing a bed became customary, he’d realized this practice wasn’t for Shouta at all.

It had always been for him.

Even at thirty, Hizashi sometimes couldn’t manage to get his mind to shut off long enough for some proper sleep, and after fifteen years in each other’s company, Hizashi supposes he shouldn’t be so surprised that Shouta could practically read his thoughts. Still, it was a little incredible when his husband just knew, and without prompting, would pull out one of those old books, turn to wherever they’d left off, and begin to read to the quiet room until Hizashi’s light snores peppered in between all the spoken text.

They’d never talked about it.

It was just one more thing that made Hizashi feel lucky, one more thing that made him look at Shouta and think the world doesn’t deserve you.

This week had been running them both thin, and Hizashi was beginning to feel that familiar itch, that constant static at the back of his mind that said, here comes another sleepless night. He knew Shouta would be digging around for some history book tonight, was almost planning on it, that is, until he entered the staff room and saw his husband’s head tucked into his arms, face down on his desk.

He shot a side glance at Midnight, but she wasn’t paying attention either, her own eyes closed as she pinched the bridge of her nose. It had been a difficult year, villain attack after villain attack, both inside and outside school grounds. The dorms, which each teacher took shifts supervising, were eating into personal time, as was the increasing criminal activity in every sector of the city. There had been a big practical exam for the first year hero courses today, most of the teachers involved in one way or another. Hizashi had gotten out of it due to the third years’ English final prep course he’d had to develop on the fly last week when it became all too clear some of the young U.A. graduates weren’t going to look very good on paper with their current test scores. Principle Nezu had not been pleased. They couldn’t very well call themselves the best school if their students were all flunking out.

Hizashi gives the staff room a once over. Practically every teacher in the room looked like they hadn’t seen sunlight or a proper meal in a year.

They all needed a break.

As he makes his way over to his husband, and his own desk beside the hunched over man, he knows there’s nothing he can do to help everyone in the room, but certainly, he could do something for Shouta.

Hizashi reaches a hand out, trailing a finger over Shouta’s shoulders, causing the other man to shiver. He sits down in his seat and that messy head of black hair starts to move, shifting until he sees Shouta’s tired eyes, a little more pink than usual, staring at him from between the loose strands. Hizashi brushes them away gently, Shouta’s eyes fluttering shut for a moment as he does so. Their marital status was no secret, though they certainly didn’t flaunt it, in the same way their coworkers didn’t get more than a peck on the lips from their partners when they came to drop something off or pick them up for lunch on occasion.

Shouta sighs when Hizashi pulls his hand back.

He opens his mouth and Shouta’s gaze shifts to it. He almost asks, long day? It’s incredibly obvious it had been, so he thinks better of it, going instead with, “Just a little bit longer and we’re out here of here, babe.” He whispers the words, leaning in close.

Shouta’s eyelids slowly fall closed.

“I finished grading,” he mumbles out.

“Oh wow, good job!” Hizashi exclaims, genuinely surprised. His own work had been piling up relentlessly.

“Mhm…” Shouta hums. “Let me know when you’re done and we can go.”

Hizashi tilts his head, frowning in question. As if sensing the minute shifting of air around the blond’s body, Shouta answers without prompting, “I shifted some assignments around. Figured we could both use a break tonight.”

Hizashi’s frown deepens.

Of course Shouta was already twelve steps ahead of him. The other man probably ordered takeout and had a movie picked out for later too.

Pouting, Hizashi opens his desk drawer to bring out the grading he hadn’t finished yesterday. He sets the heavy folder down and flips it open. Shouta shuffles next to him and he turns to see his husband burrowing into his arms, getting a little comfier, settling in.

Hizashi looks back down at the tests.

Gritting his teeth, he shuts the folder and pushes out of his chair.

Shouta’s head lifts up immediately, an eyebrow raised when he turns to look at Hizashi.

“I’m ready, let’s go.”

“What? I thought you had more to do,” Shouta asks, looking down at the large stack of papers.

“It can wait.”

“Can it?”

Hizashi bites the inside of his cheek.

The kids were already failing, right? What was one more day not knowing if they improved on the last test?

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine!” he answers, smacking on a grin and waving it off. “Come on! Let’s go before we both end up falling asleep here.”

Shouta looks like he very much doubts Hizashi’s answer, and rightfully so, but the scruff on his chin that is bordering on a light beard at this point, and the darker bags under his eyes, both win out over his desire to insist Hizashi complete his duties. The other man slowly rises, and Hizashi doesn’t miss the way his hand shakes a bit in the air before it meets the back of his chair when he pushes himself up.

He’s more exhausted than I thought, Hizashi frowns, watching carefully at how Shouta’s body bends to reach his bag. When the erasure hero turns back around, he makes sure a private, gentle smile is waiting for his husband.

Shouta returns it easily, despite his spent energy.

“Come on,” Hizashi says, tugging at his sleeve.

They tell their coworkers goodnight, wishing them luck on their various arduous tasks, and head home. They get a quick dinner from Lunch Rush in the cafeteria, neither really feeling like waiting for food or making their own, Shouta having not ordered takeout after all. Shouta sleeps against the passenger side mirror, letting out little grunts and mumbles every time the car stops and starts at stop lights and stop signs. It makes Hizashi wish they lived in a more rural area, so he could just let Shouta get some proper rest.

It’s alright, though, he has plans for that.

It was Shouta’s turn to be doted on, to be cared for. Hizashi did his best to keep his husband happy and healthy, but their work lives didn’t always leave a lot of room for extra indulgences. So they made time for them. They carved out spaces in their lives for one another even when time and responsibility fought them at every turn.

Because that’s what you do when you love someone.

Hizashi looks over at Shouta’s sagged frame, snoring quietly, and reaches out a hand, placing it on his husband’s leg for a moment, just above the knee, to stroke his thumb in a soothing circle.

That’s what you do, what Shouta had always done for him.

It was his turn.

When they get home, Hizashi jostles the other man awake and they make their way inside. They don’t say much, both going to the bedroom to get dressed down and wash off the day’s grime. Sometimes that was nothing more than a quick rinse to get off all the germs that seemed to follow teenagers around, and other times it was a more involved process, like when Shouta plans a demonstration for the hero course involving the faculty.

Thankfully, today was a fairly easy day for Hizashi, having missed the hero course activities, but while he was combing out his hair, Shouta let him know he’d be taking a longer bath tonight. Whether that was for sore joints, a few punches from one of the students he hadn’t quite been able to dodge, or just a desperate need for relaxation, Hizashi didn’t know.

When he’d gotten all the hairspray and gel out, though, he slipped into the tub with Shouta and rattled on about nothing, just to fill the silence, to see the way Shouta’s lips perked up with a delicate smile when Hizashi told him about some prank his intern had tried to pull this week.

The bath seems to seep some of the rigidness from Shouta’s body and Hizashi is happy to run his hands, draped in one of their puffy towels, over those scarred shoulders and have a content sigh fall from Shouta’s lips this time. When he moves the cloth away, he briefly kisses Shouta’s upper back, peeking out from behind his damp hair to stare at his husband’s eyes in the reflection of their mirror. Shouta’s upper cheeks are flushed from the warm bath water, his eyes drooping, blinking a little more than usual. It’s obvious he’s already on the verge of sleep.

Hizashi ushers him along into the bedroom and pulls out some comfy sweatpants for both of them. When Hizashi turns around, stretching his arms out above his head and popping his back, he sees Shouta reaching for one of the many books tucked away in the cubby beneath his nightstand.

Before the other man can take a seat on the bed, he says, “Wait!”

Shouta jumps a bit and turns to look at Hizashi, who is covering his mouth with his hands, realizing he’d sounded more frantic than what he’d intended.

“S-sorry,” he laughs out, lowering his hands. Shouta raises a brow, but otherwise doesn’t comment. “Can you...can you uh...go make us a snack?”

Shouta looks at the clock. It’s already past 9 PM.

“Just something little, you know? Maybe some tea? Something sweet?” Hizashi asks, tilting his chin down and jutting out his bottom lip.

Shouta relents, setting the book on the bed. “I think we might have some frozen mochi. Is that good enough?”

Hizashi smiles and nods, throwing his arms open in an arc, requesting a hug, which Shouta easily slips into. He’s pleased when he feels the other man’s scruff drag against his cheek before a kiss is placed there.

Shouta backs away and heads for the door and Hizashi waits only a few moments before jumping into action. He knows he doesn’t have much time. As quietly as possible, he walks out of the room and ducks into the guest room next door, pulling the many decorative pillows and large comforter off the bed. He drags the items back to their room, pausing briefly, a smaller pillow corner in his mouth, arms already stuffed full of the others, when he hears Shouta call out.

“Strawberry or green tea mochi?”

“Hm-een Te-mm.”

“What?” the voice gets louder and Hizashi panics, opening his mouth and letting the pillow drop.

“Green tea!” he shouts quickly.

The floor creaks around the corner and then he hears Shouta moving away.

“Okay.”

“Thanks, baby!”

Hizashi kicks the dropped pillow into their room and shuffles in with the rest, making sure to close the door behind him without making too much noise. Looking at his pile, though, he realizes he isn’t going to have enough time.

He opens the door and shouts, “Can you use the kettle to heat up the water? I think it tastes better than the microwave!”

He hears a grunt from the kitchen, probably Shouta rolling his eyes, but no further complaints. He takes this as an affirmative and quickly gets to work, pulling harshly at the edge of their comforter to free it from where it is tucked into the bottom of the bed.

---

Shouta barely manages to save the mochi before it falls to the ground, the plate he’d had resting on his forearm, two mugs in his hands, tipping precariously. He’s lucky he is standing by the counter, the soft little green desserts rolling onto the clean surface rather than the floor. He sets the mugs down and gathers them back onto the plate. Assessing the situation, and deciding he doesn’t particularly want to try holding two mugs of boiling hot tea in one hand and risk burns on an already stressful day, he rummages around in their cabinets until he finds the tray Hizashi had used a few anniversaries ago when he’d made Shouta breakfast in bed.

Speaking of, he hears a creak from their bedroom again.

He’s not sure what Hizashi is up to in there, the tea and desserts were an obvious excuse from the moment the words left the blond’s sheepish mouth, but Shouta was willing to play along. He wanted to see what Hizashi thought he was being so clever about. So he took his time making the drinks, letting the tea steep. He hadn’t even been considering using the microwave when Hizashi had insisted he didn’t.

Now, about twenty minutes have passed and he’s officially about of reasons to hang out in the kitchen.

He sets everything on the tray and starts slowly toward their bedroom, hoping he’d bought his husband enough time for whatever he had planned.

“Hizashi,” he says, raising his voice to be heard over the shuffling just beyond the door. “Let me in, my hands are full.”

“Just a sec!”

Shouta lets out a soft sigh and smiles down at the mochi. While he gravitated towards small, quiet displays of affection, Hizashi was one for large, impossible to miss ones. Shouta quite enjoyed their different styles of love.

He wouldn’t have married the man if he didn’t.

He waits patiently outside until the knob jostles and Hizashi’s face pokes out around the door. His face is a little pink, as if he’d been working hard, and more questions start popping up in Shouta’s mind.

“I uh...I thought we could do something a little different tonight,” Hizashi says.

With that, he steps away and pulls the door open, moving to the side to present the room to Shouta.

What he sees makes his eyes go wide and his mouth pop open.

Hizashi had always made the most of every minute, but this was unbelievable. In the brief moments Shouta had given him while preparing their snack in the kitchen, the blond had miraculously transformed their bedroom.

From the foot of the bed, Hizashi had draped several blankets over their desk chair, the computer chair from the office, a hamper, and what appeared to be one of the nightstands. The blankets were parted at the front. Inside were piles and piles of pillows, every single one from their bed, and all the little textured and patterned ones of every shape and size from the guest room next door.

The large, comfy looking pillow fort was not the most impressive part.

It was the thousands of sparkling, beautiful stars twirling over every inch of the hideaway and sneaking out from the cracks in the blankets to fill the surrounding walls and ceiling of their darkened room.

It was the well-used, dog eared, cracked binding copy of the History of Tool Crafting he’d read to Hizashi nearly every week when they’d first moved in together, sitting open to where he’d last left off among the pillows.

Shouta feels the tray in his hands shift and tears his eyes away from the twinkling scene to look down and see Hizashi’s hands gently sliding the food from his grasp. His gaze shifts up to his husband’s face, now covered in stars too, eyes brighter than he’d ever seen them, two little curved crescents as Hizashi beams at him.

Just like that, as Hizashi takes the burden from between his fingers the same way he takes so much else, the weight of the week is lifted.

“Zashi…”

“Hmm?” Hizashi questions as he brings the tray over to the fort and sets it inside. The mugs clink a bit, but otherwise nothing spills.

Shouta watches as his husband crawls in as well, settling among the pillows, picking up the book to pat the space next to him. On any other day, he might roll his eyes, tell Hizashi this is so unnecessary, put up some sort of grumpy fight just to concede and admit he loves it.

Tonight, though, it’s perfect.

It’s exactly what he needs.

It’s a tremendous gesture that has Shouta’s heart skipping happily in his chest.

He closes the bedroom, making the room a little darker, the stars a little brighter, and crouches down to slip beneath the blanket roof. He lies down beside Hizashi, careful not to hit the tray of food, and wriggles around until he’s comfortable, settling in and wrapping an arm around Hizashi’s shoulder, pulling the blond close against his side. Hizashi’s warmth feels wonderful against him, some part of his brain already beginning to clock out, thinking, you’re safe, you’re home.

He takes the book from Hizashi’s lap and opens it with the hand not slowly stroking its fingers up and down Hizashi’s waist. He leans into the other man and feels the blond snuggle in closer, turning onto his side a bit and throwing a leg over one of Shouta’s. Hizashi slips one of his arms behind the small of Shouta’s back and the other over his front, rubbing slowly over Shouta’s belly with his thumb. Every miniscule movement is relaxing, soothing, and after all the years of bringing out this book to calm Hizashi’s racing mind, to lull his lover to a proper rest, he thinks he might be the one dozing off a few minutes in this time.

Shouta turns to where they’d last left off, but pauses before he begins reading. Looking over at Hizashi and then leaning in to kiss his temple.

