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targaryen-dynasty · 9 months ago

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TO STOKE A FLAME.

Aemond Targaryen x servant!Reader

WARNINGS: SEXUAL CONTENT-MINORS DNI; p in v, oral (m receiving), power imbalance (prince and maid), mutual pining, female Reader

WORDS: 4K

NOTES: this is written for the writing challenge hosted by @targaryenvampireslayer I got the prompt "Just relax for me, I'll make it feel good" and the trope mutual pining. This was my first time writing mutual pining, and I hope it's at least slightly fitting lol.

When you’re first assigned to cleaning the chambers of the King’s second son, your heart leaps for it means you are able to escape the tortures of being a scullery maid for a position that is at least a bit higher ranked, and not as ungrateful and strainful.

Prince Aemond is an early riser, already up long before first light, and whenever he sets off to train with the sword in the morning, it’s time for you to take care of his quarters.

There’s another maid that has been offered the same opportunity, only that she is in charge of making the chambers Prince Aegon presentable, and from what you have gathered, you wouldn’t want to trade places with her.

Aemond’s chambers are always immaculate when you step into them. Everything is in its place, and the air is always filled with the cool morning breeze from the windows he’s kept open. Quite different to the quarters of his older brother.

But what they do have in common are their questionable reputations.

While Aegon is promiscuous, known to pinch and fondle at any serving girl who strays within his reach, Aemond is somewhat feared, at least among the staff. Most servant girls keep well away from the prince, and a part of you is certain it is solely because of the black eyepatch he dons after losing his eye, and the grim expression he usually holds on his face.

The other maid that tends to his chambers with you is overly cautious when dusting or putting fresh linens on his bed, something that even makes you swallow thickly. However, you can’t seem to bring yourself to share their sentiment.

How could you?

Despite only meeting the prince very briefly, you feel like every day that you sweep through his chambers, you get to know him more and more. If there’s bedlam following in Aemond’s wake when he leaves in the morning, it merely consists of several books scattered all over his desk, his armchairs and sometimes even his bed.

Most of them deal with dragon lore, history, and a variety of other subjects which you wouldn’t expect to be read by any other lord, making clear that the prince is very well educated, and always strives to learn more.

And though he keeps his chambers mostly spotless, there’s very much of his personality in them – if you read between the lines.

More oft than not, the armchairs close to the fireplace don’t stand in their usual positions, turned to the side to face each other with one of them being piled by books or scrolls. And you know from the servants that he’s often found sitting beside the fireplace either in deep thought or engrossed in a book with the flames of the fire dancing in the corner of his eye.

You’re cleaning his quarters all by yourself today for Darla, the other maid assigned, has been called to take care of something else, which means you’re granted slightly more time for Aemond’s chambers.

Kneeling in front of the fireplace, you’re knocking off as much ash and debris as possible back into it, before some of it is swept up and emptied into the pail standing next to you.

You’ve been a bit too engrossed in your task when the doors behind you burst open, catching you by surprise and startling you. There’s only one person that could and would enter the prince’s quarters at this hour of the day – the prince himself.

As you hurry to get back on your feet, already straightening and dusting off the skirt of your maid attire, you’re a bit too quick and hit your head on the ledge of the fireplace, your mob cap falling to the ground in the process.

It’s a stinging pain that shoots right through your whole body, and a throbbing that settles at the crown of your head. You bring a hand up to soothe the pain at least a bit, before you’re reminded of the reason why you got up in the first place.

Gritting your teeth, you take in a sharp breath and lower your hand, bobbing a small curtsy with a strained ‘Prince Aemond’ leaving your lips to the man that stands still in the room, clearly regarding you.

“My apologies, I–” you say, trying to make excuses and wanting to state that you’re just about to leave, but he cuts you off.

“Are you well?” he asks, though there is a lilt of amusement in his voice. “I apologize for startling you, that was not my intent.”

What’s even more unusual than him apologizing to you, a servant, for barging into his own chambers is that he's inquiring about your well-being. You’ve never before been acknowledged by any of the Targaryen’s, not that you expected it, and feeling his gaze on you kind of makes you nervous.

He raises his brow when there doesn’t come an answer from you, and you take it as your cue to speak. “I–Yes, Prince Aemond,” you stutter, bowing your head. Raising it again, your hand brushes the crown of it briefly, the spot still throbbing despite it happening a few moments ago. “I am well. It’s–It’s nothing, my prince.”

Gathering your things, you’re caught off guard for a second time since he’s entered his chambers as he slowly approaches you. He has a sympathetic smile on his lips now, and you’re not sure if it’s the embarrassment or him coming close enough to tower above you, but your body feels like it’s been put on fire.

“Are you certain you’re well?” he asks, eye flitting from your head to meet your eyes. “You’ve struck your head rather hard.”

He reaches to inspect the spot on your head, yet he hesitates and pulls back right before his fingers could brush your hair. You’re slightly disappointed, but your pounding heart is grateful. Just the mere proximity brings a blush to your cheeks and has you shifting your weight from one leg to the other, and you’re certain you wouldn’t have been able to handle him touching you.

There’s a moment of silence between you, and your hands clutch the handle of the pail tight enough for your knuckles to blanch from the force. It’s unnerving, and you’re torn between wanting to stay and wanting to leave. You’re afraid he’s not the man you’ve made up in your mind, that there’s just a hint of truth in the rumors that make their way around staff and court.

His voice cuts through the silence like a sharp blade, smooth and somewhat calming. “What’s your name?”

Taking in a deep breath, you tell him your name, but not without your eyes darting to the ground. His gaze is heavy, too heavy for you to meet it, and you feel as though there’s something else than curiosity woven within it.

“You’re quite flustered over nothing,” he hums, and the way your name slips past his lips with so much ease almost makes you melt right then and there; at least it’s enough to make you forget that he’s clearly noticed the effect he has on you.

Aemond takes note of you being nervous around him, his attention causing your blood to rush through your veins. It seems as though it’s a rather strong reaction that you have to him, something not many women feel when he comes near them. It’s endearing.

Your eyes flicker upwards to meet his good one again, and you straighten your back for another curtsy.

“M-my apologies, Prince Aemond.”

You can spot the exact moment the corners of his lips curl into a teasing smirk, your timid demeanor and your nervousness the trigger for it. And being as cocky as he is, he thinks he could have a bit of fun with you.

“It seems you’re rather out of sorts for something so trivial,” he notes, his tone teasing and playful, matching the flicker of mischief in his eye. “Perhaps I should inspect you myself to see if you have in fact sustained any injuries.”

His words make you feel as if the world around you is slowing down, making everything feel almost unbearable. You’re finding it incredibly hard to look him in the eye without blushing or your breath becoming heavy, and therefore fix them on the ground again. Noticing his large feet in comparison to your much smaller ones, your thoughts briefly stray to what else of him might be large.

But before you can answer him, or your thoughts can dive deeper, Aemond places a hand beneath your chin and gently tilts your face back up for you to meet his gaze. You’ve only seen one other in passing, and even then you’re certain he’s paid no mind to you at all, so his touch comes unexpected. But you don’t tense, and you certainly don’t pull away. However, you’re unsure if you should give in and lean into it.

His finger brushes along your jawline, trailing down the curve of your neck, and coming close to your collarbone, a heat following in its wake. He stops for a second, as if he’s debating whether or not he should move his touch any further.

Aemond’s surprised by your reaction, yet he also realizes that you’re much more interesting than any of the other maids for they were all alike – all not daring to look at him or stay in his presence for longer than a few minutes. But you’re different.

He could already tell by the way you so neatly clean and store his books when he’s spent his night reading by the fire, or how you seem to pay extra attention when you’re putting fresh linens on his bed, fluffing his pillows without the hurry the previous chambermaid has had.

And seeing his touch having such a significant impact on you, the little maid he’s spent so much time dreaming and fantasizing about, feeds a desire he didn’t have before – the desire to bed you, to claim you.

“Get on your knees,” he orders, hooded eye looking down at you.

Swallowing thickly, your mind struggles to comprehend what he asked of you. “I-what?” you stammer in disbelief.

“You heard me. On your knees.” He’s a bit firmer now, and uses the slight grip he has on your shoulder to give you a little help sinking down. You follow his lead, the pail rattling onto the ground.

Your hands are folded in your lap when you gaze up at him, eyes wide and curiously studying his next move. With your thumbs brushing over each other, you try to keep your fluttering nerves at bay, grazing your skin to distract yourself from the throbbing that blossoms between your legs.

Aemond looms over you, reaching out to cup your cheek with one hand. There’s something in the position you’re in, and the combination of his gentle touch and stern orders that gets to your head, and lures you in to lean into his hand. It also makes you a bit bolder as you place a hand on his thigh in return.

It piques his interest, obvious in the way he raises a brow, and his eye flickers to where your hand rests on his body. But he doesn’t shy away from the touch.

“Do you know what I require of you?” Aemond asks, sterner than before.

You bow your head, batting your eyelashes at him in an innocent manner. “I do, my Prince.”

That’s all he has to hear before he swiftly unlaces the front of his breeches and tugs them down barely enough to free his cock and stones, the sight alone making your breath hitch in your throat. He’s well endowed, and far bigger than the cock of the one man you’ve slept with before.

You release a shaky breath, replaying all the knowledge you’ve gathered about pleasuring a man with your mouth, and catch a whiff of musk mixed with the salty smell of sweat – he’s definitely trained with the sword this morning.

Squeezing his thigh, your eyes flicker between his and his hard cock as the slight nod of his head encourages you to curl your hand around it, your thumb and index finger barely touching.

He throbs in your palm already, and the tip is covered in a red that makes it clear he’s desperate to be buried inside of something; probably not caring whether it’s your mouth or your cunt.

Even though you cower beneath his dominating presence, a jolt of boldness strikes you that makes you lean in and lick a flat stripe from the base of his cock up to the bulbous tip. A salty taste lingers on your tongue as you drag it over the slit, making you hum appreciatively, seemingly pleased to witness the effect your touch and presence have on the prince’s body.

Aemond buries his hands in your hair, loosening the bun you’ve put it into this morning, and grabs a fistful of it. It’s a sharp tug of him that catches your attention, and your wide eyes flit up to meet his demanding gaze.

Spurred on by the heavy breaths moving his chest, you swallow, and eventually part your lips to slowly ease him inside, and even though he holds you by your hair, he’s generous enough to not force himself inside, allowing you to move as you please.

“Fuck,” he growls as he gets accustomed to the warmth and tightness of your mouth, head tipping back to release a bawdy groan.

You hollow your cheeks around him, and, after a few moments that allow you to adjust to him, start to bob your head back and forth his thick length, flattening your tongue against him for added stimulation.

Growing bolder and bolder with each passing moment, you squeeze your thighs together every time the tip of his cock brushes the back of your throat, robbing you of the ability to breathe until you pull off of him again.

With his hand in your hair, Aemond senses you getting more comfortable, and starts to guide your head along his member, encouraging you to set up a quicker pace to which you eagerly comply.

“That’s it,” he groans, not able to tear his eye from the sight of your lips wrapped around him as his cock repeatedly disappears inside of your mouth.

Droplets of your saliva dribble from the corners of your lips down your chin with how fast you sink down on him, and the lewd sounds of his soaked cock sliding back and forth past your lips fill the prince’s chambers, hardly drowned out by his grunts and groans.

At this point, you’re drenched in your arousal, the linen of your small clothes clinging to your swollen mound in a way that’s almost uncomfortable.

While you bring one hand up to clasp around the rest of his cock that doesn’t fit into your mouth, the other grips his thigh a bit harder than before, holding onto him for dear life as he uses your face however he pleases.

You feel the muscles of his thigh tense and contract under your palm and his cock throb inside of you, indicating that he’s close to reaching his peak. It’s the first time you pleasure a man with your mouth, and you’re not quite sure what to expect. But before you can brace yourself for whatever might come, Aemond pulls you off of him by your hair, prompting you to topple back to sit on your haunches.

You lock your teary eyes with his good one, lips smacking as his musky and salty taste spreads on them and your tongue. “My Prince, I–”

“Remove your clothes,” he interrupts you, his voice less friendly and more a command.

There are so many thoughts rattling your mind right now, and you don’t know where to start and what to process.

“I wasn’t asking,” he growls, his impatience showing as you don’t comply quickly enough.

With a bow of your head, you rise to your feet and peel the beige-ish apron off of your body, the red dress and smallclothes following suit. You waste no thought on your modesty, on the fact that you’re standing bare in front of a prince of the mighty House Targaryen. The longing for him that has built with all the days you’ve cleaned his pristine chambers, and the undeniable aching between your legs don’t allow you to.

You’re undressed when he stalks around you, regarding you like he’s the hunter and you’re his prey. You see that your obedience arouses him, his hard cock throbbing and bouncing with each step he takes around you. It’s thrilling in the best way possible, and the feeling of being desired by him feeds your confidence.

“Are you just watching, or will the prince undress as well?”

His eye narrows and flickers up to yours at your question, and there’s the hint of a smile adorning his features. “Would you like that?”

Biting your bottom lip, a blush creeps on your cheeks. “Very much.”

As you size him up, you notice a flush blossoming from his cheeks down his neck, the same warmth you feel obviously spreading through his body, too.

“Then I suppose that I’ll oblige.”

You watch with half-lidded eyes as he removes his clothing, slipping out of layer after layer, starting with the black leather robe, and ending with his smallclothes.

You all but drag your eyes over his lithe frame, taking in every muscle that ripples beneath his pale skin, and every silver, coarse hair that trails from below his navel to his cock and the sac of his stones.

It seems like he basks in your attention, in the way you stare at him in awe as you lick your lips, and he’s certainly not afraid of showing himself in his full glory.

“Get on the bed,” he says, smugly. “On your hands and knees.”

This time you know better than to take a few seconds to comply, bowing your head before climbing his bed right away, getting in the desired position. You suddenly feel vulnerable and exposed, completely at his mercy in a way you’ve never experienced before. However, your curiosity and desire overshadow any reservations you could have.

“Pray tell, have you lain with a man before?” You feel the mattress dip beneath his weight as he slowly settles behind you. His hands find your hips, and you shiver with anticipation.

Looking at him from over your shoulder, you nod. “Just once, my prince.”

A soft hm rubles in his chest at your words, and he raises an eyebrow, intrigued by your words. You certainly seem to take him very seriously, which isn’t unusual given his station, but it’s your honesty that’s a whole different matter to him. “You enjoyed it, I presume?”

