#i'm (focus) on that new story chapter

[fisheito]

yal'rlready comin for me about that next event preview and i'm like *prepares the salmon cannon, anew*

[faerykingdom]

I'm LOCKED. IN.

[crystalkitty1220]

Welcome back to tumblr! Hope you enjoyed your break

It was very stressful. Ended up failing the marking period for English, but not by as much as I was failing before. Could still pull up the overall grade by the end of the semester.

[wereh0gz]

hello, I have a question, are u going to make another werehog au story, reading the projectnewmoon story makes me wanna read more about the werehog.

I already have some more stuff planned for the project: new moon blog (which will involve the werehog of course). I also have other aus I wanna write for that involve the werehog but I'm not sure if/when I'll get to those so no promises

[cas-backwards-tie]

Chapter One: News Crashing

Poly!TaskForce 141 x Omega!Reader

The Omega Pack Plan Masterlist

Summary: A change in procedure around base causes you to spiral as your world comes crashing down. There's only one way out of this and it starts with telling the truth.

Words: 4.4k

Warnings: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Anxiety, Existentialism, Misogyny, Dismissive Attitudes, Angst, Rage

Mentions of: Medication,

A/N: Honestly, I'd been inspired by a few series (Standard Emergency Protocol and Pantry Solutions) I've read those and it caused me to want to write my own ABO COD AU, so I started this as a sort of funny fic awhile ago. I'm haven't entirely plotted out the whole story, but I have some ideas for the first few chapters. I was finally inspired to finish and post it because @cringeycookies liked the snippet I posted in a wip tag game. So thanks to everyone who inspired me, and a special thank you to @penelopepine for helping me with the dialogue and Price's reaction as I try to begin writing for them.

"I'm sorry, Ma'am," the nurse responds, "we're no longer authorized to refill suppressants of any kinds for any purpose." With a push of the empty orange pill bottle back across the counter in your direction, she offers you an ugly forced smile.

"Is there really nothing we can do?!" You complain incredulously, "Nothing at all? What am I supposed to do with this?!" Taking the emptied bottle into your hands, you stare at the nurse with widened eyes and a wild look.

"There is no 'we'..." she rolls her eyes in response, focus returning to the papers before her. "But if you insist, you can always bring it up with your CO, or the Base Commander." She scribbles something out on the page, but you can hardly focus when your world is virtually crumbling apart around you. "Now if you don't mind, some of us actually have work to do around here."

Still stunned, you can't help the way your breathing picks up as your heart begins to race. About a month ago now there was a base-wide meeting where they'd finally cracked down and implemented a new program the government is trying out: OPP. The Omega Pack Plan. While it's uncommon for Omegas to even be recruited into the military to begin with, such a thing does exist. Regardless, the Base Commander gathered everyone in the Auditorium for a presentation to talk about the new program and how the army would implement it into the troops. Luckily, considering you're on an elite Task Force, it doesn't apply to you. At least... it didn't.

"What the hell is this?!" You yell, tossing the orange bottle in his direction.

He'd heard the stomps all the way down the hall and smelled you coming, so he's neither surprised by your appearance, nor startled by the toss of the bottle. John swiftly catches it in his hand as he looks up at you. "What?" He inquires, finally glancing down to examine what he's caught. "A pill bottle?"

"Captain, it's empty! They won't refill it- I can-"

A groan tumbles past his lips as he drags a hand down his beard. "Look, Panther-" referring to you by your callsign, interesting move. "There's nothing I can do, it's over my head now. I wish I could do something, but I can't." Sitting back in his leather chair, Price places the bottle on the desk; a faint rap of the plastic hitting the wood is the only sound between you momentarily before you hurriedly shut the door.

Panic begins to flood your system as you're not sure how to handle this. It's your turn to freak out. You know how this goes, you know the story now; ever since they'd implemented and dispersed the Omegas into the troops, they'd started implementing them into the Task Forces, and now they have to do so with the One Four One. Fingers curling in and out of shapes as you try to process your next move, you speak before you can even begin to plan what you're going to tell him.

"I- I'm- I..." You're pacing his office now, the heavy gaze of your Captain upon you as you try to prevent yourself from hyperventilating. The thing is, you're usually good with pressure- really good. It's your job to be good. It's just... this is different. This is your life, your livelihood at stake, the livelihood of all your future generations to come.

A sigh resounds throughout the office before you hear the low timbre of his voice. "Dove," he calls out with a gentle tone, "I want you to take a deep breath for me. Alright?" With the calm and even sound of your Captain's voice and the assured look on his face, you comply. Exhaling the last of your breath, you close your eyes and focus in on the deep intake of air through your nose. With the parting of your lips you slowly release it before giving yourself a moment.

When you open your eyes he gestures to the seat before his desk, though you know he won't take offense if you decline. Hesitant, one hand finds its way to the other, wrapping around your arm as you listen to him speak. "Now, can you explain what has you in this state? I assure you that there's nothing that can't be dealt with." You want to trust him, you know him--John Price--your Captain. He's always had your back, always made sure you felt comfortable in the Taskforce, always made an effort to check on you after things got rough.

You nod. Licking your lips, you search his blue eyes as you tentatively take the seat across him.

"Whatever it is, we'll deal with it, alright? I can guarantee you that unless you're trying to tell me you're an Omega, nothing you say is going to shock me that warrants the amount of panic you're putting yourself through," Price chuckles. He's obviously joking, trying to break the tension with humor. Lips drawn upward into a small smile, the Captain stares at you expectantly.

"What if I am?" You whisper, eyes unable to tear from his visage as you try and gauge his reaction. Unexpectedly, silence fills the space between you and feels deafening in the small space. The growing comfort of his office these couple of months now feels like a cage you're forced to stay in, under watch, as you stare down your superior on the brink of a battle to the death. And that's what you do. His blue eyes bore into yours, skeptically shifting between your left and right as he seems to try and get a read on you.

All of the sudden you jump at the smack of his hands hitting the desk in front of him. He laughs at you.

He's laughing at you.

And you're sitting there with your guts spilled out, dread eating away at the pit in your stomach... and he's laughing. It feels like forever is passing you by as you stare at him in shock, this moment between the two of you frozen in time as nothing else persists.

"I understand what this was now," Price explains, still chuckling to himself as he shakes his head. There's a warm smile on his face that feels eerie considering the dire context of the situation at hand. "You got me! I fully believed you for a second there, too."

Eyebrows furrowing in dark realization, you can't help but stare at him wildly. "Wha-" You begin to question him and his line of thinking, but he cuts you off.

"This was all a prank, right? The bottle, the hysterics- you really outdid yourself, Sergeant." Leaning back in his chair, he props his ankle up on his other knee. "Because let me tell you, this was good. Better than anything Soap's cooked up in awhile. Did you come up with it yourself?" There's a cheeky grin on his lips. "Ah, I know you did."

Lips opening and closing like a fish out of water, you sit in the armchair across from him pale with a dazed look across your face. He doesn't actually think that this was...

"Well, with your little triumph in your pocket, I say we get back to work, yeah? I've got some new leads from MI6 that've just popped in." With that, the man stands from his desk and rounds it. "Garrick should be back around Tea. I'll see you in the Command Station then," he informs you. It's then that he passes by, a genial clap on your shoulder while he's at it.

Left stunned in silence, you can't help but grit your teeth, consequentially pronouncing your jaw as anger ebbs through your bloodstream. Breath getting heavier, you can't help but loathe the meeting tonight. Your Captain might be satisfied with the conversation, but all you feel is discouraged. He's abandoned you, left you alone in his office with a humiliating sense of betrayal and shattered trust. Almost like you hadn't just told him your biggest secret at all.

Punching the standard heavy punching bag hanging in front of you, you grunt, ignoring the pain that gnaws at your knuckles underneath the reusable hand wraps. Sweat builds on your brow as you continue to unleash your pent up anger on the gym’s equipment. How could he?! When had you ever pulled anything even similar to this? Never! And the fact that you’ve only been on the team for a handful of months only exacerbates the abandonment you’re feeling right now. He’s your Captain! Regardless of your feelings or the situation at hand, isn’t he supposed to be there for you? He’d promised from the get go to help you with whatever you need, and now the one time you go to him for aid it backfires in your face and leaves you without any sort of solution going forward aside from straight up telling the whole team the flat out truth, and God forbid! You can’t even begin to fathom how that’d go.

A pent up and frustrated yell almost akin to something of a growl emanates from you as you tear into another round of swift jabs and punches. Regardless of the situation at hand, you’ve been trying to build up your upper body’s strength and letting out the anger you’d accumulated over this morning’s events seemed like a perfect opportunity to let loose.

The stretches and treadmill routine didn’t take a lot out of you, but the weights, and now the punching bag definitely is starting to take its toll. Sweat beads at your forehead in rivulets that drip down the sides of your neck, down your scalp past your neck and between your shoulder blades. Tank top soaked in sweat, you breathe hard as your heart pumps rapidly in your chest. You would’ve wound up here at some point or another tonight, but the Captain’s discourteous response certainly led to an earlier workout time.

While others sparsely litter the gym’s floor, you pay them no mind and vice versa. It’s not uncommon for soldiers to be found blowing off steam or aiming to beat their highest reps on the weights. Yet, this gym is reserved for higher standing members of the Force, the gym on the far side of the base where there are less people, offices, and considering the regular army men train in the bigger gym closer to their quarters, it’s mostly other higher ranked officers in here.

“Captain’s lookin’ for ya,” Markowski, another Sergeant that you’d come to befriend on base announces from the doorway, having poked his head in after leaving a few minutes earlier. He belongs to a different Task Force.

A groan tumbles out of you as you realize it’s already that time. Just as the door clicks shut, your phone chimes loudly with the alarm you’d set earlier going off. A few quick swipes of your fingers, you turn the alarm off and unlock the device, seeing a number of messages flood your notifications.

Kyle: You hear they’ve bumped up the timeline? 😯

Johnny: “ https://Tiktok/Shattered.Rat567 ” Had me rollin’ 🤣👏🏻 Gotta check it, Bonnie

Simon: You coming to the meeting or not? 🤨

Johnny: Where r u? You’re usually first here 👀 Cap’s getting peeved, watch out

Not looking forward to the inevitable mess of a meeting before you, you don’t bother rushing to join the men. With a wash of your face in the women’s locker room, a speedy bathroom break, and a grab of the items you’d brought with you, you’re heading for the Command Station.

With the time Price set the meeting, you won't get to eat dinner till afterward. You'd be lying if you said you weren't annoyed by this entire situation, your agitation from neglecting your hunger earlier has certainly come to bite you in the backside.

While you don’t have time to respond to their texts, having set the alarm with only enough time to get back to your team’s Command ‘station’ albeit more like your headquarters before heading out. Speed-walking through the orderly halls with a haste perfectly common around here, you navigate with a well practiced knowledge. Though you’ve only been here coming up on six months soon, you’re well acquainted with this part of the base.

Rounding the corner, you’re in the hall, close. Yet, the worry of being late lingers in the back of your mind and adds another layer of annoyance on top of your residual anger buried deep down from this morning’s situation. You’d inevitably come up with your solution. It’s not one you like… but it’s the only logical option. Another turn and you’re striding into the big garage-like room.

“Nice of you to finally join us, Sergeant,” Price calls out to you. Lifting his eyes from the map laid out across your station's table, he glares in your direction.

“What took you so long?” Soap snaps, his brows slightly furrowed as he stares at you from the opposite side of the table, hands lazily wrapped around his vest’s straps.

A look at your watch tells you that you’re not even late, the meeting doesn’t officially start for another minute! But you are usually waiting on them. He’s got you there.

“Yeah, you’re usually the first one here. It’s not like you,” Gaz whispers under his breath as you sidle up alongside Ghost, Gaz standing diagonal to you right beside Price at the head of the table.

“Focus,” Ghost orders the men, his hands tucked in his hoodie’s pocket. You don’t fail to notice the way he subtly takes a step further away from you as soon as they start talking again. Price goes back to talking plans as Gaz is questioning the circumstances of the information the Captain had acquired earlier when he’d had to leave the office.

“Which is exactly why-”

A heavy exhale on your behalf leaves the men frozen as their eyes drift back to you. “Do you have something you’d like to say, Panther?” The Captain questions. Jaw clenched, you tear your eyes from the map they’d settled on.

“We’ve got a big problem,” you announce, cutting off the Captain as you finally raise your gaze to meet Price’s slightly widened blue eyes.

“Well, if you see something that needs changin’ then let’s hear it,” he responds. A ‘hmph’ follows as he crosses his arms over his chest and sits his weight back onto his heels.

“It’s not about the op,” you correct him. Tilting your head side to side you attempt to crack the kinks in your neck while standing a little straighter to appear more engaged and serious.

“And it’s more important than this? What we’re doin’ right now?” Soap questions, his hands dropping to rest on the table as he looms over it, eyeing you with frustration obvious in his irises.

“What is it?” Gaz asks, a quirk of his eyebrow garnering your attention for a split-second. He’s genuinely asking, and there doesn’t seem to be a hostility in his scent as he turns his attention to you. Then there’s Ghost, who you don’t even need to look at to feel his heavy gaze on you, waiting expectantly.

“Actually, it is,” you argue with Soap, anger beginning to boil in your belly, the frustration and angst having been left to simmer all afternoon. “I can’t believe you didn’t take me seriously when I came to you earlier,” you turn your anger on Price. He looks taken aback by the outburst, something you’re not known for.

“Dove,” he calls calmly, hands out in an attempt to pacify.

“Don’t-” you bark, starting to raise your voice without realizing it. “I came to you in confidance! Trusting you when you said you’d be there to help me if I ever needed it! How could you?” Gritting your teeth, you don’t realize how hard you’re breathing as your chest heaves with anger.

“Woah, woah-” Gaz sputters, “What-” holding his hands out to try and diffuse the argument.

“I let myself be vulnerable-” You continue to shout.

“Isn’t this something that shoul-” Soap attempts to dissuade, backing down as he puts his hands out.

“-and tell you the truth, and-” you’re lunging for him across the table. You’re held back by a massive hand on your shoulder. “You laugh in my face?! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

You're suddenly pulled back, off your feet, and shoved into a metal chair that'd been nearby. Your Lieutenant is hovering over you, his cold eyes now tinged with a spark of anger as they bore into you scrutinizingly. There's the sound of commotion behind him, multiple voices overlapping, yet you can't see anything with that utter giant in front of you!

“Does anyone wanna explain what the bloody hell is goin’ on here?” Ghost snaps. It's only then when the man steps aside that you can see where everyone is. With both of you in your respective corners, you simply glare at the Captain from over your crossed arms out in front of you.

“Are you bleedin’ kidding me, ya Scally?” Price grunts as he shrugs Gaz’ hand off his shoulder. “You’re still on about it! When w-"

"That doesn't explain what happened, Cap," Gaz interrupts, stopping him from going off and getting them nowhere.

He groans, running a hand over his face once more before composing himself. Everyone waits for an explanation—you too—he’d been the first to speak, and you’re curious to hear what he comes up with. “She came into my office, bloody cryin’, tossing me a pill bottle, muttering about, saying she’s a-”

You don’t dare let him finish, not wanting him to be the one to finally say it, exposing your truth to the team. "Omega. I’m an Omega, ” you finish his sentence. While you’re scared to meet their faces, you take a deep breath and force yourself to do so.

"Christ," Price curses, fingers coming up to pinch the skin between his brows as he hangs his head.

Ghost's stoicism is nothing unordinary, and in fact, is somewhat a comfort considering you'd expected nothing less from him.

Gaz looks stunned for a moment, eyes flitting about the other’s faces before the serious look on his face morphs. Lips slowly drawing upward, you shouldn’t be surprised when he starts laughing. "Yeah right," Garrick teases, "and I'm actually the Prime Minister."

Yet, it's not just him. The uproarious laughter from your right only adds fuel to the already burning flame as the two other Sergeants laugh like idiots. All as if it's some poor joke with no consequences to anyone's life, and yet... it's the truth. At the end of the day, it doesn't change anything. At the end of the day, your life is still in jeopardy and they're treating it like some joke. Unable to form any sort of retort, you simply blink; stuck in a stupor raw, stung, and with a dumb look on your face.

Soap, rounding the table slaps Gaz on the back, his face flushed red from laughing so hard. "Yer makin' my stomach hurt. God," he eggs the other on between his dying chuckles and attempting to catch his breath.

"You're really just gonna stand there and laugh?!" You finally burst. Anger surely must be coming off your scent in waves, but you don't care. Standing from the chair, you don't flinch as Ghost swipes his arm out in front of you in case you were going for the Captain again. There will be no physical altercation on his watch.

"She already pulled this on me earlier, mind you, and now what? You're trying to pull it over on the lads' too, eh?" Price goads you.

"And I was telling the truth! You're the one who said I was joking," you point out. The volume of your voice is lost on you, partially blinded by the fury bleeding out.

"I suppose you never did admit to it being a prank," Price reasons, fingers grazing his beard as he runs them over it repeatedly in thought. "But how do you expect us to believe that when you clearly smell of a Beta?"

"Even on the battlefield, after everything we've been through-" Gaz starts.

"After yer all sweaty from a workout, too. I think we'd notice, Pan," Johnny argues, illuminating a legitimate point of consideration.

"Oh please," you mutter quietly to yourself. Shaking your head, you can't believe they're really all being this daft right now. "Like you have heard of those Scent Spritzers.”

There are various perfumes on the market specifically designed to alter one’s scent. Most use it smell like an Alpha when they’re not, or an Omega when they’re wanting to seduce an Alpha when going out. But Omegas posing as Betas was rarely heard of. You’re more than sure it happens more frequently than people know of, they just haven’t been caught. And in your line of work? It’s scarce. People are thoroughly vetted, but… you’d been on suppressants for a long, long time. And a Beta perfume only perfected your hiding.

“Did you forget we’re Alphas, love? We’d be able to smell you across the room if you were,” Gaz taunts. There’s a puff of his chest that makes his cockiness even more annoying than usual.

"You really want to be an Omega? Dumb yourself down to some weak fragile thing?” Johnny jokes, nudging Gaz’ arm as he shakes his head.

“A doll who can get whoever she wants? Want to be nothing more than good for knockin' up and popping out pups?” Gaz adds on.

“Are you serious right now?” You test, seething under your skin as your hands ball up into fists. “How could you say that?!”

“It’s what people say,” Ghost comments.

“Nobody would want that and you’re out here lying about it,” Johnny pokes.

“We’re only trying to point out the flaws in your little rouse, Pan,” Gaz says, a smile lighting up his features as he crosses his arms over his chest.

"And what if I was lying, hm? Would that change anything you just said to me? How you feel about Omegas?" You scoff.

“This isn’t about your designation,” Price finally speaks. Fingers still weaved into his beard, his blue eyes lift to meet yours. “I see what this is about now, but there's nothin' to worry about, Dove.” Your Captain takes on a softer tone and all of the sudden you feel yourself start to get emotional as a twinge of sadness, of the hurt bleeding through upon understanding makes you feel seen.

“I know it's intimidating, the thought of having your first unmedicated heat, but we have medics here. It's natural. Heats, ruts, we all have them. And, hey... at least you're not an Omega, right?" Whatever relief you’d momentarily experienced sinks back down in your gut with the speed of a rollercoaster drop. It’s as silent as a stakeout, the only sound being people’s breathing. And the lack of yours.

It takes a moment to gather yourself, everyone’s eyes on you with the serious topic change. While sex and the downsides to a designation are something discussed with the boys, you’d often been left out. And to your comfort. "You know what? I can’t do this,” you retort. Backing from the group, you toss your hands up. “I guess you'll just have to wait and see," you bite back. With a whip of your hair over your shoulder, you head for the door.

The room is silent once more as everyone gawks. You’d never reacted in such a manner, had an outburst like that… this is… certainly different, and something they’re not at all used to.

“It’s because they took away her suppressants today,” Price explains. It might not have been something the group should be privileged to know. A private matter, really… but with the way you acted? He felt the men deserve an explanation, at least.

“That makes sense,” Gaz responds quietly, eyes still on the door you’d gone through.

“That’s no excuse,” Johnny counters, arms crossing over his chest with a scowl on his lips.

"Well... that went better than I thought,” Ghost comments with a shrug. “Back to the plan? We can fill her in later.”

[apt502-if]

Demo Update (July, 10, 2024): Episode 1

EPISODE 1 UPDATE: +100,433 WORDS

Hi Hello. Yes, I know. :< I went dark again! This time it was because I ended up changing more last minute and didn't want to moan on about the excuses so I hunched away to work on it in silence. :> I think I've made it clear through my actions that I am not a social media person so I tend to neglect the 502 Tumblr when I write. Sorry :< A lot happened in my life since posting the pilot but I did say I would never abandon 502 and I meant it. I struggled with my work/life balance since starting an IF (it's a lot of work) but I'm glad I'm here to I can update the demo now!

What to expect:

⛟ Another day in apartment 502

⛟ Spend some time with one of the roommates.

⛟ Have your orientation at your job and meet a familiar face!

Some things to take note of:

The news anchor route is not available. I didn't like the direction I was taking it and haven't figured out what I want to do with it. It's not gone permanently but this update it'll be blocked off :<

Stats are still not updating. I ended up changing them multiple times and realized I wanted to wait another update to figure out what stats I want to focus on. The story gives me many directions to go on when it comes to stats and I want to make sure I hone in on the stats that will apply the most of MC's story. The stats are there so you won't get any errors but they won't move or anything and they'll most likely change.

There may be some inconsistencies, typos, errors or things that don't match. The product of writing half the chapter over nine months ago and going through many changes. :< Please let me know if you find errors. You 100% will in a 100k chapter.

The demo is 150,299 words. Play Apt. 502 here.

[nebulousmoon3990]

GHOSTS OF THE PAST (Batfam x neglected hero reader)

III𓂃› SPIDER

Warning: violence, swearing, sensitive topics, bad things, spelling mistakes (English is not my first language) and the reader has black hair and blue eyes (sorry), female reader!, I accept criticism, but please don't be rude, everything is fictional!

Hey guys! I'm really sorry it took me so long to post (I was sorting out some things in my life). well, enjoy the chapter!♡

Clark really didn't know what he was getting himself into.

He had expected to come to New York to do a simple interview for the Daily Planet, write the report and spreadsheet right here while eating at a café and if possible bring back some souvenirs for Lois and Jon.

Fighting a supervillain was definitely not in his plans.

It had happened out of nowhere, while he was waiting for the meeting with the businessman, the urgent news on television warning about a monster attacking the city made him leave urgently. He could solve this and finish it in time.

He just didn't know that he wouldn't need to solve it.

While flying, now as Superman, he easily found the villain, it wasn't very difficult to see him in fact. He was the size of a building of at least nine or ten stories, his skin was rocky and hard, made purely of stone. Clark was about to attack the giant when he heard a scream.

