#ii scrapped characters | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

another-lost-mc · 2 years ago

Text

For Your Ears Only: When MC sends them audio porn

Featuring: The Demon Brothers x gn!Reader

NSFW // Content: Explicit smut. Mentions of sex toys, masturbation, sexting (audio/photos), oral sex (m! and gn!reader receiving), teasing, light dom/sub undertones, consensual recording of sex acts, penetrative sex, phone sex, mutual masturbation, pet names, praise kink, sex acts/masturbation in semi-public spaces, strip tease, oral fixation, cum eating, creampie, overstimulation, light degradation, dream sex, consensual somnophilia. 4.4k words.

For Your Ears Only series: Part II (the Dateables + Side Characters)

You: for your ears only 😘 ▶️ Attachment: missingyou.mp3

You relax into the mattress with a sigh and let the D.D.D. slide from your grip onto the sheets. Your breathing is finally back to normal, and you swallow thickly as nerves and lust and a hint of embarrassment wash over you. You’ve sent your lover dirty texts and teasing photos before, but this was different. You sent the audio clip—roughly two minutes' long—without listening to it first; you were worried that if you did, you might lose your nerve and scrap the whole idea.

Curiosity gets the better of you, and you finally listen to it yourself. The quality is impressive and better than you expected since you’ve never tried making something like this in the past. (You're slightly aroused listening to yourself too, so you can only imagine what their reaction will be.).

Thanks to some careful planning beforehand, your soft sounds and whimpers and curses are crystal-clear without any background ambient noises. The toy you used squelched obscenely with lube and cum as you moved it against and inside your body. The recording even picked up the faint sounds of your squeaky mattress creaking under your weight when you came so hard, your trembling body shook the bed.

You still feel an inkling of desire not yet sated, and you resist the urge to reach for your toy again. You squirm imagining your lover storming through the door and finding you like this, or maybe they’ll call you and you can listen to them get off too? You rub your thighs together as your body tingles with all the possibilities.

Your glance at the phone in your hand and ponder what to do while you wait for a response.

LUCIFER // a test of patience

Lucifer puts his phone to his ear, and after a few moments of staticky silence, he finally hears you. He's memorized all your sounds, having drawn them from your body so often by now, and he can perfectly imagine the way your body moved as your fucked yourself with your toy. He wonders which toy you used—he gifted you several in your collection— and whether you did this in your bed or his.

It's only his sheer stubbornness and force of will that keeps him on the RAD campus, instead of abandoning his responsibilities to rush to you.

When he returns home, you notice that he seems mostly like himself, and maybe if you didn't know him that well, the subtle changes would escape you. His eyes are darker when he looks at you, and he finds silly excuses to touch you: a hand on your shoulder as he passes you at the dinner table, pretending to pull a stray piece of fluff off your shirt. He leans closer to you when he speaks to you, pressing his chest against your back while he murmurs quietly in your ear. His lips brush against you when he speaks, and you can feel him smile against your skin when you shudder.

You understand that this has turned into some kind of game. He’s teasing you and testing your reactions, and you know he’s waiting for you to break first. You refuse, no matter how much you might want to, and neither of you bring up the recording you sent him earlier.

He finally seeks you out in the library after dinner. "Come to my room in thirty minutes," he says quietly when he cups your cheek with his gloved hand. He brushes his thumb across your bottom lip. "Such a lovely gift deserves a reward."

When you stand up and try to follow him immediately, he looks at you sternly and it freezes you in place.

"I've been patient all day," he reminds you with a gentle rebuke, "so I think you can wait a little longer, too."

His footsteps echo down the hall as he walks away from the library. You try to focus on your book, but you keep re-reading the same passage and your eyes dart impatiently to the clock across the room. Time passes so slowly, and by the time you’ve waited half an hour like he asked, you’re nearly vibrating with anticipation and the inside of your underwear is damp with your arousal.

You knock on his bedroom door and slip inside. The room is dark, but you can see Lucifer sitting on the bed with his legs crossed. Candlelight from the mantle flickers across his skin and bathes him in wispy shadows and his deep, red eyes glow as he stares at you. You might’ve started this game between you, but his hungry smirk tells you what you both know: you’ve lost, and he’s won.

He pats something next to him on the bed, and you nearly gasp in surprise when you realize he fetched the toy you used earlier from your room. How did he know which one—?

“I was so impressed by your gift earlier, and I was hoping for a repeat performance," he murmurs casually, ignoring your shocked expression.

It’s not that you don’t want to, but his request catches you off-guard. He stands from the bed and reaches for the hem of your shirt so he can tug it over your head and toss it aside. His eyes roam your bare skin and you melt into him when he pulls you flush against his chest. Your nipples harden against the fabric of his shirt, and you shiver in his arms when he kisses your jaw.

“Unless you don’t want to?” he asks quietly. He pulls back and tries to read your expression—he can sense your hesitation, and no matter what he might want, he would never dream of forcing you to do something you’re uncomfortable with.

“I’d rather have your cock instead,” you admit, and it comes out as a needy whine that makes your cheeks warm.

It’s a brutally honest honest answer, but you’re not capable of anything else: Lucifer wants your honesty, and you’re so riled up from his subtle teasing this evening that you can’t seem to filter your thoughts.

“Perhaps I can give you a little taste for motivation, hm?” he drawls, and his gloved thumb runs along your bottom lip. His eyes glitter wickedly when you lower yourself to your knees and reach for his belt.

He fishes something out of his pocket as you undo his fly, and you realize it’s his phone. “Let’s see how beautiful you sound with your lips around my cock. I would love to see how it compares to your solo performance,” he admits quietly, and you can hear the eagerness in his rough voice.

You nod slowly to give him permission, and his eyes glitter with wicked excitement. He taps the Record button on the screen just before you swallow him down and moan greedily at his taste.

MAMMON // doesn’t care how, he wants you now

It doesn’t matter where Mammon is—the club, the casino, a photo shoot—as soon as he starts listening to that recording you sent him, he’s already abandoning his plans so he can come to you. He bites his lip to keep himself from groaning your name, unless he’s somewhere noisy where his frustrated exclamations will go unnoticed.

(Fuckin’ hell, baby, you’re so fuckin’ hot—)

He doesn’t even have to listen to the full thing, either. When the first soft moan falls from your lips, his cock is already stirring in his pants. He rushes to his car and speeds home, playing the recording on repeat over and over until he can see you.

He’s never felt so desperate, but he’s greedy for more of you, all of you. All your little whimpers and sighs, and the obscene squelching sounds as you fuck yourself and beg for him—they’re all his.

He rushes through the front door, gliding past your bedroom and marching straight to his own. When he opens the door, the scent of your arousal and cum makes him stagger in the doorway like he's intoxicated by you. You’re naked and writhing on his bed, thrusting the toy in and out of your greedy hole, while you whimper his name. The wet noises your body makes are even more visceral in person, and he can’t wait anymore.

He rips open his belt and tugs his pants down enough to pull out his cock. He crawls onto the bed and kneels between your legs. He stares at the toy that disappears in and out of your body. Your skin is wet with cum and lube and you sound so hot and you smell so fucking good.

He wraps his hand around yours so he can move the toy with you, and it's a little faster and deeper than you managed on your own. You��re so close and you don’t want to stop, but Mammon stares at you with his mouth hanging open and it's almost enough to undo you and he's barely touched you.

“I’m so close,” you whine. His eyes glow like molten gold as he moves his hand a little faster, grinding the toy inside you and brushing against that soft, spongy spot that makes your whole body tremble.

“Yeah, c’mon babe, lemme hear you,” he pleads, and he doesn't care how desperate he sounds because he wouldn't trade this for all the fuckin' grimm in the world.

His bed frame rattles when you come with a hoarse cry. He teases you through the aftershocks until you whine try to clench your thighs shut around his hand. He finally lets the toy slip from your greedy hole, and he tosses it aside so he can kneel between your legs instead. Your legs are still shaking, and he guides them to rest on his hips.