Still meeting his gaze, you swallow thickly. You’re hesitant to answer, not sure why it’s of importance, but he doesn’t seem willing to let you off the hook just yet. “Yes, I did.”

Aemond gives your flesh an appreciative squeeze at that, and shuffles close enough for you to feel his cock press against your arse. “Would you be willing to again?”

You press your lips into a thin line to stop them from pulling into a grin, but fail miserably. The prince behind you takes that as his cue to continue, and you’re most grateful when you feel him drag the tip of his cock through your soaked folds.

“Just relax for me,” he purrs, his eye fixed on the motions of his hand, watching as his cock disappears inside of you. “I’ll make it feel good.”

The moment you stretch around him, you take in a sharp breath, his cock breaching your cunt at a teasingly slow pace that makes sure you feel every vein and ridge of him drag along your walls.

With his hands coming back to rest on your hips, he pulls you onto his cock until his hips press against your arse, taking his time to adjust to your tightness. The ‘shit’ he mumbles doesn’t go unnoticed by you, a renewed wave of your arousal drenching his cock and the sac of his stones.

If his impatience hasn’t been running thin before, it certainly does now, because the first gentle, sensual thrusts are quickly replaced by merciless pounding. You don’t mind it for you’ve been thoroughly soaked, and enjoy the feeling of his cock repeatedly brushing the spot inside of you that makes your vision go blurry.

Aemond brings a hand between your shoulders, applying a good bit of pressure to press your chest down and your face into the pillows. Your head turns to the side, but you’re not able to look at him.

His breathing is heavy, strained pants leaving him, and his hand trails back to grope your arse.

“Fuck, what an obedient girl they’ve ordered to take care of my chambers–of me,” Aemond rambles behind you, bowing forwards to put a bit more of his weight on your small frame. “Taking me so well. Giving me exactly what I want.”

The praise goes straight to your head, and you want to answer, but the words die on your tongue, replaced by quiet whimpers and whines that grow wanton as he splits you open with a hard, percussive thrust. Then another follows, and another, keening at the sweet sounds you make only for him.

Not able to focus on anything else than the pressure building inside of your belly, you push your hips back against him, and he counters by pulling you back with each of his thrusts, meeting him halfways which results in the lewd sounds of skin slapping on skin to echo off the walls.

He’s making you feel so good, so wanted, that you’re certain you would keep going even if someone is to barge into his chambers, interrupting you.

As his hand snakes beneath your body to make contact with your pearl, you’re overcome with the true knowledge of how experienced Aemond actually is. He strums your body like the most talented lutenist, bringing you closer towards your sweet release.

“Gods, I–” you whine into the pillows.

The taut string inside of you snaps, and the pleasure within you soares through your veins. White, hot pleasure clouds your vision, his arm around you the only thing keeping you up right now.

“That’s it,” Aemond grunts, and the snaps of his hips increase to the point your whines become hiccuped, catching in your throat with little to no time to fill your lungs with air.

And then, his hips stutter, his throbbing cock spending itself deep inside of your quivering walls. He twitches and trembles so much that he’s forced to still his hips, and you take it as your cue to roll yours against him, helping him through his peak.

The throbbing only stills once you’ve milked him for every drop of his seed and the last bit of the euphoric high subsides, making him come back to his senses.

But there’s not much basking in the proximity for you, not when Aemond pulls out almost immediately after, climbing off the bed to get dressed again. The red dress is crudely thrown into your direction, silently making clear that it’s time for you to leave.

It seems as though he’s embarrassed, because he has a hard time meeting your eyes, and doesn’t look at you when you get back in your clothes. But perhaps you’re just not catching the subtle glances he throws into your direction as your maid attire comes back to hug your curves.

Tying the apron and fixing your hair, you reach for the pail. It’s then, with you bowing forwards, that you finally feel his seed trickling out of your cunt, and the sensation alone makes you shiver in an uncomfortable way. You certainly have to look for a quiet spot in the keep where you can clean yourself, since you’re not done working.

You head for the door, but before you open it, his smooth voice catches your attention again.

“You may leave now, but I expect you to come back and finish your task at the Hour of the Ghosts, for you have not cleaned the fireplace thoroughly enough.”

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aquamarinebling · 5 days ago

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I enjoy the idea of the party carrying Siffrin’s ashes in different ways. how they would treasure him in their own methods, in this scenario fulfilling his wish of “carry my ashes with you” in a post-canon context.

mirabelle im not certain on, but i imagine she frets on what to do with them for a long time. she doesn’t want to upset their ghost- even if she doesn’t exactly believe in spirits that way and it’s a lot of her anxiety going “but what if you’re wrong, what if you’re upsetting them and they could never tell you? what if you pick wrong, and the memory of him is insulted without you meaning to?”.

perhaps isabeau considered, briefly, putting the ashes into an earring, but the idea feels too far intimate to do to someone that he never told his feelings to. even if siffrin did clearly have feelings for him, it doesn’t matter since isabeau never actually heard it. instead maybe he settles on a necklace, so he can still keep siffrin near his heart.

odile is functional with it. something small and easy to carry, something she won’t lose and can keep close. I think she considers turning them into a gem at some point after being annoyed with the stress of losing or accidentally scattering the ashes, and the thought brings her a wave of guilt. what right does she have to alter his wishes, just because he’s gone? it’s a conundrum for her, not knowing more about what they would have wanted, and having no way to learn more.

bonnie doesn’t want to lose siffrin, so they keep them at home in an urn where they can see them (set up by a window, because someone mentioned siffrin liked the night sky, and “maybe siffrin will wanna look outside sometimes”.) something about them saying hi to it each morning, perhaps working with petronille to put a shrine together (it takes ages to get it right), and sitting by it on a bad day, or ignoring the little section of their home dedicated to him when they’re mad at him (for dying, for sacrificing themself, for losing their eye, etc).

#isat #in stars and time #letting this one out of the drafts!!!!#I think I originally got brain worms about this after reading a ghostfrin fic?

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stararch4ngelqueen · 1 year ago

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Sympathy for Breakfast

(Part 1)

—

Time Written - 9:03 p.m

(Completely unrelated photo it’s just funny to me, also just a silly part 2 for no reason. SFW silly, he stands like this for a majority of this Drabble)

—

The early rays of morning sun sent an irritating glare of bright light through his mask when he feels a faint rumble, making him instinctively reach for his phone.

You coming home soon?

I have a surprise :)

Love you <3

Jason smiles at the screen, feeling glad that his girl woke up on the good side of the bed. However, he checked the time, slowly growing concerned as to why you were up so early.

The diner the both of you adored on weekends and midnights wasn’t even open yet.

A handful of thoughts course through his tired brain. Some of them concerning, some of them far from appropriate.

“Good morning, Mister Hood.” You smile from your position on the ground as he shuffled himself through the front door, carrying double bagged to-go boxes in hand.

The only comfort he had at this moment, besides the fragrant hot coffee inside the machine pot, was seeing your smiling, well rested expression. Your hair was styled to keep out of your way as your main focus, the ‘surprise’, was the project the two of you had been putting off on for a while.

“Babe, what’re you doing?”

You sat criss cross on the living room floor in front of an ash gray, large convertible crib, newly put together by yourself alone.

“Built the crib! Isn’t it pretty?” You extend your hands out towards the sight, the crib equipped with every detail perfectly in place. All you had to do left was add in the bedding onto the new mattress for your son, and it’s fully finished.

A very special bed for a very special boy, already loved before he’s even born.

“The box weighed a ton.” Was Jason’s first statement as he eyed the empty box and scattered foam borders. He sets his helmet and breakfast on the dining room table, approaching the messy living room.

“It wasn’t heavy,” you quickly state, gesturing your head over towards the corner of the living room, where the box had sat behind the couch for a good three months.

“It was super easy too! What do you think?” You immediately ask, not liking how he was too concerned for everything but the surprise.

Their was a cute, eager glimmer in your eyes as you stared up at him, like a little girl showing off her extravagant art piece. Right there, he understood why you had lately become quite OCD with all the baby’s essentials.

Sorting out all the supplies, washing all the clothes, ordering a new baby blanket set because it didn’t arrive in the shade of teal blue you wanted.

Nesting. You were nesting.

Cute.

“It’s nice,” Jason says, tilting his head as he examines the large crib. How the hell his eight month pregnant sweetheart built this heavy crib all on your own was a full body shiver he tried very, very hard to refrain expressing.

“Yeah, very nice. How’s it, uh… how’s it gonna fit through the door?”

“What?” Your smile slowly drops. “Huh?”

“I mean, it’s pretty wide?” Jason peeks over towards their semi open bedroom door. “I don’t think the crib will fit through…”

You go quiet, looking over at the crib you were proud of merely seconds ago.

“Huh??”

You express once more, noticing this large, extravagantly built crib, with bottom drawers prepared to pack in freshly washed baby clothes, would be a little too wide to push through the bedroom door. Especially with the bed in the way.

“But this took … this took forever!” Your voice held that tremble that Jason suspected would come, making him playfully pout.

“Awww, Princess.” He tried so hard to hold back a smile or laugh, quickly failing behind his gloved palm.

“Don’t laugh!” You yell up at him. “I was so proud of myself! This was the one time we buy something from IKEA, and I didn’t have to second guess the instructions a hundred times! Now you’re saying it won’t fit through the door!”

Cause it won’t. Jason wasn’t cruel enough to voice it, simply gazing down at his love, who hid her face from his view, still perched in the center of empty screw bags, power tools, and ever so finicky foam beads.

As tired as he was from patrol, this topped the cake of interesting things to happen yet.

He wasn’t delighted to see you cry aggravated tears from this daunting realization you completely missed, but the outcome of your hard work at such an early hour… only to be stumped, it’s funny. Jason can’t help that.

His shoulders bounced with his light laughter, settling down in front of his woman, who had exhausted hands covering that pretty face from him.

“S’okay Princess. Crib looks gorgeous, an’ you still possess all fingers and toes. Proud of you, but no more heavy lifting. Alright?”

His soft praise and gentle warning fell on acknowledging ears, but responded to with shameful silence. Jason couldn’t help that you were a little impatient with exciting tasks, he wouldn’t ask you to change that.

It’s like asking him to stop his horrible, eye rolling humor. Or twisted, cruelly timed jokes. It’s impossible.

He softly shushes you, kissing the top of your forehead. His eyes glance back to the crib, overall impressed at how you put it all together so well by yourself.

At the start of living in your own apartment, the both of you took many IKEA dates. Each night ended up in some form of aggravated frustration over a piece of furniture placed wrong, or the irritation of an extra screw from a missing slot once the entire piece was already finished.

“You take your vitamins?” Jason prompts, watching your head slowly shake no, still sniffling behind your hands.

You were too fixated on building the crib and getting everything together, you forgot the key component of a successful pregnancy; to worry about your own health. The biggest of priorities.

Yep. Nesting.

“We’ll eat, take your vitamins, an’ have our food comas. No worries ‘bout the crib mama, I’ll take care of it.”

Jason’s soothing voice was almost enough to settle your nerves, or the mention of food actually.

“Did you go to Benny’s?”

“Mhm. Got your favorite.”

“Can you help me up?” You reluctantly ask, giving him those pink flushed puppy eyes that he couldn’t go against.

“Whatever the lady wants.”

Tired muscles slip underneath your arms, cradling your sides as he helps you up off the ground. Your swollen belly nudges against his abdomen, making his heart melt. He wondered if your manic rush of dopamine woke up his boy, softly smirking at the idea of you chastising your relentlessly kicking son whilst building his future bed.

“Baby boy missed you, by the way.” You say, as if you just read his mind.

God, kill him already. His twice beating heart can’t take much more of this.

“He just wants food,” Jason chides before stepping to the side, letting you slowly waddle to the kitchen.

“We’re all on the same boat, Papa.”

God, please scratch that last thought. He’s in heaven.

Jason’s exhaustion didn’t stop him from nudging you towards your seat, taking the empty mugs from your hands to fill them with Colombian roast.

He wasn’t just being courteous; he was making sure you didn’t have too much caffeine, diluting the majority of your cup with your preferred milk.

After taking those vitamins you needed, Jason finally allowed himself to sit down and rest, too lazy to pull off anything other than his tactical belt and leather jacket.

He watches the love of his life through hooded eyes open your plate, your expression brightening as if you didn’t just sob over the crib mishap. Something he most definitely wasn’t going to mention at a manor dinner about three years from now.

Fluffy blueberry pancakes, piled with fresh fruit and savory sausage on the side. Honey cinnamon butter, and extra syrup. All topped with chocolate chips.

Beside it, an egg white spinach, cheesy omelette. With vegan cheese, for some odd reason. Suddenly, you had as much distain to cheddar and mozzarella, possibly most dairy, as you did to egg yolks in your omelettes.

This was your breakfast, The only meal out of your three meals a day that wasn’t invaded by a strange concoction of spicy pickles or vinegar based hot sauce. Or any other horrible last minute choices.

Something tells Jason that he’s going to see cake eaten for breakfast after the birth for a good while. Not like he’s going to complain, honestly.

Whatever he can do to combat the birthing blues, but that’s a concern for the future.

“Babe.”

“Hm?” You glance up from your plate before you dug in, seeing that same gentle smirk he carried on his face for the past four minutes.

“I was kidding, by the way.” His smile slowly grew the quicker it sets in, expecting to get pummeled by fruit after this;

“The crib will fit through the door.”

#jason todd #jason todd x reader #jason todd x you #jason todd x fem!reader #dc jason todd #jason todd x y/n #x pregnant reader #jason todd x female!reader #jason todd dc #Jason Todd x #let’s go to Benny’s guys

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cbrownjc · 6 months ago

Text

My Long IWTV Season 2 Prediction Post:

So this is a long post containing all my (more or less) final predictions for Season 2 of IWTV. Mostly so I can keep track of everything I've been predicting since Season 1 ended.

I'm breaking this all up between General Predictions and some specific Episode Predictions. And I'll put it all under a spoiler cut due to the length and just in case any of this is correct, which would mean massive spoilers. Because yes, many of these predictions are based on things found in many of the books in the VC, not just IWTV; as well as recent trailers and other press material.

General Predictions:

Louis will attempt to end his life like he did in the book Merrick by the end of the season, likely in EP08: This is something that I've been predicting since EP05 of Season 1 first aired. I think it is pretty much my oldest prediction wrt the show, and one I've never wavered from. Now it's time to see if this prediction is right or not.