Looking through the villain a helicopter was in the way, the pilot tried to maneuver away but they would be enveloped in the confusion. Using his speed, Clark tried to get closer to the helicopter, however it was not enough since it was still far away.

The rocky hand would catch the vehicle before him.

Well, he is not alone.

Before the walking rock caught the propeller and possibly destroyed the vehicle something got attached to the hand and pulled it up, bringing the villain's focus to another place, his distraction was enough for him to catch the helicopter. He noticed as he moved away that what had stopped the giant was... a web? He followed with his gaze the path of the white rope and saw a figure pass quickly on it.

What?

Leaving the helicopter on top of a landing area of ​​a nearby building, he approached the frightened journalists. "Are you hurt?"

The one who answered was the cameraman, who was still breathing heavily, "N-no, Mr. Superman. We're fine-"

"IT'S HER! TYLER FILM, FILM!" The woman's excitement made the man quickly grab his camera. She looked at him and gave a shy smile while holding the microphone, perhaps a little embarrassed by her euphoria. "Oh, Superman, thank you very much. It's just that we never get clear images of her, so you can understand our excitement."

She? She who?

No one needed to answer his question because when he looked at the monster he saw the "she".

A super heroine

Her figure swayed between the giant and the buildings. She wore a suit that covered her entire body, leaving no room to see any of her features. All Clark could see was that she was short, perhaps indicating that she was a teenager.

The monster tried to grab her with its free hand, moving much faster than it had when it was with the helicopter. She, however, brought her webbed wrist towards the giant's face, causing him punched his own face. Swinging away from him, she taunted, her voice echoing off the buildings. "Hey big guy, is that all you know how to do? For someone so tough, you're softer than jelly!"

Hit a nerve, for sure.

"Who is she?" He asked the man who was filming the action with the reporter, even in a situation like that the cameraman looked at the heroine with a glint in his eye, a glint that intrigued Clark.

"Her? She's Spider-Woman."

Spider Woman, he had never heard of this superheroine, but that didn't matter now.The "Spider Woman" swung again on her webs at the stone man's aggression towards her. Superman moved away from the reporters and headed towards the brute. He was quick to bump his fist with the giant's, preventing him from punching a building. The action made the heroine finally notice the Kryptonian. She widened the white eyes of the mask when she saw him flying. "Superman?"

She hung from a building, climbing the glass to get closer to him, she looked at the monster and then at him, her head spinning until she realized something, knowing that he would help her she addressed him. "Hey, Superman. Can you immobilize him for me for at least a few seconds?"

The Kryptonian looked at her, hesitating a little, but then a smile appeared on his lips "Leave it to me."

They moved together at that moment. Clark used his freezing breath on the stone legs, freezing them and immobilizing him to the ground. With the giant still, the spider woman climbed on his back and reached his neck. While the monster struggled, he saw her take a syringe and apply it to the rocky neck. With the liquid entering the monster's veins, he began to scream. Clark was about to intervene when the thunderous scream stopped.

Slowly, pieces of stone fell from the giant, and when they found their end on the ground, they turned into sand, being carried away by the wind. Little by little, the monster began to disintegrate until there was nothing left of him, just a cloud of dust in the place. Approaching to see the damage, he went down and came across the individuals.

The villain, once gigantic and grotesque, was now a thin and small man, passed out in the heroine's arms, while his breathing stabilized, Clark for the first time observed Spider-Woman up close, without being in the heat of battle.

The costume she wore was outlined in black and golden, the fabric was a mix of a dull color and another bright color, the symbol of a spider displayed proudly on her chest, the hood covered the mask on her face, making it difficult to see the white eyes of the mask. What intrigued him most was that it was not common fabric, since when he tried to use his x-ray vision he could not see Spider-Woman's identity.

She certainly knew how to hide her identity.

Just like someone he knew.

"Looking at he now, he doesn't look like a villain."

"And he isn't, they forced him, he's just an ordinary citizen." The dust slowly cleared, now revealing the street they were on. "Honestly, it's a surprise to see you here, shouldn't you be in Metropolis?"

Clark started to sweat a little. True, he should be in Metropolis, not New York, but he couldn't just watch everything on TV, there was a villain attacking the city! And he didn't know New York had a heroine to protect them! How careless of him. "Yeah, actually, I was..."

"was?"

"I-I flew past here! That's it." Spider-woman looked at him before starting to laugh, well at least he tried to hide it, in fact the excuse had been pretty bad.

"Okay, I'll take this as truth, you must have your reasons, don't you, Mr. Clark?"

The aforementioned froze, looking at the spider, who stood up carrying the injured man. The sounds of sirens were heard in the distance, indicating that the police were coming. "What?"

This time, it was the spider woman who froze, realizing her carelessness too late. She looked at him, and even with the mask on her face, he could have sworn a bead of sweat was on his forehead. "Ah, I and my big mouth."

"Do you know my identity? How did you-"

"L-look, I swear it wasn't intentional, seriously! I have... my reasons to know, but I promise! I didn't tell anyone and I won't tell anyone." Superman just looked at her in astonishment, it wasn't intentional? How did she find out then? While the police and ambulance finally arrived, the woman was quick to hand the man over to the police and briefly explained everything, she distanced herself from the police, ready to leave as quickly as possible when he approached her.

"Who are you? Like, really?" She looked at him, clearly anxious to get out of there. "That's... a secret, but like I said, I won't tell anyone, don't worry."

She pulled away from him again, releasing a web from her wrist, already trapping her in a building to resume her run. But before that, she turned to Clark, the tone of her words showing no lies, only truths. "After all..."

"If I wanted to do this, I would have done it nine months ago."

And with that she was gone.

Again, Clark didn't know what he was doing.

It had been a few days since his encounter with Spider-Woman, the revelation that she knew his identity disturbed him, but that wasn't what was going through Clark's head now.

That was who she was.

That woman (or teenager?, Clark doesn't know) had been saving New York for at least a year and absolutely no one in the league knew, she was literally under their noses the whole time and no one knew! But while they didn't know anything, but New York knew, you weren't liked by everyone but most definitely liked you, you gave those people security every day and they trusted you.

You were a real mystery.

In addition, there was the identity issue. Clark wasn't rich, so he didn't have spectacular security to hide his identity, but he always took precautions. You, however, found out so easily. Clark knew that your "it wasn't intentional" statement might be wrong, but whether it was intentional or not, you still did it.

Clark knew that you wouldn't reveal your identity to the world. Your statement made that very clear, but even so, his head itched and itched to meet you.

Maybe he was being hasty, but you were a great heroine, there was no denying that. You fought well, you were smart, and you had experience. You could be a good ally. Besides, Clark doesn't know if you're an adult, so it would be a good way to keep you under supervision.

That's why he's heading back to New York now.

The sun had already set, giving him a view of the beautiful night that had fallen while he was flying, but at that moment Clark was trying to find you.

He didn't know where you could be, in fact he didn't know what to do when he found you, he didn't even know what sparked his interest, he simply... felt. Something about how you were, the mystery surrounding you intrigued him, and Clark simply followed that instinct.

His thoughts were interrupted when his super hearing picked up a sound, of what sounded like running, it could have been anything but his instincts told him to follow the sound, to find the source.

He did.

And thank goodness he did, because he found you.

You were jumping over the buildings, like he had seen you do before, and it was only when you stopped that he could approach you. You were on the edge of the building, looking down at the floors. Clark intended to approach you, but it seemed like you had other plans.

"I thought you had already left." Your voice was neutral, showing no irritation or pleading, it was as white as a sheet, which made him stop, a little surprised that you had discovered him. "I did."

You turned to him, the eyes of the mask you were wearing showing him your confusion, looking him up and down, your reasoning led you to realize why he was here. "You- wait, are you following me?!"

"Following is a very strong word-"

"But you just admitted that you went to the metropolis and came to New York again!" Your arms gestured so quickly thanks to your nervousness that when you realized it you put one of them on your waist and the other you ran your hand over your face.

Clark couldn't help but find this cute.

"Look if this is because of the identity-"

"More or less, but that's not all." Clark's mouth turned into a gentle smile, your brain thinking about the possibilities again, all while you looked at him.

Silence reigned between the two, neither of them wanting to comment before the other, but it seems that Spider-Woman didn't have much time because a sound came from her gauntlet, she quickly accessed it and Clark saw that the "bracelet" was a type of miniature screen attached to the fabric of the suit, you looked at the messages before turning to Clark.

"I'm sorry but I have to go." You looked at the city below, looking at the lights that illuminated the place. Clark was about to speak when you cut him off before. "No offense Superman, but I think it's better if you go back to Metropolis, I don't have time to talk."

You spread your arms wide as you leaned towards the edge of the building, your eyes narrowed affectionately, which contradicted your voice full of irony. "Then this is our last meeting, thank you~"

And then you threw yourself.

Clark flew to the edge, ready to catch up with you, only to be faced with the emptiness of the city, you disappeared before their eyes, like a ghost.

"Then this is our last meeting."

No, it wouldn't be.

And it wasn't.

For the past four months, Clark has been bothering you, appearing out of nowhere, scaring you, helping you, making you more irritated by his constant appearances, making you more dynamic, more ironic, but happy.

It was a confusion of emotions, to tell the truth.

You expected that after a while he would stop doing this, after all he had things to take care of, for example: a city called Metropolis.

But Clark apparently didn't agree with that, because at least once every two weeks he would go to New York just to talk. The weirdest thing is that he started talking about his life to you as if he had known you for years! He talked about how he loved Lois, his relationship with John and Conner, GOD! He even talked about the Daily Planet!

Dude, he didn't even know who you were and he was just talking about his life to you?

You, however, always listened to him, you didn't tell him anything about your life but you didn't stop listening to him either.

Honestly, if you wanted to, you could very well mess with his life.

Good thing you're the heroine here.

As you jumped between buildings, your danger sensor beeped, warning you of something approaching. Knowing who it could be, you went down to the terrace of a building. Your suspicions were confirmed when you felt a gust of air from above. Turning around, you came face to face with the hero who had been on your tail for the last few months: Superman.

Clark had a gentle smile on his face, the smile of a hero, something that conveyed confidence and comfort. And it really did.

"Hello, Mr. Super, you look as happy as ever."

"Yeah, you look as relaxed as ever." He landed in front of you as you leaned against the building's railing, your elbows keeping your body steady as you assumed a carefree posture. Clark glanced at the buildings behind you nervously, uneasy about something. "I hope you don't mind, but we have company today."

You arched an eyebrow in doubt as your danger sensor went off like crazy, you had a few seconds before you turned around and launched a web at the person. You expected to find a criminal or even a super villain, but you were faced with the sunglasses of a teenager in a costume similar to Superman. "Yeah, she's really fast like you said."

What?

Before you could react, a much smaller figure appeared in front of you, just like the teenager (the difference was that he was a child and didn't wear glasses) he also looked a lot like Clark, he floated in front of you, bright and excited eyes directed at you. "Wow! You're so much cooler in person!"

A drop appeared on your head, turning to the man of steel you muttered to him. "Who are-"

"John and Conner." He chuckled softly, seeing your eyes narrow in irritation. "John really wanted to meet you and Conner ended up joining too."

"Oh." You pulled away from John a little as sarcasm flooded your lips. "That's great!"

Conner chuckled softly as you released him from your web, he approached you as he bent down a little to speak to you, since he was taller. "I thought you'd be happy to see us, it's not every day three Kryptonians come to New York to help with crimes." His voice held an undeniable teasing, the low and deep tone of his voice having the words dragged in his speech, it seemed almost sensual.

You stopped as you watched the other two, John and Clark froze, their gazes fixed on Conner, who you had confirmed was trying to subtly court you.

But you're not the shy girl here.

You approached him, close enough to be face to face, your breath could be felt on his mask. Conner, surprised by your bold move, leaned back, his cheeks flushed with your approach. "Well, New York is already protected by its heroine every day, so I don't need help." The smile on your face grew when Conner turned redder at the sound of your voice.

You quickly moved away from him and hung on the ledge, you turned to him, your figure shining with the lights in the city. "Then watch me do my job, mini super."

You fell from the building, the wind shaking your hood as you fell. Before hitting the ground, you threw a web up and climbed up again, hanging on one at a time. As your figure moved away, Conner and John looked at you. "Damn."

"You better come, or we'll end up losing her."

The night would be very long.

"OH GOSH, I'm so tired!" You yawned as you hung on the webs, it was almost four in the morning and you decided to go home. The supers had already left, you believe they were tired too (Especially Conner, where you and he played flirting all night).

You stopped on the terrace while looking around, seeing if someone or something had followed you, seeing no threat you hung on your web and slowly fell to your apartment, you opened the balcony door and as soon as you entered you were greeted by a satisfied meow.

Looking at the sofa in the living room, you saw Mooly lying on the cushion, the little black kitten moving and going to your ankle, cunning for affection. You laughed softly and picked her up gently, while placing her in your arms. "Hey, haven't you gone to sleep yet?"

As you petted the little one, footsteps were heard throughout the house, when you looked up you came across a large white vinyl robot, its form being embraced by its shadows, its round eyes shining in the dark space.

You looked at it and it did the same, the atmosphere apparently cold and tense to those looking from the outside, but completely the opposite for those who live in this house. The robot bowed respectfully, its voice, calm and tobotic, showed deep down a contained joy, reserved only for those close to it.

"It's so good to see you home." He stood up from his position, round eyes blinking slightly in the darkness of the apartment.

"Master (Name)."

You smiled as you set Mooly down on the couch again, you raised your hand to his neck and squeezed it, causing his mask to retract, revealing his identity. His face, the face of someone forgotten is a frequent presence on the walls here.

(Name) Wayne, the Spider-Woman, the missing daughter, the useless Wayne. His face was older than before, aged like red wine, clearly showing that you took after your father, since your face was just like his. Beautiful and exquisite, cold and deadly.

"It's good to be home Mark, where's Alex?" You asked as you squeezed your shoulder, which was a bit sore from today's patrol.

"Mrs. Alex is already asleep, she said she couldn't stand listening to you flirting with Superboy anymore."This made you laugh out loud, you could imagine Alex covering his ears so he wouldn't hear the two of you. You pressed the bracelet on your wrist and in a flash your suit retracted into the bracelet, showing your figure that had a loose blouse and pants. You stretched, heading towards the bathroom.

"Well, I guess I better go too, tomorrow I have a college project and Mrs. Vivian wants me early at the coffee shop" before you could get there Mark called you, his voice echoing through the house. "You got a message from Master Billy."

You stopped and looked at Mark, the notification displayed on his cute belly from an ologram. "Did he send it at this time?" The robot shook his head and handed the phone to you.

Opening your messages you went straight to Billy's contact, concern starting to creep in on you, but then again, you should know how Billy is.

Because when you saw the message you felt your stomach churn.

Billy Batson was eating the most beautiful and delicious candy you had ever seen in your entire life, and he sent it to you even though he knew about your addiction to sweets.

That little shit-

You quickly typed furiously on the cell phone keyboard, not caring that it was late, just wanting to curse Batson for making you feel hungry when you planned on not having dinner.

'Fuck, I hate you Batson ಥ_ಥ'

His answer didn't take more than a few seconds to come, his response irritating you even more.

'HEY, you finally answered me, I was already worried. Besides, I know you love me 𖹭𖹭𖹭(∪ ◡ ∪)'

'I promise I'll buy one for you, good night little spider ツ'

'...good night Billy.'

You wanted to cry, that's it.

Especially because you were hungry now.

Knowing your fate, you threw the cellphone on the couch and turned on the kitchen light, you heard Mooly and Mark's footsteps following you.

"I think there are still ingredients for a mug cake, right?" eating now wouldn't hurt.

"Bruce? BRUCE!" The aforementioned looked at the entrance of the batcave where Tim and Jason had rushed in. The two looked like they had seen a ghost, sweaty and pale, still in their suits. "Tim, what is it?"

"You- You need to see this!" He sighed heavily as he threw himself into the chair at the control panel, his fingers typing faster than he had seen them on missions. Bruce looked at Jason, who was standing next to him, who had a burning look on his face, hope hidden behind his eyes.

What's going on?

Bruce didn't need to ask, because Tim began to explain to him. "Since the accident with... (Name), I've never found any clues..." Bruce shuddered at the sound of your name, they didn't talk about that subject.

Even after three years it still hurt.

"But that was because I wasn't looking in the right place!" The teenager put up the pictures of the bus that had been carrying you that day, only the wreckage that was left was in the picture. "But now-now I know where to look."

"Last year, Star City had several people kidnapped suddenly, just like (Name) no one found any clues about the case, but Jason and Roy investigated thoroughly and managed to find a kind of underground dungeon where the kidnapped people would be."

Now on the computer was the picture of the bus and of a kind of what Bruce would call a mental hospital. The place was so rotten and filthy that Bruce wondered if anyone lived there. "Apparently there's nothing, but if you look behind each of the huge graffiti on the wall..."

Tim, using the program, removed the graffiti, which gave Bruce a view of the white walls, but in the middle of them, pieces of something nonsensical resided there. "... and put them together."

The movement in Tim's hands moved the images on the wall, distorting and shaping them until one completed the other, making the nonsensical make sense.

"A symbol."

The symbol of a womb wrapped around a two-headed serpent.

"Do you know where else this symbol is?" Tim again returned to the image of the bus wreckage, he shaped the image and put together pieces of the walls that resulted in the same symbol, but with small parts missing. "So you mean-"

"That the same people who kidnapped the people in Star City were the ones who kidnapped (Name)." Jason answered for the two, his tone as dejected as Bruce's.

He can't blame him, he's in a similar state.

"The problem is that I can't find out what it means, I've tried on the Internet, in history books, even on Wikipedia! But I haven't found anything."

The crushing silence suffocated those present, leaving invisible marks on their being. "It has to have a meaning, anything- okay, what does it mean to a womb?!"

"Jason, this is stupid-"

"No, but we have to try! Shit, you only looked in science books or-or whatever, but have you tried to look for anything related to mythology?" Tim thought for a moment, but shook his head negatively.

"The womb refers to the woman, the mother. Now, what does a two-headed snake refer to?" Bruce asked no one in particular, his thoughts searching for the knowledge he had about it.

"Would it be a mother snake? That's nonsense."

Jason thought for a moment and realized something. "Technically, it's not." The red hood searched the control panel while talking to Robin and Batman.

"In Greek mythology, there was a creature that was half snake and half woman." The mythological image appeared next to the symbol. The grotesque figure of the creature somehow referred to the symbol.

"She was known as the mother of monsters."

"Echidna."

HI GUYS, this chapter was a lot of work, I had a lot of blockages but I managed to do it.

Now I have a question to ask: Is Conner treated as Clark's son or brother?

You already know that I haven't read the comics, I've watched Young Justice (at least there it gave the impression that Conner would be treated as Clark's son) but on Wikipedia it says that Conner is treated as John's uncle, please answer me 😭.

I'm also doing a reader drawing (NON-CANONIC), I think I'll do headcanons too. I'll possibly leave a link below.

Ok, let's go to the Tag list \(•◡•)/:

@daiyanomochi - @amber-content - @wizzerreblogs - @foggyv-oid - @kore-of-the-underworld - @theunknowntravel3r - @space1crow - @shortnsweetsposts - @popursocks - @sugasweettea - @salfishers - @itachisank - @jsprien213 - @infirebaby - @yhin-gg -@h-ib

@bunbunboysworld - @h-ib - @sheep-from-rad - @tatsuri-zomushiki - @the-holy-pigeon - @geminis93 - @horror-lover-69 - @mybones537 - @eyeless-kun - @timotheechalametswifeys - @justabreadslice - @nymphzy0 - @1-800-g00ber - @pix-stuff - @jsprien213

sorry for any mistakes.

Bye 𖹭

[acid-ixx]

gets fucking stabbed by damian and my last breath still be like "it's not his fault ! he is ten and was raised to be murderous since he was born ! kid entered a household where everyone ignores my existence, i don't blame him for assuming that to be the norm and acting evil to me so that he assimilates to his new environment ! bro literally went through the worst all his life so of course the way he expresses himself is harmful to others !"

and then i get stabbed again lol

— masterlist !

OH MY GOD PLEASE 😭 the gaslighting yourself is real, i'm telling you.

unfortunately, the reader's toxic mindset of justifying everything your family does is a common scenario for every time one of them fucks up; only in the past though. the present chapters will have you slowly realize just nothing really is ever your fault. that you've never once been in the blame for the actions of your youngest brother.

but right now, i want to focus on why you just seem to let damian go about his own crazy path of targeting you. and it's either it's because you have nothing, nobody else to fight back with you, or it's purely because you allow him to.

to destroy you, to make you suffer, to make you learn that you have no place, or standing in the family. and if you do have a place, it is at the rock bottom.

this is what damian is taught: the weak should be eliminated before they fester into some type of unnecessary cancer.

you're weak, when he first saw you, when you first approached him with your tail tucked behind your legs and an invitation to hang out together with the scent of cookies wafting in the air— he knows that it is you who will make him weak.

you give him temptations to be a child, he's raised to fight against it. he ignores the unwelcomed feeling of wamth that blooms in his chest, those are feelings that gets you killed.

so it's how the story goes: he brings his sword up to your neck, and sways his hands swift enough to make a small cut to ensure that the first thing you associate him with is fear. and for someone vulnerable like you, it doesn't take much before you quickly submit to the prospect of your place beneath a trained assassin like him.

he ignores the sudden pang of his heart and the aching, gnawing dread that chews at his mind at the memory of your widening eyes and the wobble in your steps.

it's already damaging enough to have the youngest be introduced and immediately accepted into the family, but it's worse when he's significantly younger than you, a boy nearly half your age; someone you've always wanted to have, to care for, to help raise and cherish... despises you from the start, before you two even formed a connection.

someone you once called your younger brother, now became an enemy in opposing lines in a place called home.

what would've been fine-tuned jealousy towards him because he was given everything in a silver platter turned into shame that you couldn't even face him, not right after he threatened to kill you, no... and especially not after you've convinced yourself that if you couldn't even prove your worth for a young boy like him, then you really have nothing good to offer.

you give him the autonomy to think it's alright, that due to his upbringing, alongside your naive brain always justifying that your other siblings are right, and you are in the wrong— he was given every opportunity to torment you when you even go as far as being in the same room as him.

and i have my receipts on why you're just like that; all in the grace of low self-worth and self-esteem. past you reasons out that it's because it's always your fault.

you couldn't even find a way to save your mother, you couldn't even establish your place in the manor, you couldn't comfort bruce when he was still not over jason, what more could you be when all you see damian as is a young, broken child like you? that behind that veil of threats and weapons ready to attack you, is someone you knew could've been different, if he was raised right...

if he'd given you a chance to help nurture the softer, more humane part of him.

you've always wanted a younger sibling, not only from back when you were just with your mother, but also when you were introduced to the manor. because not only did it mean that you'll know how your mother felt when she raised you, but because you thought you'd have somebody by your side throughout the silent torment you've went through.

and when you're graced with one, who doesn't even consider you his older sibling; you let it be.

you let him be himself.

damian wayne, demon's granson, the son of the bat.

so many titles he's called, but never one where he's your younger brother.

it doesn't help that you justify his past, because the man you idolize, dick, does so too whenever you try to complain. his excuses are never out of malicious intent to have you suffer further— it's just that he never once actually considered you as important enough to bat an eye on, like how the rest of them treat you.

because you know that even dick has his limit towards the youngest member of the family; he just never reaches it when it comes to you.

so if you have a person allow another to act terribly towards you, but have another, a friend or family, who teaches you that it's not right, who fights by your side; it wouldn't take long for you to also learn how to defend yourself then. you'll gain confidence that you're at least not alone, that your actions are completely valid.