The blond smiles up at him.

“This is amazing, Zashi. Thank you.”

“Anytime, baby,” Hizashi says, then pushes up a bit to reach Shouta’s lips, pressing them together gently. When he pulls away, he whispers, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Shouta answers.

Hizashi shifts positions, sitting up slightly and causing Shouta to sink lower against his side. He rests his head on the blond’s shoulder and feels the weight of Hizashi’s fall gently atop his. Finally, he looks down at the text on the page, it taking a few minutes to focus, his vision already getting blurry around the edges.

Yeah, he wasn’t going to last too long.

Still, he begins reading aloud, his own low, monotone voice feeling a thousand miles away in his ears. He hardly registers what he’s saying, feeling only the slow, consistent rise and fall of Hizashi’s chest against him, the dragging of his husband’s thumb along his waist.

He begins to think he could spend his whole life here, under these blankets and stars, Hizashi’s warmth seeping into his muscles and bones, and never once get tired of it.

This was all he could ever want.

---

The book starts to fall backwards in Shouta’s hands, the pages having not been turned even once, as his husband’s fingers begin to loosen their grip. Hizashi catches it before it falls, holding back a chuckle as he feels Shouta’s weight get a little heavier against his side as the other man falls asleep.

It had to be a record.

Shouta had read two and a half sentences.

Hizashi pulls the book from the other man’s hands, closing it and setting it aside while trying to keep as still as possible. He pulls one of the blankets he’d left in a pile next to him just for this purpose over their bodies. Shouta wriggles a bit, lying lower, and Hizashi sinks down with him.

Tonight, he’s not going to need some boring book to shove away all the worries of his work, all the nagging duties he’d left back at the school or his studio or agency.

No, he felt light and happy, his brain flooded with memories just like this.

Moments of perfect silence, with Shouta filling all the empty spaces, bringing him back down to Earth, chasing away all the responsibilities and fear and pain, and replacing them with something else.

He reminisces about all those little moments like this, beneath the stars in one way or another, replacing them with love, with peace, with rest.

#erasermic fanfiction #erasermic #maizawa #eraserhead #present mic #yamada hizashi #aizawa shouta #bnha #mha

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foxofthedesert · 6 years ago

Text

How to Tame a Siren | A DinahSiren Arrow FF

So, like every other DinahSiren shipper, I loved the scene after Laurel's petition to have Oliver released is denied and Dinah stops her from going after the judge. Dinah has some pretty impressive Siren calming skills, so I wanted to explore that in the setting of an established relationship.

If you’d rather read/comment on AO3, click here.

"Fuck!"

Bursting up from the sofa, Laurel heaves the notepad in her hand clear across the apartment, shouting into the effort with almost enough force to trigger her sonic ability. For what must be the fifteenth time this evening, she had read through an amended opening statement for the trial due to start tomorrow morning only to find it yet again utterly inadequate. Which in turn made her feel inadequate. Which then made her angry.

This trial is by far the most critical of her career. It is make or break stuff, really, of the sort that could catapult her from a zealous state D.A. into the realm of public political stardom. The potential to extend her sphere of influence into the elusive halls of power is too tempting to resist when Mayors, State Reps, and Governors – hell, even a few prominent US Senators – were made from emerging victorious in similarly high profile spectacles. Being District Attorney of a metropolitan area has certainly afforded her a tantalizing sample of what real power tastes like, and she has wantonly indulged herself in the heady flavor, but there is no sense in denying she wants more. The limited prestige of local prominence is not enough. Her desire to join the exclusive ranks of the political elite only intensifies the closer she gets to breaking through the threshold of a ceiling that appears increasingly less impenetrable. Just because she has mostly bottled up her dark side does not mean she has ceded her ambitions. First meta-human President sure does have a nice ring to it, after all.

Since giving up the unrivaled adrenaline rush of hunting down enemies then mercilessly disposing of them, Laurel has needed to focus those chaotic energies into more productive outlets. Joining Oliver's gang of mostly insufferable do-gooders proved an ineffective option, as such selfless service could never satisfy her ferocious, ultra-competitive drive. Oh, she tried suiting up for a while as a means to sate her frequent urges to commit violence, but found it to be at best a stop-gap solution. Fighting did help, and still does, to mollify the malefic creature crawling beneath her skin everyone so lovingly refers to as Black Siren, just not enough.

Sadly prowling the shadowy streets of Star City and pummeling members of the criminal element she once would have casually commiserated with had one glaring flaw: every night when her patrol was done she had to go home and try to stuff Siren back into the little square box labeled: DANGER MONSTER INSIDE, DO NOT OPEN. On a good day of pretending to be someone she isn't, that box barely survives the inexhaustible fury of the prisoner it was specifically constructed to contain.

The only alternative to giving in to the insidious temptation to become Black Siren again was to supplement the lackluster approach of vigilantism by funneling some of that excess energy into her day job. So that's what she has done, having adopted a method of practicing law that mirrors her no-holds-barred approach to fighting. Ruthless, aggressive, largely merciless, occasionally reckless, always a sharpened blade in hand ready to be metaphorically driven home. These were some of the descriptive words and phrases she has heard attributed to her tenure as District Attorney, meant as criticism by her opponents and praise by her supporters. Whether offered as complimentary or disparaging, she embraces them all wholeheartedly. Ultimately she is who she is and forever shall be, only now she focuses on being an edgy, remorseless, vindictive, judgmental, angry person in the courtroom so she can just be Laurel at home.

That said, she would be lying to insist she never wishes to return to the simplicity of Siren's outlook on life. Being a good guy is hella complicated and terribly stressful. There is an undeniable advantage to not giving two shits about anyone other than herself. Doing the right thing is so often thankless and contradictory to her temperament that she suffers from far more anxiety than she ever did causing mayhem whilst arrayed in the signature black leather and fishnets. Some mornings she finds it hard to force herself out the front door of the apartment for the gigantic knot of caustic dread that has taken up residence in her belly. But she has yet to let that irrational angst defeat her, in no small part thanks to the stubbornness that makes her a survivor. That, and there is one very special person for whom she would do almost anything who does not allow her to surrender to her worst characteristics or her very real fears.

On nights like tonight, though, when she is frustrated beyond all reckoning and has been bullied to the bleeding edge of her tolerance with the expectation placed upon her to do things the 'right way,' preventing a full blown Siren-apocalypse tests the limits of her carefully developed self-control. And when she is arguing with herself internally like she is right now? Yeah, that doesn't help at all. Doesn't bode well for her sanity, either.

What the hell are you doing, you deluded moron? The villainous part of Laurel's psyche is being so excessively obnoxious tonight that she is unable to ignore it. You're no Clarence Darrow. Hell, Gomez Addams is more qualified than you are for this shit. You know what that means, don't you? It means you're gonna fuck this up just like you do everything else. It means you're gonna make a fool of yourself in front of some of the most powerful people in the entire country in addition to those sappy morons you've started hanging out with. It also means a killer is gonna walk free. Good thing it would be oh-so-easy to make sure that never happens! Betcha a crisp Nixon or whoever the hell is on a hundred here it wouldn't be hard to intercept prisoner transpo and take care of that problem. Permanently.

"No! I can't. I won't..." Shaking her head frantically, Laurel is as much frustration over her internal dialogue with an imaginary version of her worst self as she is over responding audibly to the obvious goading. Agitated past the point of reason, she begins to pace the area in front of the sofa like a captive tiger whose juicy meal was left just out of reach of her chains. To ward off a total meltdown, she slips into the tried and true method she was taught to master the monster within.

"First," Ollie had told her taking up a very convincing zen pose, "close your eyes and envision a harbor of peace, somewhere you are totally safe. Somewhere you feel secure enough to allow yourself to be vulnerable. A place that you can be your true self, absent of all baggage weighing you down and as in touch with your former innocence as is possible. See it? Good. Now go there. Immerse yourself in your surroundings. Let the familiarity and serenity and warmth seep into your bones and wash away the fear and rage."

That part was always easy enough for Laurel. When she first started training in Oliver's regimen, she used to envision her house on Earth-2 back before her mother miscarried after an accident and her parents started fighting all the time, then divorced a couple years later, and soon after her father crawled head first into the bottle. Back then, she was exactly like every other happy little girl in America. Mommy's angel and Daddy's pride and joy, she was celebrated for her advanced intellect and a gift for language that manifested early alongside a clear affinity for mediation and a prodigious grasp for very vague concepts of justice. She can remember her Mom and Dad playfully arguing about whose footsteps she would follow in. Was she going to become a career academic like her Mom? Or a cop like her Dad? They never could agree. In the end, Laurel landed somewhere between all on her own, not that it mattered when her idyllic life came to a screeching halt not long after her eighth birthday. But the memory of that former happiness was enough to center her in the midst of the storm of unfettered darkness that was Black Siren.

Like Ollie, however, she has since moved on from that initial visualization. Her refuge is no longer a place but a person.

Dinah.

Just the thought of that name creates a puddle of warmth low in Laurel's belly that swirls wonderfully northward. Once reaching her chest, it then spreads into her arms and fingers, which begin to tingle with anticipation that will have to wait til later for fulfillment.

Her eyes slide shut involuntarily as she imagines Dinah in all of her glory – olive skin that is every bit as soft as it looks, thick curly brown hair she envies as much as she loves, entrancing green eyes that reveal the mysteries of the universe to an infinitely curious mind, and sinfully lush lips turned up in a smile only she gets to see. A distinctive smell washes over her as the very human vision of her haven coalesces within the mist of her memory, cherries and the subtle hint of Tom Ford Jasmin Rouge, and it is accompanied by the feel of warm fingers and palms sliding against and caressing the bare flesh of her arms, shoulders, sides, hips, and along the small of her back. Shivering at the ghost of a touch for which she has acquired an insatiable addiction, she also hears a slightly husky yet alluring feminine voice whose dulcet tones are capable of penetrating any resistance constructed by a heart that has been abused so many times there is no reckoning the wounds. That voice – Dinah's unmistakable voice – is telling her to be strong, is encouraging her with reminders of all the good she's done since rejoining the wider world, and comforts her with assurances that she is loved and always will be.

Like the arrival of a gentle morning tide, Laurel feels calm wash over her and her monstrous side recedes a step into the darkness.

"Next," Oliver would say, "concentrate on regulating your breathing and then focus on bringing your heart rate down. Elevated BP and oxygen supply to the brain only fuels the runaway chain chemical reaction going on. Control is what we are after, so strive for it with single-minded tenacity."

Again, easy enough, though primarily thanks to her gorgeous, heroic, compassionate, unshakable anchor – the woman in whom she has learned to trust and for whom she would take on the whole world. Taking slow, deep breaths, Laurel hones in on the sound of her heartbeat and then compares it with the memory of the one steadily beating beneath her ear most nights. That gentle thrumming cadence, so reliable and soothing, is a unique pacifier that has proved a startlingly effective cure to chronic insomnia.

Funny, she never believed books and movies that made romance out into some mythical cure to all the ailments of the human condition. She still doesn't about a lot of it. Not only do her psychological scars preclude her from such vapid sentimentality, experience has taught her that love can often be every bit as destructive as it is some wholesome force with only benevolent intentions and outcomes. There was a time in the not-so-distant past in which love inspired her to commit atrocities she will never atone for or forget, acts of such unfathomable depravity they eat away at her restored conscience to the point she has started wrenching awake from the throes of a vivid nightmare recounting on of them. And in the present, love has yet to cure her infrequent depressive fits any more than it has rid her of the endlessly reoccurring compulsion to murder the terminally moronic legal-lackeys who annoy her on a daily basis. But! She has discovered, to her immense delight, that popular media was right about one thing. It really is so much easier to fall asleep ensconced in the strong arms of the one person she loves more than anything or anyone else while listening to said person's heartbeat.

Unbidden yet beyond her capacity to resist, Laurel's lips quirk up into an amused smile. Felicity was so insufferable when Laurel admitted to Dinah turning her into a cuddle bug because a girl's night ended up with her having too liberally imbibed the delicious spirits served at their favorite 'friend date' haunt. A few other tidbits about herself also slipped free that night. One of them was of a particularly intimate nature and involved a graphic description of her all time favorite taste and smell, which got her into so much fucking trouble less than a week later because Felicity is literally incapable of keeping a secret, especially when in company with one Curtis Holt who has flipped his gossip switch on.

Lord have mercy! But isn't Dinah a splendorous vision when she's royally pissed off.

"Having restored a sense of equilibrium," Oliver would instruct once the first two phases were complete, "carefully corral the monster inside into a place from which it can't escape. There is no other option than compartmentalizing. Believe me, I've tried everything else. Embracing the monster only gives it validation and power over you that you will find nearly impossible to regain. Ignoring it will only feed it's rage. And trying to lock it away forever will only make it all the more vicious and bloodthirsty when it inevitably escapes imprisonment. No, the only way to deal with what people like you and I have to deal with is to control it fanatically. That means intensively training to unleash it with purpose instead of reckless abandon, very much like a weapon, and at all other times strictly segregating it. So put it in a box or toss it in a cage or seal it away in a cell, never lose track of the key, and then keep a close watch on it until the next moment arrives when you need it again.

This is the hardest part. Not because Siren doesn't go into her cage like she's been conditioned to, but because Laurel always feels bad about banishing that part of her into such desolate isolation. Without it, she probably would not have survived the repeated traumas she endured without going batshit insane.

Being Black Siren was not always the study in mustache-twirling villainy as it was when she relocated to this Earth. At first, she was on a crusade to secure righteous retribution for her father and Ollie and all the broken, hapless, vulnerable prey like her who succumbed to one or many of the soulless sharks circling the chummed waters in the wake of a personal tragedy. If only she knew what she does now, that revenge never goes as planned, is never as satisfying as one hopes it will be, and ultimately leads one down a rabbit hole of infinite darkness.

When killing Brett Collins – the drunken bastard responsible for her father's death – didn't quench the hatred that had taken root in her heart, she started hitting the streets on a regular basis. Before long, and with the help of an assassin named Sandra who took an unusual interest in her, she was learning how to fight with more than just her meta ability. Encounters with targets got progressively more out of control until she was not only either putting them in the hospital or the morgue, but she lost her ability to differentiate between just punishment and violence for the sake of personal pleasure. By the time Zoom coerced her into his cohort of meta-terrorists, there wasn't much left of the Laurel who was once the biggest daddies girl to ever live and who would have gladly endured a thousand scourgings or literally ran through fire for her beloved Ollie.