Lestat is asleep in a coma somewhere in the Al Shafar Tower, and is the source of The Groan: I first made this prediction back before EP07 of S01 aired. I wasn't too confident about it being proven during Season 1, but I think now is the time. Maybe Lestat's in the penthouse. Maybe he's in the basement. Maybe he is on some floor in between, I don't know. But something like The Groan wasn't spoken about as just some throw-away line. There is a reason it was pointed out. And I think that is because Lestat is the source for the sound and makes it sometimes while he is in his post-Memnoch coma state. And what is going to finally wake him up will be Louis doing what I predicted above in my first prediction.

Armand and Daniel's relationship (ie their past romantic relationship) will be revealed in EP08: I've been predicting this more times than I can count during the hiatus. Simply because, as far as general/causal audiences go, revealing it in the finale always just seemed like the most impactful place to reveal it.

The missing pages of Claudia's diaries will reveal the information about her that we learned in the book Merrick, particularly regarding her feelings toward Louis: Via the link above I made a long meta post about that. I'll say more about it below, but in general, why Louis is going to do what he does by the end of EP08 will be because of what he reads/learns from Claudia's missing diary pages, just like as what happened with book!Louis in Merrick.

Louis will begin to awaken his Fire Gift abilities during the season: There is a quick shot in one of the preview trailers of what looks to be Louis setting one of his photographs on fire, but not with a match or candle or anything, but just by staring at it. I think when Louis first discovers he has the ability to light things on fire like that, he'll not be overly excited about it or anything, and only reluctantly test it out sometimes . . . until he unleashes it in full in the season finale against the theater coven.

--------

Episode Predictions (Spoilers):

Episode One (many people have already seen this episode at the premiere, but there is one thing I was already predicting about it before then that I want to say again):

-- Louis and Claudia will not arrive in Paris until either the end of the episode or the beginning of Episode Two.

-- This episode will be a set up to explain how revenants are created. That they are made if you try to turn a human but don't give them enough blood; OR if you don't scatter the ashes of a vampire that has been reduced to one. This will be done to set up both why Claudia's ashes had to be scattered AND the risks being made to bring Louis back either at the end of Season 2 or the beginning of Season 3.

---

Episode Two:

-- Not much to say really that most don't already know/suspect. Louis and Claudia arrive in Paris, and Armand and Louis first meet. Louis and Claudia meet the whole theater coven.

---

Episode Three:

-- Again, not much to say. Armand's full backstory will be told. This is also the main episode where we'll see Nicki and what his fate was. We will probably also get confirmation from Armand that the backstory that Lestat told Louis and Claudia about Magnus and how Lestat said he was turned was true.

credit: gif by @sheisraging

---

Episode Four:

-- Louis and Armand have sex for the first time (with Dreamstat in Louis' head giving commentary 🤪).

credit: gif by @sheisraging

-- The "banquet" scene, where Armand puts the coven members to sleep and Louis and Santiago have a confrontation (Louis looking like he's going to cut Santiago's tongue out.)

-- We will see the rift between Claudia and Louis continue to grow, as well as Claudia's distrust/dislike of Armand.

credit: gif by @sophsun1

---

Episode Five:

-- "Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat." 😂

credit: gif by @loo-nuh-tik

Yeah. We'll see this moment above in Episode 5. And Louis and Armand will basically deliver all their break-up dialogue from the end of the first book HERE, in Louis' shitty apartment in San Francisco; after Louis has attacked and almost killed Daniel.

This means that yes, Louis will confirm to Armand that he knows what Armand did to Claudia here. (With only heavy illusions made about what her ultimate fate has been.) And then Armand will give his "I thought you'd get over it" monologue.

And while Louis and Armand won't fully go their separate ways as they did in the book after all of this (because Armand will still feel he needs to look after Louis), we will very much understand that these two are not a happy couple at this point in time, and are full-on toxic in their own unique way.

credit: gif by @loo-nuh-tik

-- Along with the FULL 1973 interview, The Chase between Armand and Daniel will be shown almost in full. We'll see a lot of things about The Chase, but we will probably not see fully when, or how, it ended.

---

Episode Six:

-- "I betrayed Louis once in my life and it wasn't in San Francisco." Armand says this to Daniel in Dubai in this episode.

-- Madeleine gets turned in this episode.

-- Louis says goodbye/breaks up with Armand.

credit: gif by @hermit-frog

-- "The Last Supper."

credit: gif by @nalyra-dreaming

-- The episode will end with Louis, Claudia, and Madeleine all being taken by the Theater coven to be put on trial. Armand gives Louis a "Judas kiss" and leaves the three alone at the dinner table right before they are taken.

credit: gif by @ofinkandust

---

Episode Seven:

-- Okay so, back when the Jones Cut trailer first aired, I said that this moment was Rockstar Lestat:

credit: gif by @virginiaisforvampires

Well, I was wrong about that. Why? Well take a look at this:

credit: gif by @sheisraging

Do you see it? Behind Santiago, in the upper left. That is the same key prop on the railing as in the shot with Lestat on the right on the railing. If you squint, you can also kind of make out the musical notes on the railing to the left of the Lestat image on the railing on the right in the Santiago one.

The shot of Lestat isn't Rockstar Lestat, as I first thought it was. It is the real Lestat's first entrance into Season 2. And it's going to be at the trial, in Episode Seven.

-- And because Lestat is making his first entrance in the way I talked about above? This is 100% from Armand's POV with some of Louis' misremembered POV with it. Because Lestat was not in any condition to make THIS kind of entrance on his own.

-- The revisit of Mardi Gras Murder Night from EP07 of Season 1 will happen here, during the trial. And it will be revealed that Claudia alone slit Lestat's throat while Louis stood by passively, while Lestat begged Louis to put him in his coffin. (Matching up to what Claudia wrote, in Lestat's blood, what his last words were.) Giving the full context to this moment we only saw in a flash in EP07 of Season 1:

Which will then lead into . . .

-- The revisit of the Louis-Lestat fight from EP05 of Season 1 will be shown in this episode as well. (And will give viewers, particularly non-book readers, their first hints of Amel.) And because of what happened in that fight, specifically why that fight started in the first place, will tie into . . .

-- Claudia's diaries, which will be read at the trial. Out loud. By Santiago. And more specifically the missing pages, which we see Louis and Armand talk about in this preview, will contain some damning evidence that will all lead to . . .

credit: gif by @mundaneandmagicalcreature

-- Claudia will reveal right there, on stage, to Louis himself, how much she hates him and blames him more for her situation than she does Lestat. Because "It's never been about me." Lestat made her for Louis. If Louis hadn't wanted her, she would never have been turned.

-- This episode will end with Claudia's death. Louis will be rescued from his coffin prison by Armand, and the episode will end with Louis breaking down over her loss -- both in the past and in the present in Dubai now that he remembers everything about Claudia's true feelings towards him right before she died.

---

Episode Eight:

-- Louis goes all Carrie/Firestarter on the Theater coven (after warning Armand to stay away first), unleashing his full Fire Gift powers on them all.

credit: gif by @sam-reid

-- Louis grieving in the park -- the same park where he first met Armand -- in the rain after destroying the theater coven, comforted by Dreamstat. And then Armand arrives . . . because Armand is whom Louis was actually waiting for. Why? Because, as Louis said about it in the book --

Where to go then, if not to die? It was strange how the answer came to me.

credit: gif by @hermit-frog

-- Louis and Armand (and Dreamstat) go to the "Louver" for that moment from the book; which in the show has been replaced with someplace else since, post WWII, the Louver was apparently still closed at that time. It will be revealed that Louis knows of Armand's hand in Claudia's fate, shown via Dreamstat's reaction to everything Armand says about what happened.

-- And this will all now tie everything together into what will be alluded to about Claudia -- and Louis knowing Armand had a hand in it whatever it was -- in Episode 5 . . . and this now reveals why Louis and Armand's relationship has not been a happy one at all over the years, as we will see in Episode 5. And this will all be summed up by Louis probably saying this from the book directly to Armand:

"Yes, that is the crowning evil, that we can even go so far as to love each other, you and I. And who else would show us a particle of love, a particle of compassion or mercy? Who else, knowing us as we know each other, could do anything but destroy us? Yet we can love each other."

-- And the "Louver" scene will be the last scene we see Dreamstat in, as it will be here that Armand will tell Louis that Lestat died in the destruction of the theater. And Louis will believe him.

-- Armand, in the present in Dubai, will reveal the head thing he did to Claudia before she died.

-- Armand will reveal how he threw Lestat off Magnus' tower, even after Lestat was badly burned by Louis setting fire to the theater (but survived).

-- we will find out WHY Louis stopped feeding on humans in the year 2000. And it's probably not something anyone expects.

-- At some point in here it will be revealed that Lestat and Louis do reunite after Paris -- for real -- for a time, in the recent past. As seen by this hug:

credit: gif by @nalyra-dreaming

However, something happened that made Lestat unavailable/incapacitated again (some Memnoch-type event is my guess.) So Lestat is now in a coma and Louis, rather than be alone, chooses to stay with Armand for the same reason he did after losing Claudia in Paris.

-- In Dubai, Louis will try to end his life via sunlight exposure, as he did in the book Merrick (as I noted above). Because, along with finally remembering the truth about how Claudia really felt about him, Louis will also be under the impression that Lestat will never wake from his coma again.

-- The bookcase collapsing around Daniel is a consequence of Lestat waking up from his coma after he stops hearing Louis' heart beating. (I.E. a visual representation of Lestat "shattering the realm" as it is apparently explained in the book Prince Lestat about this moment when he woke up in Merrick.)

-- Armand saves Daniel from getting crushed by the bookcase, which will also come tumbling down after the books and glass do.

-- Somewhere in all of that, Daniel will have a flashback that reveals he and Armand were actually lovers in the past. Daniel will be stunned by the memory. Armand will just be surprised that Daniel finally remembered it.

-- Armand and Daniel won't have time to talk about it though because Armand fears/will realize that Louis has done something that caused the commotion to happen (and likely because he also notices The Groan has stopped).

-- Armand and Daniel find Louis' body, burnt to coal ash. Lestat is either already there with Louis' body or arrives very soon after they do.

-- Whether we see Lestat revive Louis (as he was revived in Merrick) at the end of the episode (with Armand's help) or if we are left on a cliffhanger about it? IDK.

--------

The predictions above are all the ones I feel most confident about right now. There are some others I have, but I'm not very confident about them, so I'm not listing them. I might mention them in individual posts after certain episodes air or not.

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dhampling · 7 months ago

Text

sun astarion x reader drabble

Granted, only for a few hours; until morning at most - but there’s a genuine relief when your compatriots want to scatter across the town and leave you be.

All except for him.

wc: 600+

Blistering.

Eyes closed, toes outstretched - free from the confines of all leather and the tough of a sole long-battered - heels heavy in the fresh grass, the new soil.

There’s a moment where all the air carries is far-off laughter and the smell of woodsmoke.

You can’t say you’ve ever spent much time in Rivington - if any, at all. It’s charming in some lice-ridden rickety fashion, akin to other small towns you’ve travelled through in your time; and in prime position under the sun it simply bakes. Smoulders. Dirt paths trodden with clouds of pale puff, shoes laced with thick dry creases of dust. Warm ash on the waning breeze.

The birds chirp in a dot-smatter overhead. Sky blue and vast and baking in the swell of the midday heat.

And it’s here you decide you’ll stay.

Granted, only for a few hours; until morning at most - but there’s a genuine relief when your compatriots want to scatter across the town and leave you be.

All except for him.

His first few tenday spells of day in two hundred years and he understandably basks in it. Pallid, occasionally wounded by the tender curse of long sun-reddened flesh for some small while before the skin heals over and his whinging stops. Forearm over forehead, eyes half-squinting; the gentle cant of his head toward yours on the lolling hill.

Astarion is quiet. It’s understandable. In a few long nights once reaching the Gate, he may have to relinquish his freedom once more. Give himself to the shadows, to the endless night; some awful routine of the moon rising as the stars sparkle overhead and the memory of every ounce of self-control leaving his corpse for the hunt.

Granted, his centuries of plight will no longer be a problem. You’ll die if it ensures he’s free. Unspoken but he’s safe in the knowledge you won’t leave him behind. You won’t forget his struggle. You hold every ounce of his deliverance in safe hands and you’ve proven yourself time and time again to be in his corner.

“I’ll come with you, you know.”

A soft whispering into the sun; and you feel him shift to turn his head fully to you, still squinting; heat radiating from softened cheeks and lashes fluttering at the high of his cheek.

“Hm?”

“If you want me to. Whatever happens next.”

He offers some noncommittal hum and blinks slowly, wriggling a little to lay on his side with arms outstretched toward you.

“Come to me, lover. Please.”

You shuffle closer and rest a head on the hot skin of his inner arm, lips dipping to kiss your head.

“I mean it, Astarion.”

“I know. I do.”

A sleep-heavy sigh of contentment as he holds you still.

“A house. Here. Thoughts?”

You wrinkle your nose.

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“I can’t see you settling here.”

“I could definitely settle here, if I wanted to. Little house. Little... pets.”

His fingers flutter on the peachy low of your cheek. You groan.

“You’ve got a lot of life to live. Rivington shouldn’t factor into that, love.”

“Oh, I know. I’m familiar. However, it has a certain charm by day that I’d never seen before now. Cobble all… warm, underfoot. It’s nice.”

You grin.

“You’re the pet. A fat housecat.”

“I’m not fat.”

“No, but if you keep feeding on me the way you are doing, then that will change.”

He taps you playfully then pauses, before softly nuzzling his face deeper into the warmth of your hair.

“That or the wine, I suppose. I’m a creature of comfort.”

“You’re a creature. Full stop.”

#my writing #astarion ancunin #astarion x reader #baldurs gate astarion #bg3 #astarion #astarion baldurs gate #astarion bg3 #drabble

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sapphire-writes · 2 years ago

Note

I see you’re open for requests 😍 Could you write Aemond x Reader who is his childhood best friend (she could be like a commoner or a servant) I’m not sure about the plot…thought you might have some ideas, it could be angst and end with fluff 😚

Love, love, love this request! Thanks so much, nonnie, I hope you enjoy 💚

Aemond x Reader

rating: mentions of Aemond's eye injury, some angst & fluff

word count: 1.6k

masterlist

You opened the door to Prince Aemond’s chamber, sticking your small head inside. The room was dark aside from the beams of sunlight that shone through the gossamer curtains. The breeze made them dance across the floor.

“Prince Aemond?” you called, in a voice squeaking with nerves. There was no reply. You knew the young prince was supposed to be at the dragonpit, but something inside of you begged you to check. After assuming the coast must be clear, you entered, bringing with you your bucket.