... but if you have an entire family that couldn't even scold the boy for leaving a scar on your neck, who brushes his mean comments about you aside, who isolates you even further with malicious words that you know becomes crueler when targeted at you—

then you have no basis for what is right, and what is wrong.

and that makes your authority, your trust in yourself dwindle like your already crumbling relationship with all the others the further you try to fight back.

that's when you learn what it's like to give up, all over again. if you accept his vidictive insults, if you know your place to turn back if you see him in the same room, if you knew from the start that sometimes trying doesn't equate to succeeding; then it'll at least numb the pain that comes after.

for the entirety of your life from when damian was introduced, that was how you coped—

but your life after the manor, after damian matures and learns softness, about empathy (that he's buried long ago during his training from when he was all but a toddler) on your situation; reading your journal entries because he still felt entitled to due to some hidden, twisted trait of possessiveness... that's an entirely different story.

would you still be as understanding as you were back in the past towards him? would you still force yourself to love the demon you saw as just a little boy? or would damian finally understand that it's too late to turn back time, to correct all his mistakes?

either way, if you were capable enough to change (at least, in his eyes), becoming an independent person (you think, huh? your place is at the manor), then maybe you could give him a chance too, to fix your relationship and build a bridge to an even stronger one.

one where you could finally baby him, like what you've desired. one where he could feel vulnerable, when he learned that it's valid to feel weak— it cuts back to the previous points: you make him weak.

and when he's out to find you after going through every single diary, every entry, after deducing that there's still a small spark in your that'll forgive him if he tries; he refuses give up any sooner if it meant replicating the same warmth he felt when he stood by your presence.

so... you wouldn't want to leave your youngest brother waiting for you, don't you?

after all, it's just like what your entries told him, right? this is what you always wanted, right?

a/n: everyone is entitled to their own feelings about how i portray damian and mc's relationship!!! i love how all of you guys have different conflicting reactions to this. it's all so complex for me, how damian sees you as someone who's weak and makes him weak (he's just a stubborn little guy), and you, who sees yourself in damian, alongside the added desire to just have someone to care for (because you want to so badly honor your mother's memory), and that person also caring for you is ARGH!!?!

i apologize for my long rambles (if anyone wants me to cut back on posts like this, just tell me), i'm sure everyone is anticipating chapter 5 and possibly (soon) chapter 6 (since the drafts, not the final work is becoming too long). but right now, all i could provide are my depictions of the reader's relationship with every member of the family. i love to churn scenarios where it feels like you're actually part of the family so i'm actually manipulating all of you guys to become attached to the characters too, just to add an extra layer of angst, hehe...

[missadangel]

The Heart of Rome (Marcus Acacius x OC)

All Chapters List

VII. The Wedding (+18, Smut, MDNI)

 Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia… 

Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia…

Domus Severiana…

The night before the wedding.

It had been five days since the fight, during which time General Acacius had paid Domus Severiana a visit on two occasions. The exact date of the wedding had also been agreed upon. Your dowry had been arranged by your half-brothers and was in alignment with the General's – your future husband – expectations. Tomorrow promises to be an eventful day in the Domus Severiana, as weddings are usually held in the home of the bride's family according to Roman tradition. After the wedding ceremony, you and your husband would be conveyed to your new home, the General's villa, in a carriage. Fortunately, you were not a stranger to there. You had already spent some time there, although not as his slave this time, but as his wife. You were pleased to be leaving this fascinating place, particularly as you did not intend to spend any time in the same place as Caracalla and Julia. However, with Geta, was a different story. Perhaps he was the only one you would miss, as you felt a certain bond with him. He seemed to feel similarly towards you, but it was challenging to discern his feelings. It seemed like a puzzle that could never be solved. 

On that night, in your room in the imperial chamber, on your big bed, you were sitting with Decima, chatting, perhaps for the last time. The slave girl, Geta's favourite, had brought you a bucket of verbena for your bridal wreath-like crown. She had offered to make you the crown you wanted, but you were having trouble deciding on the colour and were seeking their input. 

"Perhaps pink would be a good choice?" Decima picked up the pink verbena.

"I'm not sure," you replied, shaking your head doubtfully. "It might not match the colour of the veil.”

"Since your dress will be white, maybe it should be a lighter colour," the other girl suggested, taking a lighter pink from the bucket.

You picked up a white one from the bucket and placed it on your saffron-coloured veil, which was laid at the end of the bed. "I think white is a simple and pure choice. So, the green leaves will complete it."

"Ah, just like a bride, a wonderful choice, my lady."

"Yes, it's beautiful." Decima agreed.

Before you could say anything, Geta burst into the room with a big smile on his face. The girls stood up and greeted him.

"You seem really focused on those flowers, like it's a matter of life and death. Would you also help me with some strategic documents? It's so hard to focus on them," he said sarcastically.

"Isn't that your responsibility? After all, you're the emperor," you teased him.

"Oh, but it's so boring," he replied with a frown.

When he jumped on the bed, next to you, you were startled but not by the shaking he caused.  "Hmm, white, nice." He was lying on his side, propped up on his elbow, supporting his head, picked up a white verbena with his other hand.

"What are you doing? I have a wedding tomorrow and I need to get some sleep."

"Oh, right, that's why I came here." He said, pointing at you.

"What do you mean?”

Geta turned his head towards the door an yelled. “Come on in!” 

A young man, who appeared to be a slave, entered the room and approached you, his movements slightly hesitant.

You looked at Geta in shock. "What is he doing here?"

But you were not alone, Decima and the other girl were also quite surprised.

“There won't be time before the wedding.” He said arrogantly.

“What are you talking about?”

“Undress.” Geta ordered him.

“What! No, don't!” You shouted at the slave. He grabbed the end of his tunic, unsure of what to do.

"I'm doing you a favour. Do you really want to ruin everything on your wedding night?"

"A favour?" Is that what you consider to be a favour?” You spoke a little louder than you intended to.

However, Geta didn't seem to care. "I'm not suggesting you sleep with him, but it might be helpful to study the man's body, especially the important parts." He pointed to the young man's pelvis.

You jumped up from the bed, feeling embarrassed, your cheeks burning.

"Thanks, but I don't think that's necessary."

Geta sat up in bed, his eyes twinkling with mischief. "Are you sure? Look at you, your cheeks are all red. You'll certainly faint when you see the General Acacius naked." 

His loud, ringing laugh was the final straw that broke your patience.

"I'm not a virgin!" you exclaimed.

Everyone in the room looked at you in surprise. You felt extremely embarrassed. You turned your back towards them, feeling ashamed to look at their faces.

Geta clapped his hands. "Well, well, well, my sister is not so innocent after all." He approached you. ”Caracalla will be disappointed though. He was thinking of giving you to the Temple of Vesta to become a virgin priestess." He laughed.

You turned towards him. “What?"

"To piss off the General, that's for sure. Anyway, you're not a virgin, so it's not an issue.”

"I don't think that's funny at all,” you said angrily.

"It seems there's more between you and the General than I thought.” Suddenly his face was serious. “Since you trusted him enough to dare to give yourself to him before marriage.”

You averted your gaze from him, not because you felt guilty, but because you didn't want to discuss such intimate matter with him.

He really didn't like your serious face, especially when you looked away from him. He leaned towards you with a playful smile. "But if you'd like to observe anyway, I mean, before the wedding, my body is in great shape. Not as muscular as his, but still."

'Can you please leave my room?' You pointed at the door.

'I understand your pre-wedding nerves and I forgive you, otherwise you can’t treat me like this,' he said smugly. 

“You started it," you murmured.

He seemed relieved. “Have a good night, sister," he giggled, and walked out of the room, his slave following behind him.

Once they were gone, you threw yourself on your bed and sighed deeply. “I hate him.”

Decima and the slave girl were giggling. 

Decima sat on the bed next to you. “I was thinking of talking to you about the wedding night, but I don't think I need to. I mean, since you're not,” she said, her voice trembling. She must be remembering painful memories from that house.

“Decima, I'm so sorry,” you voice cracked.

“No, you don't have to feel sorry for me, please. But can you tell me exactly how far you and the General have gone?" She gave you a suggestive look.

“Well, it happened once, you know.” Your cheeks were starting to flush again.

“So you're still inexperienced, my lady.”

The slave girl opened her eyes wide as you both turned your heads towards her. “I apologise, I was out of line, my lady.”

“How do you mean?”

“She's right,” Decima said. “There is so much for you to learn.”

So it turns out they were right – everything had happened so quickly that night. And you still dreaded the wedding night like a virgin. The last time you remember, he was stopping himself from going any further and was really patient and gentle with you. But you were still feeling like a virgin, not physically for sure, yet emotionally, novice to all the pleasures that the male and female body can experience. Thinking all of these, a new concern arose inside you, the inability to satisfy your husband's expectations as his wife. Like that's all you need, really.

For the rest of your last night in the palace, you were relaxing in the marble tub, breathing in the steamy air mixed with the floral aroma, while Decima's gentle fingers rub your legs. After a few embarrassing conversations, you savoured your last night as unmarried woman, since, from tomorrow you will be a married one. 

As the memories of your time with Marcus came to mind, you wondered when you first fell in love with him. When did it happen? Was it when you first saw him and felt a peculiar attraction? Or was it the first time he touched you? Each time he was kind to you? Perhaps it was when he smiled warmly at you? Or the first time he kissed you? You smiled to yourself. It seemed a little silly to choose between your beautiful memories as if you were entering them in a competition.

You were certain from the first moment you saw Marcus, you loved him. And it grew more and more every day. You suddenly realised how much you had missed him. The last time you saw him, he was talking to Geta and Caracalla about marriage as if it were a strategic issue, and you just watched them. You hadn't even had a chance to talk properly or touch him. 

Once you had finished your bath, you lay down on your bed. Your eyes lingering on your veil, which lay over the armchair next to the small table. As the sweet breeze from the window caressed your hair, you closed your eyes and dreamed of tomorrow.

Wedding day…

In the early hours of the morning, the streets of Rome were filled with a festive atmosphere. A group of people gathered around the Palatine Hill for the wedding of General Acacius and Princess Aurelia, eager to witness the momentous occasion. They patiently awaited the arrival of the carriage carrying the General to the wedding venue, hoping to catch a glimpse of him or the imperial family. 

You opened your eyes slowly and became aware of a number of voices. The first thing you heard was a sound that could be described as shouting. This was followed by a hum, which seemed to be the sound of a crowd, the swallows flying past the window, and then a knock on the door. As you gradually sat up in bed and yawned, Decima entered the room, accompanied by three slave girls carrying your wedding dress. 

“What's all that noise?” you asked Decima as you got out of bed. “Emperor Geta and Caracalla have had an argument I guess.” The slave girls put your dress on the bed.

You looked at her, surprised. “What's the argument about?”

“I'm not sure, but it's nothing to do with you or the wedding. Don't worry.”

“Then you must know why.” You said, eyeing the other girls, noticed that Geta's slave wasn't with them.

“I wasn't going to tell you not to worry about it on your wedding day, but I think Emperor Caracalla took an interest in Emperor Geta's favorite slave and it didn't go down well, so there was tension.” She was helping you undress.

“Is that why she didn't come with you?”

“Would you like me to ask her to come over?” she asked as she helped you into your long white silk tunic.

“No, I don't need to, but I hope she's all right.”

Decima rolled her eyes. “Perhaps you should stop worrying about someone else. Today is an important day for you.” She smiled softly. "You're the bride, remember?"

You giggled and nodded. She was right, but you couldn't help thinking that something might happen to the slave girl because of those two. 

With the assistance of the slave girls, you were nearing the end of your dressing process when Geta arrived a short while later.

He clapped his hands. “Sister, you look gorgeous.” Then he crossed his arms and inhaled deeply. “General Acacius. That lucky bast-.”

“Brother." You silenced him and frowned.

He pursed his lips, suppressing his laughter.

“Why didn't your slave girl come to help me?”

“Because she was busy dressing me,” he pointed to the white toga with gold embroidery he was wearing. 

She arrived at the door a moment later, holding your floral wedding crown. 

“Look, here she is. Come, girl quick!” Geta beckoned her over. “General is about to arrive and it's time to put the veil on.”

“Your highness, first we must put on the belt,” said the slave girl. 

Two of the other girls placed a thin belt around your waist, where the Heracles knot would be tied, and tied it one time. Geta's slave was combing your hair at the same while pinning a few to the sides with hairpins.

“Tie plenty of knots.” Geta grinned. 

You rolled your eyes. “Don't be childish.”

“Your Majesty, if the groom can't untie the knot-“

“I know, it's bad luck,” he grinned again. He was giggling like a child as he tied a few knots in the belt around your waist.

“That's enough!” You pushed his hand away. 

“Looks like the Glorious General Acacius will be trying to undo the knots until morning.” His laughter echoed around the room, and everyone could hardly keep themselves from laughing. You were almost one of them, biting your lip hard not to. 

Before long, you heard footsteps and one of the slaves came into the room, out of breath. “Your Majesty, my lady, General Acacius’ carriage has arrived.”

You felt a sudden rush of butterflies in your stomach when you heard his name. 

“Time for the veil,” Geta ordered the slaves. They draped the long saffron-coloured veil over your head. Decima wrapped the end of the long veil around your arm to keep it from getting tangled around your feet. You grabbed the part hanging from your arm with your hand. The yellowish colour of the veil made it a little difficult for you to see clearly. It was like looking at the sun at sunset, with everything bathed in a yellow glow. You bowed your head a little as Geta's slave placed the flower crown on your head. 

“Wonderful!” Geta smiled and held out his arm to you. “Shall we?” You took a last glance at your room, hesitating for a moment before taking his arm. Decima looked a little sad, so you gestured for her to embrace you, the veil preventing you from moving freely. She came and hugged you, and you felt a little uneasy about leaving her there.

“You know, it's not too late. If you're unsure about... I’ll tell him.”

You gave Geta an aggressive look, despite the veil, you were sure he saw it.

Then you took his arm in a hurry. “We can go now.”

“Impatient, sister?”

You rolled your eyes and felt your long eyelashes brush against the fabric of the veil.

“After all, you’re old. Around twenty-six? I think you're fortunate to have found someone to marry.” He smirked.

"Ha-ha. How funny.”

As you left your chambers, you heard the murmurs of guests coming from the main courtyard. You walked out with short, confident steps. As you descended the stairs, you saw Caracalla standing there. Geta turned his head away from him. Were they sulking at each other?

Caracalla eyed you up and down. “I liked the tempting idea of keeping the General waiting, but the guests will gossip about us,” he chastised you with a laugh. When he held out his arm to you, you looked at him in surprise. “How dare you keep my arm waiting?”

Geta could joke, but Caracalla could do more than that. He could joke and at the same time manage to chastise and sarcasm. You took his arm, despite your initial hesitation. As you walked between the two of them, you looked at their faces out of the corner of your eye. It was a strange but nice feeling.

Soon you found yourself in the main courtyard where you were greeted with applause. It seemed that the guests recognized you from a distance thanks to your yellowish veil. Your eyes searched the crowd for Marcus and were momentarily distracted by the flowers hanging from the upper balcony. But you continued your search with determination.

“Where is mother?” Geta asked.

“I sent her away,” Caracalla snapped.

Geta looked at him angrily. “Are you mad?”

“Stay out of my business.”

“Stop it,” you hissed. “Don't ruin my wedding.”

Geta leaned towards him, whispering behind your back. “This isn't over, brother.”

Whatever had happened between them and wherever Julia had gone, you really didn't care right now. You were too focused on Marcus, who was waiting for you at the altar. He looked magnificent in his white toga virilis, (special toga worn by the groom). Your consciousness was clouded by the exhilaration you felt, and the voices of Geta and Caracalla sounded like grunts to you.

The only thing you really saw was Marcus' face, it filled your vision, for a moment you could think of nothing else. His eyes were a buttery, burning dark brown color, his stunning face was almost severe with the depth of his emotions.  And then, when he meets your gaze, a breathtaking smile appears on his handsome face. 

You felt like you might have fallen from the exhilaration and excitement if it hadn't been for your half-brothers holding your arms. Fortunately, the seemingly endless march was over and there you were, right next to Marcus, your General. 

Flamen Dialis (the high priest of Jupiter) began his speech to preside over the wedding. 

“My emperors, and honored guests, welcome to the wedding of General Marcus Justus Acacius and our Princess Septimia Aurelia Marciana.”

With soft applause from the guests, the slaves brought in a lamb adorned with flowers, its bleating echoing throughout the courtyard.

"Great Juno, Goddess of marriage and fertility, accept this gift of life from the great house of Emperor Publius Septimius Geta and Emperor Lucius Septimius Bassianus Caracalla.”

You chose not to look as the lamb was sacrificed, glad that the veil blocked your view. With a gesture from the high priest, Marcus held out his hand and asked Geta and Caracalla the usual question. 

“My Emperors, do you promise to give me this woman, your sister, as a wife?”

Geta and Caracalla glanced at each other, and then back at Marcus. 

“I promise.”

“Promise.”

They vowed.

You didn't realize you were crying until your tears soaked the fabric of your veil. You blinked, trying to see Marcus' face more clearly. Geta and Caracalla placed your thin hand in Marcus' large, warm palm. As soon as you touched his skin, that familiar feeling blessed you. He stroked all your fingers with his thumb, as if to calm you. The High Priest seemed satisfied and turned to Marcus. "General Marcus Acacius, she is yours.” He announced.

Geta and Caracalla took a few steps back, you took a few steps towards Marcus. He gently lifted the veil from your face and placed it over your head. You smiled with joy as you could see his gorgeous face more clearly. It seemed unbelievable, but this amazing man was now yours and you were his. Marcus took your hand gently and placed the golden wedding band on your fourth finger. You playfully caressed the ring -with the symbol of clasped hands on it- with your pinky finger. Here's one more thing to get used to.

“Seal it with a kiss.” The high priest gave consent.

Marcus gently grasped your shoulders, bent his head towards you and kissed you tenderly, adoringly. In that moment, you forgot everything else: the time, the place, the guests, and the reason you were there. All you remembered was that he loved you, that he wanted you, and that you were his.

“Let's witness the contract!” The high priest raised his arms and the guests applauded.

Marcus and you both broke the kiss with great effort, you even heard someone clearing their throat. You were almost sure it was Geta. Marcus pulled himself back to look at you, seemed amused, a smirk appeared on his face. There were giggles and murmurs coming from the audience, but you refused to look away from his face to see them.

The sweet evening breeze wafted gently around the Domus Severiana, carrying with it the sounds of a small crowd enjoying a wedding banquet under the soft lights. Marcus was conversing with Octavius in the vicinity of the fountain, while you were sitting in the fancy seat that had been reserved for you and Marcus, next to the imperial seats of Geta and Caracalla. Your half-brothers barely spoke to each other during the banquet, their mother Julia was nowhere to be seen, but nobody seemed to care. Macrinus, however, was looking at you out of the corner of his eye when he was talking to Geta. When he finished talking to him, he came over and smiled at you.

"My lady, I would like to congratulate you."

"Thank you, sir."

"I wish you and General Acacius every happiness."

You looked away. "I see Sir Gaius was not able to attend." 

A thoughtful expression crossed Macrinus' face as he realized the implication in your voice. 

"He asked me to convey his sincerest congratulations to you.”

"I'm not sure, I don't think he's sincere.”

"I beg your pardon, my lady?" He leaned a little closer

"I wonder if you were aware of his plans?" You shook the glass in your hand, your eyes fixated on the movement of the wine in it.

Macrinus cast a quick glance at his fellow emperors and leaned towards you.

“Can you please explain how you mean?”

“He told me a little about the plan for the throne, almost in a threatening tone,” you replied. Then you looked at him in the eye. ‘You didn't know?’

Marcus saw you two looking at each other with serious faces, so he frowned and ended his conversation with Octavius. Macrinus' face was hard to read. Whatever he was feeling, he was hiding it well. You were determined to solve him though.

"Whatever Sir Gaius has said, my lady, I can have no such thoughts,  I am at the service of your brothers, and of you too, surely.”

“There is no need for that, Sir Macrinus.” You were startled by Marcus's harsh voice. He stepped between the two of you, protectively, right in front of you, his shadow falling across your face.

“As her husband, I am the one who must look after my wife, Lady Aurelia, and I am grateful for your services thus far.” Marcus spoke with a tone that brooked no argument.

Macrinus smiled. “Of course, General Acacius, congratulations again, now, if you excuse me.” He turned and strode to the other side of the hall.

When Marcus turned back to you, he looked concerned. He sat down beside you and leaned in. “Did he say something to bother you?”

You shook your head. “No, he just congratulated me.”

Marcus raised an eyebrow.

“It's nothing to worry about, really,” you smiled at him.

He put his arm around you, "We'll talk about this later." His free hand went straight for the food on the table. “Did you eat enough?” He stuffed a grape into your mouth. “You'll need your strength for tonight.” 

You almost choked on the grape as he smiled crookedly. 

Geta's loud laughter startled you. When you looked at him, his favourite slave was feeding him some food too. Caracalla was also very busy romantically with his own slave. When you turned to Marcus, he was staring at you under his eyebrows. There was desire in those brown eyes that melted like butter and made your throat go dry. 

Then Marcus's face turned serious as their laughter continued. He turned his head and looked at your emperor half-brothers. “I think that's enough of the banquet.” He looked back at you with a soft expression this time. “Is my beautiful bride ready to go to her husband's house?” He gripped your hand tightly.

'Husband' word made you giggle. “I am very ready, General.”

He smiled and kissed the top of your hand then stood up, pulling you with him.

“It seems our happy couple have decided to take their leave,” Geta noticed you two. 

“With your permission, your highness,” Marcus nodded.