“Ready, babe? Nice and stretched for my cock?” he groans as he teases your entrance with the head of his cock.

You nod and roll your hips to encourage him, and you both moan against each other's mouths when he finally plunges inside you and claims your body for himself.

LEVIATHAN // dirty little secrets

Leviathan isn’t a stranger to porn. He pretends he doesn’t have a collection of videos and adult games with characters that look suspiciously like you, and you pretend you don’t know he has them. He doesn’t really need them anymore, and he’s slowly replacing his collection with videos and photos of you instead: you're the real deal, the attractive-as-hell human that wastes their time with him for reasons he’ll never fully understand.

There are nights when you can’t be together, like tonight—he doesn’t want to keep you awake with the all-night gaming event he's taking part in. You reassure him that it's okay and you understand, but you go to your room and lay in bed, thinking about him and missing him. You send him your little gift anticipating he'll listen to it at some point tonight before you fall asleep.

When his guild calls for a break, he listens to the recording through his gaming headset and he’s hard almost instantly. His body burns with embarrassment, and he hates how desperate he feels when he scrambles to pull down his pants and palm his weeping cock. Your first whimper of his name makes him whine.

He fumbles with his phone so he can call you, and you answer almost immediately. He groans when he hears the familiar sound of your creaky bed springs in the background as you continue touching yourself without him.

“My greedy little boy,” you coo breathlessly in his ear when you answer his call. “D’you want more already?”

He nods even though you can’t see, and his throat bobs when he swallows around the lump in his throat. “Yeah, fuck, you sound so good—“ he trails off into a long moan.

He doesn’t even realize he’s stroking his cock in time with the wet, slick thrusts of the toy plunging in and out of your hole. He knows how shameful and pathetic and weak he is, but he's so fucking hard and needy for you that he can't bring himself to care. “Wanna come, make me come, please, I want you so bad—” he babbles in your ear.

Your airy chuckle is punctuated by your own whimpers and moans. “Come for me, baby, let me hear you come too.”

Those words trigger his own release, and he bites his lips to muffle the shout as his cock shoots thick ropes of sticky release up his belly. He keeps going, hips jerking from the sensitivity, until you groan out his name and all the other noises on your end of the call go silent.

“How d’you feel, baby?” you murmur in his ear when his breathing calms down. “Did you make a mess for me?”

He winces at the mess covering his shirt and his hand. “Y-yeah, it’s…a lot.” He sounds so uncertain. He's doubtful that you like how out of control he is when he's with you, and he wonders if his desperation is what might eventually drive you away from him.

“Send me a picture of how sloppy you are, then clean up and go play your game.” The call disconnects and he scrambles to do as you ask. He sends you a photo of his cum-soaked shirt, his sticky, wet pelvis, and his half-hard cock resting against his thigh.

He worries that you might be disappointed when he hits Send. His phone pings with a reply, and he sighs with relief as your praise warms him though and he basks in your love and approval.

You: Good boy.

SATAN // self-care

Satan has a bad habit of overworking himself and denying that he does it. He spends long nights hunched over the desk in the library while he studies, or he holes up in his room when he reads.

Today, he skipped lunch at RAD and now he’s shrugging off dinner, too. He gives you a weak excuse about needing to study some more. You want to be supportive, but he needs a break. You know that if he were in your position, he'd be saying the same thing to you.

You go to your room and think about how lonely it's been without him these past couple days. You lay back on your bed with a satisfied hum and hope your little surprise entices him to finally indulge in some much-needed self-care.

It doesn’t take long before he knocks on your door and lets himself inside. He’s panting like he just ran down the stairs from his room. The front of his pants are tented and you can’t help the breathy laughter that bubbles out of you when you imagine him rushing through the house looking like that.

“Oh, you think this is funny, do you? You little tease—“ his words are pointed but his tone is playful. He tries to smother a wicked grin when he steps to the edge of your bed; he admires the sheen of sweat glistening on your skin, the discarded toy still slicked with lube and traces of your release, and your half-lidded, bright eyes that promise him more.

You reach for him and run your hand over the outline of his cock and you smile when his hips buck towards you. You’ll give him anything he wants as a reward for finally listening to you, and he knows it. He asks you to swing your legs over the edge of the bed, and he kneels on the rug and pushes your thighs apart. His tongue licks long, slow stripes against your tacky skin and he moans when you run your fingers through his hair.

He unbuckles his belt and slips his cock free so he can jerk off while he chases the taste of your cum that still stains your skin. All your little noises sound so perfect even when he’s buried between your legs. He cleans up the mess you made of yourself while he makes one of his own.

By the time you whimper and tug at his hair from the sensitivity of coming more than once under his sinful mouth, he’s hard again and ready to fuck you properly.

ASMODEUS // a game for two

Asmodeus adores these little games you play together. He’ll send you a picture, you send him one back that’s just as naughty. It’s a nice way to build anticipation throughout the long, boring days when he can't sneak you away for some alone time.

Most of the time, it's not a problem. He’s the Avatar of Lust—he knows how to keep some semblance of self-control. Or he did, until he made the mistake of listening to that video you sent him between classes. He’s stuck at RAD while you’re waiting for him at home. He knows his options: he can skip class and go home where he knows you're waiting. Or, he can give you a taste of what you want and let the excitement simmer until later when desire finally boils over.

Being a student council officer has its perks. Asmo can walk into an unused office in a quiet part of the building without being hassled. He can lock the door and hop onto the edge of the large desk without being lectured about propriety or manners.

He lets your recording play on loop while he switches to the camera app on his phone. It's not loud enough to draw too much attention from outside, but he can still hear each lovely sound you make; they send little jolts of pleasure shooting down his spine.

He leans back on one hand while he takes a photo and sends it to you.

Asmodeus: Like what you see, darling?

His grin sharpens and becomes more feral with each new picture he sends you. In the first photo, the collar of his uniform is unbuttoned and the shirt hangs loose across the top of his chest. In the next, his uniform jacket is gone and his shirt is completely unbuttoned; he makes sure you can see how his nipples hardened in the cool classroom air. The third photo is focused on his lower belly and the outline of his cock straining against the zipper of his slacks.

He waits for your enthusiastic response before he unzips his fly and tugs his boxer briefs down. In the next photo, his hand is wrapped around his cock, and you can just see the tip that's trickling a stream of pre-cum onto his fingers.

You send him a new picture—your hand between your legs, mid-stroke along the edge of your arousal—and he starts jerking himself off too. Fuck it. He's too impatient to stave off his desire for you any longer, but it's so hot that he knows you're doing this together.

After he comes, he sucks one of his sticky fingers into his mouth and sends you one last picture; he bites his lip and stares when you send him a picture of yourself doing the same.

BEELZEBUB // impulse control

Beelzebub struggles with his insatiable appetite. If there's something he wants, he’s willing to rampage through the Devildom to get it. You’re careful about timing the little treats you send him to whet his appetite for you. When you send Beel something teasing or provocative, it’s not about driving him into an uncontrollable rampage (you’ve already learned that lesson)—it's about showing him how much you love him and miss him and want him. (And to keep him from getting too distracted by food on his way to see you.)

He doesn’t usually skip meals, especially after Fangol practice, but tonight he walks past the dining room to your bedroom door. After he lets himself in and locks it, he stares at your naked body laid across the bed. The musky scent in the air from your earlier activities makes his mouth water. He starts drooling from the corner of his mouth; he’s too distracted to notice, and you’re too enamored to care.

You make room for him between your legs, and his large, warm hands wrap around your ankles. He tickles you gently and glides his hands up your calves and over your knees. He rubs his hands over your soft, fleshy thighs; he spreads them apart even more while his gaze lingers on the glistening skin between your legs. He salivates even more at the sight of lube and slick and cum on your toy, and he licks his lips.

The only message he sent you after he listened to your recording was a request to keep your toy the way it is. It's beside you on the bed, and his eyes darken with lust and hunger when he sees that you did as he asked. He picks it up and examines it; it's not nearly as girthy as he is, but it's still an impressive size. He makes a show of licking it clean, and after a few greedy swipes of his tongue, you’re squirming with desire rather than embarrassment.