It was your job to replenish the fireplaces in the chambers of the royal families. You were still a small child, and this was the task that suited you best. You could enter any room in the Red Keep practically unnoticed.

You walked over to his fireplace, getting started right away. You were eager to finish the job and be off before the prince returned. Digging through the soot, you cleared the ashes, placing fresh logs atop. When your work looked decent, you stood, brushing the soot from your hands onto the apron you wore.

A breeze tore through the room through the open windows, sending several papers scattering from the prince’s desk. You rushed to collect them, taking care to not stain the pages with soot. As you placed them on the desk you couldn’t help but admire the pages of one of the many books that lay open.

It was the drawing of a dragon that caught your eye, with descriptions and arrows pointing at various parts of the creature's body. You squinted at the pages in front of you.

“What are you doing?”

You nearly jump out of your skin as you turn wide-eyed to face Prince Aemond. Eyes wide, mouth gasping like a fish out of water, you do not answer him. Aemond raises a brow, looking from you to the book.

“Were you reading?”

You find your voice.

“N-no! No, my prince,” you stutter, feeling your cheeks warm. You desperately hope the soot from the fire hides the rosy flush.

“Do not lie, I saw you,” Aemond says, as though he is your father, not someone the same age as you.

“I wasn’t my prince,” you tell him, “I cannot read.”

Aemond’s face scrunches at this. He walks over to you then, pulling the book from his desk. He holds it across his chest, to face you.

“What does it say?”

Your lip wobbles. Embarrassment fills you and burns your insides like a fever. Surely, he means to humiliate you.

“I do not know, my prince.”

He brings a finger under a word.

“Balerion,” he says, looking at the page and back to you.

“Balerion,” you repeat, earning a nod.

Aemond traces the letter at the beginning of the word.

“That's a B,” he tells you, violet eyes meeting yours.

From then on you found yourself lingering in Aemond’s chambers when you went to do your daily task. Each day he would show you something new, different words, different letters, the names of great houses and maidens in songs.

Aemond and you became fast friends. Slowly, he was teaching you how to read. You enjoyed the company of the prince. He was patient with you and seemed to enjoy being able to teach you. Aemond did not have friends, and he was happy to have you.

Soon, you were both reading books together every chance you had. In the library, in the gardens. Aemond would even forego the Dragonpit to join you on your rounds to the other chambers of the Red Keep, book in tow.

When the royal family went to Driftmark for the funeral of Laena Velaryon, you found yourself missing the company of your new friend.

You heard what had happened before the royal family returned. You found yourself shaking with nerves once more when entering the prince’s chambers.

“Prince Aemond?” you called, opening the door. You could see his small body, tangled in the sheets. The curtains were drawn completely shut. You entered slowly, tip-toeing.

“Aemond?” you called to your friend. The bed rustled, but he did not respond. Assuming he was not up for visitors, you went about your duties. When you had finished, you glanced towards the bed once more.

“Aemond?” you tried once more, hearing a sniffle in response. You placed your bucket down and walked towards him. A book lay on the floor, seemingly tossed from the side. You gently picked it up.

“I can’t,” Aemond whimpered, sniffling once more. He turned his head and your eyes widened at the state of him. The stitches across his face were red and swollen, his functioning eye was wet with tears. His whole face was an angry shade of red.

“I can’t even read,” he sobbed, fingers clutching the sheets, “I’m fucking pathetic.”

Wet tears rolled down his face, snot leaking from his nose. The pillow he lies on is damp from his crying.

You bring a hand to his shoulder and he flinches away from your touch. Aemond feels as though his shame is fire beneath the surface of his skin, threatening to boil him alive.

“I shall read to you,” you whispered. Aemond looked at you through his tears. His hands begin to shake.

“Here,” you told him, placing the book in his lap before walking to the other side of the bed. You climbed onto the linens sitting next to Aemond. Taking the book from his lap you turned the page.

“The days before the Doom were quiet, though legends say this was an omen of death.” you began, as Aemond rested his head against your shoulder.

“I want you to come see,” Aemond says, when you enter his chambers. He pulls the pail from your grasp, lacing his hand in yours. You have never seen him so elated, his smile is blinding.

He pulls you from the room, dragging you down the halls of the keep until you reach a large window facing Blackwater Bay.

“Look,” he says, pointing in the distance. You squint, the sun reflecting off of the bay nearly blinding you. Suddenly, you feel the castle shudder, it's as though again it has fallen down the serpentine steps.

Vhagar flies overhead, out towards the bay. She lets out a roar, powerful wings causing the waves of the bay to change direction.

“She’s mine,” he tells you, giddy with excitement.

Your eyes are like saucers. You’ve never seen a larger dragon.

“She’s amazing,” you admit, feeling a pang of jealousy. Now Aemond shall take to the skies, leaving you alone in the castle once more.

You want to hate Vhagar for stealing your only friend, but you can’t seem to find it in your heart to hate the magnificent creature.

Aemond’s hand still holds yours, you can feel your palm begin to sweat with the realization. He tears his gaze from Vhagar to look at you. The stitches have been removed from his face, the skin is now turning into a pearl-colored scar across his face.

“Now we can fly,” he tells you, the grin never leaving his face. Your heart stutters in your chest.

“We?”

Aemond’s smile falters for a moment, his eyebrows crease together.

“You and I, when mother allows it,” he tells you, “Vhagar can carry many books, and we can fly to anywhere in the seven kingdoms.

Your smile matches his. He has not intended to leave you behind.

“I would like that, my prince.”

~years later~

You do not announce when you enter Aemond’s room now. Being friends for so long has awarded you that right. You have grown alongside him, rising in the ranks from lowly fireplace servant to chambermaid.

Aemond is awake when you enter, as he often is. He has most likely already been to the training yard that morning before you arrived. While you detest early mornings, Aemond loves them.

“Good morning, my prince,” you address formally, carrying new bedsheets. Aemond’s mouth twists from where he sits at his desk.

“Ao issi biare tubī,” he says, barely looking up from his work. (You are happy today).

You begin to strip the bed.

“You’ll have to teach me sooner or later,” you tell him, and make a face, pausing your movements to glance at him.

“What?” he inquires. His gaze has risen from his desk, a sly smile on his face. Aemond’s eyepatch is missing, he rarely wears it in his chambers (or around you) and the sight of the blue sapphire never fails to take your breath away.

You narrow your eyes at your friend.

“Teach me,” you demand, crossing your arms in front of you. Aemond cocks his head to the side.

“Unwise to command a prince,” he teases, piling his papers away and rising from his desk. He walks over to you.

“Oh come now, Aemond,” you pouted, causing him to chuckle.

“Teach me.”

Aemond bites the inside of his cheek. It is as though you are children again. You, a curious little creature peering over the knowledge he possesses.

“Fine,” he agrees, “since you asked so sweetly, gevie.” (beautiful).

You swat at his arm, a blush creeping up your cheeks. Though you were close companions you could not help the feeling of butterflies in your stomach when he talked to you in such a manner.

“What’s that mean?” you inquire, “Gevie?”

Aemond lets the word hang in the air for a moment, enjoying the way his mother tongue falls from your lips.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, and the heat in your face nearly sets you ablaze.

“Me?” you ask and Aemond lets out a real laugh then, from deep within his chest.

“Of course you,” he tells you, “only you.”

#aemond one eye #aemond targaryen #aemond x reader #aemond x you #aemond x fem!reader #aemond x y/n #aemond fluff #aemond targaryen fanfic #aemond targaryen x you #aemond targaryen x y/n #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen imagine #aemond targaryen fluff #aemond angst #aemond fic #sapphire answers

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reobsessed · 2 years ago

Text

Luis' Lab Partner

Pairing: Reader X Luis Content Warning: 18+, minors DNI, slight humour, protected sex, AFAB reader, Reader x Luis Sera fic. Special thanks to Suri for reads and edits!

Summary: You'd been working many long nights at Umbrella, with only your work and your smooth-talking lab partner to keep you company. One night during a particularly lengthy experiment, the two of you take a break to read some 'online smut'. One thing leads to another and you find yourself undressed, thrown over the top of Luis' desk.

Fic under the cut!

“Senorita, I have to ask, what does it mean by ‘he thrust deep into me, his cock battering my cervix relentlessly’?”

“Luis, I’m gonna be completely honest, I have no fucking clue,” you stated, pinching the cigarette from Luis’ mouth and inhaling deeply.

“It’s rather abstract…” Luis scratched the back of his head in confusion. The two of you were currently hunched over Luis’ work computer. The only source of lighting in the room came from the painfully bright light of the CRT monitor, casting your faces in an ominous white glow.

Time always passed slowly in the lab whilst you were waiting for results. Today had been a particularly gruelling experiment and despite it very rapidly turning to the early hours of the morning, you both still had a long wait ahead of you.

“It’s just like porn but with words.”

Luis laughed and did his best to sound shocked. “A lady such as yourself watching porn?? How scandalous,” he remarked with a glint in his eye, or perhaps it was the light playing tricks.

You tapped the shared cigarette on the side of Luis’ mug, watching as the powdered ash dropped into the remainder of his coffee.

The pair of you had been working together for quite some time now, the pleasant small talk you exchanged towards the beginning had quickly grown stale given that neither of you really did anything outside of work. Whilst you were happy to sit in silence like you’d done previously with other colleagues, Luis wouldn’t allow it. He was by no means annoying or obtrusive but he always made an effort to engage with you, small things like, how did you sleep last night? Have you ever read Don Quixote? What food do you like? Would you like to read Don Quixote? By all rights you should have found him annoying but there was something quite charming about him.

“You know what we’re doing right now is basically the same as watching porn together.” You paid close attention to Luis’ expression, fully intending to get as much amusement out of his reaction as possible.

Luis choked on air. “Th-that’s not- it’s not the- I have to go check on some vials,” he announced, springing to the floor in a rigid stance. You suppressed a giggle, watching as he ran behind one of the desks and pretended to look for something.

Reading together in the dark lab had become a tradition for the two of you, it first began when Luis had brought along a heavily worn copy of Don Quixote to read. Unfortunately your busy work schedule didn’t leave much time for reading and so Luis had read it aloud for you while you worked. He managed several chapters a night depending on how late you were working and surprisingly he’d breezed through the entire novel in a matter of weeks. Luis had given it his all and you deeply appreciated how he brought the characters to life, giving each a distinctive voice, you enjoyed it so much in fact that once it was over you were unable to hide your sadness.

You’d both agreed to find more things to read, these came in the form of: every single magazine in the break room, the umbrella health and safety pamphlet and finally, each of Harold’s work diaries that he’d left scattered throughout the labs (that was when they found out he really didn’t like Luis.) You cursed yourselves for not bringing along more books. That was when you had an idea, why not go online for some ‘fine literature’. And that’s where you found yourselves tonight, sat in a darkened room reading online smut.

“You coming back or should I find another one?” you called out, mouse already skimming over various links in the forum.

“I’ll just be a second,” came the stammered response from across the room.

“We can read something else. I just thought it would be funny.” You stood up, making your way over to where Luis was. “Sorry if I made things awkward…” you trailed off, your eyes studying Luis carefully. “What are you doing?”

“I just needed a moment to… catch my breath.” His back was turned to you but the embarrassment in his voice was clear.

“You know,” you began, edging closer as you spoke. “It gets lonely being cooped up in a lab all day.” Luis’ head spun round and he flinched back slightly when he noticed you were standing directly in front of him.

“I’m always here to keep you company, senorita.”

“I know,” you replied, reaching out a hand towards his chest, Luis stopped you, clasping your hand gently in his.

“Perhaps we get to work, ey?”

“I don’t want to and clearly you don’t either,” you said pointing your gaze downwards.

Luis attempted to cover himself but it was too late, even in the dark of the room his growing lust was painfully obvious.

“Ah that’s not very gentlemanly of me,” Luis laughed nervously.

“I like your carefree side better.”

You stepped forward once again, closing the gap between you. Instinctively, Luis reached out his hands and put them either side of your hips, eliciting a gasp in response. Despite being the one to initiate you were still taken aback by the sudden contact. You’d spent many days and nights together but you’d rarely touched, there was the occasional brushing of fingertips when exchanging coffee, a pat on the shoulder followed by an earnest ‘well done,’ and of course, your most intimate act so far, a shared cigarette passed back and forth between your lips.

Your arms reached upwards, looping around Luis’ neck, you pulled his head down towards you and planted a long awaited kiss on his lips. It only lasted a second but you felt as though a current were running throughout your entire body even after pulling away. Luis stared at you momentarily, mouth agape, until it widened into one of his signature grins.

“Dios Mios,” he exclaimed softly. “It would be rude not to follow the lady’s example.” He brought his lips back down to yours and kissed you passionately, threading a hand through your hair as he did so.

Delighted, you leaned into his touch, lapping desperately at his tongue, only ever having tasted him through cigarettes you were desperate to get your fill. The kiss intensified and so did your grip on the back of Luis’ shirt. The two of you stumbled backwards with Luis steadying himself with one hand.

“Perhaps a change of position is in order,” he announced, picking you up by the waist and setting you down on one of the desks.

“Stuff’s in the way,” you said, swiping your hand across various notes and test tubes. Luis winced as the glass shattered on the floor. “It’s okay, Umbrella’ll pay for it.” You’d already discarded your lab coat and were halfway through undoing your blouse.

Luis looked conflicted for a moment, that was until his gaze landed on your now exposed cleavage.

“Mi amor.” He let out a breathy sigh before burying his head in the ripened fruits. His hands fumbled with the back of your bra. His mind was clouded in a lustful haze, impairing his ability to complete simple tasks. “Mierda,” he muttered impatiently, hands still grappling with the metal hook of your bra.

Both amused and agitated you began pulling off Luis’ lab coat and then quickly moved to his jeans. In the time it took you to remove both articles of clothing, he was still trying in vain to remove your bra.

“Can’t be good at everything,” you giggled. Luis laughed in return, unclipping your bra in an instant.

“You’ll pay for such hurtful remarks,” Luis threatened light-heartedly. He dragged down your trousers and underwear, dropping them to the floor along with his jeans. Without another word he nestled his tongue between your legs, eliciting a high pitched moan from his lab partner. He gave extra care and attention to your clit, lapping at it firmly and greedily. You wiggled your hips in pleasure, grasping fistfuls of Luis’ hair in your hands, as you pushed his head further into your throbbing clit.