If only she could go back in time and tell her younger self how futile that path was, how empty and deprived of meaning her life became, she could have been spared so much unnecessary pain and so many avoidable stains on her conscience. Sadly, time on goes in one direction unless one is conscripted by an intergalactic agency with honest-to-God H.G. Wells time machines. Sara would not look kindly upon theft of The Waverider, even it was for a very good cause by her sister's doppelganger. Nor is Laurel is inclined to undertake such an endeavor. She has many regrets, far more than she can process at any one time, but the desolate highway of anguish she trod to get to where she is also made her who she is. And while she is not always at peace with the countless sins she has committed and never will be, she is unwilling to give up what she so serendipitously stumbled upon here in the Star City of Earth-1. With Dinah Drake of all people.

Three years ago, she would have laughed until her stomach hurt if someone would have suggested she would refuse to trade the sanctimonious bitch extraordinaire she first met on Lian Yu even if tempted with the opportunity to get either her father or her Ollie back – or both. And yet here she is, confidently acknowledging she would do just that without so much as a twinge of self-recrimination or guilt.

Dinah is, without question, the best thing that has ever happened to her, and there is nothing she won't do to keep from fucking up what they have. She can't say that about anyone else. For Quentin, Laurel had let her true self peek through the curtain of protection over her heart that was Black Siren, was even willing to let that self share the spotlight with her villainous alter ego. But for Dinah, she learned how to put Siren in a gigantic, cold, black box only to ever let her out when she's useful. There are no words to describe how huge a deal taking that leap was for Laurel. No one really would or could understand it except for Dinah and Oliver, both of whom appreciate her sacrifice to varying to degrees.

Oliver has a monster of his own to contend with and, since he agreed to train her how to deal with hers, no longer looks at her with that judgmental loathing and disappointment that once tainted their every interaction. Hell, he has even come to respect her for what she can offer beyond her rival combat skills and vague similarities to the Laurel he lost because he knows her daily struggles better than anyone else. They have developed a tentative friendship that neither are in a rush to experiment with for fear of triggering the other's traumatic memories of lost loved ones that wear their faces. To them, this amiable detente is working wonderfully, therefore it is perfectly sufficient.

Dinah, though...well, Dinah was the first member of the Team Arrow clique to care for the Laurel that is without any ulterior motives underscoring her overtures. It Dinah's unexpected and numerous offerings of support or encouragement that kept Laurel from making some mistakes that might well have re-immersed her in the ocean of hate, bitterness, and rage that was Black Siren. Dinah also had experience with taking out her pain on those who perpetrated it, has spilled blood and killed with her abilities in the pursuit of revenge. One of the people who hurt Dinah the worst was, in fact, Laurel, and that she was able to forgive Laurel for Vinny even a little bit spoke to the absolute strength of her character. A lot of vigilantes squawk about being heroes and set about proving how awesome they are with their fists or guns or knives or bows and arrows. Dinah proved she was a hero by showing compassion to the person for which she had the least reason to do so. To a practiced pessimist like Laurel, that alone made Dinah worth trusting, worth embracing, worth appreciating...worth loving. So when to her shock and inconceivable joy Dinah admitted to returning her seemingly hopeless affections, there was no way in hell she was gonna miss the chance to seize an opportunity she knew instinctively would develop into a once in a lifetime love. And it has been exactly that.

Objectively speaking, Laurel is fully aware she has no right to be as happy as she is. Thing about is she is too happy to care. So what if some of Dinah's friends on Team Arrow still don't trust her. So what if public opinion of their relationship is not always rosy. So what if their problematic history rears its ugly head and they fight like dogs and cats every now and then. So what if the whole fucking world disapproves of what they have. So long as Dinah is healthy and happy, anyone who has a negative opinion about their relationship can take a really short walk off a very tall bridge. Including Siren, who bitches and moans at every opportunity about how soft and pathetic she's become, like she is right now at this very moment. Sometimes Laurel is tempted to consult with Caity Snow about how best to address unwelcome snark from an alter ego. Or a therapist to deal with what might be a serious psychological disorder...

Tough shit, you salty bitch. Time to go back in the hole, Laurel tells Siren as she mentally escorts her darker self, bound hand and foot, to the ebony container she erected in her mind.

Once the beast is safely back in her inescapable box, Laurel returns to the task at hand. This opening statement has to be perfect and by God it will be. She promised a little girl named Susie that the man who took her Mommy and Daddy away would never hurt anyone else ever again. That's a promise she has no intention of breaking. And if successfully prosecuting this case propels her to a notoriety she can advantageously employ to further her career? All the better.

So I'm Meredith Brooks with a functional brain and better hair. Go ahead and sue me. She chuckles under her breath at her own joke.

Determination renewed, Laurel fetches the discarded notepad and deposits herself back on the sofa with renewed purpose. She has an important promise to keep and lofty future prospects to secure. That in mind, she sets about achieving both with a determination that matches the gleam in her eye.

"By the time I'm through, that jury will be eating out of the palm of my hand," she comments to the empty apartment, then begins to read once more

With a sigh of relief, Dinah pushes her key into the lock of her apartment door. God, it's good to be home.

All day long she's been a gigantic ball of stress. Three active, high profile cases have taken up permanent residence on her desk, demanding her attention which is already spread thin. Not only is she having to keep a close eye on the progress being made by six detectives and the entire forensics team, but she is also juggling quarterly performance evaluations on top of the Mayor's request-that-wasn't-a-request to conduct a thorough review of department spending in an effort to streamline the budget. All of that on top of her second job, unpaid by the way, patrolling the streets of Star City as the Black Canary means Dinah is way past due for some down time. Thankfully the end of her current circus act is in sight. An arrest was made today in one of the cases and she signed off on the last of the evaluations. Another two days and the budgetary review will be completed. Once that's done, she intends to take an entire week of vacation and God help anyone who dares to stand in her way.

The only problem with that plan is a certain blonde who has been perhaps the largest drain on Dinah's emotional and psychological reserves. Laurel is under even more pressure than she is, as impossible it seems, and has been working herself stupid since landing the case of the Governor's slain son and daughter-in-law. Dinah can't remember the last time she arrived to what would ordinarily be a relaxing evening at home with her partner of eighteen months.

Normally Laurel would be flitting about the kitchen while doing her best to cook an edible dinner, her golden hair twirled up into a messy bun, dressed in comfy attire like leggings and a loose, off the shoulder sweater or a raggedy old tee. That, or she would be sprawled out on the couch watching MMA or whatever live boxing match might be on, take-out waiting for them both on the dining table. Strangely enough, while Laurel was deadly serious about her job, she is not the type to bring work home with her. This case ended that preferable trend. It has consumed her to a frightening degree. Even when she's at home, her nose is in a law book or she's pouring through case files to find avenues through which to attack the insufferably smug in his wealth and privilege scumbag who – while clearly deranged and guilty as hell – has the best team of defenders dirty money can buy.

To be honest, Dinah is torn between feeling intense pride in Laurel's obsession for justice and a very real concern that said obsession might precipitate a backslide into dangerous habits that don't lead anywhere good. While she has long since forgiven Laurel for what went down with Vince, has even fallen so far beyond head over heels in love with her, a malicious specter lingers upon the horizon. Black Siren, while distant, is forever a threat to the mostly normal and incredibly happy life they have built together. Dinah knows all too well that for people like her and Laurel who have binged upon the sickly sweet delicacies offered by the worst aspects of human nature, succumbing to those old addictions is ever a single taste away.

For the past two weeks she's lain awake in their bed at night until exhaustion finally pulled her under the cresting waves of slumber, unable to fall asleep swiftly as she usually does due to slightly irrational fretting over Laurel's deteriorating mental state. Staring endlessly at Laurel's face, relaxed in repose but still troubled by demons that haunt her dreams, does nothing to quell the creeping panic that seems intent on digging further beneath Dinah's skin with every minute doubt or fear. Never has she been so invested in another person. Not even Vince. And that, more than anything else, is what fuels intense, paranoid fantasies of losing Laurel.

There is no accounting how many times she has conjured up what might happen if a not guilty verdict is returned in this crucial, impending trial. Of how she would be forced to watch Laurel's vibrant olive green eyes turn cold, and of their tense evening at home with all of Dinah's attempts to assuage Laurel's simmering rage failing miserably. Of Laurel eventually tiring of being pawed at and patronized with another you did your best, of her snapping at Dinah and then storming out of their apartment with death emblazoned all over her striking features. Of the morning news reporting the grisly murder of the real estate tycoon recently acquitted of murdering the Governor's son and daughter-in-law. And then the worst part, Laurel sneaking back home the next night, streaks of dried blood staining her blonde mane any ugly rusted shade of red, bags under bloodshot eyes blurry from not having slept on a manic euphoria-induced bender of senseless violence and palpable self-loathing.

Just the thought of anything remotely resembling that scenario coming to pass causes Dinah's stomach to knot with dread like a gnarled tree trunk from some old horror movie. There is little she could conjure up equally as capable of turning her guts into liquid and her heart into a block of burning ice. It is literally the worst possible outcome of this case, one that Dinah does not think she could survive. Losing Vince twice made her say and do and want things she never imagined she could back when she was a young and idealistic Marine. She had thought watching him die as Laurel screamed into his ear was her breaking point. She was wrong. So wrong. Losing Laurel to Black Siren again? That, Dinah thinks, might actually shatter her into so many jagged pieces that a veritable army of puzzle geeks couldn't put her back together.

Imagine then, how quickly panic sets in when she enters their apartment only to find Laurel on the sofa, bent over a notepad on the coffee table, hands tugging at her hair and an ugly sneer marring her pretty lips. After tossing her purse and keys onto the stand next the door, Dinah stalls for a few seconds to gather her courage before risking a breech of the fraught silence.

"Hey..." Dinah winces as much at how tremulous the lame greeting was as at the way Laurel stiffens at hearing it. She berates herself internally, knowing the last thing Laurel needs right now is to hear the doubts regarding her sanity in her girlfriend's voice. After clearing her throat and shaking off the nerves as best she can, Dinah tries again, this time aiming for and successfully achieving a warm concern that any good girlfriend should have upon discovering her partner in such a state. "You okay? You look like you're about ten seconds away from putting Mt. St. Helens to shame."

For a second Laurel just sits there stiff as a board, causing Dinah to hold her breath. She lets it out with a silent prayer of thanks when Laurel heaves a sigh and then runs a shaky hand through her hair.

"It's this fucking case," Laurel says, choice of vocabulary not that surprising. The more stressed – or aroused – she gets, the more f-bombs she drops. "And this fucking opening statement." She gestures wildly toward the notepad as if it were a criminal on trial for felonious assault. "It's just...it's complete and utter dogshit. Patrick Star could construct a better, more persuasive argument. This is the biggest trial of my fucking career and I can't even write an opening statement that would convince a fucking six year old that peas are nasty shit and ice cream is delicious angel food. And I'm just so fucking frustrated and..."

Trailing off, Laurel growls, then sighs again before finally shifting so she can look at Dinah. There is a liquid desperation in her eyes that reveals how close to the edge she is currently teetering.

"I'm at my wits end here, Dinah. I cannot afford to fuck this up. My entire fucking future is riding on the outcome of this case. The Governor has been watching my every move, breathing down my neck twenty-four seven, pressuring me to deliver on this with an unspoken or else hanging over my head like a fucking Damoclean Sword of political homicide. Not only that, but I have an opportunity to really put myself out there, you know? Everyone knows me as Laurel Lance, back from the dead, used to be the Black Fucking Canary or Laurel Lance the unerring crusader for justice. But you know what? I have ambitions. I have aspirations. I'm not that meek Laurel that derived genuine satisfaction putting bad guys behind bars. You know that better than anyone.

"I need challenges, I need high stakes to survive. I can't do mundane, Dinah. I just can't. I like the limelight. I thrive in it. It's exciting and addictive and I'm not ready to fade into obscurity. I don't want to just be a D.A. for a couple more terms and then slink into private practice with my tail between my legs. I want more. I wanna shoot for the stars, 'cause otherwise what's the fucking point? And this case? This is my chance to do that. To make a name for myself in influential circles beyond Star City. Beyond California, even! People in D.C. are following this case. Did you know that? And yet as with everything else, I'm fixing prove to them that I'm nothing but a gargantuan fucking failure. Fuck!"

That last exclamation is punctuated by a fist slamming so forcefully into the dense oak coffee table all of the knickknacks on it clatter and shuffle or are knocked off entirely.

For a second, Dinah just stares at Laurel, a bit flabbergasted at that tirade. All of it, not just the abuse of the table. She's always known a quiet life was not in the cards so long as they are together. Laurel was right about that. There is no getting around who Laurel is as a person. She is as she said. An ambitious daredevil who loves the spotlight and craves the trappings of power. Turning over a newish leaf has not changed those aspects of her character, which is perfectly fine with Dinah. She loves Laurel exactly as she is. It's just...well, she never quite connected those traits to a desire for a political career, and that's exactly what the subtext indicated. Maybe she simply never wanted to. Being the partner of a city councilwoman at most was all she really envisioned.

Now that she's been clued in that Laurel is aiming higher, way higher if her ability to read Laurel is a reliable judge, she finds herself surprisingly willing to make some concessions to help facilitate her partner's so-called aspirations. Is it ideal for her to put their private life up for even more public consumption than it already is? No, not really. But if that's what she has to do to accommodate Laurel's professional ambitions, then she is up for giving it a try. That isn't to say it will work. There is every chance putting their relationship under a microscope will signify impending doom. However, there is also a chance that in helping Laurel spread her wings and fly, she'll discover something new about herself as well. And that is an exciting prospect for someone who is also known for pushing boundaries. The leaps from farm girl to Marine to cop to Black Canary have all been pretty spectacular. So what's one more?

First Lady of California does sound kinda nice.

"Are you just gonna stand there and stare at me? Did I finally scare some sense into you?"

Startled out of her thoughts, Dinah returns her focus to Laurel, whose brows are drawn in tightly and whose lips are pursed in that moody way no one else can accurately replicate. She hadn't meant to leave Laurel hanging, and evidently Laurel took it the wrong way.