The slow music picked up to match the pace of the ceremony, which marked the bride's departure to her new home. In keeping with tradition, Marcus grabbed you by the legs, threw you over his shoulder, and ran across the courtyard towards the gate, carrying you outside. The guests watched this cheerful moment with laughter and applause.

While Marcus was carrying you over his shoulder, you tried to look around, but all you could see was your veil sweeping the floor. As he stepped out of the main gate, you were met with a surprise: applause and the sound of your own name being called. Marcus set you down. The crowd chanted both your names. They threw you rose petals, and you smiled and greeted them. The guests inside, Geta and Caracalla, had followed you, also greeted them. One of the slaves handed Geta a bowl full of red rose petals, which he proceeded to shower over your head. His earlier mood had been far more cheerful, but now he was serious. It was as if he was sad, but it was hard to be sure. Caracalla folded his arms, not bothering to touch the rose petals. You were taken off guard when Geta suddenly hugged you. You felt Marcus tense next to you. Geta looked at Marcus with an air of command. “Take good care of my sister, Acacius. Or there will be consequences.”

It was common knowledge that he was an emperor who liked to issue threats and give orders, and Marcus was aware of this, but no one was used to seeing him do it to protect someone else. It was clear that there had always been tension between them, but there was something different in the way they looked at each other, something you could hardly make sense of. 

Marcus grabbed your hand and looked at Geta with a sharp gaze. “Lady Aurelia is now my wife and under my care, she will be well looked after, you can be sure of that, your highness.”

Geta pursed his lips as if thinking about something. “Well then, you can go,’ he said then, pointing to the carriage.

“Be gentle with her, won't you?” Caracalla laughed hard.

Of course, shameless jokes were part of the tradition and your brothers were the experts at it.

Geta smirked. “Good luck,” he said, gesturing with his hands to his own waist, alluding to the belt around yours. 

You rolled your eyes at him and got into the carriage with Marcus's help. He lifted your veil as you got in and helped you to sit down. He called over Octavius and had a quick word with him. You were curious about what they were talking about, but you couldn't hear it clearly over the music and the crowd. When Octavius left, he came into the carriage and sat down beside you. He ordered the coachman to get the horses moving.

As the carriage moved, he held your hand and placed it in his. He traced the outline of the ring on your finger with his thumb. Then he lifted your hand and kissed each finger. You heard another carriage moving just behind yours. You turned your head and lifted the curtain with your free hand to look out.

“Another carriage?”

“I believe it's an imperial dowry,” he said sarcastically.

You looked at him, confused.

“Your brothers are sending you lots of clothes and jewellery,” he explained.

“Must be Geta.” You thought so.

“They have no boundaries when it comes to spending coins.”

You chose to remain silent because he was right.

“Still,” he grasped your chin gently and turned your face towards him. “My beautiful wife deserves it all.”

Before you could react, he kissed you passionately. His arms wrapped around your waist, and you felt his impatience. You inhaled his masculine scent and felt a moistness between your legs. Gods, why does this road never seem to end? You thought.

Villa…

By the time the two carriages drew close to the General's villa, the sun had finished its work for the day and was beginning to set. As he left, the sky darkened, and the moon rose soon after. The moon was bright and illuminated the night, almost as bright as the sun, especially tonight.

When the carriage finally arrived, Marcus stepped down and offered you his hand. You took his hand with a smile, but you had forgotten the veil you had wrapped around your arm and you stumbled on the steps. Marcus wrapped his arms around you and put you down effortlessly. Like you were a little girl. 

Octavius had already got out of the other carriage and came over to greet you. You turned your head to look at the other carriage. You were astounded to see Decima standing there, smiling. 

“But how?” You looked at her in surprise.

"Your wedding present, part of your dowry." Marcus explained. “I asked Emperor Geta to give her to your service, and he agreed.”

“Marcus, I don't know what to say. I'm so grateful.” 

He smiled in response, then took your hand and led you to the courtyard entrance of the villa. “Now we have to complete the ceremony. Are you ready?”

The ritual of entering your new home was a Roman custom that was not very common in Egypt. As a result, you were not familiar with this part of the ceremony, yet Geta's slave had informed you of a few details.

“Please guide me.”

He gave a nod. When you got to the door, all the General's slaves were waiting for you there. Two slaves were holding torches at the front. As you passed through, you noticed Norell and Tullia and wanted to give them a hug, but they were looking at you a little solemnly. Right, the ritual wasn't over yet. They both lifted you up and carried you over the threshold. You walked to the centre of the courtyard and realised how much you missed this place. It looked a little different than usual with the lighting and decorations, but you were home.

Marcus stood right in front of you. Norell handed him lucerna (an oil lamp), Tullia a jug with water in it, the symbol of life.  You took them from his hands carefully and, with his gesture, you raised them up for all to see. The slaves applauded softly, and you smiled. Then Norell and Tullia took them back from you. Marcus approached you and whispered, 'You know what to say here, don't you?’

You gave a little nod. It was a sentence you'd run through in your mind a few times already.

“Ubi tu Marcus ego Marca, where you are Marcus, I am Marca.”

He responded “Ubi tu Marca, ego Marcus, where you are Marca, I am Marcus.”

And the contract was fully signed, you were officially his wife. 

“Welcome home, my wife Aurelia,” he said with a warm smile.

It was like music to your ears to hear your own name come out of his mouth with the word ‘wife’.

"Welcome, Domina,” the slaves greeted you.

You smiled at them, and as Norell smiled back at you, you wanted to go over to talk to her, but Marcus' expression almost changed with the emotions he was feeling. He grabbed your hand and pulled you to the stairs leading to his room, or rather your room now. You could feel his impatience in the way he touched you. Your heart thudded audibly against your ribs, and your breath seemed to get stuck in your throat. 

He closed the door firmly behind you two. You could feel his eyes on you, but you refused to look at him. What was this sudden nervousness all about? You looked at his bed and saw the rose petals that had been sprinkled on it. Then, he rushed forward to snatch you into his arms, taking your breath away. You giggled, “Did you miss me?”

What a silly question, Marcus thought.

"Yes," he growled, and pulled you hard against him. "I can't think of nothing but you. Dreaming this moment was the only thing that kept me patient." Marcus's strong arms were wrapped around your waist, pressing himself against you. When he felt you tense under your dress, he reacted with a slight frown. 

“Why are you so tense? You made it through the first time well.” He brushed his lips against yours. “If I remember correctly, you liked my kiss?” His kiss was forceful, deep, overwhelming. He had got that wrong, he realized dazedly. He was the one who liked your kiss.  More than liked.  He loved it. He was radiating a strange intensity today. You could feel it under his lips; he was screaming his longing to you through them.

He slid his hand to your thigh. “I remember you liked my touch too,” now he was touching you where you wanted him most. You bit your lip. He grinned as he felt the moisture forming beneath the fabric. “I see you want me, but I want to know what makes you nervous.”

You swallowed hard, unsure of how to tell him how you felt. 

“Are you afraid of me?” His voice was so soft.

You met his eyes. “No Marcus, I'm - I'm afraid what if I cannot satisfy you or please you as your wife.”

Marcus's smile was broad, cheerful. You blinked your eyes as you looked at him in confusion 

“You will learn, my love.”

He ran his fingers up your arms, caressing your shoulders, your collarbone, your chin, “We’ll both be learning each other’s likes,” then took your face in his hands, "Each time,” he smirked, his gaze dropping to your lips. He kissed your lips softly. His mouth was hot and sweet on your own.

Marcus broke the kiss to remove the veil from your head. It was getting in the way of his arms around you and feeling your skin. He placed it on the edge of the bed, a little hastily. When he came back, he took your hands and put them on his shoulders, just above the shawl on his white toga.“Will you do as my wife?”

“Sure.” You took hold of Marcus's plain white shawl and slowly removed it from his shoulder, then waist. He now wears only his plain white tunic. You placed it on the bed neatly. You gasped as his hands wrapped around you from behind. He kissed the nape of your neck gently but needily.

“Turn around to look at me.”

You did as he said. His hands went to your belt, his smile fading as he realised the knots. It was exactly the reaction you thought he'd have.

“Why did you tie so many knots?”

“Apologies.” You bit your lower lip.

"He did this, didn't he?" He narrowed his eyes. He grunted when he saw the answer in your expression. "He always manages to annoy me.”

Marcus untied one of the knots patiently, but there seemed to be more. While he was untying it, your eyes drifted across the room to Marcus' leather armour. Next to it was his sword and then you noticed the item that you thought might be useful. Marcus' pugio (a dagger used by Roman soldiers as a sidearm).

“This belt represents virginity, right?”

Marcus answered without looking at you, determined to untie the knots. “Yes?” Suddenly, he stopped and looked up. He met your gaze, following the path of your eyes. He turned his head in that direction.

“So I'm not a virgin after all. I mean…"

He laughed when he realised the implication in your voice. “I'm all ears.”

“Can't you just cut it off?”

“Gods must have blessed me with an intelligent wife.”

He took his pugio, unsheathed it and came over to you. “Stay still.”

You nodded and swallowed, wondering why this turned you on so much. Marcus grabbed your endlessly knotted belt with one hand and pulled, almost staggering you. With the other hand, holding his pugio, he cut your belt in one swift motion. You were startled when you felt the sharp surface of the dagger just slightly under the fabric. But it was over in a flash.

Marcus threw the belt on the floor. "There's nothing holding us back now.” He hurriedly put the pugio back in its sheath. And in the blink of an eye, you were in his arms again. You trembled with ecstasy in the dress which freed from the tightness provided by the belt. Marcus's impatient hands grasped the fabric of the dress at your shoulders, perhaps a little roughly, and skilfully undressed you. The dress fell to the floor, pooling around your feet.

“Undress me,” he demanded. Unlike his impatient hands, yours were slow, yet eager. You grasped the hem of Marcus' tunic in your clumsy hands, lifted it up and pulled it over his head, allowing it to fall to the floor.

As you looked at his bare chest, your eyes drifted to where he was last injured, and you looked at him as you stroked it with your hand. "It's not healed yet. I'll have to make some ointment.”

He grabbed you around the waist and pulled you hard against him.

“Do that later, now focus on the other thing I need you to heal.”

You looked away, and before you could turn your chin, he grabbed it in his hand.

“Wrap your arms around me,” he commanded.

You obey, feeling him between your thighs, growing, making you swallow loudly.

“Run your fingers through my hair,” he said, looking into your eyes. You already liked touching his hair so much, was he reading your mind? Marcus's breathing grew heavier as you ran your fingers through his curly, dark, partly gray hair. He grabbed your hips, lifting you slightly onto his lap. His strength was a huge turn on for you, feeling the way he was easily able to pick you up. Walking with your legs wrapped around his waist he carries you there and lifting you off of him. He laid you down on the bed carefully and then watched you. You felt the soft touch of rose petals against your skin yet didn’t care. You literally felt his eyes roaming over, from you hips up to your waist up to your breasts, and your cheeks surely turned red than they already were. But you didn't feel exposed. In a way it felt liberating to let him see you because you didn't have the urge to hide yourself from him anymore. The eager expression on his face made you feel beautiful and wanted. And then he kissed your neck, which felt even better, and you turned your head to the side to offer him more skin to kiss. He swirled his tongue on the skin behind your ear, causing you to moan. He continued working across your neck with his tongue, then pecked your earlobe and then moved to your mouth. He crushed his lips to yours. He felt your hands as you press against his back, clasping him to yourself. You ran your hands over his broad shoulders as he kissing you with unbridled passion, his lips moving over yours with a hunger you had never experienced before. Marcus was already healed when he felt your fingers caressing his wounds. The feel of your bare skin against his is beyond compare. It is absolutely glorious.

The moment he forcefully parts both of your legs with his knee, you look up at him wide-eyed. His face is intense, and you know soon he’ll take you. You don’t want him to stop, but can’t help to tense. You fight against his hold but it is as though you're fighting a marble statue.

Marcus looks down at you sternly. His voice becomes commanding. 

“Aurelia, if you could just relax, we've done it before, this time it won't hurt,” He whispers into your ear. You did what he said and let him take you. Your immobile under his control, extremely turned on. 

“I wish to please you,” he says, his hot breath caresses you belly. He slowly runs his hand downwards, reaching that intimate, soaked place between your legs that he has touched before. A satisfied groan builds in his throat. “Hmm. So responsive.”

A deft finger circles a sensitive spot gently and you bit your lip hard, feels good. You feel the need to writhe in response, but his weight is holding you down, unyielding.

He enters you with two fingers and his hand is so big that each time his finger is in, his palm presses your most sensitive spot. He curls his finger, massaging another extremely sensitive spot inside you. And finally, he puts his mouth close to that area and touches it with his tongue, while he caresses your breasts with both hands then pushing his tongue back in against your clit, then sucks, consuming you, relentlessly. You can’t suppress your whimper. And groaning loudly. He looks up at you. He was determined to watch you come and the closer you got to climax the heavier your breathing became. 

"Marcus," you moaned again. “P-please.”

He smirked watched your face contort and kept at it, licking and sucking, devouring you while your legs started to shake beneath you. Soon you reached the climax and felt as if you had ascended to the sky. Marcus kissed you repeatedly around your belly, proud of the feeling he had caused. He had a smile of triumph on his face, but now his body had become more impatient. 

“Now wrap your legs around me,” he was stroking your legs. You did as he said, already craving him more than you ever wanted him, your body squirming to be his. In a swift movement he grabs your hips and pulls you down and his full length is inside you. You moan and your breath hits against his chest. Your nails dig into the back of his neck, breathing harshly. You didn't expect it to happen so quickly, but this time it didn't hurt at all, maybe because it was too wet, dripping wet.

You weren’t with him for this part, but he was acutely aware of you every shaky breath. Somehow, despite his pleasure, he found himself moderating his thrusts without too much effort. True, he had to squeeze his eyes shut to concentrate.  The feel of you around him was like nothing else.  It was strange how aware he felt of the clench of your fingers at his back as he luxuriated in the tight, silky clasp of you. How often he felt compelled to press his lips to yours. 

When he felt his brow begin to bead with sweat, he groaned and told himself his exertions had gone on long enough. He needed to withdraw.  You don’t need to, a voice whispered in his head that sounded very like his own. She’s your wife, yours. He looked at your face to confirm, determined not to lose his self-control and cause you pain. Fortunately, he saw that you were far from suffering. He smiled confidently, thinking how beautiful you looked right now. He could see it in your face, so when he hardened his movements a little, he realized that you were moaning with pleasure. A smile of triumph spread across Marcus' face as you screamed his name over and over. His thrusts are becoming quicker now, but still not too quickly, and you know you will climax simultaneously.

You close your eyes and moan as you feel yourself begin the ascent to your orgasm. He is moaning as well, then he pushes himself as deeply into you as he can, triggering his climax. As you feel him throb inside you, filling you completely with his seed, you come hard, your moan becomes a howl, and Marcus presses his mouth to yours, causing your body to twist into lovely shivers.

He slides his tongue into your mouth and strokes yours with his, extending both your climaxes. Moaning into each other's mouths, you don't want this feeling to end, and you're certain he feels the same. As you ease down from your respective highs, Marcus breaks your kiss and looks admiringly into your half-closed eyes and smiles through heavy breathing.

"I can't believe how stunning, amazing you are," he whispered, running his fingers through your hair. “I love you Aurelia, my beautiful wife.” 

You smiled at his kind words.

“I love you too, Marcus.”

Both of you naked in our post-coital bliss, a military man buried inside you, the General, now your husband. You think it was the most romantic wedding night you could imagine. Not because he's so handsome and charming despite his age. But because he's your Marcus, he's perfect.

When he finally pulls out, it hurts, but only emotionally. You already miss the fiery connection between your bodies. He kisses you again and pulls you against his chest, wrapping his arm around you, as if he's trying to stop you from running away. You smile, he must have remembered what you did last time. He places his chin on the top of your head, your nose close enough to touch his neck, your nose caressing his jugular vein. 

The warm breeze whispers through the window, blowing out the oil lamp and allowing the bright moonlight to bathe your naked bodies in its glow. Once the sounds of love have ceased, you find yourself surrounded by the gentle chirping of crickets, the soft howl of an owl, and the calming rhythm of Marcus' breathing. After a while, your eyelids gently close, and you drift off to sleep, caged and imprisoned by his arms.

The Dream...

The moonlight was all you could see, blocking out everything else. The soft wind caresses your skin, causing you to shiver, but you are not cold. You ask yourself why you are shivering. Your feet, your hands – where were they? Everything was blurred. You opened and closed your eyes, your heart racing in your chest. But why? You open and close your eyes once more. Your hands are there, but your feet are off the ground.  You open and close your eyes once more. This time, the light dims, and you can see around you. You are relieved. You thought you were blind a moment ago.

But the relief doesn't last long because you remember where you are. You were here before. This meadow, this wind, this sky. "Save him." And that chilling whisper. You flinch and gasp as the owner of the voice suddenly appears. The goddess appears in front of you, her white skin glimmering like diamonds. This time, she doesn't resemble you. She draws closer, and when you recognize her face, you fall to your knees. This time, she allows you to feel the grass and flowers. Is it because she pity you?

'Mother?' your voice trembles. You've never seen her before, only her statue, in the tomb in the Domus Severiana. She is beautiful, in a way that is difficult to describe.

'Save him,' the same tone, with a hint of urgency and a touch of pleading.

You get up on your knees and look at her, ‘I did it, Mother, I saved him.’ 

Unsatisfied with your answer, she turns away, strolling in a circle among the grass. You're certain she'll pick another herb to give to you like she did last time. But no, she grabbed something from the grass, and when she lifted it up you jumped backwards for your dear life. 

‘Don't be afraid, child,’ she whispered. 

The viper she held in her hand was torn into many pieces and spread out through the grass, then into the soil. What? Why? How? You felt like you were losing your mind. 'He will need you, Rome will need you,’ she whispered again, ringing, echoing in your ears. Rome? Him? This overwhelming, all-consuming dream didn't allow you to speak or think clearly. He was your sole focus, and you made the conscious decision to ask questions for him, even if it meant losing your mind.

'Save him from what, mother? Please…” your voice cracked, you were panting, heavily breathing.

Without batting an eyelash, she grabbed your hands and lifted you up on your feet. Her eyes were fixed on yours, as if she could read your mind.

"You already know.” Her voice sharp. 

This time, she turned around, and her hair danced in the warm wind. You shook your head in defiance, demanding to know more. She reads your mind again. "Think, Aurelia."

In a gust of wind, the grass and flowers on the ground were uprooted, plucked, and gathered around your mother's silhouette. It was incredible, overwhelming, and it consumed all of your senses. You rushed towards her, but she had already disappeared among them as if caught in a whirlwind. Your feet were no longer on the meadow with green grass and flowers. Instead, you were on a dirt field, and you felt abandoned. No more moonlight, no more wind, only dirt ground. No more her. With her voice echoing in your ears for the last time, crushing your soul, blowing your mind last time, your dream was about to end.

'Think.'

please reblog, comment or like if you enjoyed thank you all <3

@myownwholewildworld @orcasoul @pedroslut4eva @immyowndefender @lailathepedritofan @screechingchildfury @shinymusicpanda @somedayheaven @ivoryandflame @negrita2345 @music-lover09 @javiismyhsbnd @idontcareihavenoidea @jisungandpedrolover @mmkkzz @ro-nahime-things

if anyone wants me to tag them please lemme know

[skufdaddyswansea]

Mouthwashing, Dual Protagonists, and Captain Curly

While the vast majority of Mouthwashing is shown from Jimmy's perspective, the events leading up to the Tulpar's crash usually follow Curly. There are several interesting reasons for this, but there's one reason in particular that I'd like to focus on.

By setting Jimmy and Curly up as dual protagonists, we're invited to draw comparisons between them. Not only are they the lenses through which we view the story, they pass the role of Captain back and forth between their chapters.

It's easy to feel sympathy for Curly, given the state he spends the larger part of the game in. It can also be easy to gloss over his more subtle shortcomings when measuring him up against Jimmy.

In this post, I want to take a closer look at Curly's character. And more specifically, how he relates to one of the game's most obvious themes.

Is Curly able to deal with the consequences of his actions? Does he realize his own failures and how they harm the people around him? What does he do with the power he's granted over others?

Does Curly take responsibility?

Jimmy's fixation here gives us a good jumping-off point. It's certainly possible that he's only really been told this once or twice, but because he's Jimmy he's blown it out of proportion out of spite. It's also possible he's entirely making it up because he's projecting, but I think the former is more likely if anything.

And, if I had to take a guess where he heard it from, I'd put my money on The Pony Express itself.

In the eyes of The Pony Express, a "great leader" isn't someone diligent or able to meet the needs of his crew. The real reason Curly was able to rise to the top of the ladder and become captain is because he gets the job done without rocking the boat.

I'm establishing all this because I think it's worth examining by what metric he's being judged. Because, while it may be Jimmy who most often digs this point up, Curly doesn't disagree with him. Even in the depths of his ennui, it's important to him that not only is he the Captain, but a good one at that.

When comparing the two, that can again seem difficult to argue against. Jimmy is quick to lash out and shift blame. His resentment and insecurities often drive him to pick fights. Curly prefers to avoid conflict, but knows his position doesn't always allow him to do so. He tries to pick his battles, but when he has to get involved he focuses on de-escalating the situation.

But although their similarities are few, they do exist. And they greatly influence the narrative. Because it is from their shared selfishness, callousness, and cowardice that the entire story is born.

It's time to address the elephant in the room. We can't draw any conclusions about Curly's nature, his character, his role in the story, and his relationship to its themes without digging into his handling of Anya's assault, and the chain of events that follow.

I find it interesting that we never see the initial conversation Anya has with Curly about the assault. We simply know that she confided in him. He is the Captain, after all. The crew is his responsibility.

The thing is, we don't really need to know the exact conversation they shared, because we can imagine it went quite similarly to their conversation about her pregnancy.

She tells him how scared she is. She fears for her life. It never even occurred to him that she was upset about anything other than losing her job. He swears to her that everything will be fine. They'll fix this. All he has to do is talk to Jimmy.

He does not talk to Jimmy.

Maybe the first time he really did intend to. He just needed time. Jimmy has always had... struggles. If we want to, we can be generous to Curly, we can assume his old problems were much less vile. Otherwise, he would have never pulled the strings to get him this job, never put him in a position of power over vulnerable people. Right? But now, this was whole new beast altogether. Because he and Jimmy go way back, he had to process this, figure out what he was even supposed to say.

But at the same time, The Pony Express had just gone gone under. He'd been struggling with dissatisfaction and indecision for so long, and now his hand has been forced. He has his own problems. And Anya seems fine, doesn't she? If she hadn't said anything, he'd never have even known there was anything wrong. It just doesn't seem that important.

Anya talks to Jimmy herself.

She's scared, she fears for her life. But now she knows now that Curly won't defend her, nor give her the means to defend herself. Still, he promises her, they'll fix this. He just has to talk to Jimmy.