The force of your fingers pulling on his hair caused Luis to let out a stifled groan, despite the pain he continued to lap at you until his mouth and stubble were fully wetted with your dripping contentment.

“Luis- fuck- just stick it in already,” you cried out between gasps.

Luis pulled away, dabbing at the side of his mouth with his thumb. “If you insist,” he smirked, pulling open one of the desk drawers and retrieving a condom from inside. Printed on the front of the pack was a stark red and white umbrella logo, along with the slogan ‘Our Business is Life Itself’, Luis couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony.

“Seriously, Luis? You keep those in your desk?”

“What?? They’re company issued,” Luis explained innocently.

“Oh, right, so they just hand out a condom with every beaker or something?”

“Err they do for me,” he gave a half shrug, half laugh as he tore open the packet and slid the condom over his awaiting dick. He turned to look at you, before shaking his head. “Ah, this won’t do, that looks a little uncomfortable.” He grabbed the clothing from the floor, bundling it into a makeshift pillow that he slid underneath your head. You smiled at his attentiveness, reaching up to peck him on the lips once more.

Luis positioned himself on top of you, sliding in with ease. You both moaned as he settled himself inside of you. “Are you feeling alright?” He cupped one side of your face in his hand as he waited for an answer.

“Doing just fine,” you grinned in response, bucking your hips against Luis.

Luis responded by matching your rhythm, pushing in and out, the room was filled with the sounds of your heavy panting along with the clatter of the remaining items left on the desk.

Luis fought hard to suppress his overflowing pleasure. He gripped the edge of the table with one hand and used the other to pull one of your legs up over his shoulder. The new position gave him a better angle to pound into your most sensitive parts.

“Ah, more,” you gasped. Your rising contentment threatened to boil over as you felt your head swim. “Luis,” you called out in desperation. You gripped onto his arms, your eyes watering and pleading.

He peppered kisses down your neck.

“It’s okay mi amor.” The gentle caress of his voice gave your aching body permission.

Like a flash of lightning your mind went blank, all thoughts emptied as you sought only satisfaction. An electrifying pulse coursed through you as your entire body trembled as you writhed against Luis.

“Ah, ah fuck,” you cried out as you collapsed in bliss.

Luis followed soon after, crumpling beside you. You both laid in silence besides the occasional panting of breath. Luis carefully slid out of you and grabbed his lab coat from the floor, throwing it over the two of you.

“Hey, Luis?”

“What is it,” he mumbled as he dug through his pockets searching for his lighter.

“Did you hit my cervix or not?”

“Hmm maybe, maybe not. Perhaps we can try again another time?” he quirked an eyebrow in sync with his cigarette lighting up.

You struggled to suppress the blush that burned across your cheeks, holding his hand closely in yours.

Umbrella was really going to have to start issuing more condoms.

#resident evil 4 #luis sera #luis serra #reader x luis #luis sera x reader #luis serra x reader #re4make #re4 remake #fic #re fic #luis serra navarro #resident evil #resident evil fic #my fic

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yandere-romanticaa · 2 years ago

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❝ I don't remember telling you to leave. ❞

As usual his voice cut sharp, almost like a sword which was swung high up in the air, threatening to end the life of the users enemy. Who knows how long had passed since you stepped foot into the castle library and had managed to lose yourself amongst the endless sea of books that were scattered across the table, many of which happened to be sappy love stories. Chevalier had oh so kindly requested that you recommend him anything you fancy regardless whether or not you'd think he'd like it. You had just barely registered his presence when he first entered the room and had thought that he left ages ago. You read and read, the sky turning warm and orange, soft hues bathing you in their gentle glory, beckoning you to rest, just close your eyes for a little bit.

Darkness has fallen and the scent of sweet roses invaded your senses like never before. Warmth from another radiated close by, their firm shoulder pressed tightly against your own as you cracked a single eye open to see just who was keeping you warm.

That was how you found yourself in this predicament.

Eyes like ice, skin like snow, Chevalier sure was a sight to behold even if the sheer brute strength he was displaying sourly contradicted his oddly ethereal beauty. A large, gloved hand held your wrist tightly, deep blue eyes peering into your own, challenging you to move.

❝ I am well aware that I am being a nuisance, Your Highness. Therefore, I think it would be best if I just left. ❞

He said nothing, his face showed no emotion whatsoever much to your displeasure. A part of you wondered if he could hear just how hard your heart was racing, fear creeping up on the back of your neck. Without a word he merely lifted your arm up, brought it to his lips and pressed a tiny peck on the pulse point, almost as if he was trying to claim something valuable that could be easily turned to ashes.

You stared at him in awe and confusion, mind filled to the brim with millions upon millions of questions.

His Highness had made sure to show just how much he did not like your company on a day to day basis - petty insults which could even be called mean on occasion would casually be thrown at you, he would constantly pester you on how to do your duties and would "fix" everything for you. From how to properly cut vegetables to how to walk amongst the other snobby aristocrats, Chevalier somehow always managed to make you feel lesser than.

Why, oh why, was he suddenly displaying this odd token of affection?

He smirked, his lips were still pressed against your soft skin. You could feel his teeth gently grazing against the soft flesh, the threat of him biting you suddenly creeped up on you. He... He wouldn't really do that?!

That was what you wanted to believe.

❝ You're so easy to read, as per usual. ❞ - said Chevalier, his tone laced with the slightest hint of wicked amusement. For a split second he almost looked like the devil's incarnate. He was a person to fear, a man you should not trust and he made sure to hammer in that point to you.

... what sort of sick pleasure did he find in teasing you?

By some miracle you had managed to free yourself from his grip but chances are it was Chevalier himself that set you free.

You really wouldn't have been able to escape otherwise.

In a flash you had turned your back away from him and made a beeline towards the large door. Adrenaline pumped in your veins, becking you to just make a run for it, don't look back, don't even bother with the twisted prince but your curiosity won out in the end.

Just before you could exist you decided to turn your head ever so slightly, just to make sure that he wasn't following you.

Whoever said that satisfaction brought the cat back as a liar, you thought fearfully to yourself.

Chevalier merely made himself more comfortable on the now half empty loveseat, legs crossed and one arm placed on his cheeks as he stared at you, his eyes cold and calculated.

Part of you wished he would react like a normal man and just run straight towards you but he was not a normal man.

Chevalier Michel could be easily considered winter incarnate and if you stayed in that room a moment longer who knew what would happen.

With strength you didn't know you possessed, you closed the large oak door shut, the loud echo disturbing the eerie silence of the palace. Letting out a tired sigh you looked out the window only to be met with a moonless sky and a million stars. A single tear escaped you, helplessness filling your entire being.

Just how long was the merciless beat going to torment you?

And just when were you going to see just how much he adored you, even if he didn't know how to express it?

#yandere #yandere x reader #yancore #yanderecore #yandere aesthetic #yandere imagines #yandere x you #yandere ikepri #ikemen prince #ikemen games #ikeprince #chevalier michel x reader #ikepri chevalier #chevalier michel #yandere chevalier michel #yandere chevalier michel x reader #yandere male

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colemorrison · 10 months ago

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Okay look, I’m not crazy… Well I mean I am a little but it’s fine… Here’s some yandere overwatch..

This will include blood, possessive behavior, blah blah.. Mauga, Ashe, Junkrat, Sombra, Sigma and Ramattra are included.

Mauga :

He was always this over protective right? He threatened anyone who looked at his friends right?

"Where ya going? You're supposed to stay with me remember? Who will protect you and keep you safe if you're not with me?"

The look in Mauga's eyes was slightly scary, desperation pooled in them, he needed you after all. What would he do without you? He'd simply pass away.

"No, no.. You can't go see them. Stay with me, don't you wanna be safe? Darling, I don't want to have to tell you again."

His touches were rough, almost too rough, like he was worried someone would steal you.

"Can't have anyone taking you away from me, mine... All mine."

Ashe :

"Awh how cute, you think you have a chance with them? Oh no, they're mine.. Lay a finger on them and I swear I will show you what hell is."

Her fingers danced over your shoulders, displaying how only she could touch you, touch your body. Ashe was practically dangling you in front of them, showing exactly how much power she had over you.

"Aren't they just adorable? Such a sweet sight, look all you want. But I'm not keen on sharin'."

It happened so fast, painted nails digging into your throat, a shot firing straight past you toward the man, blood splattering across your face and Ashe's.

"No one gets to see my pretty little thing and live. Now.. Each time you think about going toward someone else, speaking to someone else, anything with someone who isn't me, I want you to remember this moment."

Junkrat :

"I'll kill em! They can't have you, you belong to me remember? I will make sure none of them even look at you."

His fingers gripped your skin, he couldn't let you go, his body wouldn't let him, what if you ran away? He can't possibly live without you, you're his favourite person, he needs you.

"Maybe I'll make you a nice little place and keep you here, that way you can never ever leave me. Would you like that? I would, I would love to wake up to you every morning."

Jamie's metallic hand drew hearts all over your back, obsessive traced hearts decorating your skin because of how hard he pressed.

"Mine, mine, mine, mine."

Sombra :

She had access to everything possible, she knew every little thing about you, that thing you wanted to hide and completely forget? Oh.. Olivia knows.

"What do you want for your birthday?"

"My birthday? I didn't tell you my birthday."

"You didn't have to, I know everything about you."

Her tone was playful but you could tell she was serious, the way her finger nails traced over the veins in your wrist showed you that..

"You have no idea mi amor, you are everything to me.."

Sigma :

Yes you knew he was insane but this..? Paper's scattered across his room, photos of you, photo's you didn't take. Your name written repeatedly over the walls, it was his own little sanctuary of you.

"See? I love you. No one else loves like I do."

His eyes were full of obsessiveness, insane cackles leaving his throat as he pinned up more photos of you. He needed to be surrounded by you at all times, he would go absolutely insane without it.

"It would be such a shame if this went poorly. I do not wish to kill you and then myself just so no one can have you."

Ramattra :

He took care of you but you weren't allowed to speak to anyone, absolutely no one. If you needed something you ask him, if you need help you ask him. He's learned how to do anything you might need, that way you'll never ever need anyone else.

"What is it? Oh you're hair is tangled? Well let me help you."

Ramattra moved you to sit on his lap, a brush softly going through your hair while his other hand held you by the throat.

"I need you to be still, you can handle this right?"

He chuckled at the small nod you gave.

"Ah.. My wonderful little pet human. No one else even knows you exist anymore, you really do belong to me."

————

Now... I've never written something like this so enjoy, also I wrote this with the help of @bruhhhh-huhhhhh. So he deserves some credit too.

#overwatch #overwatch2 #overwatch imagines #overwatch 2 #mauga #maugaloa malosi #elizabeth caledonia ashe #jamison fawkes #junkrat #sombra #olivia colomar #sigma #siebren de kuiper #ramattra

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covenofthearticulate · 5 months ago

Note

Ash please I am begging you for the detailed version of your Louis’ Room at Trinity Gate headcanons 🫢 I gotta know it ALL

HI HELLO OKAY LET'S FUCKING DO THIS

so the thing about Louis' rooms at Trinity Gate is that I absolutely believe they're a bit of a cluster fuck. And that is 100% on purpose. The rest of the mansion is so meticulously designed and so incredibly ornate, that Louis' room is purposefully a lot more simple in comparison (it is not actually simple by any means— when I say simple I mostly mean that there's no insane baroque murals on the ceiling or intricately patterned wallpaper or mountains of crown molding on every wall).

Louis' bedroom is his only real sanctuary in the house where he's not expected to be the Head of Household or the Gracious Host. It's also the only room that won't give him immediate Sensory Overload on the nights when the new blood makes everything feel Too Much. So all that being said: I imagine Louis' room is still an interior design dream come true, it's filled with lots of modern luxuries and is very rich, but at the same time it's the most lived in room in the house, so it's cluttered and messy and just very weird looking!!

OKAY LET'S DIVE IN:

Honestly I'd be remiss if I didn't start off by just dropping in some inspo pics from some of my favorite scenic design of all time, from Only Lovers Left Alive because I think Eve's bedroom and Adam's parlour both radiate Louis Vibes

like, look at all of her BOOKS!!! they're everywhere lmfao, the room is so big but it feels so crowded and intimate and even though she's alone on the bed/on the floor she doesn't feel lonely. it's a perfect little nest, and I definitely think Louis is guilty of leaving piles and piles of books around his room just because he likes the feeling of being surrounded by them. those are his comfort Dostoyevsky's.

At the same time, Adam's place is also just so painfully Louis to me with all the clutter from across the centuries:

like the furniture is beautiful and there was clear aesthetic intention once upon a time, but it's so overrun with shit...there are record crates, but also a walkman and headphones on the coffee table...there's a tv remote with no tv?? there's a fucking candelabra on the middle of the table? I just love it so much, it feels very Louis to me because in my mind even when he's mentally doing okay, Louis strikes me as one of those people who will keep lots of shit lying around.

He's not a material person in the way Lestat is, but sometimes it just doesn't really occur to him that he can just throw stuff away, and also I think he's really fascinated and sentimental about certain Human Things. Like I've said this before, but I've always headcanoned that he likes to keep all the slips of paper and makeshift bookmarks he finds in his secondhand books— occasionally Armand will organize them into a pile or tuck them into a drawer, but otherwise that kind of stuff you'll find scattered about Louis' bedside table, dresser top, and and writing desk.

ANYWAY so at Trinity Gate I think Louis' room itself is surprisingly small, and that's on purpose too. it's meant to be something intimate, so really the only furniture is the bed, a writing desk, some bedside tables, and maybe a small plush armchair for him to sit and read in. a lot of the design and layout is inspired by his familiar late 18th century style, but with a much more modern touch.

I know for a FACT Louis has a fancy four-poster bed, and it's a queen, not a king. He doesn't like all that extra space, he only needs enough for him and Armand to be comfortable in (space gets tight when Lestat sleeps over, but that's okay).

The bedding itself probably isn't too ornate— maybe a sage or navy colored duvet and matching pillow set. No patterns or anything fancy on the bedding, just one straight color. Hanging from the four posters are drapes that Louis absolutely utilizes when he wants a little Extra Privacy. It's also something he's used to from his mortal days (re: sleeping with mosquito netting in louisiana) so it's just muscle memory for him to let down the drapes once he knows he's going to be settling in for the evening.

For reference, I imagine something similar to the structure on the left, with the bedding set on the right

Actually the photo on the right is very similar to how I picture other aspects of Louis' room: the bookshelves in the wall, the cool gem toned walls, accented with a bit of crown molding but nothing too ornate.