Recognizing this moment as critical, Dinah springs into action. "No, no," she says, moving as she talks. "I was just a little stunned by that...outburst. I'm actually kinda glad you got all that out in the open instead of dwelling upon it until it ate you alive. Just...look, I know you're upset, but there's really no need to take it out on the furniture. I assure you, Counselor, the coffee table is innocent."

Ignoring Laurel's scoff, Dinah strides over to the sofa where she approaches danger without a second thought. Three years ago she would never have been so bold seeing as this Laurel Lance is a tempestuous woman by any conceivable standard of comparison. At least once every couple of weeks, at minimum on a monthly basis, Laurel summons up potentially catastrophic hurricanes, which if left to their devices would plow through their relationship with all the tact and delicacy of an irate bull in a china shop. Thankfully by now Dinah has plenty of experience dealing with them. Her ability to forecast Laurel's moods is legendary, and as for actually dealing with them? Well, their friends don't call her the Siren Whisperer for nothing…

Once at the arm of the couch, she bends over to reach for Laurel's hand. Expecting resistance, she is pleasantly surprised when her girlfriend responds positively by taking her hand and lacing their fingers together.

"C'mere for a sec," Dinah says, tugging on Laurel's hand. When Laurel does not obey, she tries again with a bit more force, then adds, "Opening statements can wait, Miss Lance. Right now there is an amazing, loving, and extraordinarily patient girlfriend in dire need of a hug that she happens to think will be mutually beneficial. Perhaps we can have a sidebar to address that very critical and time sensitive matter."

A crack in Laurel's foul mood appears in the form of one corner of her lips quirking up. "Going to shamelessly manipulate me with flowery legalese are you?"

Dinah smirks. "Depends. Is it working?"

Shaking her head, Laurel chuckles. A second later, she pushes off the couch to stand. "Always does," she says, and when pulled close, melts into Dinah's waiting embrace.

For the longest time they just stand there in their living room holding each other, gently swaying to the melody of an important song that Dinah hums for both of their enjoyment. Slowly but surely the coil of irritation and rage that was Laurel unfurls until she is pliant and relaxed and fully ensconced in the heady atmosphere of their love. As sense and control return to Laurel, neither are in a hurry to escape the cocoon of warmth surrounding them, so they remain locked together, indulging in the sensation of their bodies in full contact from hips to shoulders, reveling in one another's scent, hands exploring fit frames both over and under items of clothing, all the while exchanging languid kisses or foreheads resting together as they stare at one other with indescribable adoration and devotion on full display.

This is one of Dinah's favorite things to do – just be with the woman she loves in her arms as every last one of her cares fades away into the background. Her buddies in the Marines always used to affectionately tease her about being so touchy-feely with her romantic partners. Said that real Marines stormed the beaches, fought like devils, then extracted with all due diligence. Of course, they were just breaking her balls, as most of them were unarguably whipped, but she never did escape their nickname for her: Huggy Bear. The label didn't bother Dinah. On the contrary, she wore it with pride. In the field, she was all Marine but at home she was all woman. Those that love her understand and accept the dichotomy. Still do.

Laurel took a while to adjust, having never been the cuddly type, but she has since been at least partially converted to Dinah's soft approach to romance. Which is great because now Dinah can throw on some sultry jazz whenever she's in the mood and drag Laurel into the living room to slow dance to Etta James's sultry crooning, Miles Davis' soulful trumpeting, or Charlie Parker's impassioned saxophone until their feet and legs ache. There are also times just like this when both are content to dwell inside the warm bubble of their love without a care for anything or anyone else. Enveloped by Laurel's smell, remnants of hazelnut coffee on her breath and the gentle fragrant spice of her perfume, and blanketed by the love pouring out from Laurel through her eyes and lips and fingertips, the entire world could go up in flames and Dinah couldn't be bothered to give a damn. This is her heaven, and it if were up to her she would never leave it.

But as Solomon so wisely wrote many thousands of years ago, there is a time for everything under heaven to end. As comfy and happy as she is right now, the reason she initiated this embrace remains an elephant in the room that must be addressed. She can't let Laurel go on like this or the next time she might come home to a trashed apartment. Or worse.

Breaking away from Laurel, albeit reluctantly, Dinah maneuvers them both back to the couch. After seating herself, she encourages Laurel to join her.

"Guess there's no getting out of talking it through this time, huh?" Laurel asks, looking embarrassed and at the same time afraid. Not of Dinah, but of herself, how she has been reacting to this case, and at how she has been wriggling her way out of talking out her issues with Dinah at every turn. The time for deflections and avoidance is over. For them both.

"Afraid not, babe," Dinah says, then pats Laurel's hand comfortingly. "This case has been eating you up. You're irritable – well more irritable than usual –" that earns her a glare, "and it isn't just because of your career being on the line. By the way, I just want to say, I didn't know you had your sights set on climbing the ladder so high. But if that's what you want, I'm with you. A hundred percent."

"Really?"

Laurel sounds as surprised as she looks when she shouldn't. Dinah has been nothing but supportive of her career. As a woman in a profession even more male-oriented than practicing public law, she is well versed in navigating the unfair hardships of gender inequality in the workplace as well as the complex social webs that spring up in a mixed gender environment. Granted, being a Marine more than prepared her for the culture shock of being an ambitious woman in primarily male dominated profession, but that isn't to say it was always easy. More than a few hateful pricks and handsy sleazeballs had to learn the hard way that she doesn't take shit from anyone, no matter how large and in charge they may be. While Laurel's venture as D.A. has been far less problematic on that front, the trauma she experienced at the whims of abusive men before assuming Earth-1 Laurel's life made Dinah's pre-cop days seem like a picnic. For both that reason and her own experiences in the workplace, she would never stand in the way of Laurel's dreams. And that wasn't taking into consideration the more simple motive for her support, that she loves Laurel and only wants the best for her.

So, Dinah is a tad bit offended that Laurel might have assumed she would throw a hissy fit or something after learning about her ambitions. That said, she abstains from making a scene over it since she can't deny she has only really been supportive of Laurel's current career track. They have yet to discuss at any length about where they want to be professionally five or ten years down the road. If this conversation is any indication, they should do so before long.

There is only one major reason Dinah can think of off the top of her head as to why they haven't broached the matter, namely Laurel's reticence to discuss where their relationship is headed. God knows Laurel has been let down and betrayed and burned by love too many times to allow herself the luxury of dreaming of a future outside of fighting for her survival. So it isn't a big shock that she doesn't seem to be operating with an end goal in sight as far as their relationship is concerned.

Dinah, on the other hand, has stubbornly clung to her idealistic vision of the future, so she knows where she wants it to be heading. But a relationship is a two-way street that she cannot navigate solo. Before long, she needs to figure out where Laurel stands as far as what she ultimately wants out of this relationship. Otherwise what are they doing? Spinning their wheels. That's what.

"Of course," Dinah finally answers aloud, careful to keep any offense from slipping into her tone. "I love you. I want you to be happy, and not just with our home life. It's just as important to me that you're being fulfilled by your job. Do you believe that?"

For a second Laurel stares at her in disbelief that is quickly banished by awe. "Yeah..." Her response is whispered so low that it is barely audible, so when Dinah arches a brow indicating she requires clarification, Laurel obliges. "Yes, I believe you. Thank you. That...hearing you say that means more to me than I can really explain."

Dinah doesn't agree. She thinks Laurel is perfectly capable of explaining it, but is merely too stubborn and prideful to admit she derives pleasure from receiving Dinah's validation. Why Laurel is so reluctant to confess to such when she has no trouble doing so in the bedroom is a minor inconvenience Dinah has yet to resolve. She is making observable progress, though!

"Oh, I think I have pretty good idea," she says, unwilling to press that particular issue at present when there are other things to address. "But that's not important right now. What's important right now is why you're all twisted up about this case. I've not seen you like this in a long time, and I have to admit it scares me."

Laurel sighs in frustration then pinches the bridge of her nose before responding. "I'm sorry about that. I never want to scare you. You know that, right?"

"Of course I do. That's why it's scary. If you're not trying to do it, it means something is really wrong. So what is it?"

Another sigh, this one more plaintive and hesitant. "It's about Susie."

"The Ingrams' daughter that was hiding under her bed while her parents were being slaughtered in the next room?"

Dinah will never forget walking into the apartment and seeing that trembling child sandwiched between two detectives who were trying to take her statement. As Captain, she had responded personally to the murder of two prominent members of Star City's upper crust, a family with links that stretched the breadth of the country all the way into the D.C. establishment. The last thing she expected was to be forced to attempt extracting vital information about the crime from a terrified, traumatized seven year old. She didn't make much headway at all, nor did anyone else who tried, before ordering everyone to leave the girl alone until Child Services arrived. And then Laurel waltzed in and everything changed.

"That's her," Laurel says, visage regaining a semblance of vitality as she talks about little Susan Ingram. "Remember I had to interview her a couple times right after the incident and she, uh...weirdly took a shine to me? And how she wasn't really talking to anybody else, so guess who got to spend bunches of quality time with her?"

Dinah smiles, remembering how Susie would cling to Laurel's leg or hand and would never stray much more than a couple steps from the woman who apparently reminded her a lot of her mother. It was half adorable and half amusing watching Laurel discreetly flail for balance at being the sole recipient of a traumatized child's trust.

"Sure. You acted all put out about it but secretly you fell in love with that little girl just like everybody else did. Me included." And that much was undeniably true. When Laurel informed Susie that Dinah was her girlfriend, it was as if she was suddenly inducted into the club. After that, she was present – as was Laurel – at every last one of Susie's official interviews about her parents' deaths. It was impossible not to love a child who could melt through Laurel Lance's sturdy defenses with such breathtaking ease and speed.

"Yeah...well," Laurel winces subtly, "I may have told her about losing my dad and then given her my word I would make sure the man that took her mom and dad away would never walk the streets again." She pauses then, her eyes misting up as she searches for something from Dinah that she is apparently having trouble finding. "Did I lie to her, Dinah? Am I gonna break that little girl's heart? Am I gonna be responsible for sending her into a death spiral like what happened to me after my dad's killer went free? Am I going to turn that precious, innocent child into me? A broken, deranged killer with no conscience."

Her own heart breaking for Laurel and Susie, Dinah shifts on the sofa, angling in toward Laurel so that their knees are touching. She adds her other hand to where she's holding on to Laurel's, one clasping the underside of Laurel's wrist while the other palms the top of her hand.

"Baby, no. First of all, you aren't broken or deranged, and you most certainly have a conscience. You wouldn't care what happens to Susie otherwise. Secondly, I don't believe for a single second that you will let her down. You're going to win this case and give her and her parents the justice they deserve. I know it."

Doubt and self-recrimination marring her features, Laurel pulls her hands away to run them fretfully through her hair. "How? How can you be so confident when I'm not?"

Absently, Dinah reaches out to tuck a strand of loose hair behind Laurel's ear. "'Cause I know you. Sometimes I think better than you know yourself. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Laurel Lance does not make empty promises."

"Maybe you'll change your mind after you read my opening statement," Laurel replies, then groans miserably. "It's really bad..."

"Doubtful. I've always thought you have a unique way with words. Most juries you've addressed seem to have agreed with me." Smiling, Dinah nudges Laurel's shoulder then gestures toward the offending notepad that seems to be the subject of ninety percent of Laurel's ire. "But I know better than to marginalize your concerns, so let's see it. And before you object due to my blatant conflict of interest, I'll be as unbiased as I can. Sound fair?"

With a drawn out sigh, Laurel returns a hesitant nod. "Yeah. Okay. But only because I trust you won't blow smoke up my ass." She then retrieves the notepad and extends it toward Dinah with a slightly unsteady hand.

Reminded of how critical it is to give an honest opinion without being unduly harsh, something she has become adept at living with a woman whose temper frequently has a hair trigger, Dinah respectfully accepts the notepad. "I won't," she says. "I promise." And then, when Laurel settles back into the cushions, legs crossed and arms folded over her chest, she begins to read.

From the first word, it was clear Laurel's stressing was for nothing. The rest of the opening statement does nothing to contradict that assessment. It is, in her opinion, an incredible speech worthy of being represented upon the silver screen.

"Laurel...this is amazing," she croons after finishing the captivating read. Unsurprisingly, Laurel glares at her dubiously. "Seriously! I'm not trying to spare your feelings because I love you. I actually think it's perfect."

Laurel huffs, stubbornly refusing to accept the praise – which is fairly typical, albeit less so now than when they first started dating. "You said it before. You're biased."

"Obviously. But that doesn't mean I can't recognize a winning argument. I've sat through my fair share of trials, and heard a lot of opening statements. And this?" Dinah brandishes the notepad as if it were the smoking gun in her case to prove Laurel is overreacting. "This is so, so good. But..." tossing the notepad back onto the coffee table, she retakes Laurel's hand, "if you're still not happy with it, tell me what you think is wrong. Maybe articulating your concerns and then tossing ideas back and forth will help work out the kinks."

That perks Laurel up. "You sure? I know we haven't had dinner yet..."

"Not a problem," Dinah says confidently. "I'll call in for Thai and have it delivered. We can work til it gets here. Sound good?"

"No. It sounds...wonderful." Silence stretches out between them as Laurel worships Dinah with her eyes as if seeing her for the first time all over again. The heated gaze of those electric green irises elicits a delicious shiver that corkscrews down Dinah's spine. "Damn," Laurel says after completing her languid study, strangely enough voicing Dinah's own thoughts. "I really am the world's luckiest bitch. 'Cause you are the best girlfriend in history." Full lips quirk up at one corner. "If I was as smart as I say I am, I probably ought to listen to Felicity, stop beating around the bush and wife you up."

The trailing comment, out of left field as it is, does not even phase Dinah. Truth be told, she's been fantasizing about taking their relationship to the next level for a while now. There is little else she wants more in the world than to become Mrs. Laurel Lance.

"Amen, babe. From your lips to God's ears," she replies enthusiastically, catching Laurel completely off guard.

"Are you...actually being serious?" Laurel responds, visibly shaken, waves of insecurity pouring off her. "You'd really…? I mean, you wanna…? You would...to me?"