Things are different now. He can't sit by and wait for things to work out anymore. After all, it's not only her problem anymore.

Now it's Curly's problem too. How is he supposed to find another job with this on his record? There's only one other person on this ship who understands what he's going through.

He talks to Jimmy.

And he understands. Not that what he did was wrong, of course. Not that he'd done something horrific, irreversible, cruel. But that it now had consequences, and that he wouldn't suffer them alone.

Curly made his decision. He chose his paper-thin illusion of peace and his eroding friendship with Jimmy over the safety and well-being of his crew. And when it all came tumbling down, he decided it was better to bury them all under the rubble than to face the struggle to rebuild.

If Jimmy hadn't been there, hadn't been his co-pilot, Curly almost certainly would not have been able to bring himself to actually follow through with something so selfish and reckless.

But Jimmy was there, and Curly made sure of that.

So, it's time to ask again. Does Curly take responsibility?

Well, yes.

But it's too little, too late.

As much as Mouthwashing is about Jimmy fighting furiously against the consequences of his actions, it is also about Curly being forced to watch them unfold anyway. His silence and inaction, once a choice, are inflicted upon him by his mangled body.

Jimmy may have crashed the ship, but Curly gave him the keys. And so it's fitting in the end that Curly is made to take the full weight of responsibility by the man who he helped avoid it so many times.

[theliteraryarchitect]

Hi, this is a really specific situation, but I'm at a loss. I had an accident that left me with lasting brain issues, and my writing has taken a hit. I went from being able to churn out a 3k word chapter in a day to needing an hour to write 50 words. I have so many ideas but can't express them, and I hate writing as a result. I know practice and just pushing through are going to be the main pieces of advice, but do you have any other suggestions or resources for someone who is having to re-learn how to be a writer?

Hey there! First off, I’m so sorry this response took me so long. Your Ask really stuck with me, and I wanted to give it the thought and care it deserves.

I can’t imagine how frustrating and heartbreaking it must be to go through such a big shift in your writing process. Losing that ease and flow—especially when you have so many ideas—is a huge adjustment. It’s a testament to your creativity and drive that you’re still thinking about how to keep writing despite the challenges.

You’re absolutely right that practice and pushing through are often the go-to advice, but I think it’s equally important to give yourself permission to grieve what’s changed. Writing can feel like such a core part of who we are, and when it’s harder than it used to be, it’s natural to feel a sense of loss.

Here are a few suggestions that might help as you navigate this:

1. Try Different Mediums: If typing feels like slogging through mud, maybe experiment with dictation software or voice-to-text tools. Speaking your ideas aloud could help you capture more words without the same strain.

2. Focus on Smaller Goals: Instead of trying to write full chapters, set tiny, manageable goals—like jotting down a single image or one sentence that excites you. Those little wins can add up and feel more achievable.

3. Explore New Ways of Outlining: If you’re struggling to get the words out, focus on the ideas instead. Create bullet points, mind maps, or even doodles to capture the essence of your story without the pressure of fully fleshed-out prose.

4. Be Kind to Yourself: This is the hardest one, but it’s so important. Writing isn’t just about the final product; it’s about the joy of creating. Even if the words come slower, every step you take is progress.

And don't forget to give yourself a ton of credit! Re-learning how to write in a way that works for you now is an incredible act of resilience. You’re still a writer, and your stories are still worth telling, even if the path looks different.

Hope this helps!

Bucket

/ / / / / / / / / / /

@theliteraryarchitect is a writing advice blog run by me, Bucket Siler, a writer and developmental editor. For more writing help, download my Free Resource Library for Fiction Writers, join my email list, or check out my book The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.

[kiwriteswords]

If we're talking angst with Aaron Hotchner, I feel like a miscarriage would do good to break his heart (if you're comfortable writing such a heavy topic, of course!)

No words appear before me in the aftermath [Aaron Hotchner x Female Reader]

Masterlist || Ao3||Word Count: 1k|| AN: Well, this took an emotional toll! Sort of inspired by the scene in Grey's Anatomy with Meredith Grey! Also, peep the new 'taglist' banner! I really like how it turned out!

Tags/Warnings: miscarriage, pregnancy, angst, blood, traumatic event, canon typical events, canon typical themes, canon typical language, BAU team member reader, established relationship, hurt/comfort, concerned Derek, concerned, Spencer, concerned Rossi

Summary: "Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. You were bigger than the whole sky. You were more than just a short time. I've got a lot to pine about. I've got a lot to live without. I'm never gonna meet, what could've been, would've been, what should've been you."

In the muted light, the BAU team maneuvered through the abandoned warehouse, their breaths visible in the chill air. Aaron Hotchner led with the precision of a seasoned commander, his eyes scanning for danger; his heart, however, remained anchored to you. 

His partner in every sense. 

Despite being married for some time now, the thrill of working alongside you never waned. The team admired your synergy, the seamless dance of mutual respect, and whispered strategies. You bettered each other and for that? The team was grateful. 

As gunfire erupted, chaos threaded through the precision. Aaron commanded, "Cover! Now!" 

His voice was the calm in the storm, but his gaze instinctively sought you out. You moved with practiced ease, though your face was pale.

The exchange of bullets echoed a grim symphony. Spencer and Derek flanked you, moving as one unit. But as the final shot silenced the night, halting the unsub, a different, sharper silence fell over you. 

Clutching your side, you staggered slightly, the color drained from your face not just from exertion but from pain--a deep, gnawing pain that didn't come from any bullet. Your knees felt weak; a sour taste filled your mouth. 

The physical manifestation of your emotional turmoil was evident in your trembling hands and the way your body seemed to sag under the weight of the news. 

"Derek, check her!" Spencer's voice cracked through the tension, his youthful face lined with worry.

Derek approached, his brow furrowed. "You're bleeding... a lot. Were you hit?" His question hung heavy in the cold air.

You shook your head, moisture glossing your eyes, not from the icy wind but from a storm within. "No, I... it's not that."

Across the warehouse, Aaron knelt beside the subdued unsub, his duty momentarily anchoring him to the spot. But his eyes were locked on you, sensing the distress in Derek's tone. The local PD was moving in, ready to take over, allowing Aaron the space to be not just a unit chief but a concerned husband. His responsibilities as a leader momentarily set aside, he moved towards you, his focus narrowing to the palpable tension surrounding you.

As Aaron approached, he noticed the stark contrast of the blood against your clothing, and his heart skipped a beat. The scene around him: the flashing lights, the murmur of the police radios, all faded into a blur. 

Only you and your pain remained sharply in focus.

Always keenly observant, Rossi stepped in, his voice gentle yet urgent. "What’s going on?" he asked, looking from you to Aaron, sensing the shift in the air.

The question was too much. The weight of the secret you harbored now bled out in more ways than one. "Stop," you whispered, the single word a dam against your breaking heart. Your eyes met Aaron’s, and in them, he read a thousand chapters of a story you hadn’t yet told him. Miscarriage. The word stood unspoken, a ghost between you. The pain of loss, the fear of the unknown, and the struggle to communicate it all, hung heavy in the air.

You turned away, a lone figure against the backdrop of flashing police lights, walking away from the puddles that mirrored your desolation. Aaron stood frozen, his instincts as a unit chief battling his instincts as a husband. The words to command, to comfort, eluded him.

Seeing Aaron's hesitation, Rossi placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Aaron, she needs you now more than the team does." His voice was low, filled with understanding and a somber recognition of the personal stakes involved.

Spencer, who had hung back, now stepped forward, his voice hesitant but firm. "She wasn't ready to tell us, Hotch. Maybe... m-maybe she wasn't ready to tell anyone yet?" 

Derek, still close by, looked between you and Aaron, regret coloring his tone. "Hotch, I’m sorry, I didn’t know she was..." His voice trailed off, unsure of how much had been understood, how much had been shared.

"Neither did I." Aaron's voice broke, a rare crack in his armor. He hadn’t known about the baby, about the hope you had nurtured silently. Now, all he could see was the future unspooling, threads of joy unraveled into grief. His internal conflict, torn between his role as a leader and his desire to comfort you, was palpable.

The team huddled in a tableau of shared sorrow, the strong men of the BAU grappling with a pain they couldn’t shield you from. As you distanced yourself, the space between you and Aaron felt like miles. He wanted to chase after you, to erase the hurt, but his feet were rooted, his role uncertain, his heart heavy with the shared pain.

He finally found you in the women’s bathroom at the local precinct, the tiles and walls reflecting a cold he couldn’t shake Locking the door behind him, he stood inside. 

You were at the sink, changed from your original clothes into one he recognized as back up from your go-bag. 

Your hands mechanically scrubbing under the relentless stream of water, each motion a futile attempt to cleanse away the tragedy that had stained the day. Stained this chapter in your life.

Water pooled around the drain tinged with a heartbreak that soap couldn’t wash away. 

Your focus was laser-sharp on the pink-tinted water, a cruel reminder of the life that was slipping away from you. Aaron paused at the door, the sight of you grappling alone with your pain tightening his chest.

“Let’s take a minute,” he said gently, his voice a soft contrast to the harsh fluorescent lighting. His words seemed to hover in the humid air, too heavy to immediately absorb.

You didn’t look up, your hands moving to your stained clothes, spot-cleaning the blood that had marked it. The fabric absorbed your focus, your fingers scrubbing rhythmically.

It was a task, something you could control when everything else seemed to unravel. 

“I need to get more jeans for my go-bag,” You said as if it was just an item on your to-do list. As if there wasn’t a life-altering moment happening right before your very eyes.

Aaron moved closer, his reflection ghosting beside yours in the mirror, a shared image of both solidarity and separation. “You don’t have to do this right now,” he murmured, reaching a tentative hand toward your shoulder.

The contact startled you, a lifeline you hadn’t realized you were waiting for. Your eyes met his in the mirror--windows fogged with unshed tears. 

“I need to clean this up,” you insisted, your voice as thin as the paper towels you now snatched up, blotting the damp clothes.

He watched the deliberate way you avoided your reflection, focusing only on the stains you could fight. “You’re not alone in this,” Aaron assured you, his tone threaded with the promise to hold together the pieces of a shared dream that had shattered silently.

The paper towels piled up. Crimson. “I was going to tell you…I wanted to tell you…,” you finally admitted, the words spilling out like the water you couldn’t stop. “A-After the case...”

The confession hung between you, a delicate truth that now lay bare in the most unforgiving of lights. 

Aaron reached for your hands, stilling them. “Let’s just sit for a moment. Together,” he suggested, guiding you away from the sink, away from the relentless reminder of loss.

You allowed him to lead you to a small bench in the corner, the cold of the tile seeping through your clothes, a stark contrast to the warmth of his hand covering yours. Side by side, you sat in a silence that spoke volumes, your breaths syncing in a slow, shared cadence.

Aaron looked at you, really looked. 

Not as a unit chief or a husband seeking to fix things but as a partner sharing in the rawness of the moment. 

“We don’t have to go back out there today,” he said softly, an anchor in the fluidity of grief.

You leaned into him, your head resting against his shoulder. The fight to stay composed ebbing away. 

In the quiet of that sterile space, you found a haven, a shared solitude that didn’t push for answers or action, just presence. He’d always had this effect on you. 

“We both wanted this so much." Your voice just above a whisper. 

Aaron nodded, his cheek resting atop your head. "I know," he murmured. His heart ached with the weight of lost futures. "We wanted it," he repeated, his voice thick with emotion, acknowledging not only the pain of the loss but the depth of the shared desire that had been growing between you.

In the reflection of the darkened mirror, the two of you sat, a poignant picture of what strength truly looked like, not in the avoidance of pain but in the willingness to face it. 

Tag List: @zaddyhotch @estragos @todorokishoe24 @looking1016  @khxna @rousethemouse @averyhotchner @reidfile @bernelflo @lover-of-books-and-tea @frickin-bats @sleepysongbirdsings @justyourusualash @person-005 @iyskgd @hiireadstuff @kcch-ns @alexxavicry

[hollyhomburg]

Before I Leave You (Pt. 80)

(Omegaverse au, Mafia au, Bts x Reader)

Summary: “Come on hyung, fuck her like you mean it.”

Tags: Groupsex, Mating cycles/in heat, fivesome, exhibitionism, voyeurism, slight Jungkook x m/c focus, praise kink, Knotfucking, dumbification, mind-break, Namjoon calls Yoongi a bitch once in like a sexy way, omegaspace sex, lactation kink, false pregnancy, some good ol' tiddy sucking, omega x omega content, scissoring, pussy spanking, excessive squirting, size kink, breif mention of monstercock dildos, overstimulation kink, forced orgasam (but not in a cnc way), knot milking, mommy kink, daddy kink, trans characters, discussion of girl knot/cock, girl on top, feral sex, biting, humor, this is soft and horny and funny and sweet.

W/c: 12.7k

A/n: Ahhhh i'm sorry it took so long for me to write this chapter- the good thing is the next one won't be that far off! Until then if you like this story and want to read a different version of the beginning that has like 5+ additional chapters of how yoongi and the m/c got together you can read it here.

Previous part - Masterlist - First part

As you can expect, there is some clamoring around Yoongi.

Everyone reaches to feel, to touch, to check. Your hand is among the others tangling with Tae's fingers then Hobi's. Every touch is exploratory, curious, and coming to terms. Shocked and happy, weirded out and displeased. There are so many emotions that everyone's scents are all over the place. Surprised, excited, and scared.

Jungkook starts to tip his head, eyes open, leaning into Namjoon's space and falling, like he can't figure out which alpha to please with the scent of a new knot in the air. Jin lets out a shocked noise, not entirely upset but still.

“Wow is he bigger than Minnie and Hobi?” “I don’t know, but you should definitely measure.” “It feels so much less firm than a normal knot,” “Like squish mellow” “And he’s got that vein! I can see it pulse!” "Wow what the fuck, it’s so pink."

"Am I dreaming it's like my dream for everyone to have a knot."

"Even the pup?"

"Especially the pup. Have you seen Tae's dick? Girl knots are like- so ugh."

Until it gets too much, until Yoongi’s hips splay, and his head tips back, breath ragged. “Guys I’m-”

"Alright." Namjoon snaps, loudly. "Everyone back off. Give him some room."

You do not back up, you curl up around your mate's body protectively, still barely conscious of the fact that you're dripping into the nest below you. But you don't really think that Namjoon was talking about you and he doesn't make you move once you snatch your hand back. Resting it loosely on Yoongi's hip, clutching at his shirt like you think someone is going to take him away.

Namjoon eyes your hand and then your face. You tip your chin down demurely like there can't possibly be any way you'd missbehave. Namjoon huffs, shaking his head before he ducks down.

The pack alpha examines Yoongi’s knot under an appraising eye. His big hands turning it this way and that, Yoongi’s eyes roll back no one gives him shit for rocking up into Namjoon’s touch, needy.

Does knotting always feel this way? There’s pressure in his lower stomach, a tightening that makes no sense. That sort of feels like his self-control is spiraling away or dangling on the edge of a very precarious edge. Like all of him is about to break or perhaps be made whole.

Yoongi doesn't like thinking of sex as something necessary for love. But knotting certainly feels like a cross between the two.

No wonder why alphas are such knotheads. If fucking always felt like this, like the sex equivalent of a full body hug that lasts for hours, instead of a singular moment of euphoria and closeness. Yoongi would never want to fuck any other way. No wonder why they're so possessive too.

This feeling- Yoongi’s not addicted, not yet.  

You hook your chin over his shoulder to watch, sniffling. And Yoongi is a little too aware of you. The way your body lies against his arm, the dewy brush of his wrist on your stomach as you set your body against his. He must be going insane; he must have bit you again and given you a fresh mating mark. Because it feels like he can feel the mating mark wrapping around his cock.

You're a little more lucid because the pack’s sour scents cut through the breeding haze.

“Is Yoongi like- presenting?” Your voice sounds so small, so fragile. Yoongi bares his teeth at it. He tips his head into yours, nosing at the side of your face. Trying to reassure you. Trying not to bite. Hissing when Namjoon once again pulls at the skin of his knot.

“I don’t think so,” Namjoon says carefully, slowly. Reaching for Jin's glasses on the edge of the nest (because they're roughly the same prescription) so that he can take a look at the underside of Yoongi’s cock and the scent glands just below it.

They’re not puffy and not swollen like an alpha's. Alpha's knot to scent mark, not just breed. It's surprisingly a relief knowing that not all of Yoongi's biology has changed.

"He’s like still a beta? Right?”

“As far as I can tell yes.” Namjoon hesitates, poking at Yoongi’s knot harder. Eyes flicking up to measure his response. Yoongi does not snap at him, doesn’t do anything but lean against the column of Namjoon’s arm like he’s having a hard time holding his body up. When Namjoon puts his hand on the base of Yoongi’s throat, he doesn’t do anything but close his eyes.

"No- if you were an alpha you'd be biting my head off right now. You're definitely not presenting" Namjoon decides, begging that it's true. His own instincts are just a hum beneath his skin.

Namjoon might be a man of science, but he does trust his instincts more than he’d ever willingly admit. Namjoon's inner alpha is not chomping at the bit for a show of dominance and is not threatened by the sudden muskiness of another foreign knot. A shock in itself. Any scent of an unfamiliar knot combined with the smell of their omega in heat would make any of the alphas, even hoseok the tamest one, go feral. Packs work that way.

Beyond an extra layer of horniness, Yoongi’s thick chocolate scent has not changed. Not even a little bit once Namjoon sniffs and rolls the taste of it around on his tongue.

Namjoon presses the side of his face to Yoongi’s neck and closes his eyes. You can feel Yoongi’s heart flutter with how you’re holding onto his arm. After a moment namjoon pulls away. “You’ll be fine.”

You sag, a bit in relief. Yoongi? An alpha? If Namjoon says he’s not you believe him. Your brain is too hazy to think straight. But you decide you’re glad he’s not. Yoongi’s perfect- you’d hate it if something changed without his say-so. You babble, say it. And your mate covers his face.

“If I had to bet, I’d say it’s the mating mark. I’d like to take tests but-” Jin’s head jerks up, scent souring. Sensing a trip to the hospital before it’s even been said. Jungkook’s eyes on Yoongi don’t blink, grinning down at that knot with his hair in his face, already excited and dopey. As if talking about the hospital is enough to summon another seizure.

“After maybe. If it’s still a problem.” Namjoon caveats, pausing to rub down Yoongi’s arm, soothing him. Yoongi is still trembling. Still shaking so hard that he can't really move with any coordination.

“Has anything like this ever happened before?” Seokjin asks, carefully. Pillow over his bare lap. Namjoon has the good sense to at least put on some shorts. Jimin looks at Tae quickly and Tae does not return his gaze. Some secret soulmate conversation going on between them that you can’t read.

When you look up at Hobi- he’s watching your face. He doesn’t look away but after a moment he shrugs as if to say ‘Our beta has a knot- so what?’

“I’ve never heard of a beta popping a knot. I’m not sure. I think this might just be us.”

You groan, hiding your face under Yoongi’s chin. His breath heaves, and he turns back to you, nuzzling back.

“Is it my slick? Or the mating mark? Did I do this to him?” your eyes are wet, tears already threatening. You are already generally sensitive, and even more so in heat. Yoongi eases away your worries with a quick kiss to the side of your face. Cutting off your guilt before it has a chance to build.

“None of that now. If I had to change for anyone I’m glad it’s you.”

The pack is quiet around you, all in varying states of nudity. Quiet at the truth of what he says, how suddenly deep this has gotten. But he's right, you'd change for any of them. You wouldn't mind either. Yoongi rubs your cheek and you pull yourself half into his lap for a cuddle. Needy, too worn down to let it go. Yoongi’s hands go around your waist keeping you close. You melt into his arms, still sniffling.

"Your dick was perfect before though-"

"Sweetheart " he groans. You pull back from him, glancing down at his lap.

"What? I'm just saying-"

“Don’t look at it!”

Hoseok chokes back a laugh and tries to keep it in, but before you can help it everyone's laughing and covering their faces with their hands to keep from smiling. 

“You didn’t cum at all. Did you?" Namjoon asks, eyes dark. Yoongi starts to lift the hem of the shirt you wear, showing.

“No, I didn’t.” Yoongi can feel a bit of skin at the base of his cock, still loose, still half popped. If you weren’t more preoccupied with holding your mate and controlling your weepyness. You’d be more curious about the knot pressed between your legs.

Maybe this is just resource-guarding. Classic omega in heat, of course, the most valuable resource is your mate. 

“You know” Namjoon hesitates, looking from Yoongi to Jin. “Popping a knot without ejaculating sperm is kind of medically dangerous-”

“Namjoon-” Jin scolds.

“Sorry- without Cuming is actually kind of dangerous. Especially because it’s like, not typical for you to have a knot.” Namjoon licks his lips, "We should probably make sure that it's like- working."

You don’t know if it’s hornyness or just Namjoon being concerned for Yoongi’s health (probably a little bit of both) but you perk up. Blinking at the pack alpha who looks a little strained. A little like he’s trying not to look too much.

Across the nest, Jungkook shuffles forward, blatantly eyeing Yoongi’s knot like he’s just found his new favorite toy. But no sooner is he putting his hand on the beta’s tight before Jin is pulling him back the collar. "No no no pup, that's not yours yet."

He lets out a little bereft whimper but you hardly notice. Eyes bright and directed up at Namjoon. Like it honestly hadn’t occurred to you that now that your mate has a knot that means he can use it. Yoongi can knot you now. Pack Alpha is so smart! You don't know how it didn't occur to you yet but-

Oh, you really want that. You really want Yoongi to knot you.

The self-consciousness Yoongi felt earlier is entirely forgotten. You’re a little dumb in heat. A little floaty. Yoongi doesn’t mind. This is why you have packmates, to make these complicated decisions for you.

Yoongi’s hands are still firm around your waist. If Yoongi does have a knot now, for the time being, then you should get first dibs.

You whine, he was perfect without it really but you really really really like knots, your squishy omega brain is convinced that you need it. That it’s yours and your packmates are suddenly keeping it from you. You bare your teeth. No bite, all bark. You'd actually growl at them if Yoongi’s hands didn't clamp down around your waist. Hard. Harder than he usually touches you. It jogs you out of your reverie.

Marks. Kis fingers hold you hard enough that you could have bruises. Good. You want marks on you and on him. Your mating mark isn't enough. Not now, not with Yoongi having a knot.

“Should I, should you-” The pack settles in, ringing both you and Yoongi, as you stare each other down, both of your scents spiking wildly as you take each other in. Seeing each other in a new light.  

Yoongi laughs, deep and rough. And you get shivers down your spine. Your voice is high-pitched and squeaky from the strain. "Don't tease me."