I also love the idea of Louis only having a single painting decorating the wall, but I've always liked to imagine that it's a piece that Armand had made for him, hand-painted as a birthday or anniversary gift. Louis hangs it right above his bed and likes to stare up at it upon waking in the early evening.

And don't even THINK of bringing in overhead lighting into his room!!!! He NEEDS yellow gaslight sconce things on his wall!!

okay and lastly, I like to think that even though his room is quite small, he does have spaces carved out for all his lovers. Lestat likes to drape himself dramatically on the little ottoman at the foot of the bed and hang with his hair down as he talks for hours with Louis. Armand likes to perch on top of the writing desk like a cat, toying with all the little trinkets Louis has there, or occasionally flipping through his journals and books just to scribble little love notes in the margins.

Sorry I've gone on for too long but YEAH thinking about character's spaces is just such an interesting way to get to know them!! I am never not imagining all of the intricacies of Louis' bedroom!!!! Please I love him so much!!!

#;answered #headcanons #headcanon #SORRY IF THIS IS INCOHERENT #THANK YOU FOR OPENING THIS VERY SPECIFIC CAN OF WORMS LMFAO #louis de pointe du lac #trinity gate

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strayheartless · 2 months ago

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So you’re not alone:

Alrighty, have a little bit of platonic CloudGeal for your soul because I felt like Angeal needed a a friendly cuddle for some reason!

****

Usually around his Dads anniversary, several of things happen every year without fail:

Genesis and Sephiroth camp out on his couch the night before and look after him all day.

Zack does everything he tells him to the first time around and when his attention wanders he apologises quickly and tries again.

He’s not left alone at any point in the day.

This year, things are going a bit differently and it’s nobodies fault that it is. Sephiroth had been called away to mideel; Genesis was still in Wutai and Zack was on a second class training exercise that did not “require Angeals presence,”. Angeal thought Lazard had stated that specifically to spare him the heart ache, and while he appreciated the gesture, it actually ached a bit more to be left on his own than to be busy.

Maybe he should have headed back to Banora for a week, but his mothers stiff upper lip approach to his fathers death made being around her difficult in a way that Angeal felt immensely guilty for. He’d call her this evening, he always did, but being there… it was more trouble than it was worth.

Apart from anything else there was nothing in Banora to visit. Angeal had been a Third class when his dad had died and as a result of that he’d had a third class wage. There was very little he could do to help pay for a funeral and even less he could do to pay for a headstone. His father had been cremated not buried and his ashes were scattered along the beach. There was nothing left but the Buster sword.

… some days that sword felt like a grave marker on his back.

Laying in bed, Angeal stares vacantly at the ceiling, wondering if he should just go back to sleep, when a sound from his kitchen catches his attention. It sounds like butter hitting a hot pan. As he tries to concentrate on it the corresponding smell tells him he was right. There was another sizzle.

What on Gaia? Who was in his apartment?

Getting up Angeal grabs his hoodie off of the back of his chair and shuffles through the hall to the kitchen. The lamps were on rather than the overhead light which suggested Sephiroth, but as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes it was blonde hair that caught his attention not silver. The person was standing in front of the cooker pouring what looked like pancake batter into a hot pan. The smell was Devine and it takes Angeal a second to realise there was bacon going too.

“Um… hello?” He said, making the blond jump.

Cloud Strife turns round to look at him, doing his best not to look too sheepish.

“Hey” he muttered.

“Hey” Angeal blinks a few times. “Don’t think I’m being ungrateful for you cooking breakfast, but er, why are you in my apartment?”

Cloud blushes a little, but to his credit he squares his shoulders against the urge to duck his head. He’s been part of their merry little band for a few months now. Zack had been insistent that he join them for most things, and in actual fact Angeal quite enjoyed the kids company. He was quiet but he listened. The kid was still a little nervous around them at times though.

“Oh, er, Zack said you’d likely be having a hard time today… so I figured I’d come keep you company,” he gestures to the food as if it was the definition of company.

Angeal blinks again.

“You didn’t have to do that. I would have been alright,”

“Yeah I know, but my Mom doesn’t really like being alone during my dad’s anniversary and Com- I mean Genesis mentioned you found it hard to be on your own so I just… I figured I could help.”

Cloud scratches the back of his head before seemingly remembering that he had Pancakes to flip. As he turns away Angeal places his hand on the back of a chair to steady himself.

“Don’t…” he croaks out. “Don’t you have work today?”

Cloud shrugs.

“Na, took a days leave. I usually have some spare that I loose out on so it’s cool.”

Angeal sits down heavily. Why on earth would he do that for him? That was such a kind thing to do. They barely knew each other. Sure he liked Cloud, but to go out of his way to make Angeal feel better on his worst day of the year? That seems…

Cloud drags his attention back by placing a plate in front of him with a glass of Orange juice. There’s a percolator full of fresh coffee too and Angeal feels embarrassingly like he might burst into tears.

“Look,” Cloud says. “When my Dad died I was real little, so I can’t really commiserate on that front. But I’ve spent most of my life watching my Ma get real low because people just expect her to be fine. So I had this little ritual I started to try and make her feel better. Even if she didn’t smile, I just wanted her to know she wasn’t alone. So making breakfast and then taking her out for a walk or something was just what we did.”

Clouds leg is bouncing nervously under the table. It’s not hitting the wood but Angeal can see it in the tiny way his left side moves. He wants to know if he’s overstepped. Angeal is more than willing to let him know he hasn’t. Getting out of his seat Angeal gestures for Cloud to stand, and when he does, he crushes the younger man in a hug.

He hadn’t wanted to be alone today. He’d thought he was just going to have to deal with it, but Cloud Strife decided that wasn’t what was going to happen. He’d been kind enough to consider Angeal when he got up this morning and honestly it was overwhelming.

“Thank you,” he whispered into Clouds hair. “Thank you for being here,”

Cloud finally lifts his arms to hug back.

“Your welcome Angeal. I’ll be here all day if that’s what you need.”

And he was.

#ffvii #angeal hewley #ff7 #cloud strife #platonic Cloudgeal #Angeal just needed a cuddle and someone to be nice to him #Angeal headcanons #my writing #one shot

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astxrwar · 9 months ago

Text

blunt force trauma [1/x]

SYNOPSIS: traumatized!Bucky x Brainwashed!supersoldier!reader.

Rating: M

Word Count: 5k

Content Warnings: Canon-typical violence and that is all (for now). Check out the tag "fic; blunt force trauma" for Content + ao3 chapter notes for extras if you're interested. <3

Read on AO3

[ 1 ] [2]

Bucky had known, is the thing. Before getting sucker-punched out of a fucking moving semi truck, before getting his ass kicked in a spectacularly fucking embarrassing fashion, before getting saved by two dipshits with government-financed uniforms and the most ridiculous fucking make-believe superhero names—

He had known that there were others like him.

Super-soldiers. Enhanced. Whatever.

Well—

He’d known about one.

The first time he sees her it’s March, nighttime, cold and dark and fucking raining, for like the fourth day in a row. He’s gone outside to take the garbage out, the last in a mundane and seemingly fucking endless procession of normal-human-being tasks that he is trying very hard to be comfortable in doing, day after day, the way he is also trying hard to be a normal human being in general, a concrete and intact person who attends his court-ordered therapy and grocery shops and goes outside semi-regularly and does not commit violence even when it definitely feels warranted.

He’s tired. He has a headache starting somewhere around his left temple, the muscles there beginning to tense and tighten and pulse, irritatingly, against his skull. He wants a fucking cigarette, and he’s going to have a cigarette— he keeps meaning to quit, because it’s really not a great habit, even if he’s pretty sure the serum will keep him from getting, like, lung cancer, or something. He’d been a pack-a-day asshole in the 107th because they were free, and he’d stopped when he was him because he didn’t have wants or needs or desires as a soulless killing machine, so part of it is probably just— the way that it feels grounding, kind of, the acrid burn of the smoke and the bitter taste of tar and the gently flickering embers of the cherry this bright spot of red and orange against the endless black backdrop of the alleyway at night. It’s very human. Very selfish. Very not like the person he used to be.

He doesn’t see the figure standing there until the cigarette is already half-gone, presumably because they’d been mostly obscured from him by the massive industrial-size apartment complex dumpsters and also, more importantly, because they hadn’t moved at all in the entire time he’d been outside. And it’s something about that, the unnerving and inhuman stillness, something about the way that they’re holding themselves, the vicious and barely-restrained and entirely recognizable tension he can see— feel— even just in their silhouette, the way that they’re standing, it reminds him of—

Something.

Bucky can tell when the figure realizes he’s seen them; there’s this shift in the dark line of their shoulders, like an intake of breath.

He flicks his cigarette, scattering ash down onto the pavement, the flakes drifting in the puddles of dirt and oil and city grime, becoming waterlogged, sinking in until he can’t see them.

They— she— she says his name. Her voice is quiet and hoarse and crackles like she hasn’t spoken in a while and like it had taken some amount of effort to do so now, and she says his full, legal, god-given name, like she knows him.

“How do you know who I am,” Bucky says, flat, a question, but not really phrased like one. He grinds the end of his cigarette against the brick side of the building until the ember is out, and tosses it into the open dumpster; he’s aware of her in his periphery, that instinctive part of him that he mostly tries not to think about tracking her presence and waiting for movement and anticipating, calculating, flexing the fingers of the metal arm at his sides and breathing in deep and slow and relishing in all of it a lot more than he knows he should be.

She doesn’t reply. He can’t make out her face, not with how dark it is, with where she’s standing, deep enough into the alleyway that none of the light from the buzzing and flickering street lamp closer to his end reaches her at all; there’s still something about the way that she’s holding herself that prickles with familiarity, recognition, but he can’t place it. He’s positive she’s not government or military, reasonably certain she’s not Dora Milaje, less sure she’s not some kind of HYDRA offshoot minion or some other kind of general bad news.

“Are you going to try to kill me?” he says finally.

Her breath catches, like she’d choked on it, and it’s audible even over the muted sounds of TVs playing and casual conversation and arguing floating down from the scattered collection of open windows above the alley, even over the louder and more persistent dripdripdrip of water down from the gutters, the sounds of traffic that never fully relents drifting out from the road.

“No,” she says, with enough vehemence that it stuns him, for a second– he’s taken aback by the force of the word, and then also, a second later, by how absolutely uncertain she sounds. Like she doesn’t believe it herself, or maybe more like she really doesn’t know.

“Okay,” Bucky says slowly, after a pause. “Okay, so what do you—“

He makes a mistake, then— he turns, the sole of his boot grinding softly against the wet, dirt-streaked asphalt, and he takes all of an aborted half-step in her direction.

She stiffens.

Bucky trails off, his fingers curling into loose fists at his sides–

She flees.

He hadn’t been expecting that, fucking obviously, so he wastes an essential handful of seconds just processing what the fuck even just happened. By the time it occurs to him that she’d ran, by the time he moves to the other end of the alley and rounds the corner and stares out into the adjoining street, there’s just—

Nothing. Nobody. An empty stretch of pavement. She could have followed the road down past his field of vision, the line of it blurred in the distance by the gently misting rain; she could have gone down any number of nearby alleys, could have climbed a fire escape onto the roof. If he’d been expecting it, he could have followed fast enough to see, but—

He hadn’t.

He’d honestly expected her to fucking attack him, not— run.

“Fuck,” Bucky says aloud, to nobody.

He turns back to his apartment building, kicks a rock and watches it skitter across the glittering wet pavement and into the shadows.

He lights another cigarette.

He’s wired and on edge for hours afterwards, meaning he doesn’t sleep well. That thing inside of him is itching for it, a fight, an excuse, something to break the painful fucking monotony of his life these days; his therapist keeps saying that he’ll get used to this, the boredom of normalcy, and while he nods and plays along during the sessions, he’s not sure that’s even the issue.

He is used to it. He has a routine. He cooks and cleans and does general life maintenance on a strict and unwavering schedule. He even goes out once a week, goes and gets sushi and drinks with Yori, and even if that might technically not count as a friendship, it’s– something. He has a life. A normal, boring, regular, semi-adjusted life.

He just–

He just doesn’t fucking like it.

It sucks, right, because back in Bucharest he remembers wanting this so fucking badly, wanting to just be normal, to be able to go grocery shopping and cook meals and listen to the radio and do nothing. Be nobody. And now that he has it, for real, forever, it’s like his stupid fucking brain has decided nope, y’know what, I don’t really want this after all.

What he wants, honestly, is another cause to throw himself into. Another banner to follow blind. Something that would let him relieve some of this constant fucking pressure, this itch just under his skin, this feeling like he’s forcing down and holding back and choking on all the worst parts of who he is, with no outlets to turn to, no options, no hope for relief.

I don’t do that anymore, is what he says to people, the pre-programmed line another term for the conditions of his parole.

What he doesn’t say to anyone: I kind of miss it a fucking lot, though.

Bucky stares up at the slowly-turning blades of his ceiling fan until his vision goes blurry and it turns into this meaningless shifting shape in the dark, and then he closes them, finally, and tries to will himself to sleep.

He should tell his therapist.

There’s a lot of things he should tell his therapist. I have nightmares, still. I probably qualify as paranoid. I made friends with the father of one of the men that I killed, and I go out to eat with him every week, and I think I feel just as bad about doing it as I would if I didn’t. I still haven’t figured out how to work that TV in the apartment, even though I said that I did, and I don’t even really know why I lied. I miss hurting people. I can’t sleep.

“How have you been, James,” she says, peering at him across a cheap-looking wooden table, her pen poised threateningly– okay, not threateningly, but, like, still, threateningly – over a blank notebook page. The chair he’s sitting in is straight-backed and uncomfortable and slightly too small, and he wonders if that’s on purpose. “Anything new happening?”

She always asks this, in the beginning, like an ice-breaker, or something, except it feels like the opposite. It always feels–stiff, and perfunctory, and performative. That’s another thing– before all this, he used to be great at shooting the shit, talking about weather and sports and who’s seeing who and all that meaningless, petty nothing; he missed it, too, when he first started coming out of the fucking fugue state. And then it’s like– all those disassociated and splintered pieces of himself reintegrated, fused, solidified into something vaguely resembling a whole person, and he found that actually, he couldn’t stand any of it, anymore.

“Nope,” he says, popping the ‘p’ and leaning back in the chair until it creaks, dangerously, like it might break. Fucking government office, you’d think they could afford decent and non-flimsy furniture. Doc glares at him like he’s full of shit and he makes a point to dial back the affected nonchalance, gauging her response to try to figure out the range of what might strike her as believable. “Nothing. Same old, same old. You know.”