"Laurel. Jesus." Ashamed of herself for leaving any room for doubt, Dinah heaves a self-recriminatory sigh as she scrubs a hand over her face. "I guess I have to work on my communication skills as much as you do, because of course I do." Deciding that there is no time like the present to get started on that noble goal, she gently squeezes Laurel's hand, willing her to understand just how much she really does want to get married. "I've been thinking about it for so long I already have a million ideas about bridesmaid dresses and venues and catering options." When Laurel's eyes widen comically, Dinah realizes how that might sound like an actual proposal. Chuckling, she shakes her head lightly, "Don't freak out, babe. I'm not asking right now. I'm afraid with me being a traditional girl I am in the romance department, that particular ball is in your court. That being said, at least now you know what my answer will be."

Another briefer silence descends, during which Laurel stares at Dinah in utter amazement and worries at her bottom lip. "By chance, is it the same answer you'd give if I asked you for a kiss?" she asks after a few seconds of waging an internal battle with a part of herself Dinah can already guess is making a fuss out of this.

No doubt it will not be the last time Laurel's dark side has cause or opportunity to undermine the direction their relationship will hopefully be taking – and very soon if Dinah has any say in the matter.

Dinah's answering smile is as much to tease as it is an invitation. "I don't know, Miss Lance. Why don't you woman up and find out."

"Oooo. A challenge. I likey. Alright. So..." Without prompting, Laurel fluidly slides off the couch and onto her knees. Once situated between Dinah's knees, she offers her hands palm up. And when Dinah slides her hands into Laurel's, those mesmerizing green eyes begin to dance. "Dinah Miriam Drake," Laurel says, all formal and serious yet with the stirrings of an indescribable passion and devotion underscored by a hint of playful affection. "Will you do me the extraordinary privilege of allowing me to kiss you?"

Tears well up in Dinah's eyes at the subtext to a query that was clearly a test run for a much more important one to come. Barely able to contain her urge to jump Laurel's bones on the spot and with her heart soaring through clouds of pure saccharine joy, she smiles. This is the easiest question she has ever been asked. Or at least it will be until she gets asked that other one. Doesn't matter, though. To both, her answer is the same.

"Yes."

#arrow fanfic #dinahsiren #dinah drake #laurel lance #black siren #laurel x dinah #dinah is a certified siren whisperer y'all

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carriedon-awolfsback · 6 years ago

Text

5pm UK time? Looks like it's new porn o'clock, folks!

Aberrant

Chapter: 1 of 3

Rating: Explicit (18+)

Pairing: Copia/extremely self-indulgent author talking in the second person female reader

Wordcount: 1,921

Content Advisories: Dom/sub kink themes. Can't stress that enough. Right now, a metric fuckton of degrading dirty talk and sexual shaming, some choking and similar manhandling; there will be pretty hard physical painplay later on. This is an x-reader where the reader is the (very much into it) submissive recipient of all this and is ID'd as cis female; PLEASE don't expose yourself to this content if fairly hard femsub is liable to be triggering for you. I'm very happy to answer questions about exact wording and content privately or on anon, if you have specific needs.

Read on AO3 here, or read below the cut, and try not to think too hard about what these kinks tell you about my personal neuroses! Fun options for all consenting adults! Yeah boy!

Chapter 1

Invitation

You made sure you came to the dark mahogany door on the stroke of midnight and knocked three times. There could be no misunderstanding what you came for.

“Enter,” came a voice from within.

You shouldered the door, expecting it to be stiff and immovable with its scarred wood and iron handle, but it swung with startling silent ease and you took a heavy step inside.

The room looked very much like you would have anticipated even if you hadn’t been here before in the light of day; all dark wood and red walls and carpeting. The large ornamental window behind the work desk was now shuttered, hiding its stained glass; the warm light that reached just short of the corners of the room was provided by the chandelier overhead that had long since been augmented into an electric version, and accented by one or two decorative stands around the walls bearing black and white pillar candles. Copia was seated in one of the red, plush wingback chairs that faced the office fireplace and the two neighbouring alcoves of stacked books old and new, one leg crossed elegantly over the other, clad in the black leather and velvet ensemble he was fond of for public appearances outside of the Ministry complex. If your stumble amused him he didn’t let it show, instead snapping shut the wallet of papers he’d been perusing and placing it on the low table, keeping his mismatched eyes on you all the while.

“Good evening, Sister,” he said quietly. “You’ve come about what we discussed earlier, I presume?”

“You presume right, sir.” You gave him a weak smile, hands fumbling with the hem of your shirt on your hips, adjusting needlessly, trying to keep them busy.

He nodded and looked thoughtful for a moment, looking deep into your eyes. “I am glad you decided to accept my invitation after all.” It was a placid expression- even kind.

Then he stood and in two strides he was upon you, compassionate eyes now eerie and cold, his hand flying to your throat. He walked you backwards without hesitation until your back hit the door you’d just entered through, driving a gasp from you, and he shoved his body hard against yours, trapping you, not letting you take your breath back. His hand squeezed, and his hips ground once forcefully against yours, and you couldn’t smother the whine of desire that escaped.

“I don’t play tasteless games,” he said curtly, his hot breath and soft lips inches from your face, “Or pantomime villains to coax out the grimy little things in your psyche. You will know yourself and keep telling me how much you like this, until such a time as you don’t, and then I will stop. Understood?”

“Yes, Cardinal,” you panted, the breath still knocked out of you. Your hands flexed on the wood panelling behind you, fighting for self-control.

He squeezed your throat again, the leather gloves squeaking and smelling rich and smoky. “Does it excite you, meeting me for this?” He cocked his head like a curious animal, watching your blushing face impassively. “Like a dirty little secret?”

“Yes, Cardinal-”

He gave another, crueller squeeze. “Has your brain slid so far south already that you can’t say anything else?”

“I- no, sorry, Cardinal,” you stammered, trying to formulate something that wasn’t just a braindead yes or no. “I was just, I’ll do whatever you tell- oh fuck-” his free hand was pushing between your legs, cupping you through your pants. “Oh, mm-”

He squeezed firmly for a moment, making your thighs tense against his arm, then held his hand still, denying you any friction, giving you an impassive too-close stare that you couldn’t break as you fought to catch your breath. “Your little face is so pink,“ he taunted. “Is there something shameful about doing this with me, hmm? You’re far from the only needy girl in the Sisterhood who creeps out at night and makes herself a plaything for the senior clergy, we all know that; no doubt the place would fall about our ears without such generosity... but is there a little extra thrill in how much more people would stare and whisper if they saw you let me take you? No?”

This already wasn’t a fair game. It was inappropriate and often downright ridiculous, the things some people gossipped and claimed about him- that he let ghouls in blood-moon heat pleasure and feed from him without ill-effect, conversed with diseased pests and let them nest in his rooms, or was even something old and cursed in human glamour, a veritable death omen- and it would be insulting to validate them.

But at the same time…yes. No matter how cruel or downright wrong they were about Copia, there was added eroticism in knowing that the ache inside you was all for someone they called dangerous, pervert, usurper, corruptor.

“Coward,” he sneered, not leaving you enough time to drag your contrary thoughts into a response. “I don’t advise trying to lie or sugar-coat things tonight. You must be a pretty nasty little thing yourself to have agreed to this; why hide it now, huh?”

His hand was still frustratingly still, but you knew instinctively if you tried to grind down to encourage him he’d only take it away again. Instead, his hand around your neck relaxed and slid down a little, and he leaned forward over you, tilting his head to nuzzle into your throat. You groaned again, tilting your head to expose more to his grazing lips and teeth. He pinched skin here and there, following with tender kisses that pulled the nipped flesh between his lips, or with slow, hot swipes of his tongue.

“Did you hear rumours I was sick, and dirty, and disgusting?” He spoke between suckling kisses, over your soft, slightly suffering noises of enjoyment. “And did that make you all hot and bothered? Did you keep finding yourself wanting to scurry away to your little bed, thinking about being dirty with me?”

You nodded mutely, slowly, barely able to move under his ministrations.

“So what did you do about it?” His voice was barely more than a murmur close to your ear. “Before you pulled your little scraps of courage together enough to come to me and confess.”

Your mouth ran dry, then wet with hunger. “I touched myself,” you admitted in a mousey voice. “I got off thinking about you. Lots of times.”

“Tell me how.”

“I… have this pair of gloves, which I wear and… pretend they’re your hands.” You sucked in a sharp breath through your teeth as his teeth gave your earlobe the gentlest of tugs. “Th- ah- they’re not such good quality but they’ll do.”

“Hmm. And what do my hands do for you?”

He punctuated that with a scratch of his gloved fingertips at your collarbone and a bruising kiss over your pulse that made you gasp and your already-heavy eyes flutter shut. “Play with my clit,” you panted quietly, a plea as much as it was an answer. “The leather… feels good.”

“Like this, yes?” He pulled his cupping hand smoothly back, pressing in firmer with his fingertips at the apex of your thighs and making a few languid circles through your clothes.

“Yes, mmh, like that-” the push and pull of fabric was rough on the sensitive flesh beneath, and over too soon as his hand slid away and rested on your thigh instead, not about to let you get too far gone so early.

“Is that how little it takes to make you come apart?” His lips quirked against your skin as he heard and felt you moan in protest.

“No… only sometimes,” you admitted, wincing as his fingers tightened on your leg at the first word, like he could tell you were bending the truth. “When I’m getting close I usually… I use a toy.”

“A big toy?”

“Yeah.” You felt his teeth bared in a humourless grin against your skin. Smug. “Thick. So it feels real.”

“Good,” he purred. “And how do you like to be fucked with this…” he adjusted his stance a little so that his thighs pressed fully over yours- “big, thick cock you want me to give you?”

“Slow but hard,” you breathed. “Deep. And then faster, with my- your thumb back on my clit, til we both come- with you inside.”

“Filling you up?” The momentary shortness of breath that entered his tone at that gave you the impression that this particular detail was a little indulgence for himself, not just for your titillation. “Until it drips down your thighs between us?”

Your hips rolled involuntarily against him as you shuddered and nodded, the fantasy as vivid as ever, but now moments from potentially coming true.

He drew his head up from your neck sharply and crushed your mouth to his, his hand sliding back up to pin your neck back, his tongue pushing into your mouth. Yours pressed back, urgent and inelegant. Your hands left the door where they had been flattened all this time to claw at his arms; doubtlessly he would tolerate no aggression on your part, but you had to touch something of him. The leather was soft and gently textured under your grasping fingers, and smelt warm and heady, well-polished.

“Do you feel guilty afterwards? Hiding under the covers with your cheap, sticky gloves and your sore little pussy, a dirty little wet patch ruining the sheets under you?” He broke the kiss without ceremony, leaving your lips uncomfortably wet and abandoned, and bared his teeth. “Embarrassed that all the dorms around yours probably heard you screaming for it harder from the plague-bringer?”

You squirmed at the use of the overdramatic epithet. Much like the rumour mill, you refused to pay too much attention to the mock-titles many of the Siblings bestowed on him, the line between playful and pejorative far too blurry for your loyalties- but he seemed to wear it like armour. “I always try to stop myself making a noise but I can’t.” You were convinced at this point you couldn’t get any redder; regardless of whether the dorm walls really were that thin or not, you wondered if he was just unnaturally gifted at figuring out your pressure points, or if you had truly been being this transparent for months. “I just… it’s too good.”

“Hmph. Normally I’d dispense a lecture for you about letting go of shame in the name of spiritual wellbeing.” He thumbed your jawline almost tenderly as you looked down, face burning. “But shame, for you… this has a secondary use for you, yes?” He clicked his tongue when you stayed silent. “You need a little bit of shame to feel hot, and get excited. Don’t you?”

You nodded mutely. He drew even closer, which didn’t seem possible, and his hands at your throat and thigh got tighter, fingertips digging in.

“Then take my advice- you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Then both hands were gone, and you realised how much you’d been relying on his hold to keep your shaking legs supporting you as you slumped against the door.

“Follow,” he spoke impassively, as though he hadn’t just been licking and fondling you and urging you to fantasise aloud about him spilling inside you. Patting his leg idly like a man calling an old dog to heel as he made for a door at the back of the study.

What else was there to do but follow?

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zayntoxicateme · 7 years ago

Link

June 18, 2018

We managed to catch up with the quietly enigmatic singer.

Read "How Do You Explain Zayn?"

Zayn, the one-named man who found himself reborn after leaving One Direction, is now on GQ's cover. In his shoot with Sebastian Mader, Zayn channels Tyler Durden and Leo DiCaprio's Romeo. And the wildly enigmatic singer also let down his guard, briefly, in talking to writer Carrie Battan about his relationship with Gigi Hadid, the self indulgence of being a "star," and his crafty use of the paparazzi for his own devices—a story you can read here (full story is below; the link will take you to the GQ website)

How Do You Explain Zayn?

Carrie Battan

Photographs by

Sebastian Mader

The 25-year-old British singer is deeply, maddeningly, almost trolling-ly enigmatic. And that cultivated mystery—along with his disdain for the standard rules of superstardom—is probably what puts him on the short list for COOLEST HUMAN ALIVE. On a recent Friday night, though, he dropped his guard and spilled his guts.

There are exactly two places in New York on a Friday night where Zayn Malik can smoke Marlboro Lights as liberally and openly as he pleases, unencumbered by gawkers or the city's increasingly draconian anti-smoking laws. The ﬁrst is Zayn Malik's SoHo apartment, where he spends the majority of his time, zoning out, reading books, listening to music, and "partaking in the herb," as he says. The second is the Mary A. Whalen, a 172-foot-long restored-tanker-ship-turned-nonproﬁt-hangout-spot that is docked off the shore of Red Hook, Brooklyn. The ship is closed for business after 6 P.M., but tonight its leader, a hardy blonde ship preservationist named Carolina, has agreed to keep it open late to accommodate us. No crowds, a few plastic chairs, and a gently lilting surface that is basically a giant ashtray.