He hums and groans at your taste, but it's not enough. He swipes at the sticky mess between your legs with his fingers and sucks them into his mouth. He makes an impatient noise in the back of his throat when his fingers are clean and he's still hungry for more.

He lowers his head so his mouth can finish what his fingers started, and he shifts your legs onto his shoulders while he sucks on your arousal and flicks his tongue against your entrance. He stretches you with his thick fingers while your thighs tighten around his head and keep him in place. He finally raises his head when you tug at his hair and beg for him; you feel so empty and he's the only one that can fill you the way you want.

He watches his cock sink into you, and he finally fucks you with powerful, deep strokes that shake the bed. He holds onto the headboard for leverage, and each snap of his hips punches the air from your lungs in shaky moans and keening whimpers of his name. You come first and your walls milk his cock until he fills you to the brim.

His cock slips from your body and he lowers himself between your legs again. His tongue laps greedily at your release mixed with his. He does it over and over again, fucking you senseless with his cock and eating you out after, until your throat is hoarse and you can't possibly come again.

He looks satisfied when he finally raises his head from between your legs. The lower half of his face is warm and sticky, and he kisses you so you can taste how delicious you are on his tongue. He lays down next to you and gathers you into his arms.

While your breathing tapers off into quiet snores, he smacks his lips with satisfaction; the only thing that tastes better than you is the combined taste of both of you together.

BELPHEGOR // sweet dreams

You send Belphegor the recording you made for him, but you still haven't heard from him by the time you start getting ready for bed. When you check on him, you find him fast asleep in the room he shares with his twin. You smother your disappointment and hope he’ll still appreciate it when he wakes up tomorrow.

“You’re so fucking horny for me sometimes, aren’t you?” he whispers into your ear from somewhere behind you. He suddenly pulls you tightly against his chest and hooks his chin over your shoulder. His hand dances along the waistband of your pants and his cool fingers dip underneath and tickle the soft skin of your belly.

Your mouth opens soundlessly in surprise, but quiet, muffled moans echo around you. The sounds play on loop over and over, and you realize that they're yours.

“That pathetic little toy of yours can’t satisfy you the way I can,” he states matter-of-factly because you both know it’s true. “How many fingers do you want tonight?” he asks teasingly as his hand slips into your underwear. “One? Two?” You gasp at the cold, slick sensation of his fingers teasing your entrance. “Or three?” he breathes into your ear, and when you nod shamelessly, you cry out as he thrusts them inside and your hole stretches around him.

You reach behind you and fist one of your hands in his hair, and he hisses as a jolt of pleasure-pain shoots through his body. He smirks against your shoulder and nips at your throat in retaliation. You start rolling your hips and fucking yourself on his greedy fingers; he grunts when your ass rubs against his cock that’s hard and pressed into your back.

“See?” he taunts you as he coaxes you towards the precipice of pleasure, but his fingers are thrusting shallowly into your hole now and denying you the friction you crave.

“I’ve been here the whole time, you could’ve had me instead. I’ll fuck you however you want.” He tugs on your earlobe with his teeth. “You beg so prettily for my cock.”

“You were sleeping,” you whimper, and he clasps his hand over your mouth to muffle your frustrated cry as he pulls his fingers from your body completely. He wipes them on your shirt with a huff of laughter.

“Even if I’m asleep, I’ll still fuck you better then your fingers or toys ever could.” He licks away a bead of sweat trickling down your neck and sighs hotly against your skin. “You have my permission to do things, just like I have your permission, too.”

Suddenly you’re both bare and he pushes you down so you’re on all fours. He leans over you, and you feel the head of his cock slide between your legs and press against your entrance. “You riled me up with that little message you sent me, and now it’s time to wake up so I can fuck you properly.”

You gasp as your eyes fly open when the dream ends, and you moan into your pillow when he finally sheathes himself inside you.

Read more: Obey Me! Masterlist

3K notes · View notes

coquettepascal · 2 months ago

Text

felicitas and her general

summary: general acacius has caught your attention after being the first mortal to worship you in decades. you only face one challenge: don't get too attached.

warnings: rated g, contains spoilers for gladiator ii, follows the timeline of the movie somewhat, reader is the goddess felicitas (who is the goddess of good luck,) this fic is basically just an add on to the movie.

tags: goddess!reader x general acacius, emotional infidelity, lots of roman mythology stuff, writer is basing all her knowledge out of what she remembers from PJO and HoO, worship, complicated feelings, marcus does not cheat on lucilla physically, yearning, pining, grieving, guilt, major character death(s), stalking (kind of), a lot of obsession/dedication, angst, hurt no comfort but also hurt with comfort.

a/n: i watched gladiator ii and then was too emotionally devastated to finish this fic the way i planned. i really hope you all like this!! also, this fic is also dedicated to my dear friend @pascalssbabyy because she is my biggest cheerleader and i love her <33

wc: 7.2k (not beta read)

It was he who woke you.

A quiet sacrifice in the evening that felt like the freshest breath of air you could have, more intense than what you could have atop any mountain, near any spring. The scent of burning meat and smokey vegetables grasped at your lungs, and you almost choked on it. How long had it been since someone had offered you something so kind? Real food, not just scraps of something they didn’t wish for.

You’d never complain about how difficult it is to be a minor Goddess, you know that you could be a mortal, but most don’t think of how Gods can fade. It’s a physical process, one where you’d notice how your fingertips passed through things like chalices and bowls, how a spoon slid through your hand once. The clatter of gold on the table was embarrassing, even though you were alone. Nothing about being forgotten, or fading, physically hurt. It was only mentally taxing, knowing that you weren’t as important as you once were, that mortals found you insignificant.

Generals used to come and offer things frequently sometime ago, but you couldn’t even begin to understand how long ago that was. When you’re immortal, or supposed to be, mortal lives seem fleeting. You had taken them for granted, and regret it now, for all you have now are the empty clouds above your temple.

The last offering you can gather was from a young boy, who wanted to win a board game against his sister the next day. He had given you half a bun with strips of meat. Sure, it was thoughtful, but this was something rich.

You finish inhaling the offering, and then hear the offerer's voice. But it’s muffled, and you want to see who it is anyways, so you swipe through the clouds and create a window to see. Then you can hear him clearly.

Someone who is clearly a general kneels at your altar, which is chipped and dirty. The ashes of the food are in front of him, smoking still, and you can taste the wealth in his meal. It can’t distract you from him though, he is striking.

Broad shoulders support a heavy, curly, grey, head of hair, which is bowed in honor of you. His body is widely built, sturdy for battle, and his voice is just as powerful. You’re so focused on hearing his voice you only catch the tail end of his request.

“... Allow me to come home safely, if not for Rome, then for my wife.”

Your heart squeezes, and you swear you can feel the ichor gushing through your veins. Scarcely when a General came to give you an offering all those years ago would he mention a wife, only ever wishing for luck in the upcoming battle or war. But here, now, you’ve been given a respectful request and offering. It isn’t a thought in your mind to not favor him now, your eyes closing and your mouth murmuring a blessing to him. It feels intoxicating to use some of your power again, especially on someone who asked for it. It also feels intoxicating to watch this General leave.

He looks around before he goes, seeming to note how degraded your small temple has become. The statue of you that lies ahead of your altar is yellowing, and ironically, multiple fingers have broken off. The General seems displeased by this, sighing as he exits the temple.

His gait is heavy, sandaled steps weighted as he walks down them and into the torch-lit night. You find yourself looking for him even after he’s disappeared from your sight, the warmth of gratefulness hugging around you. Part of you knows better than to play around with the thought, but still you wish to know more about him.

—

It worsens when he comes back. A few times a week he returns, offering rich foods. It’s been a month now, and you are coming back to life.

Fading didn’t feel like anything, but coming back feels like so much more. The first few offerings had your body feeling alight again, like the ichor in you was flowing again, but within the last two weeks you’ve gotten your fingertips back. They were tingling for a day and then the next you were able to properly grasp things again, nothing was slipping through you.