Someone found me, yesterday. They knew me.

She narrows her eyes. Scribbles something down. The scratch of the pen on paper sets his teeth on edge, makes a muscle in his jaw twitch, erratic and uncontrollable. He forces himself to stay very still, not to lean over, not to try to look. Forces himself to smile.

Wonders, vaguely, if it even looks like he’s smiling, or if it just looks like he’s baring his teeth.

Days pass. Then weeks. A whole month.

At first, Bucky maintains that alertness; his senses sharpen, expectant, the handful of times he ventures out to toss the garbage or have a cigarette at night, and he sleeps in short, fitful bursts, waking with a start at the sound of cars backfiring on the street outside or the building settling as the temperature drops or the radiator when it creaks, just a little louder than usual, as the heat kicks on. He doesn’t mind any of this, actually, and that’s another thing he knows he should probably tell his therapist.

Hey, Doc, I’m kinda thinking somebody wants to murder me, so I’ve started keeping a knife under my pillow again, and I’ve really only been sleeping for like, an hour or two at a time.

Weird thing, though– I feel better than I have in weeks, and I haven’t had any nightmares.

He does not tell his therapist, for a lot of reasons. Part of that is because he guesses she’d want to have the military deal with it, whatever it even is, which is just–absolutely not necessary. He’s a grown man, a fucking ex-assassin, for god’s sake, he can handle his own shit; but then there’s also the fact that she doesn’t even really know he’s still having nightmares. She suspects, he’s pretty sure, but he’d started denying it the fourth or fifth appointment in, got tired of her saying stupid shit like let’s do an exercise; I want you to describe it to me and talking about it will help, James, and you should try establishing a relaxing bedtime routine.

Planning contingencies in case he’s attacked in his sleep, he’s pretty sure, does not count as a relaxing bedtime routine, but even still. Whatever works, right?

And it does work, for the first week, and then the second week, and then some of the third week, too, but eventually that pervasive vigilance starts to wane in the absence of any actual threat, and there’s nothing he can do to maintain it– it’s instinctive, that response, and while he can force himself to go through the motions, the checking and the watching and the knives stashed in places, he can’t bring that feeling back.

She’s never there. He looks, at night, lingers for a while and paces aimlessly after he’s tossed in the trash and his cigarette has gone out, sometimes even lights a second one and stays out even longer, leaned back against the brick and waiting, still, silent, like maybe if he goes long enough without moving at all she’d just reappear out of thin air, like a magic trick.

That doesn’t happen, because of course it doesn’t.

Eventually he starts to run short on the drive for that, too. Humans, it’s just how they are– get nothing for long enough and they’ll start to lose interest in trying. Bucky used to be above those kinds of things, or beyond them, or something like that; he could maintain single-minded focus on something for months, years, when it was necessary.

Bucky misses that, too, sometimes. But he’s human now, or some approximation of it, and so eventually he stops looking so hard. Just glances over at the spot where she’d been standing, tosses the trash in, finishes his cigarette, heads back inside. He sometimes tries to find her in the daytime, in the people he passes on the street, in the dark figures at the bar when he goes out with Yori, cataloging the stature and posture and the shapes of strangers, the way a girl holds her shoulders in line at the grocery store or how the bartender will sometimes stay leaned against the counter for a long while, perfectly still.

But he never sees her. Not once. He’d know, he thinks, if he did; he might not have seen her face, or really anything beyond her silhouette, but there was something eerily familiar and immediately distinctive about the way that she held herself, how she stood, how she moved. The pieces of that he sees reflected in other people are never enough to trigger that same automatic, visceral feeling of recognition.

That vigilance– it just keeps fading.

He starts to sleep in larger and larger chunks, unbroken, and the nightmares come back.

“How are you doing, James?”

“I’m doing good, Doc, how about you.” He doesn’t phrase it as a question. He’s tired and his jaw hurts and his teeth feel weird in his mouth, loose and sore and wrong– he’s probably been grinding them in his sleep again. The thought aggravates him, the idea that his body does things now that he can’t control.

“Bullshit,” she says, and he tightens his grip on the armrest of the chair, a reflex, until he can feel the wood give a little under his fingers, like it might splinter into pieces in his hand.

“Yeah, y’know what, I have a headache,” he says, mulish and stubborn and not in the fucking mood.

Doc just stares at him, lets the silence stretch and stretch and stretch– in the beginning, when she would do this shit, he’d just stare right back and say nothing for the entire forty-five minutes. Learned real quickly that just makes things worse, because she started making him come in twice a week. He’s down to twice a month, now, and would really like to keep it that way–ideally would like to make it less, even, if possible.

Bucky sighs and he shifts in the chair and he runs his tongue over his teeth and gives up on attempting to tamp down the irritation that he knows he wasn’t doing all that great a job at disguising to begin with. He thinks about what to say, and it’s like threading a needle, kind of, trying to find that sweet spot, something that sounds like honesty without feeling like he’s being fucking– violated.

He ends up telling her about how he’d went and made a nighttime routine and that’d stopped the nightmares. He does not tell her that the routine involved checking the locks on all the windows and scuffing the hinges on the door enough to make sure it would creak if anybody opened it more than halfway, taping knives under the end table in the living room and on the inside of the door to the coat closet in the hall.

She looks– suspicious. Uncertain. Like she doesn’t trust him, but isn’t quite decided on whether or not he’s lying.

Bucky smiles, again.

She relaxes, just a little.

He’s been practicing– how to do it and make sure it reaches his eyes.

It’s that same night that it happens again. He’s tired and still irritated and his jaw hurts, this tense, throbbing pain that comes and goes in waves and just pisses him off more, and he’s thinking about how much he fucking hates therapy and how ridiculous it is that anyone in the world would pay money for that, to be examined like a bug under a microscope, vivisected and picked apart until there’s nothing left.

All it’s doing is making him a more convincing liar, he thinks, bitter and sour and mean.

Bucky stops in the alleyway to have a cigarette before going inside, because he’s pissy and wants one. He does that cursory once-over of the spot behind the dumpster and there’s nothing, which is expected, and so he leans back against the soot-stained brick and shoves one hand in the pocket of his jacket and sighs and tries to just– not want to commit murder.

He notices it by chance.

From here, he can see his own bedroom window, four stories up, the drapes shuttered. It’s like six at night, but it’s April, so it’s not pitch-black, the sky that sort of soft blue-purple color with the sun obscured behind the endless sprawl of buildings. It’s still bright enough for him to be able to see the shadows of the folds in the curtains. Bright enough for him to see them move.

It’s not a lot, just a slight shift of the fabric, the shadows rippling like the air had changed inside the room– it could have been a trick of the light, he reasons, he could be overstressed and underslept and kind of loopy off all of the half-second buzz he gets from the nicotine, seeing things. It could be the stupid fucking window, the fact that he knows the seal around the edges needs to be repaired; it had been drafty as hell all winter. It could just be that the radiator had happened to switch on at that exact moment, sent a rush of heat spilling up to the ceiling that swayed the drapes just enough to make him think that there’d been– something.

Those are all perfectly viable explanations. None of them settle his pulse.

He thinks he can probably feel his senses heighten, like everything in his field of vision sliding into better focus, or maybe his awareness of them just amplified; same with his hearing, the din of constant city noise sorting out into isolated and individual sounds that he filters through as he stalks the length of the lobby hallway, takes the stairs two at a time, silent and barely breathing.

When he gets to his floor he stops on the landing. Listens. There’s the muffled noise of traffic outside, a horn going off that sparks two others in quick succession, all from different cars; the couple three doors down from his whose argument is devolving into yelling at each other, again, their voices overlapping and rising in volume; the echo of scattered, tinny applause from what’s probably a TV on in an apartment upstairs.

And then there’s this soft, unassuming thump that comes from his apartment; nonspecific, maybe just the building settling as the temperature drops, but Bucky still stops breathing entirely and holds himself very, very still and waits–

But there’s nothing else. Nothing important.

He tells himself sternly not to get his hopes up, and then realizes a half-second later that he’s not even sure what that means– if he’s hoping that there will be something or hoping that there won’t be.

His doormat is crooked. Just a little, one of the corners closest to the hallway folded over, kicked up, something that could have just happened by accident, a misstep from someone else living in the building, but–

That’s way too many fucking coincidences.

He opens the door as quietly as he can, enough to slip through and into the foyer but not quite far enough for the hinges to scrape against one another in the places where he’d scratched divots into them. The lights are off in the apartment, his living room and the adjoining kitchen shrouded in that late twilight shade of purplish-black; he sees a solid shadow in the corner by the fridge and something inside of him lights up and comes alive and floods his entire nervous system with this immediate shock of energy and it’s like everything just sharpens, his awareness of the world around him, like everything had been fuzzy and gray and muted before and now it’s not, the shadows are darker and richer and the colors are brighter and he stops feeling like he’s watching the world slip past him in this monotonous and unending blur.

She doesn’t hear him until he’s almost all the way across the living room, and even when she turns he just raises his arms up, a gesture he hopes comes off as nonthreatening.

She doesn’t move.

Bucky steps into the kitchen— it’s an open floor plan, so, honestly, there isn’t really a strict dividing line— and realizes his mistake as soon as he gets his palms flat on the counter. He’d meant to close the distance and show her that he’s not going to hurt her, keep his hands open and within her line of sight, but he’d miscalculated by a fucking large margin. There’s nowhere for her to go, he’d trapped her in the corner, not even on purpose; the door and the window in the bedroom are her only exits, and he’d situated himself directly in between both of them.

The last time, she’d ran, when he’d tried to get close.

Belatedly, it occurs to him as he watches the stiffening line of her posture that if she can’t run, she’s probably going to–

She lunges for him and swings at his head and he sidesteps it, moving down further along the long side of the dividing counter. He’s not even between her and the door anymore, but it doesn’t matter, she just keeps moving towards him, and her face, when he sees it– her expression– her eyes, that violent and single-minded focus, the strange serenity to them, like her mind is blank and her head is empty except for the way that she’s tracking him, the steady steps that he keeps taking back, and back, and back–

“Listen,” he says, “I don’t want to hurt–”

She lashes out at him mid-sentence and he jerks back and hits the wall in the adjoining hallway; he’s operating mostly on an old and familiar instinct so he twists to the side when she tries to hit him again before he can think twice about it, realizes only afterwards that he’d been standing in front of a support beam and he should have just let her hit him, it’s not like she could hurt him, and she’s going to break her fucking hand–

She hits the two-by-four dead-on and he expects to hear the solid awful crunch of the bones in her knuckles or her wrist, but what he actually hears instead is the drywall crack as an impact crater erupts out from under her fist and the plaster crumble like wet sand and the two-by-four fucking snap, bow in on itself and splinter into jagged shards like a tree hit dead-on by a car veering off a highway.

“Oh, shit ,” he says, aloud, and suddenly a lot of that instinctive and unthinking recognition starts to make a lot of fucking sense. “You’re–”

She swings for his head again and he ducks and lurches backwards and catches her next attempt with the metal arm– he deflects it harmlessly to the side, but the angle is strange and he ends up absorbing a lot of the momentum and the force of the blow jars all the way up to his shoulder, and, holy fuck, yeah, she’s exactly what he thought, she has to be–

“Will you– just– stop,” he tells her, or tries to. She’s gotten close again and the sentence is cut off when she goes for his sternum with her elbow and he barely manages to move back, a few milliseconds from having the wind knocked clean out of him, and then a second time as she steps in to knee him in the ribs and he’s force to twist to one side at some strange angle that nearly has him off-balance. She’s fucking fast, Jesus Christ; he catches her arm when she swings at him again, grabs her wrist with his hand and presses the metal one out flat to the inside of her bicep and tries to force her backwards into the wall, but she steps in and closer to him before he can gather the momentum and this time she throws her elbow towards his fucking face–

Bucky makes the split-second decision to just let go and try to put some fucking distance between them, retreating back into the kitchen.

He doesn’t want to hurt her, not if he can help it, not with how she looks right now as she advances on him— there’s something in her eyes that he doesn’t just recognize, something that he knows, it’s like looking into a fucking mirror if mirrors could be fucking portals into the past, or something.

“Stop,” he says, again; they’re following each other around the long counter in his kitchen, now, her eyes fixed on his with this startling precision, staring him down like a cornered animal. And, god, he fucking gets that, if only she’d just–

She seems to realize after a few seconds that they’re just circling, because she leverages herself up on the counter and slides across it and nearly breaks his nose with her heel.

He catches her next punch dead-on and the look of blank fucking shock on her face is satisfying in ways that he knows, rationally, shouldn’t be.

“Listen to me,” he says, and she doesn’t, predictably, but when she steps in to try to hit him and maneuver out of his grip like the last time he just uses her own momentum to get her turned around and pinned flat down to the counter with both of her arms twisted behind her back, held together with one of his hands, applying enough pressure to keep her there without tearing ligaments. She thrashes, violently, catches him with her feet a couple of times in the shins, but he’s running on adrenaline and the pain doesn’t even really register as pain at all, the way it used to, like it’s all just sensation, no more important than temperature or hunger or pressure or time.

“Listen,” Bucky says, again, trying to keep his voice nonthreatening but not sure how well he manages that, “Listen, alright, I don’t want to hurt you, just relax.“

The thing about the stupid counter in his kitchen is that it’s not really at waist height, even for him, which means when he’d forced her down onto it she wasn’t bent over at an angle deep enough for him to have the leverage to keep her there for long. The ideal position would be anything more than ninety degrees, an angle that would have someone stuck and unable to straighten against the pressure without the use of their arms; the thing about that stupid fucking counter being so high up and her being shorter than him by a meaningful margin is that the edge of it doesn’t even come close to hitting her waist and the angle he’s holding her at is incredibly fucking shallow. It wouldn’t be that hard, if she were to realize all of that, for her to drop her weight down and press into the counter with her knees to force him backwards; it wouldn’t even have to be far, there's a lip jutting out from the top that she's bent over, so there’s space between her and the side of it already. She’d only need enough room to brace her feet and push-- the legs are the strongest muscle group in the human body, and the impact when he hits whatever’s behind him would be more than enough to force his grip to loosen.

Bucky had been aware of all that, is the thing. Obviously. He’s a professional.

He just thought it might have taken her a little longer to figure it out.

His back hits the fridge hard enough that it rattles all of the contents inside and forces the air out of his lungs with a pained and entirely involuntary groan and though he tries real fucking hard to keep ahold of her, he loses track of one of her arms.