There is just one problem: The temperature on deck is decreasing rapidly with the setting sun, and Zayn—the 25-year-old former British-boy-band member, current solo pop-ish star, and all-around inscrutable avatar of contemporary celebrity—has arrived with nothing on his person but a lighter, a backpack, and an iPhone. No jacket on his rail-thin five-ten frame—just a pair of charcoal skinny jeans, a distressed Pink Floyd T-shirt, a bright pink beanie that obscures his new ﬂower skull tattoo (or "tah-oo," as Zayn pronounces it). He looks so modernly cool, blending a hip-hop swagger with a punk-rock edge, that he should receive a cut from Urban Outﬁtters every time someone makes a purchase. He is the only man whose Disney-princess-long eyelashes seem to bolster his machismo rather than diminish it. Nobody this dreamy has ever bothered to check the weather to see if he should grab a jacket before leaving the house. Through chattering teeth, he rejects multiple offers of blankets. "It's all good," he insists, burping faintly after taking a swig of his Peroni. "I'm cool."

Still, Carolina avails us of the ship's warmer galley. "I might have a cigarette ﬁrst?" Zayn asks, as though he needs permission, gesturing toward the other side of the ship. Over there is his assistant Taryn, a young woman with French-braided pigtails that make her look more like a high school soccer player than someone designated to manage the everyday logistics of a notoriously slippery superstar's life. She is the custodian of his pack, doling out individual cigarettes to Zayn periodically.

But Carolina assures us Zayn will not have to stay outside to smoke his cigarette. She'll let us smoke belowdecks on the condition that Zayn provide her one of his Marlboros and permission to snap a photograph. She promises she won't post it until after the story runs. "Uh…yeah?" Zayn replies, sounding sincerely surprised that he is the one who has to answer a question that was directed at him.

A steely detachment from life's mundane logistical concerns is part of almost every celebrity's existence, but it is the core of Zayn's being. This character trait has ruinous potential, but it also means he gets to live his life exactly how he pleases. And it means that he doesn't have to express a single word or hint of desire in order for the conditions around him to re-arrange to his liking and comfort. There's a hapless Peter Pan quality to it that makes it tough to hold against him.

We settle around the table in the '70s-style kitchen on the boat. It's 15 degrees warmer down here and private. Zayn instantly appears relieved, his shoulders unclenching and his brow de-furrowing. He stops shivering. He is in a womb-like space, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, and he seems palpably and unexpectedly happy. "Thanks," he says quietly and earnestly in Carolina's direction as she seals off the door behind us. "Couple of times I tried to quit. But I just like smoking cigs. Simple as that."

There is a major conundrum in Zayn's life, which is that he may be constitutionally incapable of being a star. He tells me so almost immediately. "I don't work well in group situations, with loads of people staring at me. And when you say 'star'…everyone wants you to be this kind of character that owns a room or is overly arrogant or conﬁdent. I'm not that guy," he says. "So I don't want to be a star." Zayn seems to aspire to the soul of Prince, or some cult '90s skate-punk ﬁgure, but is trapped in the trajectory of a Justin Timberlake.

A decade ago, someone like Zayn would not have become the Chosen Member of a band like One Direction. The Chosen Member is the boy-band graduate whose solo career evolves and hurdles into grown-up relevance, ultimately overshadowing the band's legacy. Until recently, you could spot a Chosen Member from a mile away—he was unequivocally the best dancer and the one the most girls wanted to bring home to their parents. But Zayn never ﬁt the mold of a Chosen Member. From the day One Direction formed, on the U.K. show The X Factor in 2010, he was cast as the smoldering background foil to the eager-to-please Harry Styles and Liam Payne. His energy and his dance moves were muted. He presented as the quiet, disillusioned one.

But in the past ﬁve years or so, it has become acceptable—necessary, even—for a young pop star to show some edge. Thanks to the social-media-fueled, ever intensifying quest for authenticity, real or feigned, we no longer expect our most famous musicians to be toothless and virginal robots. Now we demand that they show a certain degree of lustiness, instability, anti-heroism. The Weeknd scored a No. 1 hit with an elaborately coded song about a cocaine binge—and then followed it up with another No. 1 hit, this one explicitly referencing a cocaine binge. Lana Del Rey's entire aesthetic revolves around a kind of narcotized death wish. And Taylor Swift spent her last album desperately trying to persuade us that she really is villainous. Even Disney's babiest-faced of pop princesses, Selena Gomez, is getting mileage out of her demons, playing a Girl, Interrupted–style heroine and rocking a hospital bracelet in a music video. Face tattoos are basically required for entry onto the Billboard Hot 100 these days. Squeaky-clean is no more.

And yet even for the most tortured-seeming of these artists, there is still a ﬁerce expectation that they play the game. Mild drug habits or mental illnesses are perfectly acceptable, so long as someone is willing to write catchy songs about those tendencies and then later gussy them up for arena audiences and gamely ﬁeld jokes from talk-show hosts. Even Justin Bieber, the poster child for our current era of troubled pop stars, is always just one phone call with his pastor away from being able to quiet his demons and pop-and-lock on demand.

Zayn seems like a perfect avatar for this new generation of bruised pop heartthrobs, but he's the only one of his cohorts who can back it up with a sincerely jaded disposition and an unpredictable way of being. He is the only one who is staunchly unwilling to play the game. You will not ﬁnd Zayn cheesing with a random group of famous people for someone's Instagram story at Coachella, nor will you ﬁnd Zayn learning the latest viral dance move with Ellen DeGeneres. When he released his solo debut, Mind of Mine, two years ago, he opted out of touring altogether, surely pissing off a bunch of emotionally and ﬁnancially invested parties. And although he promises to be more public-facing this time around—he insists he will tour—he's still removed from the album-cycle content churn. He says the creators of Atlanta have reached out to him to appear on the show—a dream opportunity for anyone in the music industry at this moment—but persnickety Zayn is still mulling the potential. "If the part's right, I'd be really into it," he says. Even the "behind-the-scenes" video that accompanied his new single fails to actually take anyone "behind the scenes"—it's just the song playing over some B-roll. "I guess the cameraman didn't get too much footage," Zayn says on the boat. "I might have been running away from him a bit."

When I ask him why he failed to show up at the Met Gala a couple days earlier, he almost chokes on his cigarette smoke as he exhales. He went to the Met Gala once, in 2016, and that experience symbolized everything he detests about being a famous person—and the litany of coercion and artiﬁce that someone in his position experiences.

"I did go, but I didn't go there to be like, 'Yo, take me serious,' " he remembers. "I was taking the piss! I went there as my favorite Mortal Kombat character, Jax."

He continues: "The Met Gala is not necessarily anything that I ever knew about or was about. But my [former] stylist…would say to me, 'This is really good for you to do.' And no matter how strong you are mentally, you can always be swayed to do certain things. Now, it's not something I would go to. I'd rather be sitting at my house, doing something productive, than dressing up in really expensive clothes and being photographed on a red carpet.… To do the self-indulgent Look at me, I'm amazing thing on the red carpet, it's not me."

Here Zayn catches himself, probably realizing this might register as a diss of Gigi Hadid, the 23-year-old supermodel he's been in an on-again, off-again relationship with for two years. The supermodel who very much seemed to enjoy dressing up in really expensive clothes and being photographed on the red carpet days earlier.

"I get it, and I understand that people gain enjoyment from it," he says. I ask if he followed along with the coverage from his couch. "No, no," he says, and pauses. "Gi stole the night, though. The stained glass on her dress. Everyone else just put a cross on."

When I ask Zayn if he has any conﬁdants in the industry, he shakes his head vigorously. "No," he says. "I don't ever want to cross wires with other people too much. I just want to see the world through my eyes."

Zayn grew up with three sisters ("I was outnumbered," he says) and is still surrounded by women, ensuring that there's a high level of exasperated but fond maternal energy swirling at all times. Blood relatives and the Hadids—particularly Gigi's mother, Yolanda, who seems to have taken on a Kris Jenner–ian role in his life—make up much of his inner circle today. ("We get on. She's really fucking cool. She's a Capricorn. She's the same star sign as me.") He recently parted ways with his high-proﬁle manager. His best friend is a younger cousin.

"I'm not [in] the mix," he says. "I'm outside the mix."

This kind of stubborn non-participation, of course, is a reaction to the years Zayn spent being in a mix that was not to his liking. When he was a kid, growing up in the northern working-class city of Bradford, singing was just one part of an aimless but all-consuming creative impulse. He never thought he was much of a singer, until one day the choir leader at his performing-arts school praised his voice and suggested that he try out for Britain's premier vocal-competition show. Zayn's mom had to drag him from his bed at 4 A.M. to attend the audition, where he broke from the typical pop fare with a rendition of Mario's "Let Me Love You."

After his X Factor audition, there was an exchange (never aired) in which head judge Simon Cowell probed baby Zayn. " 'You know, with all these online platforms, why haven't you ever put out anything prior to this?' " Zayn remembers Cowell asking him. Zayn seemed the type, after all: a soft-spoken and artistically gifted teen who liked to sing alone in his bedroom and tinkered with rudimentary song-recording equipment. "I didn't necessarily think my stuff would be seen amongst the millions of people who put their stuff online. So I went with X Factor at that age," he says now. Like any ﬁckle teenager, Zayn "just did it for fun, to see what would happen."

The day that Zayn auditioned, he was among many aspiring solo artists rejected by the judges. But ﬁve of the young singers were cobbled together as a boy band in a later segment. Thus was born One Direction and a rabid fandom that British people love to compare to Beatlemania. A craze so ﬁerce and massive that it generated global synchronized ﬂash mobs and fan-ﬁction authors who've reportedly scored six-ﬁgure book deals. In an instant, Zayn was thrust into a star-making boot camp, fast-tracked to an uncontrollable type of notoriety without being given the opportunity to consider alternatives.

It's no secret that Zayn didn't love One Direction's sound or his bandmates. "My vision didn't necessarily always go with what was going on within the band," he says. There was something so earnest, so wholesomely dweeby, about the whole thing. It wasn't cool, and Zayn didn't particularly enjoy being dragged around the world to look like an epic dork during the prime of his youth.

When he split off, in 2015, Zayn ﬁnally got to do all the things he hadn't been able to in One Direction: dye his hair, grow his beard, sing about sex. But he was also introduced to a fresh army of puppeteers trying to guide him, and he felt disoriented, adrift. The only way to ground himself was to resist the pull of anyone's expectations and answer only to Zayn. He'd spent ﬁve years taking direction and had become allergic to it.

There are plenty of clichéd expressions about how toxic and stiﬂing freedom can be, and Zayn experienced many of them when he went solo. "I didn't really, like, make any friends from the band. I just didn't do it. It's not something that I'm afraid to say. I deﬁnitely have issues trusting people," he says. When he was living in Los Angeles, aimless, he fell in with a crowd of industry people: "Producers, musicians, tailors, stylists, managers. Them kind of things," he says. "It got too crazy. I just got too much into the party scene. Just going out all the time. And I was too distracted." So he left L.A. permanently and moved to New York earlier this year as a way to bring himself back down to earth.

Running a bit further, he recently bought a farm in rural Pennsylvania on the advice of Yolanda Hadid, who also has a farm there. The farm? "Cool." The state of Pennsylvania? "Cool." If you haven't picked up on it for yourself yet, Zayn loves the word "cool"; he loves it so much that he uses it more than 43 times over the course of our conversation. And now that Zayn likes to go to his farm and visit the Hadids, he and Gigi even have a horse together, named Cool. He's just getting things going on the farm, but already there are crops of cherries, tomatoes, and cucumbers. He likes to ride his ATVs. Sometimes he and Gigi will go at the same time, and she'll ride a horse, like Cool, while he watches.

Zayn has a habit of speaking in a conditioned state of detachment, responding in friendly but anodyne one-liners. Still, even someone who willfully projects this kind of cool two-dimensionalism can get irked from being flattened all the time by those around him. I catch myself flattening him, even when he's right in front of me. When I bring up the deceased Lil Peep, with whom he shared a manager, I say that it's a shame they never met—they seem like kindred spirits who could have made a great song together, or at least bonded over tattoos.

Zayn begins to laugh. "I'm not just going to be friends [with people] because we've both got tattoos. Loads of people come up to me and they're like, 'Yo, I got tattoos, you got tattoos. Let's be friends.' And I'm like… 'We're not just going to be friends because we've both got tattoos.'

"There's a bit more depth to me than that," he says, admonishing me.

One topic that will draw out this aforementioned depth is, unexpectedly, America. Despite the fact that he is living in a country under a leader that is exceptionally hostile to immigrants, the fantasy of America as a come-one, come-all melting pot is alive and well in Zayn's mind. He says he'd vote for Oprah if she ran for office because he likes her "ideologies about the world" and she's a "badass businesswoman."

"The UK is like, Fuck you, you're successful. That's not a nice attitude to have," he says. "You come to America, you're a bit shocked at first: Are these people being genuine? Are they really interested in me? Do they want to have a conversation? But they do! And that's a really nice thing. And I feel like it's misrepresented across the globe. For the kind of country it is, because everybody supports, no matter what color, what gender, what sexuality, what class—none of that matters here. People genuinely want to know you for who you are. And that's how America should be represented across the world."

Watch Now:Zayn Rocks Summer’s Best Swerves

Maybe you should run for office, I say.

"Maybe. It'd be cool. I feel like it's a beautiful place. [Because of the current political climate,] people are expressing how they really feel about where they come from and their heritage and their backgrounds. They're all mixed. To be American, you are mixed.

"So that's how I feel about it—it's a beautiful place, and it's a beautiful time to be alive."

Another unlikely topic that will break Zayn out of his default conversational mode and get him talking in jolting, paragraphs-long monologues: the paparazzi. The paparazzi who have been trailing him for years and, recently, every time he sets foot near Gigi's NoHo apartment, feeding the endless tabloid speculation about the state of their relationship. The paps used to piss Zayn off, until he realized their utility.

"That's my promo," he says. "I come outside, they take photos." He gets to quietly remind people that he exists—and gets photographed looking like the second coming of Johnny Depp, leaving the apartment of one of the most gorgeous women in the world—without doing a thing. "They stay outside and do all the work!" he says. "You can get pissed off about it and be like, 'Yo, this is a hindrance on my life.' Or you can use it for your own beneﬁt and be like, 'Well, if they're going to take the photos, then let them.' You've gotta earn your dollar, and I've gotta earn mine."