In that time you had also learned his name. A guard had come looking for him one night, and stood behind him whilst he prayed. You had found yourself smiling when he didn’t interrupt himself, instead acting aggravated once he had finished. The guard had apologized for interrupting and let him know that “Your wife wishes to speak to you, General Acacius.”

Acacius.

You still don’t know his first name, but it is enough. You can think of it when you feel lonely, when you are bored. Something to associate with the offerings, with the blessings. The fact he has been so consistent hints at a desperation, which would usually repel you from blessing him, but he is the only one who seems to recognize you. His efforts are not going to go unseen by you, not when you have so little to do.

You can feel yourself conceding to your need to know him more, but just as you begin to fight yourself again, he shows up.

Tonight he’s dressed a little nicer. Usually he arrives in a plain tunic but this one has golden trim on it, and his hair is a little more tousled. He stumbles into your altar holding something in a cloth, but he’s walking like he’s… drunk?

Acacius meanders to your altar, grabbing a torch along the way, and then empties the contents of the cloth. It produces a small dessert bun, a Libum, or honey cheesecake, and your mouth waters. So much of the food that is given to you is savory meats, masculine foods that are heavy on the senses, but this is sweet and delicate. You can, of course, eat whatever you’d like. You’re a Goddess, and though you aren’t major, you are still very fortunate.

But this feels thoughtful.

The General drops to his knees after lighting the bun ablaze, swaying slightly, and now you know he must be drunk.

“Goddess Felicitas,” he begins as normal, “I am sorry I am later than usual. Though I don’t know if Goddesses sleep. I was… caught up in other affairs, but I made it in time.”

He is less eloquent than usual and seems particularly focused on how it is nearly past midnight.

“I brought you this though,” he gestures to the half burnt bun. “I wanted to bring you something different than meat and… things. I thought a dessert would be fitting for that task.”

Acacius pauses now. His thoughts are probably muddled from whatever he drank, and you find yourself smiling. Foolery has never been so endearing to you.

“You have been listening to me, I suppose. My requests for luck in battle have been answered, as well as my safety being ensured. Your blessings have brought my wife peace of mind, something I could not previously afford to her.”

He looks so small in your temple tonight. Normally he is not so vulnerable, but his shoulders sag as he mentions his wife. Some sort of shame runs over him at the idea that he could not ease his wife’s worries, but it makes you feel better that you could help.

“Goddess Felicitas, I come here tonight bearing no requests, just gratitude. Your blessings have soothed wounds I could not see, and I feel like a young soldier again. You invigor me.”

Then, he leaves.

You watch helplessly as he stumbles back down the steps and away from your temple, and more than ever you wish to chase him. The love he has for his wife is clear, and you hold no jealousy of that, but you wish it were you. Something in you is deeply attached to this General now. He has awoken you so much more than rekindling your power as a goddess, more than releasing you from the grief that comes with fading. Yes, Acacius has made your heart beat again, your mind curious again, and you feel seen. Being worshipped is not the same as being loved, if that were true you’d have had many children by now,

But after so long being forgotten, this feels like what you remember being loved as.

—

You try not to interact with the other Gods for the most part. They tend to meddle in things they don’t need to, and are sensitive. You are not exempt from this stereotype, but that’s only more reason for the distance.

But today, you venture to meet another deity.

Morpheus is not hard to find. He is pretty stationery where he is, usually lounging on a rock or bench near his temple, or above it in the clouds. He is a bit…dramatic, from what you remember, but wise.

Today he is stretched out on a cloud above his temple, eyes shut. His pale skin stretches taut on his bones as his lean frame breathes deeply. But, he is not asleep.

“Morpheus,” you speak.

His body rolls toward your direction, eyes still shut, but a small smile on his face.

“O young goddess Felicitas, what brings you to me?” He questions.

It’s hard not to feel embarrassed. You’ve spoken to Morpheus on very rare occasions, but he’s always been somewhat helpful, though nosy. Dreams tell a lot about people, and when he’s the one giving them to people, it’s hard to hide anything at all.

You don’t want him to know of your true affection for General Acacius, just that he is… worthy of a visit.

And so you begin to describe it to Morpheus, your need to visit Acacius. He doesn’t open his eyes at all, but he raises his eyebrows a lot and seems bemused at your situation. You’re only halfway through your rambling before he raises a gangly limb and waves at your words.

“Felicitas, you think you are the only Goddess wishing to visit her admirer? You need no explanation,” he says jovially.

Morpheus reaches into the air and pulls 6 black berries into existence, then drops them into your open palm.

“When you know he is asleep, bite down on one of these and think of him,” he describes to you.

The berries smell like nothing, but a powdery residue is left on your skin as you roll them in your palm. It doesn’t repel you at all.

Tonight, you will visit him and express the same gratitude he did to you.

—

Marcus lays next to his wife, Lucilla, with her hand in his. She fell asleep sometime ago, leaving him to lie awake by himself.

He didn’t make it to her temple tonight and the guilt is festering in his body. Marcus knows that she is a Goddess, that he probably isn’t a thought in her mind. He knows that he is just another whiney mortal, giving her food that isn’t nearly as good as whatever Gods eat. His insignificance grows as he feeds into his guilt.

Stress has permeated his life for much of it, from his time as a young soldier up until now, as a General. Battles, politics, and his family, have created a breeding ground for him to be wracked with anxieties, but he stays strong. Thanks to his time in Felicitas temple, it’s been better.

Which is why failing to make it to her temple tonight is making him feel so bad.

He grabs at the linen sheets of his bed, stressing and trying to reassure himself until he falls asleep finally.

—

Being in a dream is weird. It feels much the same as it does when you disguise yourself as a mortal, the out of body experience is semi-familiar, but it’s weird because someone else is there.

You’ve been watching the General enjoy the lake in front of him for a few minutes now. He hasn’t slipped into it, but just walks along the waterline. It seems like he is looking for something. Surely his dreams usually contain more action, or perhaps are memories, so you assume it may be strangely understimulating for him.

The appearance you’ve chosen is one of modesty, but elegance. A seafoam green peplos hangs off your frame delicately, with golden clasps at the wrists and waist. You did your hair so it would be tucked out of your face. There is no guarantee that Acacius will recognize you like this, but you look much like your statue that’s within your temple.

Swallowing your nerves, you shimmer yourself into visibility. The grassy field is odd beneath your feet, and you walk toward him with uncertainty in each step. You’ve never met with a mortal before, and you haven’t stepped on anything earthy in a long while. His broad stature only becomes more daunting as you get closer, especially since he seems so focused.

You will have to speak first. You’re much too quiet in this environment, and you must act fast lest he wake before you get his attention.

“General Acacius,” you speak firmly, though your hands shake.

This is so unfamiliar to you. You’ve barely even seen his face, as he’s usually bowed at your altar. It is the first time you’ll see him at an equal level, the first time you’ll have brought yourself to him rather than him to you.

He turns quickly, an instinctual aggressiveness toward the unknown. You stand about 10 feet from him, eyes widening.

Acacius is striking. His nose is what you focus on first, strong in shape and line, but behind it are his eyes which look to you with wide acknowledgement. His hair curls around his head in greying ringlets, like a permanent laurel crowning him. The wide expanse of his back was once impressive, but now you can see the solid wall which he becomes when facing you. Nothing could push him over it seems, a man built to stand.

Your heart squeezes the way it did the first time he gave you a request, a tender rush tingling your whole body. No words come out of either of your mouths, and the General drops to one knee instantly.

He recognizes you.

“Goddess Felicitas,” he rushes out in a breath. His chest is heaving as he bows his head and no, no this isn’t how you want this.

Your feet are moving before you can focus on your anxiety, bringing you so close to him that you can kneel too. Maybe a goddess should not kneel before a mortal general, but you are just on your knees rather than putting yourself below him. Your peplos billows a little as air rushes through it when you hit the grass.

He is above you like this, and you tilt your head to see his face again. His strong brow is furrowed, eyes squeezed shut like he is afraid of you.