He nudges the underside of your jaw with his nose. "Come on, it's sorta easy" his teeth brush your mating mark and you gasp, the threat of a bite but not a bite at all. "and you like it."

The pack looms closer so close they can reach out and touch, can reach out and feel. "Should we watch? I think we should watch" “Yes. Definitely yes.” “Yes, I think we should, yes please.” "they're so pretty when they fuck."

But Jungkook huffs, a little bratty, a little bit upset that there's a knot he's not allowed to ride. "Can't I get one lick?"

"No Koo" Jungkook jerks against his hold.

"If I lick it, is it mine? While she rides it does it count if I lick it?” Jungkook gets dragged over Jin’s lap for that one, completely happy with it as the other omega lands several swats over his behind. Giggling as he goes.

The slapping sounds are distant. Jungkook's skin glows from the force of the hits but his cheeks are round from his smile sweet. A Spanking? You'd like one of those. Maybe you can provoke it from one of your packmates sometime later. You might need a settling after this.

Your brain is a mess of wants and instincts. But a spanking can wait. Yoongi's knot presses just under your pussy and you grind onto it experimentally. Tingles of pleasure filling your whole body. Good. It's so good. You snarl.

“No. No Jk- pup”

You are not paying attention as Jungkook tries to claw his way over to you; laughing, making a game of it. You and Yoongi are not speaking but you are communicating. Every grit of his teeth says mine, and every twitch of his hands on your hips says keep going. You look down at your mate and lick your teeth, polishing your canines as you eye him. The line of his throat. The pinkness of his nose. His chest- everything.

As Yoongi huffs, half fond. Cheeks slowly warm the more your eyes roam, the more you look and hunger. 

It’s not that you’ve never been a sexual creature and it’s not that Yoongi has never seen you want him. But too often have you been like Noodle. Too frequently has he been the steward of your lust, carefully encouraging it and letting you be fickle and safe. Every time you've had sex you've been timid. he’s always letting you know through every breath that you’re not too much and that you can have it in any way that you want.

But now- now you’re eyeing Yoongi like you want to eat him.

Your brain is too syrupy and slow to do more than grind against his knot (like I said, all bark, no bite) your pussy dribbles onto it. The glide of your slick hole so much against such sensitive skin, pressed between your body and his. An omega possessed. An omega on a mission. 

He’s been on the business end of many knots but this- this is different. Your eyes are open hardly blinking, Jungkook’s hands trail up Yoongi’s thigh to his hip.

"You're hiding it-" he whines, bratty. But gets snapped back into the alpha's waiting jaws. More spanks. until someone, Jimin maybe is tugging at Jungkook's cock between his legs while he gets plugged up by Namjoon's knot. Namjoon's the only one out of all of them that can truly distract Jungkook. Can possibly stop him from trying to covet Yoongi.

Yoongi's knot doesn’t belong to him. As his mate you have rights.

You push him back to lie in the nest and Yoongi lets you. It’s instinct to straddle him, to get him under you where he can’t move. Even though you don’t usually fuck like this with you on top. You don’t know why this in-heat version of yourself seems preoccupied with riding or not riding, maybe it’s a control thing or vulnerability.

Your body is unused to the heat, unsure of quite what the edge of want and don’t want to meet. Unsure if you want all the control or the complete lack of it. You are weak to your instincts. Weak, even though you know if you just lied back Yoongi would take care of you.

Your instincts give you neither choice nor reason nor want for anything, anything but this. Hoseok's hands slide up Yoongi's knees, touch your lower back, everything. Everyone everywhere touching both of you. Egging you on with their bare teeth and wildly sweet scents.

The head of Yoongi's cock slides up and through your slick, catching on your hole for a moment before it pops away,

You don’t know who guides Yoongi’s knot to your fluttering hole, only that it’s there. It’s easy to sink back, eyes furrowed as you concentrate on the feeling of getting Yoongi’s knot inside of you, cheeks warm at the eyes of the pack on you.

Beside you Tae paws at Jimin’s knot he makes a nose in his throat, but Tae’s all smiles. “Minnie likes it.” She croons in a singsong tone. Hooking an arm around his waist and sliding her hands under the elastic hem of his boxers to toy with him.

There is breath on the back of your shoulder, condensation turning your skin dewy. A hungry alpha ready to swallow you whole. Looming. You don’t look to see who it is, who's looking over your shoulder watching Yoongi’s face as you ride him.

You have a sinking suspicion it might be Hobi.

You fall into a slow rhythm appreciating the way that it feels, nudging at your entrance. Filling you routine. You’re getting better at this setting the pace on your own. Moving at a steady rhythm. A rhythm that makes you sigh and squeak. Your body feels so far away. The ache in your knees, the soreness in your hole, and the tiredness in you are all impermanent compared to the pleasure.

You focus on the feeling of your hands on his chest and the pleasure that comes with fucking yourself down on his knot. It’s a good knot. Not too big, not too small, just right. Everything about Yoongi is just right for you. You mewl as you speed up your pace. Instincts burning for more more more.

Sweat bleeds down your back and Yoongi’s jaw rolls, unblinking below you. Someone wipes away a bit of drool on your jaw and you can’t find it in yourself to be embarrassed. Tipping your head back.

“Does it feel good pup, the way his knot feels in your little hole?"

"Not so little anymore," Tae snickers, "she's practically bouncing on it."

Yoongi’s knuckles are white with how hard he holds your hips, doing his best not to guide your rhythm or disrupt it. Someone's hand is in your hair, tugging and tangling with it, pulling you up and down.

Namjoon leans down to whisper in Yoongi’s ear. “Good huh? Pussy fucking you up hyung? Gonna be a little bitch and make a mess in our pup? Gonna put your little knot where you want and breed her?” 

Yoongi lets out an achy moan. And hope that you didn’t hear that. Or feel how it makes him twitch and pulse. Knot seconds from popping. Already mostly popped from before. He’s not going to last. Yoongi knows it will be quick.

"Bet you can feel how I fucked her open for you huh?"

Yoongi does not pause to push Namjoon’s face away as the alpha bites his shoulder- his ear- his everywhere. Namjoon's not nearly as unaffected as he pretends to be but Yoongi is too focused on you.

Yoongi has always been the perfect fit, not quite as long as Hobi or as thick as Jimin or the type of knot that makes you feel it for days after like Tae and Namjoon. It’s a good thing you’re a size queen because now you can fuck yourself down on Yoongi’s knot, regardless of the size it threatens to swell too.

Yoongi’s knot is about as thick around as Namjoon’s cock is normally so you still struggle to go all the way down, but stretching yourself around the wideness is good, feels nice. Sates the fire inside of you. His knot presses all nice and hot snug against that spot inside of you. You babble it, saying how good good good your mate is, how you can feel his cock stretching you out and breeding you. Almost mindless from pleasure.

Almost but not yet.

Yoongi slides his palm from your stomach up to your sternum, under the black shirt you wear, stroking over your skin lazily before his fingers tangle in the material, pulling it. using it to guiding and goad you into fuck him faster. Saying nothing. Eyes on you. Dark and heavy-lidded.

To shut you up (not because he wants you to shut up but because he wants to hold off from cumming for as long as he can). Yoongi gets his feet under him and drives his hips up. Fucking up into you. Faster and faster until you can tell you're almost taking all of it. All of it. As much as you can.

“That’s it, there you go baby. Fuck her like an alpha. She wants to take it, you just have to help make her.”

“Come on hyung, fuck her like you mean it.”

Beside you, Tae's hand works underneath the waistband of Jimin's boxers, a thumb hooked there lazily. Stilling for a second. Her knuckles wrapped around his knot probably. Hobi is tucked along Jin's side, hips stuttering working. Watching you and Yoongi. Namjoon grins, showing his teeth.  

You have almost all of his knot in you now, everything but the widest bit, just a little more, just a little and you’ll have it. You bounce up and down on it experimentally. You grin, very very convinced that you don’t have to wait for Yoongi’s knot to go down to continue.

Your mate's hands circle your wrists, holding them hard, pulling you down hard every time you pick yourself up, trying to keep you stationary. But Yoongi’s needs are very very far away in his mind.

It’s almost better this way, looking down at him, working your body down his knot. Testing the give and breathing through it the way that Namjoon has taught you to breathe through taking his knot. The pack all around, watching you and encouraging you. They're so close, it sort of feels like they're all fucking you this way.

Tae’s fingers dimple in your thighs and Jk rests his head along Yoongi’s tummy so he can watch his knot sink inside of you as a treat when he takes his spanking like a good pup. A strong hand in his hair to keep him from moving forward a few inches to lick. Pout on his face. When your pace stutters, body overtired from heat, Hobi's hand goes under your thigh to help pick you up, taking the weight of your body for you.

You finally get Yoongi’s knot inside of you, but it doesn’t stop there, you put your hands on his chest and pick yourself off of it again. It tugs but slips past the rim of muscle after a second, slick sliding down the big swollen curve of it. It takes some finesse, but your body gives way and his knot is once again hovering just on the precipice.

Then you sit yourself back down.

Jimin’s breathless curse against your throat feels almost guttural. You hardly hear it too focused on fucking Yoongi’s knot like a cock.

 “Fuck, omega's knot fucking is-” 

“It’s hot,” Jin says, leaning down to brush Yoongi’s sweaty bangs from his forehead. “How does it feel honey? Feeling your mate around your knot? All good? All nice and snug?”

“She’s-” Yoongi pants through it breath ragged, close to cumming, knot pulsating. “Warm” his voice is strained and he scrambles to reach for you. Yoongi’s lap, his whole stomach really, is covered in your slick. The slide is almost too slippery. If you weren’t concentrating so hard on keeping rhythm you’d tell him you love him.

“Overwhelming, feels like- feels like- fuck-”

But you know he already knows, can feel it in the way he touches you. The way he looks at you. Everything.

You squirt, wet noisy, little dribbles of cum flicking up across his chest, clamping down around his knot so hard that Yoongi has no choice. Your pace stutters and you sigh. You hardly notice the pleasure rocking through you, hardly notice as you start to tremble. Little ‘hng’ noises pushed from your throat with every sweet jut of Yoongi’s hips. Still fucking his knot all the way in and all the way out.

Yoongi fucks the same way he talks, sweet but firm. He cums that way too. Warm and slow. You feel every syllable and every drop.

But Yoongi has no words for the ecstasy of knotting you. Groaning deep, more guttural, more animal than you’ve ever heard him sound. Cumming, knot popping fully. Finally. Your legs shake and your head drops as it throbs and swells.

You finally stop riding him but he keeps pulling you down at the same second he sits up quick, until he's sitting with you in his lap. Wrapping his arms around you. Whipping your hair from your face, cupping your cheeks, forehead to forehead.

A bit of your squirt drips down the seam of his hip, the place where his thigh and stomach wrinkle. Staining the nest a darker shade of pink.

But there are hands to settle your giggles, his knot pulsates, and you feel wet and warm inside. You ease up and he holds you for a moment. Skin to skin. Breath to breath. Both of you panting through your comedown.

The others fall upon you.

Jin's hand cups your stomach, and Jungkook's teeth drive into Yoongi's shoulder with a quiet yelp and a 'yah jungkookie'. you love how grumbly yoongi gets when he's feeling sensitive but safe.

Namjoon tilts your chin up and kisses you, messy and filthy. When you part you feel dizzy from lack of oxygen. You can't yet register that you're panting, breathing heavily. Still sort of cumming. One orgasm blends into another. Having them around while Yoongi’s inside of you is so much. Good, but a lot as Tae strokes down your spine.

“Did good alpha?” You ask Namjoon.

“Did so well, so so so well taking Yoongi’s first knot.” Now he'll understand how possessive we can get of you. Now he'll get it.

Yoongi ignores him, but around you, the air is thick with the scent of the pack's pleasure. Hoseok ruffles Yoongi's hair than yours, you nuzzle into his wrist. Tae's hands are hungry, and exploratory.

(They watched you through all of this but never once did you wonder if you were pretty, never once did you worry about how it looked, if it was enough. There is a simple love that's here. A simple love between all of you. Through your heat- you've never once been self-conscious. With Yoongi’s knot snug in your pussy, and everyone praising you, you can't find it in yourself to be nervous or worried or feel anything but bliss).

There are familiar hands everywhere- reaching down, feeling where you and Yoongi are connected. The wet slick glide of an omega properly seated on a knot. Tae’s lips pressed against your tit while her delicate fingers paw at your pussy, not a kiss, not a suck, but a pout.

You let her until Yoongi hums, overwhelmed, and then lean down to bite her. Popping back, licking your teeth, echoing a soft "sorry" when you've realized what you've done.

Yoongi shivers as Jin runs a hand up and down his stomach, knuckles brushing yours. Namjoon crowds in behind you. Pushing you both down into the nest. His pack alpha herding tendencies are at play but he’s a warm and reassuring presence behind you. They all settle in to cuddle you and keep both of you safe until Yoongi’s knot goes down long enough to make sure that you’ve been adequately bred. 

Everyone's sort of lying on top of each other. Namjoon behind you, Jin behind Yoongi, Hobi trying and sort of succeeding in squirming his way in between Jin and Yoongi. the pack are noisy. but you sort of love the noise.

"You're pinching my skin hyung." "Wait wait wait, this will be more comfortable." "Namjoon she needs room to like-breathe." "Ow my knee like- cannot stay in this position." "Jungkook!"

The older omega lets Hobi muscle his way in. Pressing a kiss and a nibble to the back of his neck in admonishment. Jungkook sprawls across all of your stomachs and Tae rings the top and Jimin the bottom, guarding you and Yoongi against the door. Classic alpha.

Tae runs her hands over your hair, scratching at your scalp with her long fingernail. You push into her touch like a cat. She does it to you, then Yoongi. Yoongi’s hands skim up and down your hips and he’s breathing heavy.

“Love you,” he says.

he closes his eyes first but you just watch him. A chorus of voices join but you lean down, pecking him over his eyelids. Covering his body with yours. He doesn’t need to worry about anything.

Yoongi wraps his arms around you. Mumbling something into your ear quiet enough that the rest of the pack doesn’t hear. But let it remain a mystery. Let it remain for just you and him.

You rest and cuddle. And Yoongi keeps twitching inside of you. Every time you think that he’s done and that his cock can’t possibly give you anymore he starts to twitch again. Cuming just a little bit more.

It almost feels like Namjoon, who cum's a proportional amount to the size of his cock. Yoongi never normally cums this much, but you can't say you're complaining. One hand resting protectively over your tummy.

You hear Jin's familiar 'tsk' and fingers are at your hole. They guide a bit of spend back up into it. But your eyes are already closed.

You were already tired before and your heat still rages. It's not fire anymore. Something in you satiated. It's not a raging inferno but the kind of warmth that glows from coals, that sizzles on the edge of your skin, like deep-seated honeying of suns and far away stars teeming with wishes and life-giving warmth.

Yoongi decides that he wouldn’t mind doing this, just when you go into heat. He’ll get tests done later; Namjoon will drag him to the hospital after this week to take his blood and measure his hormones.

Dr.Pearl and another beta specialist will come to the conclusion that it’s both your mating mark and your slick that caused a momentarily biological shift that’s temporary at best and a one-off probably (it won’t be a one-off, Yoongi will grow a knot through every one of your heats after this). They’ll prescribe Yoongi less of your slick and a bit of distance from your scent during your pre-heat (both professional opinions that Yoongi will opt to ignore because seriously what the fuck?)

For now, you settle down atop him, keeping his knot safe inside, and go to sleep. Not before feeling each one of your packmates press a kiss to the place between your shoulder blades. Surprisingly sensitive, surprisingly ticklish. You feel it all. The brush of Hobi’s nose, the skim of Tae’s long hair. The plush feeling of Jimin's lips more like petals than skin. The brush of Jin and Namjoon’s stubble. The nibble of Jungkook's teeth.

Yoongi’s lips remain planted to your forehead, he sleeps that way through the rest of the afternoon. The little huffs of his breath tickle your baby hairs, and you can’t say that you mind.

Being the lowest member in the pack’s hierarchy means different things for each pack. Especially with two older omega’s in heat, and you below them in the hierarchy.

As the days drag on, you feel like a bit of a chew toy (not that you’re complaining).

As the lowest packmate in the hierarchy, you bear the brunt of it when their instincts shift from hungry to nesty. The breeding’s mostly done (mostly, but not quite) now is time for nesting, for preparing. It takes time for seed to take. That time that you spend cuddled close. Safe between Jin and Jungkook. Walled in on either side, safely tucked between their chests. Both of their heartbeats beat through either ear.

At least until you wake up.

You omega’s are a conspiratory little bunch. The nest is deep and colorful with many spots to hide. You do not try to hide from Jinnie or Jungkook, there is no need to. the alpha’s are who you hide from, peaking over the edge of an inner nest, the walls built up a bit like an igloo. The three of you playing a pretend game of hide and seek.

Hiding from them and the pleasure that they give you. Because they want to get in the way of all your fun.

It’s not getting in the way of the fun so much as it’s partaking in it, sticking their knots where you need them- but where is the fun in simply fucking? Foreplay is where all the fun happens anyway. Bouncing on a knot can get so boring.

Unless it’s Yoongi’s knot of course. You don’t think you’ll ever get tired of that. His refractory period is a lot longer than the other alphas, even Namjoon who tends to knot for a good 30 minutes. You’ve had him 4? Maybe 5 times since the first? And now he slumbers, hips ringed with hickeys, cock lying limp and pretty pink against his stomach, utterly spent.

You’d ridden Yoongi until he was trembling, until his breath came out as gasps and not growls. Until his knot couldn’t even pop anymore and Namjoon had quite literally scruffed you to get you off of him. Too sensitive for anymore. Twitching duly when you’d popped off for the final time, a glob of cum leaking down your hole to your other one.

And yet, you could tell by the smell of him that Yoongi was drowning in ecstasy, nothing about his scent in pain or discomfort. You did a good job. Your pack had told you, you did.

But still, your mate needs his rest, in the meantime, the omegas can play.

The morning is thick and heavy, sunlight slow moving like honey when the alpha’s start to wake to the sound of soft breathy moans. the alpha's don’t immediately register that none of them are awake and that it’s purely omegan whines and whimpers that coat the air in the sound and smell of sweet pleasure.

Honey, cake, and cream.

Jungkook giggles softly, looking down and you can’t help but smile too- dopey. Fucked out. Fucked dumb. They’re not exactly surprised that you’ve gone non-verbal. Babbling only for Tae and Yoongi when they seriously prod you for a question.

This is just another spike of your heat only… you didn’t bother to wake your alpha’s up for it. You don’t really need your alpha’s knot when Koo is so soft and when Jinnie is- honestly very big for an omega, perfect enough for a bit of comfort in your hole.

But putting the pack omega’s cock all up inside you would not be good. You want to be good for Jungkook, your nestmate who has bitten you so thoroughly your skin aches from his teeth. From your chest to your shoulders and neck. To your hips and backside. Everywhere he’s bitten you up. So that anyone who sees you will know.

The three of you giggle and rub. What started as cuddling and a bit of grinding has become something different.

You and Jungkook hover above Jin lying down, Jungkook teased him a little bit ago for his grandpa's behavior, for not wanting to move and being too cozy. His omega cock stands hard and proud. Not terribly big, but not as small as Jungkook either. You and Jungkook seem not to notice the difference.

You and Jungkook sit perched above Seokjin, the pack omega’s hands roaming without care. His face is pink and his eyes are half closed, sleepy, and happy to let you and Jungkook take what you need.

At least Jin’s heat is near ending. Your and Jungkook’s roar in the meantime. You grind into each other, tummy to tummy, Jin below the two of you left to lazily rock up into the drippy sweet cleft between your pussy and Jungkook’s cock. It’s all very slick as you move against each other. Rubbing and grinding and giggling.

Hoseok blinks awake in the nest, picking himself up with a jerk.

A combination of your slick soaks Jin’s lap, and turns the grind sudsy, almost soapy as he slides up through your pussy kissing Jungkook’s cock. Omega’s do love to scent and rub and grind; you’re doing some mixture of the two. Not scissoring, but it would be scissoring if Jungkook had a pussy instead of the little nub he calls his cock. Jungkook reaches down, tapping his cock against your clit. You purr and squeak at it.

You’re… a bit of a mess, after having been fucked by every available alpha and Yoongi so hard like that earlier- your hole is a bit of a wreck, you're leaking slick and globs of alpha cum that Jin and Jungkook are only too possessive over. Pink when Jungkook reaches down to part your pussy with his hands and sees your wrecked entrance. He's too happy to smear it all over.

You can hardly blame Koo for his fascination, dragging his own little cock and forth between the mess. Putting his cock in (not that you can even close around it, small as Jungkook is) just to feel the heat of your body and what the alpha’s did to you.

It’s a good thing that most of Jungkook’s knot collection is locked safely away in the closet. Otherwise he might be tempted to see if you can take the largest one. The one that’s larger even than Namjoon that Jungkook's only managed to take on occasion when the pack feels like devoting multiple days into opening him up. The one that often leads to multiple days of aftercare because it actually is a little medically questionable for Jungkook to take.

Jungkook might have a bit of a thing for it; a size kink. thats never more apparent than when you're close. when he puts his hands around your waist and his hands almost meet. Watching you take things that look too big, that fuck you dumb like this is jungkook's favorite.

Now that the alphas aren’t making him feel so…so omegan, so fucked out. He’s sorry he missed most of it. He wants to see it again, wants to watch you get fucked open on namjoon's cock.

Jimin lifts his head from the nest, doing a double take and cursing when he realizes that it's not a wet dream just- just real. Namjoon rubs a hand across his jaw, sitting up on his knees in the half-darkness. Clearly he's been awake for a while. His hand goes ridged on Namjoon’s wrist but the pack alpha doesn't look down at him- he doesn't tear his eyes away from you three.

Namjoon’s cock presses up between his boxers, put on for modesty- and because normally omega’s in heat can’t be trusted not to get a little handsy. Hard, insistent. Now, Namjoon wishes that you'd get a little handsy. That would be better than just watching.

“You didn’t?…” he asks, trailing off. Namjoon swallows hard shaking his head. Namjoon already has his hand hooked into Hobi's collar, keeping him in place. Keeping him from interfering. Hobi lets out a lupine whimper. More a puppy than a man.

“Jin asked me not to intervene.”

The pack alpha’s restraint is legendary, especially when Jin giggles at the way you’re bouncing or trying to bounce on Jungkook’s cock. The pack omega tuts, and slips in besides Jungkook, half pushing him out of the way. Jimin starts, but there’s no reason to.

After fucking Namjoon there is more than enough room in your pussy.

The sight of you and Jungkook rubbing your used holes together is something that should honestly be recorded for the communal pack spank bank. The three of you pink-cheeked and healthy, and-

Knocked up. The three of you look like you’ve just been knocked up even though they know you haven't. Your skin glows healthy, your bodies supple and fed. Relaxed and loopy, showing the signs of the care the pack have lavished you with.