Which is to say that just because Zayn loathes the cornball industry churn doesn't mean he needs to surrender his relevance. Zayn represents an era in which underground cool and mass-market, Calabasian-style popularity have collapsed into one another. He operates on a plane where celebrity is predicated chieﬂy on relevance and intrigue, and Zayn—with his equally illustrious girlfriend, his brooding glare, and his following of millions—has about as much relevance and intrigue as anybody. He is both a casualty and a beneﬁciary of this uniquely modern form of celebrity. In running from his stardom, he's only fueling it.

I suppose now is the time to dispense with the rest of the intel I gleaned from Zayn about his relationship with Gigi Hadid, which was a less sensitive subject than I had anticipated. The two met at the end of 2015 at a party—which "pah-y," Zayn will not disclose, but suffice it to say it was a "cool pah-y"—and just days later, Zayn learned she'd broken up with Joe Jonas. He reached out to her and asked her to dinner at the Bowery Hotel. And thus was born a couple that will go down in history as one of the most iconic and Zeitgeisty pairings of all time, a couple whose images I will show my grandchildren to prove that the world was better in my day. All of the gossip about their relationship being an opportunistic setup by their respective management is bullshit, Zayn says: "If a relationship is for your career, you can fucking walk out the door. No way. See you later."

Despite the dramatic announcement of their split a couple of months ago, Zayn and Gigi are very much still close, as evidenced by myriad photos of him leaving her apartment or kissing her on the street. Zayn speaks about Gigi in a purely misty-eyed, worshipful tone that telegraphs he may be atoning for something. "I'm really thankful that I met her," he says. He uses the term "we" in the present tense quite a bit: "We go to the farm." "We have horses." The time he actually rode a horse with Gigi, he says, "I looked like a complete idiot and she looked like a complete professional.… We're still really good friends, and we're still in contact," he says. "No bad blood." He laughs. "…Taylor Swift.

"We're adults. We don't need to put a label on it, make it something for people's expectations." To hear Zayn tell it, Gigi is the hyper-organized, clear-headed, and positive counterweight to his disposition, which can dip into a vacant or negative state. She helped him reset his attitude when he was releasing his ﬁrst solo album, partying too hard. "I had a very negative outlook on things. That might have been adolescence or testosterone or whatever the fuck was running through my body at the time," he says. "She's helped me to look at things from a positive angle."

As Zayn heads into his new album cycle, Gigi has been a font of support and organizational heft. He says she's especially good with dates, which I mishear as "good with debts."

She's good with debts? You're in debt?

"No, no. Dates. She doesn't handle my ﬁnances yet," he says. "We'll get to that eventually."

When Zayn Malik went solo, he dropped his last name. The mononymic "Zayn" took on a potency and directness that enabled him to break free from the chains of boy-band drudgery and lameness. Zayn: It's a single syllable that conjures a vaporous sexuality and a moodiness that blurs the line between contemplative and blank. You can imagine the black-and-white commercial for L'Eau de Zayn.

In the years since he dropped his last name, the word "Zayn" has also become, to insiders, an equally potent verb. To "Zayn" means to be within someone's reach one moment and then completely disappear the next without any explanation. Poof! To be "Zayned" is to witness a French exit so aggressive that it almost has a supernatural quality. I know this because it happened to me.

We emerged from the ship's galley, and as I prepared to launch into more conversation, he asked Carolina where he could ﬁnd the toilets. She pointed him toward a porta-potty on dry land, and Taryn wordlessly followed behind him, obviously accustomed to this ritual. Before I could get my bearings, he was zipping off into the parking lot adjacent to the tanker, no doubt scurrying home to his fortress of solitude and cigarette smoke in SoHo. I'd been Zayned.

We were supposed to hang out the following week, and I patiently waited for him to reach out. But I knew that he never would. And much as I'd like to be the exception to the Laws of Zayn's Nature, I get it. Who among us has never fantasized about blowing off pesky professional obligations we deem useless? Zayn—driven by a spirit that is part self-destruction, part self-preservation, part youthful punk contrarianism—actually has the balls to live that fantasy. It's self-absorbed, immature, and unprofessional. I'd be offended if I didn't think it was so fucking cool.

Carrie Battan is a staff writer for 'The New Yorker' and a contributor to 'GQ'.

An abridged version of this story appeared in the July 2018 issue.

#zayn #gq #interview #magazine #print interview #love of my life

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pikachumaniac · 8 years ago

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Fool’s Errand

Notes: Woohoo! Easing myself back into writing (finally!!).

Based on the prompt from here:

“I’ll never see you again, will I?”

“Do you want me to say no or to lie?”

“I’ll never see you again, will I?”

He pauses mid-kiss to stare at the boy, incredulous that he is choosing now of all times to ask such a question. “Do you want me to say no or to lie?”

Q glares, which is rather impressive considering how close he was to begging just a few moments ago. “Oh, why not tell a lie. It is not as if this would be the first time.”

He can’t help but feel somewhat indignant at the accusation, considering. “You seem to be forgetting who exactly left whom last time. And honestly,” he continues, before the boy can have a chance to respond, “I’m about to fuck you for the first time in two years, and you want to waste time talking about blame?”

“One year and eleven months,” Q mutters mulishly.

“And seventeen days, but who’s counting?” Not him. Not Q. Although given how interested his cock still is in the boy (and Q’s in him, if he dares flatter himself so), perhaps that is not completely the truth. Which is fine – both he and Q are well-versed in lies. Such was life, in their line of work. “Now, are you done killing the mood, and can we get on with this? You’re only punishing yourself, you know.” He runs a hand slowly along the pale expanse of Q’s skin, and watches in amusement as the boy arches his back in a desperate want.

“You bastard.” It’s less a curse than a plea, but Q is not done yet. “You are just as bad as 007.”

Raoul immediately lets his hand drop back down, his desire quickly fading. There’s no quicker way to kill the mood than mentioning the favorite lapdog of his greatest enemy, and either Q is deliberately trying to bait him or the boy is rather stupider than he’s been led to believe. Neither is a particularly appealing option, when there are so many better things they could be doing with their limited time together. “Must you insist on talking about this now?”

Green eyes narrow, no longer darkened by need but by anger. “You know why I left,” Q says, his voice low. “You know that I could not just stand aside and let you destroy yourself.”

“If you helped me, that wouldn’t even be a possibility,” he shoots back, deliberately missing the point. “Instead, you chose to work for her. Why? For some outdated concept of Queen and country?”

Q snorts, as unimpressed with the accusation as the first and last times they had this argument, and all the times in-between. “You know nothing about me if you think this has anything to do with patriotic duty.”

And that was the worst part, isn’t it? It might have been easier, if it had been about misguided loyalty to his country. That was at least something understandable, even if Raoul had never felt that idiotic compulsion. But Q’s decision is based on something else entirely, something that Raoul still cannot accept after all of these years. The knowledge causes him to sigh and flop down on the bed next to the boy, suddenly feeling exhausted. “Yes, yes, I know. You do it to save me, or so you keep claiming.” He closes his eyes to avoid the indignation directed at him; of course he knew that Q will not appreciate the mockery, but if the boy had wanted to be indulged, he would not have been asking such questions in the first place. “Tell me, does mummy know of your grand schemes? Because I can’t imagine she is pleased that her quartermaster is being distracted from his job by a super villain.”

“You, a super villain? Just because you have a shitty dye job does not mean you are a super villain.”

He opens his eyes to grace Q with an injured look. “I thought you liked the hair.”

“Nobody likes the hair, Tiago.”

He should reprimand the boy for that, remind him harshly that Tiago Rodriguez is long dead, but he doesn’t. He tells himself that it’s because there’s no point, although an unbiased observer might point out that this is just one more example of him being soft on the boy. An unbiased observer might also point out that his being soft on the boy is no doubt how they ended up in this position in the first place, that perhaps if he had taken a firmer hand with the orphan he had picked up all those years ago in Hong Kong, Q might be a bit more malleable.

(He knows he never could. As much as Q’s stubbornness drives him mad at times, the boy’s strength of will is also just one of the many reasons why he loves him so.)

“Besides,” Q says, blissfully unaware that Raoul had just been contemplating the benefits of a good thrashing, “you know her better than anyone. Do you really thing she doesn’t know?”

“I think you’re in over your head,” Raoul replies pointedly. “She will use you and discard you when you have served your purpose.” He would know, after all.

“You could prevent that, you know,” Q reminds him, just as pointedly.

Raoul scowls, “Blackmail does not suit you, dearest.”

Shame is not to be had, apparently. “We all so what we must.”

He is entirely unimpressed by that bland explanation. “This fool’s errand is something you must do?”

“Why is saving you a fool’s errand?” Q frowns, as always unable to understand that some things are just not capable of being saved. He supposes he shouldn’t be too surprised; the boy had always liked fixing things, tinkering with broken objects to make them better than before. But people aren’t things, even if it would be a lot better if they were. But in his experience, once a person was broken, like he had been, there was no going back.

He can’t break the boy’s delusion though. Not now, not ever. He knows he should, knows that he must shatter the illusion that there is something left of him to save. But he is so very selfish, and there will always be a part of him that still needs the sacrifices that Q will make for him, even if he is incapable of doing the same for the boy. For as much as he loves Q, even now he yearns for revenge even more.

So tonight, again, he will keep reality at bay. He will end this talk of silliness and ease Q down, distract him with more pleasant things that are the culmination of all these years of getting to know every perfect inch of the boy. And when they are finished, Raoul will kiss Q on the forehead as the boy drifts away, lulled into pleasant dreams by the drugs that he will slip into his drink. For that is the way they are, and that is the way they will always be, until Raoul does the kind thing and ends it all.

And that is exactly what he intends to do. Because Q is right – there will be no next time, not for them. Raoul will end things the only way he knows now, by finally enacting the revenge that he so desperately craves. It is the only way to free the boy from this prison of mutual need, as well as from Mansfield’s clutches. Once he is finished, Q will have no choice but to move on from this toxic relationship, although Raoul suspects that the boy may end up exchanging one poison for another.

(He’s seen the looks 007 has given the boy, when he thinks no one else is looking. Raoul may have to make sure that Mansfield is not the only one who is dead by the end of this.)

But rather than feel that usual rush of jealousy, Raoul just feels… tired. On its face, it’s not entirely unusual – revenge is a stressful business, after all – but this feels different. Almost as if-

His eyes widen at the boy, but it doesn’t last long as the world slips sickeningly out of focus. It’s a symptom he’s well-familiar with, except usually the roles are reversed. “Quinn, what did you do?”

“You know I hate being called that,” Q reprimands, as if that is the thing that matters right now. “And you know exactly what I did. You’ve done it to me enough times, goodness knows.”

Raoul tries to stand, but barely manages to lift his head off the pillow before he’s brought back down by the drugs coursing through his system. “You brat. That was different.”

“Oh was it really?” A heavy weight falls on his waist as the boy straddles him, peering down at him not with desire but with an almost clinical professionalism. “You and I will need to have a more in-depth debate on that, and not to mention the virtues of consent. For now, I have to go prevent what you have started.”

“You-”

A cold hand rests on his forehead, gently shutting his eyes. “Sleep, Tiago. When you wake up, this will all be over.”

He should fight back, or, at the very least, curse the boy one more time. Instead, all he thinks is, That was supposed to be my line, before the drugs pull him under.

#silva/q #ficlet #007 fest #teamqbranch #q #raoul silva

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paladin-of-nerd-fandom65 · 8 years ago

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Revelations and Truths

So it’s been building up to this moment, the first encounter between the Teen Titans and Mary Grayson the Talon. This story here is based upon “Mary the Talon”, “Mission” and “Investigation” so i highly recommend those stories before immediately going for this one.

WARNING: this story contains blood, gore and scenes unsuitable for little children. Parental Discretion is advised.

Also I would like to thank @lightdusk and @nightglider124 inspiring me to make this story come true. If you have requests and ideas for future story, please ask it would be very appreciated. :-)

Prologue: May 6th, Location: Unknown

“Arise.”

She was rose amongst the voice she had heard.

“You have shown excellent progress throughout the years…and yet we could not fully grasp your trust in us.”

“Master, if I may, my missions have been successful upon the first day I have taken my oath upon thee and further more…”

“Silence”

She fell into silence. The vision however began once more as the Master spoke. Words flew through her eyes, and deep into her mind, no her very soul.

“Mama, m-Mama d-d-Daddy? Please be okay. Please”

Mary unintentionally began breathing heavily. Her Little Robin was calling out to her. He needed his Mama and he needed her now. A crack bounced across the Labyrinth as the Master strikes his whip on the ground in order to gain her attention.

“Dear Madam, have you blocked your ears from hearing these graceful words of your trust in us?”

The owl dressed woman quickly nodded to the Master’s question as more of that young boy’s voice began to pierce her soul.

“Mama, are you hurt?”

“Mama, please be okay!”

“Just hang in there, Mama! The doctors are going to help you and Daddy!”

“Mama…I Love you”

“…Love is a weakness”, The Master concluded.

The Talon had realized whose Love was told by her Master was weak, her love for Richard, her love for her husband John….her love that comes with being a mother…was a sign of her being weak?

“It is not.” Mary speaks.

The master behind his Owl mask has his eyes widen “What WAS THAT?”

Mary raises her head with her glowing goggled eyes staring in spite towards the gathering of Owl masked men and women before her.

“Love builds strength, Love binds one’s soul with the souls of others, and Love should NOT be treated as weak.”

A much younger man with an Owl mask speaks right behind the Master jokingly, “It appears we have upset Mama Bird here”

That foolish man seals their fates however, for with those words uttered, a dagger that was on the top of Mary’s knife belt suddenly found itself into said man’s throat in a matter of seconds, with precious red fluid immediately leaking profusely. The other Owls couldn’t help but feel a sense of horror at the grisly sight.

“Why yes, Mama Bird is quite upset. My personal advice is….RUN.” Mary says this as the two mini swords strapped to her back suddenly became within her hands as she begins to dash towards the platform the rest of owls sit upon. Before Mary can climb the ledge however, a massive man dressed in similar albeit different owl-like uniform arises, knocking Mary on her feet.

“Mary Lloyd, the Masters have sentenced you to death.”

Mary with a tiny smirk coming on her masked face whereas the Owls flee simply responds, “You are talking to a dead woman so I’m afraid that sentence is rather moot.”