“Acacius,” you say softly, “I am not here for… for ill reason. Please relax yourself.”

You lean back as he relaxes, head tipping upwards as he kneels in front of you as well. Now you can meet his eyes, see the crinkles that are beside them, and really take him in.

An energy of anxiety is shared wordlessly, with him stiff from the sight of a literal goddess, and you with the fear of… something.

The identity of your anxieties isn’t something that you can figure out. Maybe it’s too much to see such a handsome mortal, or maybe it’s that you’re going to thank him for his offerings so personally. Maybe it’s humiliation from this act. What would other Gods think of this? Is it not degrading to become so attached to a mortal? Are you no better than Zeus or Hermes, the gods who interact too intimately with mortals?

The sound of his labored breathing alerts you, calls your attention back to the present moment.

“I wanted to thank you,” you admit meekly, “for your offerings. You have been very generous and… devoted.”

His eyes are shifty, and you can see the terror in him still. You don’t want him to fear you, but you can understand why. Visits from Gods or other deities can mean trouble, but you aren’t significant like that.

“General Acacius you are the first mortal who has acknowledged me in a long time,” you offer a vulnerability, perhaps trying to soothe him.

It feels so backwards for you to be kneeling in front of him, speaking. He has done so in front of your altar for many weeks now, but now the spots are switched, yet you are still in power. You avert your gaze as you speak up, wanting to request something of him.

“You’ve been so generous to me, General, I was hoping to know more about you.”

And now, rather than scared, he seems suspicious.

“To know me?” He clarifies.

You nod.

“I only know your last name. I think I could offer more luck and splendor if we were more… personal.”

Gods that felt awful to say. You’re no better than the whorish brutes on their thrones, offering petty glories for intimacy. Everything feels flirtatious but that’s not what you’re looking for. Acacius has a wife he clearly loves, you would never want to interrupt that.

He seems to hesitate, but he knows he cannot refuse you. So far your blessings have brought ease to his life, he wouldn’t want to lose that.

“Then… yes, I suppose I can offer myself if it would please you.” He responds stoically.

And it does please you, to know his name. Marcus Acacius, the one who woke you, the one who has saved you from being a fragmented memory within the temples.

Marcus Acacius, who you are too fond of.

—

You visit him 3 more times. In an attempt to space out the usage of the berries Morpheus gave you, you only visit him once a week. The bleak tasting berries are sour on your tongue, a rotten sour which lingers once you wake up, but it’s worth it.

The two of you have grown closer, with Marcus opening up more. He tells you about the stresses in his life, how much anxiety is buried in him. But, he’s confident for the sake of his wife. You’ve learned that her name is Lucilla, and much more about her. Marcus talks about her a lot, in passing or retelling something she told him. In the small amount of time you’ve gotten to know him, you’ve gotten to know her as well.

It burns you with a strange warmth, a desire and envy which makes your stomach growl. You are hungry for him to admire you in the same way, to speak of you, but doesn’t he already? Shame grips your throat when you think of it. You are a Goddess who he sacrifices to, who he wishes to have blessings from. What more do you need? A mortal couldn't offer you what another deity could.

After the fourth meeting, you found yourself lonely. Lazing back in the clouds above your temple, you woke with a deep hunger. Marcus is beautiful, an admirable man, and he loves passionately. You are already being such a glutton for even speaking with him, meeting with him repeatedly, so why must you yearn for him too?

Worship isn’t enough, you want what you will never let yourself to have.

Nothing hints that he might feel similarly. His starry gaze which lands on you is not due to your beauty, your personality, or anything more. You have blessed him, and that is why his eyes glitter. Goddess status has never made you feel so low and isolated. Still, you are happy to help him achieve what he wishes, even as it cripples your heart.

Tonight you plan on visiting him. That fourth visit was a week and a half ago, he may be wondering where you are. He still comes to your altar each night, but the prayers are less personal. Marcus saves his stories and ramblings for when the two of you are in the field, or near the lake, when the two of you are really alone.

—

You bite into the berry at around midnight. Its tangy yet death-tasting juice floods your mouth, clinging to the crevices between your teeth and staining your gums. Closing your eyes, you think of Marcus, and his curls, and his eyes, and his nose, and his strong hands.

And then you are there, and he is waiting.

It seems like his subconsciousness has picked to be at the lake today, and he’s sat in the sand at the edge of the water. You walk over to him, but notice how… down he appears to be.

“She is not happy with me,” Marcus confesses before you even sit down.

You stand a few feet back from him, looking at how his curls fall around his bowed head.

“Lucilla?” You ask softly.

He nods.

A wicked feeling begins to steep in your heart. She is upset with him, he is in need of you for something more than a blessing.

And so you listen.

It’s one of the longer meetings the two of you have had. Marcus doesn’t cry, but he seems truly upset. He’s been called to go off somewhere far again, to fight and kill. Reassurances that you will protect him as best you can only soothe him so much.

He doesn't care if he dies, he cares that his beloved is distraught over this.

The more the two of you talk, the closer you get. There are marks on the sand from where you originally sat, but now you kneel in front of him, with creased brows and worried eyes. This isn’t something you can fix, you aren’t familiar with love and its intricacies.

His knees were tucked closer to his chest before, but they’ve loosened now and his fists rest atop them, clenching. Frustration sits on his face like a mask, one you wish to take off him.

Touching is not… something either of you partake in. Sometimes your shoulders will brush when you sit together, but nothing more has ever been initiated.

That is why it doesn’t surprise you when he flinches as your hand reaches out to rest on top of his right clenched fist.

“Marcus,” you say softly, wanting to offer comfort, but he cuts you off.

“Don’t,” he replies swiftly.

At first it hurts, watching as he waves off your hand from his own, but then you look at his face rather than where your hands were joined. The frustrated look on his face is gone, replaced with something worse, something guilty. His eyes aren’t glittering at you like usual, nor are they hardened with anger.

They’re soft pools of conflict that mirror your own.

It doesn’t soothe your burn, satiate your envy. You can see in his eyes that maybe you aren’t alone in these feelings of admiration, of want, but maybe this is not what you want.

Maybe you want a different universe, one where he doesn’t have to be a mortal and you, a Goddess. So you wouldn’t have to worry about him dying, and have this friendship survive off death flavored berries. Maybe you want a universe where he isn’t married, where he could be yours and you wouldn’t feel like a spectator to his heart.

Maybe you want that, but you won’t get it.

Instead the flames of jealousy die in your chest and are replaced with tumors of guilt. Your whole body feels bloated, embarrassed, and ugly.

The pair of you stare at each other, a stupid realization between the both of you as you realize that your secrets have been spilled, even though it’s the same one.

His eyes don’t move from yours, so you move from his.

The sandy edge of the lake does not look so bright now, even though there are no clouds in Marcus’s dream.

“When do you leave?” You ask softly.

You will not follow him into whatever battle he’ll win. Don’t embarrass yourself, Goddess.

He tells you two weeks. You say you’ll see him before then.

Then you wake on a cloud again, with a cavity of guilt in your chest.

—

Marcus wakes alone.

Lucilla had not wanted to sleep with him that night, choosing to stay elsewhere. She didn’t tell him where, she left in a quiet flurry of tears and anguish.

It’s easier for him to feel guilt over his Goddess than it is to hurt his beloved, even if it is the same.

In a moment of frustration he grasps at the sheets, turning over and biting at his pillow. The bed is so cold, and the room smells like stale air even though the window is open, the night breezy.

He knows she is beautiful because she is a Goddess. All Goddesses are beautiful, ethereal beings that mortals cannot even comprehend at times. Marcus knows he is lucky to even perceive her, for her to have chosen to visit him.

Yet through all her blessings, he feels cursed.

A plague of emotional infidelity is crawling through his body, sticking to his bones and making him stiff. Everything he does has felt flat for so long, from pretending he is grateful to the Emperors, to now pretending nothing is wrong in his marriage. He’s scared, and exhausted.

Marcus rubs a hand over his face after rolling over and sitting up in bed, groaning into his palm.