She starts to turn against his grip on the other and from that look on her face he knows— intimately, personally, from fucking experience— what will happen next. Either she will keep going, keep twisting until she can hit him hard enough to escape and tear the tendon in her arm in the process, or—

Bucky lets go.

She scrambles back and away from him. He stays perfectly still, not moving his hand from where it’s still half-outstretched and open.

She only looks at him for what’s probably less than a second before she makes for the door, but it feels like so much longer. That kind of glassy, thoughtless fog breaks, when she does, and her eyes widen a fraction and something glints inside them, fragile and expressive and aware.

It’s just that one second, and then she’s gone, the door to his apartment ajar and swaying farther open, pushed by the air that had moved when she’d slipped past it.

Bucky releases the breath he’d been holding, and slumps back against the fridge.

That night he does a bug sweep for the first time in what feels like forever. There aren’t any, which is almost halfway to a surprise; he checks again for anything left behind, and again, more carefully, for anything out of place, but finds nothing.

Later, laying on his mattress and staring up into the dark, he thinks about calling Sam. He still doesn’t know anything about her, who she is or who she works for or what she wants, from him and then just in general; she’s had some kind of serum, and she moved like she’d been trained— like she’d been conditioned, how she hadn’t even hesitated at the thought of causing herself some pretty fucking significant damage to escape, the same way an animal in a trap gnaws off its' own leg.

That’s a lot of fucking glaring red flags, and she’d broken into his apartment.

He should definitely tell Sam. Or anyone, really.

The thing is, though—

He’d recognized something in her, the very first time. If he was going to tell anyone, he would have done it then.

No, this is— it’s fine. He can handle this himself, Bucky decides, and then closes his eyes.

He doesn’t sleep for long, but he doesn’t have any nightmares.

#bucky barnes x reader #fic; blunt force trauma #yes im finally uploading this. a month after it went on ao3. because I hate formatting on tumblr dot com

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nonhumanresources · 9 months ago

Text

Snowfall

Short Undertale Yellow fic about trying to move on. Spoilers for the pacifist ending! This isn't everything I want to write about Yellow for sure, I've got at least one more idea I've been toying with, but I was listening to the soundtrack and feeling stuff. It's not much but I've been thinking about the characters a lot so it's nice to get something down on the page.

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Snow fluttered downwards, flakes tumbling over themselves in their haste to join the building drifts. It sank through the air, some snowflakes lagging behind others, apprehensive. The flurries twisted around and around, eventually scattering across the treetops and paths in even layers, like sand. Or ash. Or dust.

Martlet let the snow collect on and around her. She’d have to shovel later, tossing the buildup off her balcony to keep the fragile wooden beams from snapping. Those had been built… what was it, three years ago now? Itching for space, she’d torn down a wall and repurposed it into an exterior patio with uneven handrails and mismatched floorboards, held up by a tree and too few poles. Nowadays, she could see the flaws in the construction; too-shallow angles, half-pounded nails, stress points with naught but a single board hastily screwed into position keeping the whole thing up. Martlet prefered to pay attention to the other details, though. From where she was sitting, she could see down, just between the handrails on one of the poles, there was a nick in the wood. That was where she had taken a chunk out of it with her carving knife when she dropped a mallet on her talons. Further down, there was a section with evenly spaced nails, save for one that was bent in half. That was Chujin’s work. He’d been so excited when his wife had shown up that he’d missed the last nail in his haste to wave hello.

She sighed, closing her eyes, feeling the snow accumulate.

Somewhere not far off, Marlet heard wood scraping against wood. Front door, she thought immediately, knowing that particular sound by heart. She ignored it; the balcony was on the front of the house, so whoever it was would have seen her up here anyway. Sure enough, the door behind her opened moments later. There was the sound of clawsteps and the swish of fine cloth.

“You’re not at your post.” Ceroba’s clipped tone was short, but that didn’t indicate annoyance. She was just like that. Martlet heard more rustling cloth, and the creaking wood told her that Ceroba had sat down beside her, nearly silent. She often moved like that these days.

Martlet wanted to sit in silence for a while. She’d been doing that already, after all, besides briefly greeting the balcony when she’d sat down. Her beak had other plans, though.

“You ever wonder about where it all comes from?” she asked. She liked to imagine her voice swirling out like the snow, laying across those who could hear in a soft blanket, conveying its meaning through its delicate frigidity. It didn’t; it was just about as loud as she normally spoke. It was so hard to capture the way she saw it all in her head, even with her own voice.

“The shiverstones in the cavern roof,” Ceroba responded without hesitation. Martlet imagined her staring up through layers of snow, ears tilted back, a snowflake or two settling on her nose and melting in her breath. It was very picturesque. “Water-laden air is sent up by the lava in Hotland, where it freezes and falls in Snowdin. Apparently part of what keeps the Dunes so dry is the wind that movement creates. Chujin would talk about it when we visited, sometimes.”

Martlet stayed still. She imagined Ceroba frowning at her. (She was right about that one.)

“This is a riddle again.”

“It’s not a riddle,” Martlet pointed out.

“Fine,” Ceroba sniffed. “Further back then. The humidity required for this kind of snow comes from Waterfall. The water from rivers and streams collects into the lake and the fens, where it’s picked up by the wind and carried through here.”

“Yeah,” Martlet nodded.

“But, that’s still a definite answer. You don’t wonder about facts.” She could see exactly how her friend’s ear twitched when she used that tone—some mix of what might be frustration, but might be humor, too. Or maybe something else entirely. Ceroba tended to keep an unreadable demeanor when she could. “So, keep going. The Waterfall cavern is largely tougher minerals, with slick, unforgiving walls, except for the limestone veins that have been worn away by the water flow. The main river emerges underground, but at least as much seeps down from—”

“The Surface,” Martlet whispered. Ceroba was silent.

By now, Martlet’s head feathers felt warm. They’d been cold at first, then frigid as snow melted into them, but once a thick enough layer had formed, it had warmed right back up. The snow made for a good insulator. Or maybe she’d just gotten used to it.

“You’re thinking about that day.”

Martlet sighed. She was. She had been, every single day since. It was months later, now, and she still couldn’t believe that it had only lasted… what, nine hours? Ten? According to Dalv, Clover had only been in the Underground for about an hour and a half before entering Snowdin, and according to some eyewitness reports she’d been so wrapped up in puzzle maintenance that she’d missed them by a hair on multiple separate occasions. Had she turned around, she’d have met Clover and had an extra thirty minutes with that knowledge.

She didn’t expect that to hurt so bad.

When she finally opened her eyes, Ceroba was staring at her, gaze sharp and discerning as it always was. How was it that the fox had more of an eagle eye than the bird? There was no snow on Ceroba’s clothes, and it had melted in a small aura around her kimono. Seeing Martlet’s face, she sighed and turned, staring out over the treetops. Her paws curled along the edge of the balcony, tapping on the underside of the wood.

“Yeah. Me too.” With her deeper voice, when she spoke softly, it came out in a growl. Chujin had once confessed that he’d convinced Ceroba he’d suffered an ear injury at the Steamworks and gotten her to whisper for a whole week just to hear it.

“I don’t think I’ve ever not been thinking about it,” Martlet sighed.

“None of us have, Martlet,” Ceroba admitted. “It’s kind of hard to forget.”

“I noticed,” Martlet grumbled. She hunched forwards, wings on her knees, and stared down into her yard. “So many monsters are so happy. Almost every time a human has shown up, it’s been a disaster, either for us or for them. A slaughter or a rampage. But when it’s neither, I can’t even…” she took in a shaky breath. “I’ve been thinking about the water a lot. Clover, they didn’t even hesitate when I said that we had to ride on Ava. Heck, I tipped the boat more than they did.”

“You aren’t known for your grace, dear,” Ceroba interjected.

Martlet gave her a sardonic stare. “Thanks. The point is, I seriously doubt it was their first time on a boat, you know? No one has that much confidence the first time. Do you think…”

“They were some sort of sailor, up there?” Ceroba guessed. Martlet just shrugged and hunched forwards further.

“I don’t know. I mean, it’s a stupid thought, I guess. I’ve just been… yeah. Wondering. That’s all.” Martlet slipped a nail from her pocket, fiddling with it and brushing it through the feathers on the tips of her wings.

Ceroba mulled over it while Martlet sulked, taking her time to answer. This was always how it went; Martlet would run through a series of tangents, and her friend would come up with some sort of swift response that helped her narrow down her thoughts. At least, that was how it had been back before they’d stopped talking.

This time, Ceroba didn’t offer up any wisdom. She only sat and stared out at the trees. “I can see why you like it up here.”

Martlet sighed. “Yeah.”

The snow continued to fall. It was morbid, in a way. Falling was a symbol of death in the Underground. Falling down was the start of it. There was a while afterwards, for most monsters, but eventually, they were nothing more than dust. Unlike the snow, though, their dust rose upwards, towards the myths of avenging angels and the dark cavern and, maybe, someday, through layer upon layer of mica and shale and marble and rich ore, to the sun and the Surface. That was how you knew it was snow, not dust. It settled.

Even the first human had fallen down. Every time, one after another, all six had fallen, never referred to by another term, sharing the literary fate of monsters themselves. It was true, every time, too. They fell. Killed, vanished, or… allowed to fade.

Clover hadn’t turned to dust. Martlet knew that all too well. The cold pierced her feathers, and she shuddered.

“How do you stand it?” she choked out, tears threatening to spill. “Chujin. Kanako, your family, they’re gone, yet here I am acting like this after a kid who showed up that day is gone. I… I barely even knew them. I abandoned them in the Dunes! And here I am, months later, and I, I haven’t even written in my, my journal, there’s feathers all over, I can’t stop… stop thinking about them, what I wanted to say, so much—”

Crack. Martlet shrieked, wings flapping. Ceroba hadn’t moved, but she’d tightened her grip so heavily on the edge of the floorboards that they’d snapped in her paw. She slowly unlatched her paw, brushing the splinters from her fur and placing it back down next to the ruined board.

“It’s… hard,” she grunted.

“Er. Sorry,” Martlet said sheepishly.

Cerboa chuffed, acknowledging the apology. “It helps to have friends.”

“I mean, I do have those…”

“Yeah, I know,” Ceroba responded. She took a moment to respond. “Look, Clover’s gone. We can’t change that. I spent a very long time trying to get Kanako back, and I nearly killed the kid over it.”

Martlet frowned. “If this is supposed to be helping—”

Ceroba interrupted her again. “I get it. I’m not the most consoling, okay? Only Kanako could get that side of me out.” She tapped her claws on the wood again, tracing a semicircle around the splintered board. “Clover gave us a gift, Martlet. The gift. Everything. I really didn’t get it for a while. Honestly, it made me furious, knowing that they took away my chance only to throw it right back in my face. I couldn’t even begin to realize what made a kid their age so obnoxiously noble.”

Martlet nodded. She’d seen how kind Clover was firsthand.

“It was Kanako that helped me figure it out. She…” Ceroba swallowed. “Kanako, she had the exact same look on her face when she asked me to let her help that Clover did that day. A deep-seated need to do what was right.”

“But that’s what I can’t get over!” Martlet burst out, trying to find her words. “I—we let a child give up their soul, Ceroba. I don’t care about the stupid barrier or Asgore or the Royal Guard or anything, because what does it matter when all that we accomplished was convincing a kid that the only way to help is to die for the cause?!”

She was standing. When had she stood up? Snow slipped from her head and smacked her beak, falling to the ground and filling some of the holes left by her talons. Tears followed the same route and splashed in the snow. Martlet started to pace, Ceroba remaining motionless. She tapped the nail against her thigh with agitation.

“Maybe it’s not… it’s not worth it. We live okay, down here. Maybe if it means letting children die, I don’t want to destroy the barrier.” She knew it was a bad idea to speak about that kind of thing; monsters avoided you with that kind of talk, and in a place like the Underground, isolation was a torture all on its own. Ceroba, though, just nodded.

“Perhaps it isn’t. That does not bring back my family, though. So perhaps instead we should make it worth it,” she stated, even voice cutting through Martlet’s flurries like a hot knife in the snow.

“How? How are we supposed to change anything?” she demanded, stepping up to the handrail and gripping it with her wings. It bowed under her weight. “I couldn’t even stop Clover.”

“You asked how I stand it,” Ceroba recounted. “I stand it because if I don’t, that means inaction. And inaction means stagnation. I let myself live in an Underground that allows children to sacrifice themselves for strangers. I don’t intend on letting that Underground claim any more. Perhaps that doesn’t help you, but that’s why I continue on.” She stood up, and despite being several inches shorter than Martlet, she managed to carry so much more weight to her. It was like she’d gone off and lived three times as much as Martlet had when they’d parted ways. It was unnerving, at times. She folded her arms, leaning on the handrail as well, and a small piece of wood splintered off and fell to the snow-covered yard below.

“Yeah.” Martlet took in a deep breath, letting go and wiping her face with both wings. “Yeah,” she sniffed again. “I think I get it.”

“Good. And Feathers… keep wondering. Maybe we’ll get some answers someday.” Ceroba squeezed her upper wing, her palms hot. The nickname warmed her heart

Martlet nodded. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Now, about the actual reason I came here—”

“Ohmygosh, sorry!” Martlet startled. “I didn’t even ask!”

Ceroba waved dismissively. “Doesn’t matter. Starlo and the others have gotten it into their heads that they need some sort of mechanical horse in the Salon. I told them that it was dumb but they wouldn’t stop pestering me until I offered to go pick up an expert.”

“An expert? Where are you—oh! Oh, me!” Martlet grinned. “Mechanical horse. Yeah, I think I can do that! Let’s see, I’ll need my saw, nails, pulleys…” she trailed off, counting on her feathers, then switching to her talons as she took off, sending snowflakes soaring upwards into the cool air. So enticing was the project that she didn’t even think to say goodbye, already doing mental calculations.

Ceroba watched her circle down to her toolshed and start pulling out all manner of DIY paraphernalia. A distraction would be good for the bird. It would be good for everyone, honestly. She turned back to the stairs, leaving the view behind, and went to go help pile tools into a wagon.

#writing wyrms #my stuff #undertale yellow #undertale yellow spoilers #uty #uty clover #uty martlet #uty ceroba #uty kanako #uty chujin #uty fanfic #uty spoilers #a desire to change #btw martlet is building ava 2. I don't know what to name her yet tho #also she chases people away from one area of the dump like a goose. she's very protective

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