Jump City, about two days later.

It was a seemingly calm night for the city as children rushed to their beds and the parents prepared for the next day at work. The street crime was relatively low for the night as the villains hadn’t planned any major scheme threatening the city or even its banks. Nonetheless it was nights including this one in which even the slightest of criminal break-ins can happen.

This was a possibly one family in the city’s richer districts takes note of as they lock their doors with extra bolts hoping to prevent the criminal scum of the city from reaching their wallets or perhaps more importantly their daughter when they’re asleep. However, in the midst of locking the final bolt, two distinct eyes of their servants, the Talon, are seen in a relatively close distance. Obviously, the fellow Owls have sent the Talon as a messenger. With such both parents take their white Owl masks as the Talon enters their home.

Perfect, Mary thinks with her feet barely stepping unto this couple’s front door. They do not expect or even have the slightest clue of what had happened with the rest of Jump’s Owl Nest and how most either fled back to Gotham or more commonly met the nasty end of her blades, both short and long. Her new ‘mission’ was a simple one: let the Court know now of their precious talon has finally realized who she is, why she is the way she is, and takes into account of all the lives slain by her hand and all the other talons. Now she demands one simple choice to them: leave the innocents in this City and these supposed heroes called Titans alone or suffer the terrifying consequences with her blades. Now it was this family’s to see that first hand.

“What news from the Court?” the woman of the two asks.

The Talon at first remains utterly silent.

“Speak quickly” the woman’s husband asks.

“I must first ask”, Mary says while keeping her voice mostly subdued in which should make sure they do not recognize her, “is your daughter well informed of our ways?”

“Oh, most certainly Yes”, the woman says with utter glee in her voice, “she will be delighted to meet a fine servant to our cause like you.”

Mary couldn’t help but feel a tinge of disgust in that statement since during her indoctrination into the Court, many children, especially girls, cheered in joy as her torture in the Labyrinth played on, as if this whole thing was one giant game to them. Thank God almighty, Richard never was friends with these….monsters in his time at the circus. On a quick note, where is Richard at the moment? Mary can only pray that he’s safe, at least under police protection since it was a crime scene, not really an accident that happens on that one performance at Gotham.

But yes unto the matter at hand with these savages….

Meanwhile…

Robin had just completed his sixth turn around within the ghettos of Jump City. This city in which he had been living in since about 3 years ago has done much to him within that amount of time. From his first crook to catch robbing the banks, meeting Starfire and the others, and of course the ever looming presence of Slade in which he knows can exploit his feelings of self doubt and desire for absolute justice to once again attempt a hostile takeover of the criminal underground.

However, at the moment, Slade was not the one uber mysterious criminal not yet captured that currently holds Robin’s attention. That distinct honor goes to Chucky Sol’s murder whose electrum ‘blood’ sample has left him baffled to…what exactly it is. This especially becomes a forensic nightmare for Robin since he and Cyborg have recently discovered that Sol was NOT this mystery person’s only kill; far from it actually, that very same electrum has in fact been recorded with various crimes and unsolved murder cases that had been appearing since he was at least eight years old ranging from St Louis, New York, Boston, and most prominent of all Gotham. Yes, these were murder cases not even the Batman can solve and apparently they followed him all the way here. They needed to find this person and fast.

“Kid Flash, how goes your end?” Robin asks through his T Communicator to his old friend Wally West, the Kid Flash for he covered the ghettos outside of his range thanks to his trademark super speed.

“Wish I can say I found something Dude, but apparently the lack of pretty much anything here more apparent than my lack of dinner for today. That’s short for flat out nothing” Kid Flash shrugs rather sadly in reply to Robin’s call.

“Got nothing over here either” Beast Boy states on his end of the call

“Dead zoned over here, man” Cyborg mumbles tiredly

“Nada” Raven deadpans out for an answer.

Then however came in Starfire’s response, “I have found something, something flying through the air…like one of your Earth’s ‘birds’”

Robin immediately perked at that finding, “track it Star and send us the coordinates.” He ordered and immediately to every one of the other Titans, the address of Starfire’s latest location were sent; 1940 Bill Finger Drive. In one of the richer parts of the cities was this creep showing up. They needed to get there NOW.

And so, the Teen Titans all converge to that address and a mission they don’t know yet but will bring a new spin on the term ‘criminal’

1940 Bill Finger Drive, five minutes later…

Beast Boy arrive the last while everyone else has met at Starfire’s coordinates in which was in fact a luxurious building of a mansion of house in which pretty much only people of a $100,000 and above income can indulge within. Apparently the winged figure Starfire seen had entered into the building in seemingly friendly manner and she considered simply calling the area clear…at least until she heard the doors lock…and the screaming began. She immediately tried bursting into said doors to stop whatever was happening, only being met with a painful dosage of electric shock in which left her paralyzed for a brief bit, in which by the time she awoke the other Titans plus Kid Flash had arrived.

Now all seven Titans stood outside the beautifully crafted home with Owl shaped gargoyles hanging from its granite pillars with such prestige, as if the Owls themselves guard the very city they reside within. Come to think of it, a lot of today had seemed full of owls and other birds of prey being mentioned tonight. This type of coincidence reaches to Robin’s mind, in particular bringing to mind something from his childhood not only his ever favorite nickname ‘Little Robin’ but also of a certain lullaby he heard…

But these thoughts were brushed aside the second glass was broken inside the home, they needed to get in.

“Cyborg, blast open that door!”

With that, the locked marble doors were burst open with Cyborg’s trademark sonic canon and the Titans enter the home. Probably they should’ve brought barf bags inside given what they see next.

“P-p-ple—e-ease….h-h-help us” moaned the pale and weak female voice coming out of the mangled bodies filled with numerous cuts and slashes across their torsos, legs, with a bit of stab wounds going on both their genitals and their arms held with steel chains both surround and impaling the arms, holding the young couple to the wall with their blood leaking from all mentioned and then some. Frankly, even with Kid Flash and Robin immediately working to get them down, this gruesome sight makes even the toughest of soldiers most likely want to run away and cower into the corner. Believe it or not, it was only bound to grow worse from here, starting with a howling yet high pitched scream erupting from some other room of the mansion.

“We must search this place for that little girl IMMEDAITELY” roared Starfire as the screaming continued and did not let up in the slightest.

“Split up!” says Robin in an equal state of worry and panic for that little girl. Thus the searching begins.

Apparently the search across the house goes about as well as trying to urinate in a tiny glass cup while spinning around in a spinning top like manner, mainly it was near impossible. Each of the two preciously wasted minutes passed by with numerous rooms marked with a “Clear” from each of the Titans in their respective rooms. Even though Kid Flash provided a massive boot to progress, they still head that poor little girl’s screams echo through the mansion with no sign of her.

“Ok ok Ok! I’ll do what you want just please don’t hurt me!” the little girl screamed as the Talon throws her to the nearest wall after she was done shattering said girl’s fingers and toes.

“All need to do honey is say that you and your family will move out of this city and never come back.”

“Why would we do that? Why are you doing this?! You’re part of Daddy’s friends, they won’t do this!” wailed that girl through her sobs as she staggered to get away from this monster.

“It easy sweetie, because you wouldn’t leave anybody you didn’t like alone and only hurt other people for fun” The Talon coldly replied, “I’m simply here to put a stop to it.” She then grabs the girl by the collar of his PJs and lifts her into the air “I want you with your momma and daddy to know, no matter who comes in my way or the Titans all right behind our backs, you better start running, leave us alone and peaceful, or you’ll be expecting a visit from me.”

Talon stares fiercely then into the girl’s ever so scared eyes “Do I make myself CLEAR?”

“y-y-yes” sobbed the little girl.

“Good” replied the Talon. All the sudden however,

“Cyborg, blast it!” in that second a blue beam shot across the room with every Titan that had been searching the home from the better part of these few minutes entering in almost instantly. The horror in all of their eyes at the sight of this owl like creature holding a little girl mercilessly off the ground while said girl was full of tears and pain proves being an understatement. Also an understatement would be the anger that quickly consumed their horror as they draw out either their battles stances or weapons to combat this threat.

“Who…are you?!” asks Robin with a twinge of horror mixing with pure fiery rage at the psychopath who was harming this girl to no end. At least Slade target someone like Terra and him, individuals who can actually fight back against him and not target 6 year olds like her.

Talon simply remains silent in the presence of these teenagers, analyzing their technology, powers or talents they can posses against her. She had heard of their exploits amongst her missions here at Jump and their weaknesses which was how she was able to use two of her daggers with an electric charge to keep Starfire out the first time. While analyzing the group, Robin himself actually caught her attention the most. She knows that R on that red breasted vest anywhere.

“Mama, how come there’s an R on my shirt?”

“Easy Dick, it’s meant to be your full name Richard. And it’s also because you’re my Little Robin, flying through the air with little to care. Just like Mama and Daddy do.”

Now normally a brawl against all seven Titans will prove nearly futile right here given her situation and the simple matter of fact, Robin is at the same time her top priority target and the one person she NEVER wants to hurt.

“Answer me!” suddenly yelling Robin, tightening his grip on his bo-staff and snapping the Talon out of her thoughts.

With that Talon realizes, what’s use of hiding it? From what she can gather, Satan himself resurrected their arch nemesis in front of their eyes so maybe this won’t be too hard for them to get. With that, she silently throws that little girl into their direction, Kid Flash catching her in his arms, and without a single word, slowly begins to remove her mask.

As her features began to show, each of Titans found themselves widening their eyes once again as the noted not only the feminine curve of her lips but more prominently, the gray skin with covered her face right down to bone. Lightly blue glowing blood vessels also showed themselves, thus finally wrapping up where that black electrum had come from. The nail in the coffin though came with this woman letting loose a ponytail made with dark red hair, so dark one can easily mistake it for black from a distance. This beautiful woman would’ve been a general shock for every Titan there given her beauty. But the minute she opens her now golden tinted eyes and speaks, it went from just being a simple shock…

“Hi Richard, it’s nice to see you again.”

Robin nearly drops his staff at that statement, “m-m-Mama?”

“This woman…?” Starfire chirps out

“Is your mom?!” Kid Flash blurts

Raven’s hands began to glow with pure dark magic “Do you honestly think we’ll believe that statement?”

Beast Boy’s own hands began to morph into claws and he began snarling “Lady please tell us your talking out of your butt.”

Cyborg, however, scanning the electrum in her body and comparing to that one sample, nods “She isn’t lying y’all it’s really her. Her DNA matches the sample and since that DNA’s supposed to be dead…she’s really Robin’s long lost mother.”

Robin couldn’t help but gulp his throat as he processed all this information, “you’re really back?’

Mary nods slightly, with a rather…calm and affectionate smile on her face “In a manner of speaking, yes I’m really alive again Little Robin. Now before you ask there’s a lot more at stake here that you don’t realize is real and I don’t your friends getting hurt by it.” Her face then loses its smile, now somewhat resembling her “listen to me son” look “whatever happens from here on out, you will not get yourself caught in it, Mama’s just simply doing her work to make sure every one of you is safe and sound.”

Robin couldn’t help himself from gritting his teeth towards that last statement, especially given the sobbing girl in Kid Flash’s arms, “What do you mean? Why do…This? Who should be your problems and not ours mom?! Especially something SO BAD, it makes you into…THIS?!?”

Mary Elizabeth Lloyd Grayson, the Talon of Jump City, the Rebel, the Romani, simply picks up her mask from the ground and in her most somber tone the Titans there had heard, as her eyes now glowed, her voice, now slightly made almost ghostly yet very firm, began to speak:

“Beware the Court of Owls,

That watches all the Time,”

“Ruling their nest from a shadowed perch,

Behind granite and lime,” Robin continues as he drops his staff in absolute terror. He knew that poem, that lullaby he heard as child.

“They watch you in your hearth,”

“They watch you in your bed,”

“Speak not…”

“…a whispered word about them.

They both say at the same time, “Or they’ll send a Talon for your head.”

With that, major puff of smoke erupts out of the blue, reeling back all the Titans and blinding them. By the time said smoke cleared, she was gone, leaving only a golden bracelet behind. Robin picks it up with his eyes in a dazed state; this was the bird themed bracelet he gave to her on the last birthday he spent with her.

Epilogue: Titans Tower, three hours later, Robin’s Room

Richard John Grayson Llodveski couldn’t help but sit on his bed in his sweat pants and loose t shirts cross legged as his bare feet began to feel dumb, making him curl his toes to keep on the blood flow. But his feet meant little to what was on his hands, his mother’s bracelet.

It was all there and yet he didn’t know until now. The files from Haley Circus were cracked open and the words in them couldn’t deny facts: the first ever home he had was in fact a training ground for living undead killing machines that harm all sort of people, criminals or not, for the urban legend that is the Court of owls, an urban legend meant to scare children into listening to their parents before bedtime. Now, his mother, the woman whose ‘accident’ had been the bear root of Robin himself, was a killer. More than that, she had been killing since he began as Robin, since he was that inexperienced but ever so quipping eight year old boy in a bright yellow cape and green pixie boots running across the rooftops of Gotham. While he made his new life from the circus saving lives, the woman he loves from birth until rebirth was taking them.

This truth cannot be any more devastating than some saying Hitler himself had came back to life was voted President of the USA. But then comes the fact…it his mother…

Tears started to build in his eyes, so Richard puts the bracelet back on his dresser before promptly grabbing his stuffed elephant Peanut and smacking his face in his pillows, muttering in his native Romani

“This is just (sob) wrong.”

Little did Robin know he wasn’t the only one left a sobbing wreck from tonight…

Meanwhile, at an unknown place in Jump’s waterfront district…

The now lone Mary Grayson, sitting on her own custom bed with her armor off, leaving only a bra, sweatpants and bare feet on the cushions, was glaring angrily and mournfully at her owl mask, the mask she had worn since her resurrection, the mask that had frightening so many innocent children both with and without her control…even her child was afraid now..

Mary throws the mask towards the wall and buries her face in her own pillows, muttering in her own native Romani

“This is just (sob) wrong.”

#mary grayson #court of owls #tt animated #dick grayson #koriand'r #wally west #my posts #fanfic #side note #I missed counted the Titans as seven instead of six #whoops

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