At first he tried to blame her for it. What would a Goddess want from a successful General other than a demigod hero son? What could truly be so special about him? He assumed she was manipulating him, using some sort of power to morph his heart, but now he knows it is not true.

If she had wanted to, she would have had him by now, and he knows this. If she had wanted to, her hand would have stayed where it was tonight, and pushed him further. It isn’t unlike the Gods to force themselves on a mortal, but she didn’t.

Instead, his hand feels hot where hers rested, and his mind is spinning.

Marcus doesn’t fall asleep again, afraid that he’ll see her.

—

You wait for a full two weeks before you visit him again. He had been coming to your temple less, and you had assumed he was busy with preparations for the coming battle.

The stubbornness you felt that night has not left you. At first you did not leave your temple in fear that you would grow attached, now you remain there because you have grown attached.

“Enough is enough,” you had thought to yourself.

But it is hard not to miss him, and his soothing prayers. The way his offerings tasted of smoke and sweet, and how he’d always burn such a large portion. Marcus never gave you scraps, he seemed to refuse to.

However, you can only distance yourself so far.

It is quiet when you approach him. He is sitting in the field this time, the lake a distant glitter in your eyes. He does not face you, but his head isn’t bowed like before.

“Marcus,” you greet, your voice muted.

He raises his head, turning over his shoulder and nodding, as if to direct you to come closer, and so you do.

Tonight’s visit isn’t vulnerable, or even pleasant. Marcus seems so distant as he dryly tells you about how he’s preparing, and his wishes to return safely. His eyes barely meet your own as he talks, and he continuously twists the ring on his finger.

It grows tiring, watching him ramble about politics you could care less about, listening to him say things that have nothing to do with him. He’s so far from the friend you thought you had made. When the air between you goes quiet, you don’t fill it for a while. You listen to the sound of the wind in the grass as his eyes still will not meet yours. It’s breaking you apart.

This is the last night you’re able to visit him, unless you visit Morpheus again. You will not waste it like this.

“What is ailing you, General?” You ask, deciding to prod more than you usually do.

To your surprise, he scoffs in light laughter.

“You,” he responds quietly.

His words don’t hurt, at least not yet. You have the option to walk away now, wake yourself and leave him with his final blessings, but of course you don’t.

“Me?” You ask, “what have I done?”

Marcus rolls his shoulders back, lifting his head to look into the everblue sky above the both of you.

“You have made my life difficult, Goddess.”

Difficult? You have made his life difficult?

You have half a mind to tear him to pieces, curse him with something awful like snakes for toes, or spoons for teeth. After all that you’ve done for him, all the safety you’ve provided, he is telling you that you make things difficult? How dare he? Be outraged, Goddess, for he disrespects the holy luck which you bestowed to him.

That’s what you should think, that’s how most of you should feel.

But instead you feel small, and hurt. Yes, he is disrespecting all that you’ve given, but also you feel like a failure. Your physical existence is because of him, because he did not let you fade. All you wanted to do was make his life easier, help him to have an eased mind and a safer life.

But instead, he’s telling you you’re difficult.

It feels like your body is shrinking in the white peplos you’ve worn, the sheer fabrics swallowing you. Shame is flooding in the form of tears behind your eyes, wetting your orbs with an unexpected outburst of emotion.

“I am sorry,” you manage weakly.

Marcus does not look at you while you cry, and you want to believe it is because he cares too much to watch, but you cannot verify that.

The wind picks up again, but it does nothing to hide the soft cries you can’t hold back. Once you were a fading Goddess, now you are just a failing one.

There is no luck involved with love.

Eventually he speaks again, with his head turned away from you.

“I am sorry too,” he says. There’s a finality in his tone that makes you ache.

So much is said in such little words. He is sorry to you, for you, and with you. A sorrow is shared between the two of you, knowing that your hearts ache for one another as they are worlds apart yet on earth together.

This last berry was only supposed to mark the end of your visits, not the end of everything. It feels like this is all there is for the two of you, since it’s too complicated to continue on like this.

That’s why he doesn’t move away when you move closer and rest your head on his shoulder as tears leak down your cheeks, or at least that’s what you’ll believe.

—

Time moves weirdly when you’re immortal, but it all happens so quickly.

Marcus stopped coming to offer things for you, and so you were blessing him less. Admittedly you had kept an eye on him, but not a keen one. It didn’t feel right, not when you and him weren’t… friends anymore.

But this feels too soon, too fast, too unfamiliar. Has your sadness caused you to be blind?

You watch as a man kneels in front of Marcus, panting and bloody with a sword beside him on the ground.

The only reason you are here was because you had felt the roar of a crowd all the way at your own temple, a wide distance away. It had drawn you in, and instead you had found this.

That roaring which you had heard crescendos to a new height around you as you shimmer into existence, cloaking yourself to the mortal eyes in the stands of the coliseum, but existing enough to touch him.

Arrows stick out of his front, more crushed beneath his back, as he is slumped on the white, gravel, ground. His hair is curled with tacky blood streaking through it, and he is so, so, still.

You drag your hand across his forehead, feeling the remaining heat, and in the echo of the crowd you begin to sob.

Everything around you is moving, changing, fighting, and screaming, but you sit invisible in the center of the coliseum, running your hands over the now dead General Acacius. There is nothing you can do to bring him back, to ease Lucilla, to save him and apologize. He is dead beneath your fingers, with arrows lodged deep in his irreparable, mortal, flesh.

You were supposed to keep him safe.

Hot tears run down your cheeks as you keep grasping at his armor, unable to move him or yourself. The last visit felt official, but this feels final. There is nothing more for you here, no friendship in a corpse.

Thoughts are running through your mind at the rate that your breath is puffing from your chest. The question of where he will end up in the afterlife is overwhelming you, and the chance for him to go to Elysium feels reasonable. It’s where he should be, where he deserves to go, especially after all he had done for Rome. You don’t even care why he’s here, or why he seems to have been brutally killed, but after the time you spent with him, Elysium seems right for him.

—

It’s where he should be. Elysium is where he should be.

And it’s where you find him.

His place there is somewhat similar to his and Lucilla’s home back in the mortal world, with lush greenery and airy drapes that flutter in various colours. It seems like he has left space for Lucilla here too, with space left in the chests for her things, and a permanently made half of the bed.

Elysium offers a true celebration of life for heroes, demigodly or not, and you’re sure Marcus has been enjoying that. Anything that he had been shackled to in his mortal life was gone now, and it seems that all he would have to miss is his wife.

Most of your time is spent there, in his afterlife home. You peer from behind curtains when he comes back, hidden in drapes and keeping yourself small.

He is already dead, but after the last time you abandoned him, you cannot bear to leave him alone again.

The vision of him, bloodied and murdered on the coliseum floor, flickers into your mind every time you see him lying in his bed. It’s an obsession to be near him, to be looking after him. Pluto might not even know you’re down here anymore, but what does it matter?

Marcus Acacius was the last living mortal to worship you. In the underworld, you are beginning to fade. Your fingers are slipping from you again, which is making it easier to lurk near him, but it is a painful process.

You want to speak to him. No longer do you yearn for his love, not after being in his home and seeing how dedicated his heart truly is to Lucilla, but you yearn to speak to him again. A panicked emotion runs through you at the thought of fading alone, of being entirely forgotten.

It didn’t matter before he died, fading was just something bound to happen, but now it’s more. Is he forgetting you?

—

You’ve lost most of your arms by the time you work up the courage to speak up. Lucilla arrived sometime ago, joining Marcus in the afterlife. Watching them together brought some warmth to you, some kind of happiness that you couldn’t have for yourself, but seeing it for him was enough.

You sit on the terrace of their home, invisible to their eyes, and somewhat to your own. From the tips of your fingers to just below your elbows, you are a specter. Grey shadow fills where your limbs used to be, and they pass through all objects. You couldn’t tap his shoulder if you tried.