Jinnie's glowing too- skin smooth and blemishless, lips puffy and glossy from being kissed so much (as they should be). Although his glow is softer and less harsh. Jin’s heat is already ending, just another ten or so hours now. The fever quiets to a soft hush, a gentle need instead of a rabid one.

Was it the pack omega that dragged you and Jungkook to get off on top of him? It won’t be long now. Namjoon can tell you’re both close to cumming from the way you're shaking and the way Jungkook's breathing.

The slick glossy look of your thighs, your hiccups, the sight of Jin’s cock pressing between your slick folds, peaking out, rubbing against your clit, and the head of Jungkook’s little cock. The pack omega’s hands are hungry twitching as jin cranes back and inarticulately tucks his hands into both your holes. stroking both of them. Jin’s cheeks look round, pouting as he concentrates.

“Want pups, my pups, gimme,” you and Jungkook giggle, pressing sloppy kisses to each other’s mouths, Jinnie’s too- although the pack omega does little but pout and rock into the warmth. Into the wet.

The alpha’s watch and it’s torturous to keep themselves back. But they're good alpha's. When your and Jungkook's rocking reaches a fever's pitch and then quiets. Trembling and overwhelmed. Clinging to each other, threatening to topple.

When you’re finished there is more than one available knot, hard and aching, ready to sit on.

~-~

That’s not the last time that Jungkook seeks you out during his heat. far from it.

You’re not surprised that both his and yours have lasted longer than Jin’s (probably by a day or so). Your and his hormones spike and feed off each other, your heat spikes syncing until your packmates have to handle both of you at once. Your hand remains knotted with his, whining every time one of your alphas tries to cajole you gently away from him. Unwilling to be parted from him during knotting for comfort.

The lulls between Jin’s heat spikes get longer and longer while yours and Jungkook’s remain the same. Jungkook’s even speed up a little if anything.  

Jungkook loves going into heat with you- he really does, it feels like he’s always reaching, always craning his neck to watch you. The tender nape of his neck is bruised from the number of times that the alphas have had to scruff him docile. All of him feels Bitten and nibbled at every available opportunity.

Really, Jungkook's sort of in heaven.

The alphas never throw him around the same way they do when he's in heat. They don’t treat him like he’s delicate, like he’s precious, especially with you around to dote on and fuss with. You take the brunt of Jin’s protective instinct too.

Jungkook can be as bratty as he wants, bite whichever alpha he wants, and chirp as long as he needs to. Outside of heat they rarely ever hold him down and make him take it. They always hold back. Only in heat at his most vulnerable do the alphas really stop treating him like he's fragile.

He likes pushing their buttons and making them bite. Now, Jungkook does it because he can't stand it.

Cute aggression? It must be cute aggression.

He wants to squeeze and nibble and wreck you, Watching as jimin tucks his face into your neck as his knot twitches, your entrances stretched tight around it and your legs wide open so that Yoongi can gift tortuously small touches to your clit, all but torturing it as you seem to squirt and squirt and squirt.

So much until you’re dripping around the hollow of his wrist. Your petal pink lips parted, ready for a nibble. He'd barely satiated his desire to mark you up earlier. The haze of hormones is thicker than smoke in the air, turning his brain mushy as he listens to Yoongi beg.

“One more, just one more for me. You made me cum until I couldn’t anymore so now it’s your turn.”

You sob, but thats not a no. Your knees get brought up. Cute, plush, like a fucking stuffed animal. Jungkook once again, gets the inexplicable urge to squeeze you.

The alpha's have you both pressed chest to chest. Underneath you, Jimin continues to drive his cock in smooth efficient bunches, a knot already popped inside. You'd asked him to be mean with it and sob you do. Begging and pleading for more more more at the same time you say you can't take another orgasam.

Jungkook remains above you on his hands and knees. Namjoon lies along Jungkook's spine. Punching a groan from Jungkook’s chest with every impossibly long and thick drag of his cock. Making the omega feel all of it.

A fresh wave of your slick squirts against jungkook's chest and Jungkook's arms buckle. He sort of falls half on top of you. Yoongi hums and puts Jungkook back on his hands and knees so that he can keep touching your pussy. Jungkook rests his body against Yoongi's arm to keep himself up. Mouth open.

Jungkook thinks he might imagine it. He must, because he can feel Namjoon’s cock pressing against his tummy, feel it as the bulge kisses your skin the give of your belly button.

Your giggle feels like a punch to his gut. As your hand slides up his slick stomach to palm at the belly bulge, touch him the same way he touched Namjoon's cock through you. He loves it. He presses his forehead against yours, your eyes just as dilated and as gone as his. Rubbing his face against yours in a half kiss- half scent mark.

There's a lot of squirting, mostly from you. Jungkook likes watching you squirt. It's so pretty.

Jimin yanks his knot out of your hole, a move that he wouldn’t be able to pull if you hadn’t been knotted by Namjoon recently. Perhaps inspired by watching you knotfuck Yoongi. Pulling at you so hard that it honestly to god looks like it hurts, it looks mean. It makes you squirt violently again against Jungkook's straining abdominal muscles.

Jungkook bites your cheek. Hmm, squishy.

He bites the other side, and it blooms under his teeth.

You tremble and almost seem to pass out of a second. And then- really do pass out once Namjoon pulls back, reaches around Jungkook, and says something to Yoongi, who pulls his fingers away from your clit, you jerk trying to chase the pleasure. Only to run headlong into Namjoon’s hand, landing hard over your clit.

You gush through Namjoon’s fingers, soaking the place where he and Jungkook join. At the same moment Namjoon shoves his slick-coated knot into Jungkook’s hole.  

Your head lols back against Jimin's shoulder and you let out a single broken whimper. they're pushing you to your breaking point. (But you have a gut feeling that once you break and they put back together, you'll finally feel whole).

Across the nest, Jin perks up a little horrified. He's being fussed over by Tae and Hobi, happily doted upon while Hobi's knot rests safe inside. knot warming. Comforting Jin through the end of his heat. Hobi turns and Tae starts to get up to intervene but then- 

Jungkook giggles at your sobs, lapping at your tears. Clenching wildly and grinding back against Namjoon’s knot, the pack alpha moves him so that Jungkook can press his lips to your slack mouth.

You blink, dazed, look up at him.

“Meanie Joonie” Jungkook giggles, the omegaspace haze so thick he can hardly string a coherent sentence together. “Meanie Minnie! Meanie Yoonie! Again! Wanna see!” Jungkook moves, trying to get his hand in between your legs to spank your clit again, but his swats don’t do anything, too gentle.

Jungkook is literally getting the daylights fucked out of him right now, he hardly has the energy to lift his own head, let alone spank your pussy the way he wants.

oh, after this heat, after this, he's going to have so much fun figuring out how much you can take.

Yoongi's teeth look incredibly sharp, a little feral at being asked. But Jimin nods and fuckes his knot out of you and Yoongi spanks your clit again. You've never squirted so many times in a row but you leak like a faucet now.

The next flood of your slick lands on Jungkook’s cock. Jutting against your stomach with the force of Namjoon’s thrusts. He giggles again. Shifting closer away from Namjoon- hissing at the tension around his knot. So that Jungkook can press your slick stained and swollen tummies together better.

When he cums too seconds later, from another brutal press of Namjoon’s knot to his prostate and a mean pinch to the head of his cock- he giggles and uses his hand to spread his spend over your stomach.

You’re already lost to exhaustion. But Jungkook pecks your nose, tucks his face under your throat, and goes right to sleep. 

When Jungkook wakes, he's still like that. He's not being filled, and things are calmer.

The freshly fallen night is a hush on the edge of the nest, There is a different need coursing through him. A different sort of wanting. A physical hunger. His body is exhausted, sore, and bitten.

Your chest smells like Tae's lipstick, like her kisses. Jungkook’s pretty pretty pretty alpha, the prettiest alpha that is on the other side of the nest, talking with Jin and sharing soft kisses. She must have come over earlier to check on you, must have kissed you here.

Jungkook is dimly aware of her soft words, “Do you want a knot Jinnie? Some food? Some water? A cloth? How are you feeling? Does anywhere ache my love?”

Jin's answering hum is exhausted but happy. After a second he quietly admits, “My thighs hurt.”

Yoongi is summoned, Hobi too. To squeeze and help relax the pack omega. The sound of his squeaky laugh and shy moan a welcome return.  

Jungkook dozes while you and Jinnie rest, his body over your body, lined up chest to chest, nuzzling first at your throat and then lower when Jungkook's instincts tug at him. The pack is not as worried about him being snappy. They've long since decided that whatever happened at the beginning of the heat was just that- an anomaly at the beginning. Both of your instincts settling.

But now, Jungkook crouches over you like an alpha might. Protective.

Possessive.

There is something syrupy sweet in the air, just below your skin. Jungkook couldn’t smell it until he started nosing at your throat, but now he can. Something laces through your veins, something that smells divine, something that he can almost taste, like sugar only sweeter.

He begins to move lower.

Your breasts smell like Tae, like alpha, they’ve been given so much attention, teeth marks and bruises line your areolas, Tae has sucked your nipples pink and sensitive and stiff puffy already. Imprints of Jungkook’s pretty alpha and her pretty teeth stay there like a shadow, a bruise. There is a word you call her, 'mommy.' He likes it when you call her that. It has Jungkook’s pretty alpha smelling muskier and impossibly prettier.

Jungkook’s mouth is perilously empty, it's starting to bother him. Jungkook lips his lips. Dry.

Her voice comes distant now, your hands push at Jungkook’s shoulders when he noses, but only briefly before Jungkook’s pretty alpha tuts, holding you still and keeping you from squirming as he noses, pushing through your sweet skin, searching for something. Girl omega’s are so soft. So soft everywhere.

Jungkook loves it. Is this Omegaspace? Or pupspace? Or some combination of the two.

Something starts squirming underneath him, a chest rising and falling, a heartbeat beating rabbit prey fast. But the squirming stops as quickly as it begins. Jungkook's pretty alpha looms closer, coming to see what you're fussing for and cooing at your quiet squeaks and chirps.

Tae's wrist is close, close to Jungkook's teeth as she grabs your wrist and holds you steady. Restraining you gently. “Let Jungkook have at you pup, he’s been a very good omega, don’t you want to help soothe him?”

Of course, Tae does not notice that Jungkook's going after something new, and does not notice that this isn't normal soothing. Sucking at your chest is her favorite thing. She doesn't think anything strange of Jungkook's hungry licking and desperate sucking.

There is some sweet whining on the edge of Jungkook’s senses. Independent of the sweetness beneath his nose, the warmth reaches his lips and he opens his mouth to suck. His breath going ragged.

Closer, closer still, warm and soft against his face, like a nest made flesh, like Jungkook’s nest in one person.

Jungkook sucks at your chest, lips pressing once they find the source of it- of that smell. Your nipple on the roof of his mouth is exactly what he'd been missing. Comforting. You are so soft, so soothing. He likes it. There is no fire from heat with you here at his front and yet, Jungkook still burns. The sweet smell under your skin is closer this way. Jungkook needs it, needs you like water. Clinging.

His taste buds spark with something, just a little at first then more the more that he sucks. Jungkook makes a soft sound and Tae just shushes him. Alpha, he wants to speak, alpha found it! His squishy Omegaspace brain wants to tell Tae. The urge to show and tell is quickly overridden by the need for more.

It's so sweet. So fatty that Jungkook's head spins. Mouth filling with liquid that tastes like you, but a bit like Jinnie too.

You taste Milky.  

Jungkook's eyebrows come together and Tae teases, her fingers running against his cheek slowly filling. throat bobbing Her voice sounds like it does when she's grinning. Tae can be forgiven for not immediately realizing what’s happening because Jungkook is swallowing it down before any of it has a chance to make it to open air, gasping and sucking wildly. Hungry.

"Oh, tasting something good bunny?" Jungkook's sure she must be smiling even though his eyes are still closed. Still half asleep but waking up.

A little more, something hot and sweet fills his mouth, and Jungkook sucks it all down, more with every tight press of his lips. Your squirming stops and you sigh, going rim rod straight for a second and then relaxing.

You're staring up at Tae all dazed and cute, letting out sweet babbles of "mommy mommy-alpha mommy please." Your toes curling in the nest. But who knows what you're asking for.

tae reaches down and puts her fingers in your mouth, giving you something to suck at, quieting your desperate whimpers.

Jungkook doesn't like it, doesn't like her touching you. this milk is his- it belongs to him. The milk sweet and fatty fills his mouth, slowly at first, then more. You stop squirming below him, sighing in relief body going slack. Jungkook's arms go firm around your waist, holding you still, holding you close.

It's good, yummy even. Jungkook sucks more and more and more without really understanding. His heat-fried brain not sorting through the facts of the situation.

"Does Jungkook feel good little pup? Is he making you feel all tingly?" Tae teases, softly now, like she's conscious of the idea of waking everyone else up. She leans down crouching over to nip at your throat. Settling you. But there's nothing to settle, your head lol's to the side, staring blankly ahead. Whimpering. drooling around tae's fingers, she takes them out and slips them down your throat. stroking gently.

"Hopefully he doesn't bite you too sensitive because it's my turn once he's done, gonna squirm and cry for me gonna-" Tae breaks off, inhaling jagged.

Jungkook's tongue rolls against your nipple, keeping a small dribble from slipping down your body. Lips parted in ecstasy, a single drop drips from his tongue onto your skin, just a little.

But it's enough.

There is something pearly, dribbled down around your sternum. Almost translucent, but still white and cloudy.

Tae blinks like she can't really believe it.

Then she growls, loud, shocked. violent enough to wake the others. Whereas before she'd been stroking through Jungkook's hair, now her hand goes vicelike and tries to pull him off. Jungkook whines and squirms, unwilling to be parted from you until Tae growls again in warning.

Namjoon picks up his head from the nest at the sound. Jin blinks awake against his throat and Yoongi shifts and shuffles awake. Rubbing his eyes with a closed fist when he sits up.

When Tae finally succeeds in pulling him off of you, he looks almost hurt, pouting up at her. Tae's gaze eviscerates him. Their eyes narrow at the spill of it, the glimmer of milk on his lips. A bit of milk dribbles down Jungkook's cheek. Traveling down his collar bones to his pectorals and abs, gathering in his belly button, in the little furrow of skin between his lap and tummy.

Tae's finger gathers it on her fingertip and guides it back up to Jungkook's mouth, a breathless growl. Incredulous, near worshiping.

"Messy puppy."

How many more biological surprises could the pack possibly have in store for them? They're a little too tired to be particularly alarmed, and yet, they drag their bodies over. To make sure, to see.

To taste.

Hoseok hangs his head, his whine supine. "Jesus fucking Christ, you-" Namjoon looks away then looks back again. Like he can't quite bring himself to watch and can't quite tear his gaze away.

“I’ve only just gotten used to the idea of Yoongi knotting and now-"

Jin wordlessly rubs a hand over his face, Jimin doesn't say anything, trying to muscle Yoongi out of the way, looking down at you with something indescribable, at Jimin's movement, Namjoon's hands go to your elbow, your wrist, and Jin snaps.

"No, everyone behave. She is not a chew toy."

Everyone goes quiet, admonished. Tae continues to hold you, still looking down, and Jin realizes that if he's not careful, everyone is going to snap. Tae is going to snap. He can see it in the tremble of her body, the curl of her teeth over her lip, her control is seconds from snapping. Her scent spikes climbing higher and higher, almost smelling like she's in rut.

but you're his pup. jin bends under the force of his instincts, checking on your first. Jin leans over you, brushing the hair out of your eyes, and revealing your glassy fuzzy gaze.

"Daddy?" you ask, confused. Jin hasn't heard that name in a little while, not that he's complaining.

"Sweet little puppy, my sweet little pup, are you alright, is it too much?"

Your hand's press and release in the nest. "No just- just hurts- aches, Koo.” Your eyelashes flutter, “Koo makes it better.”

Jungkook is a possessive little thing, hisses and splutters and clings to your front. even as yoongi and namjoon try to get him off of you You squirm looking up at Tae and Yoongi and Jin, the haze cuts for a moment and they recognize your franticness as more than just overstimulation.

"Do you want us to get Jungkook off of you?" Yoongi asks, voice husky. Namjoon holds Jungkook prepared to wrench him off of you if you say so. Jungkook isn't in his right mind, but Yoongi can't help but watch as he sucks like a man starved, throat bobbing with every swallow. His cheeks warm and round-looking. Oh, oh this is-

Yoongi is getting hard. The skin around his new knot tugging. He really really thought that after this morning when you rode him like your life depended on it- that would have been that.

You nod then shake your head. "Want Mommy to choose- want Tae-tae."

Namjoon uses the hand in Jungkook’s hair to pick him up off of you for a second. Jin has to pinch the back of his neck to get his teeth to release. Your nipple is pink and bitten when his mouth finally leaves you.

They watch for a second, but it barely takes a moment before the milk is back, dribbling out, trailing down the curve of your breast. Jungkook is still half asleep. Shifting downward happily when he realizes the pack don’t mind it if he licks up whats spilled. Bending down to lap up what’s trailed down to your tummy and navel.

Tae's nostrils flare and her eyes are all pupil, dark and brown, and glassy. Yoongi jogs her out of her reverie.

"Tae." he asks, an edge of dominance to his voice that wouldn't have sounded the same yesterday, not before Yoongi had a knot. Yoongi shakes his head, wordlessly. And he sees Tae return to herself, just a little.

You squirm under Jungkook. Upset, lower lip wobbling. "No, I want, want Koo- it- it aches-" Tears bead at the edge of your eyes and Yoongi is not thinking, not truly, when he reaches down to feel.

You whine as Yoongi toys with your chest, fingers rubbing gently over your wet peaks, rolling them until more milk beads. Mesmerized. Slowly at first and then more aggressively, tugging at them until your back arches.

"Tae," Namjoon's voice is stressed, Jimin shuffles up beside her, offering a comforting touch on her shoulder. "Tae" Namjoon repeats, a bit more command in his voice, her gaze jerks up in his direction.

"Yes"

"Can you handle this without going into rut?"

"Yes alpha." Namjoon watches her for a second longer. Judging the haze in her eyes, and then tips his head down. Permission. But Namjoon is nearby, Namjoon is watchful and wont let any of them go too far.

It’s gentle- how the alphas manhandle you, placing you square in Namjoon's lap, reclining there for your mommy to have her turn. He can hold your wrists this way, you want to squirm, need to squirm. The ache is overwhelming. You just want to full feeling to end. Jungkook was so close to making it go away.

“Be still little treasure, sweet sweet pup, let Taetae have what’s hers.”

Jungkook tries to go back. But Tae doesn't let him, muscling him out of the way until she growls and nips. Speaking with snarls and whines and not with words. But Jungkook is but a pup beneath Tae's play wrestling. She's always been stronger than him and after a brief scuffle of push and pull, he whines. Resting his head on your shoulder.

Tae can hardly think through it. Her pup, her sweet little pup, chest swelling from her attention. Was it her sucking that did this? Was it her sucking that tugged your biological impulse until it shifted into real change?

You are so perfect she could cry, she could knot the air with how horny it makes her.

Tae looks at your face, your tears spill down your cheeks and your voice cracks, "Mommy?” you think if Tae checks, if she makes sure that you’re okay, everything will be fine.

Tae lowers herself gently over you, hair tickling your skin, and connects her mouth to your chest.

Tae is immediately gone, milk filling her mouth that tastes like ambrosia, like the heavens made liquid, like home. she grinds her popped knot against the nest as she sucks and sucks and sucks. immune to your squealing. Hand reaching down to paw uncaring of your overstimulation. You're as wet between your legs as you are on your chest. Her brain is a mess of more and more and more.

For a second, Tae's alpha convinces her that she's actually done it, she's actually pupped you. Why else would you be sweetening so much? Why else would you be like this, sweet and swollen on her tongue.

You're getting slick all over the nest again, Tae can feel slick gathering around her wrist, fingers losing their concentration, so focused on getting more milk in her mouth, sucking that she forgets to finger you properly. Your chest is so sensitive you feel like you could scream. Every suck makes you sob in overstimulation.

Above you, Yoongi curses.

Each packmate must have their turn with you, once they all rouse and confusion quickly melts away into downright giddiness. It's dizzying, your eyes are closed half the time, and the other half you're not sure you can make sense of what's infront of you either.

Brain settling into that place where everything feels good, where nothing matters but the pleasure and the soft praises falling from their mouths. Namjoon muscles Tae out of the way for a taste after she's turned slack-jawed and milk-drunk. And his spiky head pressed against your skin makes you feel- makes you-

Obey obey obey. You lose track of what’s happening, but your pack does give you what you want, what your body needs. You don’t have to squirm too much before someone, one of your alpha’s or is it Yoongi? Shuffling between your legs to bury his head in your chest.

Having them feed from you is a flurry of sensations. They bury their faces in your chest, hair tickles skin, stubble pressing. Someone giggles, Tae maybe. She presses a kiss to your button mouth. Eyes furrowed as you cry and cry and cry.

You don’t understand why you’re crying, why you’re overwhelmed. But you don’t need to think too hard about it or anything. Any needs that you do have are taken care of.

The pack always know what you need, that you need to feel steady, held and kept. the second you start to push. They restrain you.

Why would you even need a breeding bench when you have your packmates to keep you still? There are hands holding you down everywhere, your wrists, your ankles. Your knees. You push against their touch just to feel them put you in your place.

And as much as you struggle to admit it, you do feel better, and less tense. Less full. Less like a rubber band poised to snap when they pull back.

You cum like that, fingers in your pussy, mouth around your nipple. You don't know how much you have or how much milk they're taking from you but it's enough to leave the alpha's milk drunk and dopey. Even Jinnie is a little dazed from it when he has his turn.

It shouldn't surprise you that Yoongi is the gentlest, pushing Namjoon away after you've come, kissing him, cursing low at the taste in his mouth.

"Really hyung, your mate, fuck-"

"Fuck." Yoongi agrees. Nosing at your chest before he latches, lips sucking your nipple into his tongue, waiting for that first spark. And oh- oh- drinking from you feels like cuddling. You could call him a sap and you'd be right but there's something so instinctual about it. He knots and you give milk. Round and round your instincts go on the merry-go-round until both of you get off.

Who knows maybe your body stopped and waited to make the shift until Yoongi's did.

You only really squirm when Jin guides Hoseok down. He's blushy and tries to pull back, But the pack omega doesn’t take his shyness for an answer without a no. All pups need to eat, all pups need to get their fill. Your milk smells so sweet, so filling. Lifeblood and love and satisfaction made sustenance. Your body wouldn’t be milking up so nicely if it wasn’t for your alpha’s. They should taste the result of their efforts.