Oftentimes you sit, hidden, and ponder by yourself about more than Marcus. There were so many things you were adamant about when he was alive, and you regret it all now. Your determination to avoid your feelings, or at least not show them, and your need to not become attached… it bites at you now, a stinging, grieving, venom, that won’t leave. Your status as a Goddess blinded you to how tender that friendship could have been, and now you sit as a ghost spectator to his afterlife, obsessed with a mortal as a fading immortal.

The tips of your fingers pass through the glass you try to grab as you think of this on the terrace. You’re glad that you’re such a minor deity, so at least you do not have to feel so humiliated about fading. A smile has just graced your face as you feel blessed for being so unimportant you can essentially stalk this mortal, when suddenly his voice cuts through the humid air of the space.

“Felicitas?” Marcus’ voice asks.

It’s so hesitant that you think you’re imagining it. You thought you had their home to yourself right now, thinking they had gone to do… whatever souls do in Elysium, but when you turn your face, he is there.

Marcus has not worn fancy clothing in a long while now, and right now is no different. He stands before you in a plain looking tunic, which just graces his knees. To see him at ease has been so nice, but he looks distressed at your sudden appearance.

You cannot find your voice as you awkwardly stand up, trying to think quickly. There is no good way to explain what you’re doing here, hidden away in him and his wife’s home. You could just vanish into thin air, but that feels wrong. He has seen you already, any attempts at pretending you aren’t here would be ridiculous.

His eyes scroll from your face down to your arms, and the smoking shadows that used to be there. Concern pinches onto his face with knitted brows and pressed together lips.

Something in you wants him to turn away, so you don’t have to think about why he is worried for you, even after all the trouble you caused, but he doesn’t.

His sandaled steps are heavy as he comes to you, reaching for your hands but finding the gesture fruitless as his own slip right through yours.

“Dulcissima,” he speaks weakly, shock woven in his words.

You had told him about fading a little while ago, when the two of you were in that field. Now it seems the severity of it has hit him.

What is hitting you is the name. Dulcissima, or sweetest. How long had it been since you had been referred to so fondly? All at once you are being remembered, recognized, and shown some affection. It feels like too much and tears are falling out of your control.

“I’m sorry,” you manage, “I was supposed to– to keep you safe.”

Marcus is shaking his head already, refusing your apology.

“No, no. You did keep me safe, you did. I pushed you away, I couldn’t control myself and I caused this,” he argues.

It does not comfort you that you both blame yourselves. You wish to reach out to him and touch his face like you should have when he was warm and alive. You want to know if he is cold now, and it’s as if he hears you.

Marcus places a hand on your cheek, a softness in his eyes and hold that says that he missed you.

“I saw you,” he claims, “when I was on the ground. You were the last thing I saw.”

Somewhere between life and death for mortals, there are moments of godly clarity. Some see the light, others see their families and memories, but in that tiny glimpse of time, some see Gods.

He was able to see you as you knelt over him, sobbing as you were cloaked to any mortal's naked eye. You were the last thing he saw, and the last thing he truly regretted.

All you can do is stiltedly nod at him, feeling like you were in trouble even though it seems he’s not upset.

For a moment, his eyes flick away, contemplative, but then he meets your gaze again.

“I told Lucilla of you, before I died. Not– not of my feelings which I struggled with, but that you were a close friend, a blessing in many ways.”

A blessing in many ways.

Another choked sob is wracked from your chest, your bottom lip curling out embarrassingly as your face contorts. He almost coos at you, the thumb on your cheek rubbing away your tears.

“Goddess, I have missed you,” he admits.

Stupid nods are all you can offer, your voice imprisoned in your ever tightening throat which cries. When he was alive he was never this tender, too confused and insecure to ever touch you, but it seems he has been regretting things too.

“Felicitas,” he says quietly, “do you come here for ill reason?”

You shake your head this time, rather than nodding. You have no reason to be here, other than the fact that guilt has taken over your mind and heart since he died.

“Then relax, dulcissima. I have an offering for you.”

Marcus relaxes his stature, eyes still gazing over you. He looks at your fading palms and you watch him swallow nervously.

“I will worship you again, lending you offerings here, and all I ask in return is for our friendship again.”

It’s the opposite of how you met, almost completely, but it’s everything you need. You will not fade, he will not struggle in marriage, and you will have one another again.

Again, you are nodding stupidly, but soon you’re embraced by him and nodding into his chest. His hands grasp at your back as he tells you how much he missed you in his final weeks, how he regrets losing you entirely, how he requires you as a friend.

You are satiated in his arms as he comforts you, awakening you again there on the terrace. Unbeknownst to you, Marcus has let tears slip down too as he holds you close.

“You will keep me safe here?” he asks jokingly.

It makes you smile, the idea of offering luck to a man who already died.

“Yes, General. I will keep you safe here, from all the horrifying glory and splendor,” you assure.

The two of you laugh, breaking the embrace but staying close. A passionate connection is still between the two of you, but in a different way now. Maybe when he was alive it was romantic because it is all you could think of, but through his death the two of you have come to understand it more.

You require one another in a unique way, and leaning on one another does not have to be intimate the way he is with his wife. Marcus does need you, just as you need him, and now that you are both immortal in a way, you will never be separated again.

please leave a comment, like, reblog, askbox, or ANYTHING. i'd love to hear thoughts on this <33

tags (people who seemed excited for this) (sorry if these dont work)

@pascalssbabyy , @moonshapedflan , @gossipgirl-03 , @kyloispunk , @frannyzooey , @coocoolahh , @bug-boy32 , @honeymarvel , @magicalmorg , @1deakybass , @tuquoquebrute , @harryshousewhore , @teeagain, @chewie-bars , @vampyyweek , @queenslandlover-93 , @amijenn , @aquanatalie

#pedro pascal #gladiator ii #gladiator 2 #gladiator ii spoilers #gladiator 2 spoilers #marcus acacius x reader #marcus acacius x you #marcus acacius #general acacius #general acacius x reader #lucilla x marcus #i just realized idk lucillas last name oops #pedroverse #ellie writes

351 notes · View notes

humanpurposes · 6 months ago

Text

Can I Be Yours? - Nightblooms II

Aemond returns to the pleasure house after the battle of Rook's Rest // Main Masterlist

Aemond x unnamed female character

Warnings: 18+, smut, dub-con, angst, sex work, unresolved childhood trauma, implied underage and non-con (not explicitly depicted), mentions of war, violence and death, ambiguous ending

Words: 3k

Each day she arrives at the market shortly after sunrise. She has the coin to pay for the usual cheap cuts of meat, for fats and vegetables to make into something edible, but there is nothing to buy; most of the vendors have sold the last of their wares. Summer is at an end, there are less crops coming from the Reach and the sea is still cut off with no end in sight to the blockade.

King’s Landing has never been a place where she feels at ease but as the season shifts and the war goes on, families are starving and people are getting desperate, fighting over what they can get their hands on. They’ve all been reduced to dogs, clawing at each other over scraps while carts of livestock and fresh produce trundle through the streets towards the Red Keep, guarded by men in Hightower green.

She manages to buy some crabs and vegetables she’ll have to cut the mould from. They have a store of grain in the kitchens to make flatbread, though they have to use less and less each day, anticipating when they’ll be able to find more.

She eats less of her share so the younger girls won’t have to go hungry. Besides, she hasn’t had much of an appetite for days.

She had spent hours trying to rinse herself clean of the King and his companions after they’d had their way with her– after Aemond had left her to their mercy. That night she scrubbed at her skin with salt, then a cloth, then a bristled brush. That feeling was still there, like sweat sticking to her skin, like her body was not her own. She heard their voices and their cold laughter with the rush of water past her ears. She scrubbed harder and harder until she tinted the water pink with her blood.

One morning, one of the girls returns to the pleasure house, unsuccessful in finding a cure for her babe’s fever, but startled by something else.

The Hightower army has returned from a battle, dragging the head of a dragon on a cart through the city.

“It’s monstrous,” the girl says, trying to measure the scale of the head with her arms. “It had black blood, and gods, the smell, like charred meat!”

Sylvi hovers over her shoulder. “Slain by your favourite, I wonder?”