Hoseok only lets himself take one mouthful, shivers rising up and down his body before he moves aside and lets Jimin have a taste.

Jimin- who almost immediately tries to bite and snarl. Nipping at your skin when tae jerks him away from you by his hair maw open. He's barely had a sit but that's enough for Jimin to turn feral. Immediately straining, immediately pulled in your direction. A dark purple bruise is already forming around your nipple. Too rough, Jin fusses, pulling a blanket over to you, building a nest around your body.

"No Jiminie- bad!"

Namjoon takes Jimin from Tae. The alpha snarls and splutters but whines when Namjoon snaps at his throat.

You are not lucid, not really. Eyes closed and reaching for your packmates. Someone touches you, hands frantically checking your body- but you want to tell them that Jiminie really- he just got a little teethie. It's okay. You're fine!

Tae bends to kiss it better. They guard you while the sound of snarls sound from the other side of the nest. Namjoon dealing with Jimin. They guard you. Their sweet milky pup, who could possibly be more precious?

After Yoongi has another turn, you decide dimly that it's a good thing, your body moving the edge of its tolerance and doing this. Lactating. Swelling with milk. Maybe it's because it's been so long since you've gone into heat.

After a few minutes, the bellies of your pack are warm nourished, and full. It’s okay, you can sit here like this, open and still for each of them to take a taste. Sucking your nipples pink and puffy.

“Is it permanent?” Jungkook slurs when he’s woken up a bit, yawning until his jaw pops, milk-drunk and sleepy. Nuzzling into your shoulder while Jimin gives you so much attention that you’re squirming (this time wearing Namjoon’s collar since someone needed to hold onto him and keep him from biting).

His ass glows where he sprawls and every time he so much as threatens to growl Namjoon leans over and pinches his sore behind. A warning that everything, all that sweet sweet milk in his tummy. Belongs to Alpha. Jimin can only have it if he's good.

“Is it gonna be like this all the time?"

There is a computer-cracking light on the edge of the nest, a square of light that Namjoon clicks through. Licking his lips again, although your milk no longer coats them. He brought it out earlier when Jin had questions about Yoongi, but now he’s glad to have close access to it.

“It’s fairly common with female omega’s, something about the extra glands and phantom pregnancies.” Namjoon’s voice has gone from hoarse to strong. Your milk on his throat.

Namjoon looks at you, then blushes and looks away.

You don’t know if you’ve ever made Namjoon blush like that. You still lay prone, blinking up at Tae. Wordless. Your brain is small under the feeling of so much attention. A tension in you is released easily. 

Jin gets up from the nest, so quick that he goes dizzy, he���s wearing boxers now, boxers, and a big shirt. Jin too had tasted you. A few swallows. Good, it tasted so good. But your head lolls in the nest to the side, letting out little shallow breaths as Jimin sucks at your chest, your other breast still swollen looking.

Oh, Jin's little pup. You're being so good.

Jin’s instincts bear down on him. An impressive weight that makes him buckle. “I need to go cook something. If everyone's going to eat but her- that’s- I-” Jin huffs and makes to leave the nest in a huff. determined and not the least bit wobbly.

Hoseok trails after. Lips glossy from milk, too flushed to think straight, tripping on the edge of the nest and hitting the door on the way out. Embarrassed a little- but then again everyone is paying attention to you so it goes without teasing.

Huh, the pack omega is leaving the nest. Does that mean the heat is over?

No not quite, you and Jungkook still burn with fever. It's just Jin's heat that's ended. Who knows, maybe one sip of your milk had his body reacting, reassuring him that the work is done, at least one omega got pupped during this heat (you certainly did not get pupped, the contraceptive did its duty, but your confused body has Jin's confused as well).

Although you squirmed initially, the fact of the matter is that once everyone's had a sip, your nipple sucked hard and glossy- it’s a little hard not to need it. The release of pressure, the tension. Your body makes more the more they suck.

You try to enjoy breakfast once Jin's made it, feeling warm and sleepy, bites fed to your mouth. Chewing and swallowing obediently. But it’s hard, you’re so tired. Unable to hold yourself up no matter how much they try and get you to. Limp propped against Yoongi's chest, Namjoon's, your body so heavy and so tired and now sore the second someone stops sucking.

No sooner has Yoongi slipped one of Hoseok’s shirts over your head than has wetness started to gather at the front and an uncomfortable pressure began to build. They give up and take it off because Tae is eyeing you hungrily and really. Your whines of displeasure and teary eyes are too much for them to handle. Simultaneously denied and overstimulated.

Tae sets you back against Jimin’s chest, the alpha holding around your middle. She may have had one sip earlier but now that they’ve established that yes feeding from you is something you need she’s going to hog you.

She ducks low, kissing your nose, your lips, your chin before she buries her head where you’re softest.

“Mommy mommy please.” You whine as she teases, using just her lips to mouth there, waiting until milk beads, sensitive, slip down your skin to lap it all up.

“Oh little pup, don’t want to let any go to waste? We can’t have that. You’re so sweet like this. How good you are- how lucky we are. Alpha’s fucked you so good you can’t help but milk up huh? Wanted a pup so bad that your body caught on before a pup did huh? How cute. Aren’t we so lucky Minnie?”

“So lucky,” Jimin groans, holding around your middle, hands pressed to your stomach. Slipping lower as Tae sucks.

There is some hushed whispering, a rustle of bed sheets, you blink up at the ceiling, and then a vibration sounds, and you let out a broken, “oh.” as it starts.

You turn, look, and Yoongi grins, tears bead at the corner of your eyes, but it’s hard not to rock up into it. You remember- the alphas putting a collection of vibrators and knots and dildos on the edge of the nest, in case they needed them. But it's a good reward now, an easy orgasm that hits you warm.

Your body is hungry for pleasure, endlessly hungry for it in heat. Tae laps up the center of your chest while she switches from tit to tit, both milk and sweat. Feral as she does it, a look down at her says her eyes are dark, teeth sharp.

But she’s so careful, so gentle as she sucks. Yoongi turns the vibration up higher, and you jerk, or try to. Sandwich in on all sides. Surrounded by them, carried to the precipice of pleasure by the vibrator pressed to your clit, keeping you pinned there beneath the waves of pleasure. So much. Too much. Your body is so sensitive from the last three days of this. You can’t possibly handle it.

“Can’t cum again, can’t Mommy, too- too little. Too much.” You babble, but Tae tuts. Pulling off of you, a bead of milk on her pink lips.

“Good pups cum as many times as their Mommy wants them to, come on pup, make a mess all over Mommy’s dress for me."

You obey her with a broken whimper.

~-~

notes:

namjoon is so fucking horny when he's talking about yoongi's knot and i lowkey love it, how kinda like- obviously guided by hornyness he is.

also it is 1000% the mating mark that's making yoongi have a knot like- his biology is all fucked up because beta's aren't supposed to mate, the hormones in his body that keep him neutral are being kinda 'adjusted' by the m/c's slick and mark and hormones.

me 🤝 the m/c, wanting to bite yoongi's nose.

i really wanted the scene with yoongi and the m/c to kinda be like- a final opus and like super intense, how did i do?

i struggled with writing some of the dialogue in this initially- which is so /not/ how writing usually goes for me, usually the dialogue is very easy to me but i worry that i'm getting a bit repetitive with my kinks.

honestly why do i feel the need to make the smut poetic like??? is this only for me or is this a thing???? "Yoongi fucks the same way he talks, sweet but firm. he cums that way too. Warm and slow. You feel every syllable and every drop." like thats so pretty.

the m/c bites tae because she's making yoongi overwhelmed and that's the m/cs job 😠.

okay but the reason why i describe yoongi as breathing heavy is because i personally may have...stumbled uppon a audio of his breathes and him breathing heavy and fuck if that isn't hot.

part of yoongi's smutt scene was inspired by badoobee's 'real man' so yeah, i don't really really really like the message of her song, but it is sexy so 🤷‍♀️

yoongi with the life fucked out of him: 😵‍💫 mc: i did a good job 🥰 honestly though in my mind he has trouble being in the same room as her after she litterally rides him until he can't cum anymore.

honestly jk and her holding hands while they're both getting fucked is such a cute image like fuck i love them so much. i love this version of jungkook so much- i'll always be happy with his charecter in bily.

dang, i really did make jungkook's parts super super horny.

i feel like everyone who reads this should know it's completely possible to make yourself lactate just from nipple stimulation like- even if you're male. lowkey when am i going to write a normal non-abo total power exchange fic with cisswap taegi turning the m/c into their little milksub, and they decide (because the m/c's mommies know best) that they'll put her through a sucking schedule to see if they can make her chest turn milky as an experiment! only to offer her milk up to all their friends ie the rest of bts, bonus points if she starts leaking when they're at a normal friend gathering and it turns into everyone trying it.

Similarly to how yoongi always pops a knot after this, i think the m/c also lactates through every heat after this. and then one day in the distant future after one heat it just...doesn't stop. And the pack realize it's a sign that she actually /does/ want to be knocked up or at least her inner omega has decided she's ready to actually be bred.

is this self indulgent? yes. do i care? no.

even i have to admit that i'm a little bit tired of writing smutt at this point tbh...but luckily we have just one chapter after this with smutt! and it's mostly aftercare and a lovely little spanking scene <3

[leiatalon]

An unexpected update: New site, new scenes! ✨

With dashingdon shutting down, you can now find The Eternal Library demo on CoGdemos!

Thanks to everyone who jumped in my asks with the news about dashingdon coming to an end. I was already on it but I appreciate your thoughtfulness! The news made quite the stir in the IF world. Shout out to DashingDon for hosting so many fabulous works over the years.

I was planning on doing a public update at the end of the month, but since I had to port the files anyway I figured I’d include the improvements I've made to the early chapters. The end point for the public demo is the same as before, a third of the way through chapter three, but I’ve added POV scenes and polished it up a bit. 💫

If you catch any errors, please let me know!

Public update includes:

A scene from Princess Angelina’s POV at the end of chapter one.

Two scenes from Prince Collin’s POV in chapter two.

Coming soon: A scene from Gemma’s POV in chapter three. (This is later in chapter three and will be released at the end of the month.)

Chances to initiate romances with Gemma and Angelina in chapter one.

Current wordcounts: Public Demo ~ 45k Patreon Demo ~ 65k WIP ~ 80k

I'm hoping to get back to writing chapter four next week. Life has required my focus elsewhere the last couple of days and this weekend is a busy one. I keep thinking about the story even when I'm not able to work on it, which counts as writing despite not adding to the wordcount.

The story is about to dive into a branching section that takes the MC to different parts of the castle for different purposes. One branch is dark and heart wrenching, one is rooted in kindness and kinship, and one is breathtaking, inviting your imagination to soar. 🔥⚔️🔥

Thanks for following my blog as this story evolves and sharing The Eternal Library with your friends! ✨🙌✨

[stellas-and-tonitruses]

Everything we know about Project Apple (and, by extension, Anya's past) thus far

thought i'd compile all of that now while endo's on break Just In Case the next chapter happens to start anya's backstory (i don't Think it will but endo likes surprising us LSDFKLFS)

important disclaimer that project apple and the organization in charge of anya's experiments have not been confirmed to be related! there's evidence that they have things in common, in particular employees, but that's our only real connection between the two thus far. still! worth looking into

more under the cut!

so, starting very strongly with the very first mention of anything related to the project: anya's introduction in chapter 1

despite her being a main character, we know very little about her past at the moment, and this little blurb at the beginning makes up a very big portion of what we know.

things to note here:

as an experiment, her name was "Test Subject 007". important to note that the notation differs between her and bond: she was Test Subject 007, bond was Subject 8, no zeroes in there;

she had been made thus by accident, the phrasing itself implying quite heavily that she was just a normal child before said accident (but this is the translation! i don't know japanese so i can't cross-reference with the raws to clarify if the phrasing changes anything, but the fanbook uses the word "gained" to describe her powers too);

because her mind-reading is an unintended consequence, that means the scientists were presumably not, at least initially, trying to achieve cognitive enhancements in humans, and were instead trying to achieve something else, whatever that might've been;

she escaped from the facility and then moved from institution to institution, looking for a family.

so, crucially, through this little introduction we learn that there is an organization, government-funded or otherwise, that is or was conducting human experiments for unknown purposes. we also learn that whatever family anya had prior to being involved in the experiments is more than likely unreachable, at least as far as she knows, and so she has settled for finding a new family to take care of her instead.

in terms of the facility itself, here we see they clearly drilled it into her that she can't ever reveal her secret (and the darn plush is there too -- in the anime it's even more emphasized, as you can see in the gif i made)

through her reminiscing though, we get our very first look at the scientists that were in charge of her! they're in the gif above but here they are in the manga too. it's so interesting that the anime actually shows their eyes behind the glasses though, fascinating choice.

the insistence on world peace is important, as it explains her own personal obsession with it and shows that it's not just because of twilight's own focus on preserving the peace. i also don't think twilight ever really talks about "world peace," only about "preserving the current peace between westalis and ostania" -- anya seems to be the only one talking about WORLD peace (even in the very first scene where either of them mention it in proximity to each other in ch 1, loid says "understanding the other party is the first step towards peace" and anya's interpretation is "understanding me makes world peace?") but take this with a grain of salt because i might be wrong! going through every single mention of peace in the story just to fact check this one little trivia fact is a bit much i think so i'm not doing it JSDFKLSD

but yes

remember mr hair strand and baldy, we'll see them again. not her though, ig she wasn't in charge of bond

now, fast-forwarding to chapter 19, we finally get a name and a premise for the experiments:

"but oana," you might say, "this is talking about animals only! how do we know it's the same project as anya's, which involved human experimentation?"

i don't think it is, is the thing! i think it's related to the experiments anya was a part of, which is evidenced by the same scientists being featured in project apple too, but there's more going on that we don't know about. there wouldn't be such adamancy on keeping the two separate in every official mention of them if they were just the same thing, imo!

back to the evidence, we learn that the project, conducted and funded by the previous ostanian regime (meaning donovan's related to it one way or another, since he was prime minister), was marked by franticness and desperation -- a prime place for accidents like anya's telepathy and bond's future vision.

we also learn that the project was sacked by the new administration and that the former test subjects ended up on the black market.

(this makes it very important, imo, to learn when anya escaped the facility vs. when the project was sacked. it's clearly no longer in function, but while we've heard nothing from them thus far, i'm willing to bet the shady dealings around the desmond group are NOT related to the war, as W.I.S.E. has been led to believe, but rather to reignite project apple. that is speculation however so i'm going to refrain from theorising much on why the desmond group is focused on acquiring pharmaceutical companies!!)

ok speculation tangent over, back on track

so, that's already a decent amount of info! but moving to chapter 22, when bond is finally home, and we finally see some familiar faces

behold! baldy and mr hair strand!

and 2 other guys we don't know but will see again in another bond flashback!

that's 2 out of the 3 scientists we've seen thus far from anya's own time as subject 007, confirming that there IS a connection between anya and bond's experiments, regardless of whatever the project anya was a part of might've been named.

this is also the chapter in which we learn that bond himself was subject 8 (or, if we take it from the fanbook, subject #8. still, diff notation from anya!)

in chapter 31, we learn an interesting tiny piece of trivia. we don't get any further info on it, but it IS mentioned as something that is known by W.I.S.E.:

ostania is rumoured to have done human experimentation! and W.I.S.E., and by extension loid, are aware of that.

do i know how them knowing may be important later? not really!

the next droplet of info we get is in chapter 40. we see that project apple had collaborators that are still functioning unhindered.

of course, born industries is only rumoured to have been involved with project apple, but regardless of whether or not they actually were, the rumour itself implies that the project likely pulled scientists from various other companies' R&D departments.

(this makes the desmond group's acquisition of glooman pharmaceuticals shadier, but anyway)

as a side note, twilight is emoting so much at just his wrong assumption that bond is seeking revenge against the scientists. imagine how he's going to react when he finds out about anya JKSDFKLFSD

and now aaaaall the way in chapter 58, we see the bald guy who anya also knows, the two scientists from bond's previous flashback, and one whole new guy!

and thus ends our current knowledge of it all!

the only other thing worth discussing is anya's knowledge of classical language

but plenty people have already discussed these scenes, especially recently, so here are some links: 1 | 2 | 3

the only thing i can add is that i'm fairly certain that classical language is a lot more likely to be latin than old english, because it's a very common language to learn in school (in europe at least, and ostania is based on east germany so it makes sense to me. i learned mandatory latin in school for a few good years too, even if i wasn't that good at it lol) and because one of the most common modern usages of latin are in medicine and science, it would make sense that she'd be better at it due to exposure.

a possibility is also that the scientists would think in latin to conceal their thoughts from her, and that's how she ended up learning so much. she's not fluent in latin, she's just well acquainted and that cicumstance would explain the how.

BUT THAT'S SPECULATIONNN

also i don't think "ANIA" is an acronym, nor do i think anya's been misspelling her own name out of lack of knowledge. "ania" is a polish diminutive of anna and an alternate transcription of Аня, so i think it's far more likely that anya isn't ostanian or westalian than it is that her name comes from an acronym.

now,

TL;DR!

what we know about project apple (and the "mysterious organization"):

project apple was funded and conducted by what appears to have been donovan's regime and, from what W.I.S.E. knows, aimed to create highly intelligent animals for military purposes;

W.I.S.E. is aware that ostania is at the very least rumoured to have dabbled in human experimentation;

the project is presumably no longer on-going, though it is likely there are efforts behind the scenes to revive it;

it is rumoured but not confirmed that project apple had collaborating companies that are still functioning perfectly fine;

the same scientists who were in charge of bond were also in charge of anya, signalling that there is a very significant connection between project apple and the "mysterious organization;"

based on what they were telling anya, they were/are very focused on "world peace";

their experimentation methods include but likely aren't limited to electrocution.

and what we (vaguely) know about anya that relates to this:

she is at the youngest, 4 years old, and at the oldest, 5 nearing 6. we don't know her real age, all we know is she definitely lied about being 6;

she is very fixated on specifically world peace while twilight is focused on peace between ostania and westalis. the scientists are the very first we see talking about this, so it's likely their fault;

she is unreasonably well acquainted with classical language;

she has escaped the facility at LEAST 1 year ago;

and, one tidbit from the fanbook (page 29): "Anya has been reading minds for as long as she can remember," implying that her memory of a life before the lab is muddy at best and absent at worst.

that's all we know that i know of!!

if you got this far, thank you for reading :D hope any of this was interesting or sparked any theories >:] have a good day!

[the-modern-typewriter]

How do you write something longer than a short story? I can write 50,000 words of short stories, but the moment I begin drafting out a novel it seems an insurmountable task!

The most important thing:

A lot of writers don't plot an entire novel in their head at the start. Some do, but many don't. Novel writing is a marathon not a sprint. If drafting the entire novel is insurmountable, then you can just not plan it out.

Focus on one foot after the other. 500 words. 1000 words. 2000 words. Hell, 100 words! Whatever! The point is that you chip away at the thing, you don't sit down and write the whole thing all in one go.

Structure tips:

Some short stories follow a similar structure as a novel, but many don't, so if you are used to short stories than it's worth having a quick look at how novels are actually structured.

If you haven't already looked at overall story structure, then having some idea of common story structure can help you with organising your thoughts and deciding where things loosely go. This is not something that you must rigidly stick to, but it can help you wrestle the overall shape of a novel in your head.

You could also try plotting each chapter almost as it's own short story, with a beginning, middle and end. E.g. the character has the overarching plot goals sure, but in each chapter there is an event, or conflict, or smaller goal of some sort. If doing that for a chapter is too much, you could also plan acts this way. This can help chunk the novel and make it more manageable, because you're not focused on the novel, you're focused on the chapter.

If you have no problem writing the words in volume, then the problem might be that you're not sure how to turn a short story/idea into a novel. I don't know you, so just guessing here, as it's a common thing to struggle with.

Themes/What is the story about?

If you know what you want to write about, consider a mind map with that idea in the centre. Your offshoots are everything that could serve that idea.

As you write, you will not use all of these, because some will make more sense than others. But having all of these possible events/ways that your story could manifest will help you decide what happens and help make sure it feels coherent to a larger idea.

Key ways to bulk a story

Unlike a short story, a novel requires a certain amount of meat to fill the word count. You need an idea you can sink your teeth into, not padding. Here are some ways to do this:

Dig deeper into your characters. What do they want? What do they need?

Add a subplot or subplots.

Add more characters than your short story.

Example of turning a short story to a novel

There are some different ways to achieve this. I'm going to walk you through how I would do it, in case this is helpful.

Here is an example, using my short story The Blue Key. It is a simple short story inspired by the Bluebeard myth. The idea as it is works for a short story. Obviously, this will include spoilers, so if you want to read the story, do so before continuing.

If I was going to make it into a novel I could/would:

Keep the same overall structure, but flesh out the characters and their relationship more.

For example, I could show them falling in love with each other through the flashbacks, or linger more on the protagonist getting used to her new home. The reader will explore this fantastically huge house with her and learn more about her at the same time. Maybe we explore her insecurities about comparing to his previous wife as he meets more of his friends/immerses herself in his world. We will see the strain more then as the key becomes more and more of an issue.

What is behind the door?

The Blue Key at the moment would not work entirely as a novel. The idea and especially the ending would need tweaking. However, we can continue to explore the same themes as in the short story and expand them.

Previous wife?/E.g. The classic Bluebeard ending

Gateway to a nightmare world?

Some monster/minotaur in the centre of the house that will be released if she opens the door?

A darker version of the husband? A part of him that he has locked away?

I could either have her open the door in the midpoint or at the beginning of the third act. Depending on what is behind the door, the last 25% of the story will play out differently. I'd also write the husband accordingly to drop hints etc. throughout the first half of the story.

Is the house haunted? This changes how the rest of the novel and the protagonist's exploration goes.

(So the non story-specific takeaway here is decide what your original short story was trying to say, and then think how you can expand that.)

Add a subplot/add characters

Possible subplots to explore our themes could include:

The mystery of what happened to the first wife/could include her POV to compare and contrast with the second wife. This could drill more into the idea of not knowing which genre you are in/the inevitability of the fairytale wife and their role.

Maybe the second wife hid letters around the house for the second wife to find.

Maybe the housekeeper or another character key in the husband's life does not like the new wife, a la Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (one of my inspirations for The Blue Key). How does this impact the relationship between the couple? How does the protagonist overcome this? How does this tie into the story themes? E.g. if a housekeeper, does she also have a key?

What does the protagonist want to escape in herself that she can't to mirror or foil the key/room/her husband?

I hope this helps. A novel is a bit like a long game of 'and then what? What interests me here? What does a character do? Okay, what problem does that cause? How do they fix the problem? Does their attempt to fix the problem work? Does it cause another problem?