Favourite? Clearly she was not so favoured by Prince Aemond.

Men are led by their desires. That’s why, even as the city is starving, they find the money to come here and seek their pleasure. They are fickle, easily satiated and have no loyalties but to themselves, to their own preservation.

Sylvi huffs when she does not react to her teasing. “Seven above, do try to look less miserable, girl.”

She’s been trying for days, but she can’t force a pleasant demeanour when she feels so hollow.

The returning soldiers come to the Street of Silk that night, newly paid and come to bask in their victory. Her gown is a deep shade of blue and Sylvi has given her some of her jewellery, sapphire earrings and a heavy gold necklace that feels like a collar, to cover the bruises on her neck left by the King.

She catches the eye of a soldier in the main chamber. He takes her by the waist and drags her onto his thigh.

He moves clumsily, trying to drag her core against his leg or the bulge in his breeches, she cannot tell and she does not care.

Look less miserable, it’s only a motion of the body.

Look less miserable, men want a woman who is warm, who smiles.

Look less miserable, but has he noticed her fallen face and the empty look in her eyes? Likely not.

Her body feels numb again.

“Look at me,” the man demands.

She turns her head towards him but her eyes are down, elsewhere completely. She pictures candlelight, a veil around the edges of a bed so the bodies around her are like shadows. She feels a weight on her chest and stomach, limbs intertwined with hers, long, loose hair spilling over her bare skin. A voice is just out of reach.

Look at me, look at me, look at me–

“My Prince!”

Her senses come back to her as quickly as a match takes to flame. Her head darts to where the soldier is looking, to the man standing before them, dark leathers, silver hair, an eyepatch over his face and a sword hanging from his hip.

Aemond tilts his head, his one eye intent on her.

“Apologies, Prince Regent,” the soldier says, and shoves her off his lap so he can stand.

She stumbles but holds her ground. Her eyes are on the floor but imagining his face frowning in displeasure, the sight of his scar, the lines of his muscles under his skin. She cannot bear to truly look upon him, but he’s watching her.

Why come now? Why her, when she has already proved worthless to him?

“Come,” Aemond says without reaching for her, without waiting for her to match his gaze. She follows, if only to escape the wanton soldier.

Aemond takes her to the same chamber, standing at the foot of the same bed where they used to lay together.

She stands before him with her eyes lowered.

He towers over her and lifts her chin to match his gaze with a gloved hand. The leather against her skin is unnatural, cold, disturbing her very being like ripples through a peaceful surface of water. The sight of him only brings her pain, as does the separation from him. Fear and admiration twist together and writhe in her gut.

He reaches to remove the necklace first, letting it fall to the floor. “An ugly thing,” he mutters, “do not wear this again, I find it distracting.” It bares her bruises. He traces his gloved fingers over the flushes of red and purple in her skin.

Next he undoes her dress, another gown designed to fall away from one clasp. She does not remove the rest to bare herself, so he tugs the gown away himself, pulling her forward by her wrists to make her step away from where it pools on the floor.

Without any further preamble he surges into her, cupping her jaw with his hands and kissing her passionately. He demands reception with his lips, tongue and teeth, but she will not give it to him. She remains as steadfast as she can.

He pauses, kissing her again, then again.

“What’s the matter?” His voice is subtle and as soft as the edge of a knife. Gently, he takes a hold of her neck. It is tender, but not quite a comfort. Her pulse beats furiously against his fingers. “You are angry with me, is that it?”

Has he thought of her these last few days? Does he blame himself for the bruises on her neck?

She says nothing.

“I’ll not fuck an unwilling whore.”

“No,” it falls from her lips like a breath.

Aemond tuts and tilts his head. “No?”

She parts her lips but she cannot speak.

His one-eyed stare darkens. He will take her silence for defiance, and that is not what he pays for.

If all he seeks is carnal desire she will grant him this. She tears away the layers of him, his gloves, the buckles on his jerkin, her fingers fumbling in her determination.

Aemond grunts as she pushes the sleeves from his shoulders, the leather landing with a heavy thud on the floor. His face is perplexed but he does not resist.

She tugs at the strings of his undershirt and pulls it over his head. When his chest is bare she puts her hands on his shoulders and pulls herself in, crashing her lips into his. Everything becomes a single feeling, a fire in her chest, hurt and rage and— she’s not naive enough to call it love, but it’s an urge that spurns her to be close to him. Their teeth clash. She loses her focus and her lips graze over his cheek. She finds him again, drawing her tongue against his, dragging her teeth over his lip–

“Fuck!” Aemond hisses, snatching himself away from her. He dabs his fingertips to his lip, checking for blood that isn’t there.

His eye is wide but gleaming, excited at the challenge.

Her heart leaps when Aemond grasps her jaw. He drags her chin up, fingertips pressing into the bone. “I find your insolence tiresome,” he snarls.

The edge of his nose brushes against hers. She feels his breath, how his chest rises and falls against her body, how his heart beats as frantically as hers.

She shakes her head. “I am yours, my Prince.”

He lays her on the bed, pushing her thighs apart and holding them down as he kneels.

He sighs at the sight of her.

Each drag of his tongue is divine, circling and pressing at the places he has come to know will please her the most. She tries to chase the friction with her hips but he holds her firmly in place.

She reaches for his hair, slipping the eyepatch from his face so she can see all of him. He looks up at her as she does, his lips glistening with her arousal while his sapphire consumes the golden light of the candles.

Between the movements of his mouth he mutters to himself, words she has heard before but does not know the meaning to. His voice is heavy and breathless and she adores it.

Her peak comes suddenly, a wave of warmth and weightlessness that lingers after Aemond has drawn his mouth away from her.

He’s just out of her reach, standing over the bed and slowly pulling on the strings of his breeches.

She brings herself to sit, only to be thrown down again and roughly turned onto her front.

“Aemond?”

His hands pull her up by her hips. His thumb glides in circles over her entrance and she stutters into compliance. There’s a ruffle of fabric before he replaces his digit with the head of his cock. He teases her as he rocks back and forth. The pleasure is sparse, a delicious kind of torture. She grips at the linens and sinks her teeth into her lip.

On one motion of his hips, Aemond slips inside of her. She sighs at the stretch of it. He stills for a moment to let her adjust, pushing himself to the hilt and slowly drawing back. She feels how his fingertips dig into her flesh, marks that will stay for days. She can picture the look in his eye, his resolve melting away.

She props herself up on her hands, turning over her shoulder. He meets her, pressing his nose against her cheek, teasing his lips over her skin.

“Do you still find me insolent?” she whispers.

Aemond hums.

He draws back, only to snap his hips harshly into her rear. It knocks the breath from her lungs and he holds his arm around her to hold her close to him, his palm pressing into her stomach as he fucks her roughly and without reprieve.

This is the Prince she has only ever seen glimpses of. She’s heard the workings of his mind and his regrets, but she’s never seen him unleash himself, a dragonrider, a warrior, now a demanding lover.

Each kiss of his cock at her sweet spot aches and drives her towards bliss. She grasps at his hand, leaning her head into his. His sweat drips onto her brow. His moans fall upon the shell of her ear.

She feels another peak edging closer when Aemond pushes her torso down against the bed. He keeps his hands on her shoulders. Her own moans are muffled against the mattress and she cannot move. She can only take what she is given, fast fucking and brutal precision.

He comes with a unrestrained groan, spilling himself deep within her cunt. His weight falls against her back and he nestles his face into her neck, whispering some appraisal in an ancient language, gently fucking his seed deeper.

She whines as she catches her breath, letting herself settle with him on top of her. They stay like this for a time. Before he finally moves, Aemond presses a delicate kiss to her brow.

They lay amongst linen and silk, his head on her chest, his arms wrapped around her ribs, moving with her as she breathes.

He tells her of Rook’s Rest, of his plan to attack during the daylight and bait their enemy into sending a dragon, then he would lead Vhagar into an ambush. He had not expected Aegon to join the battle, and when the smoke cleared, only Aemond and Vhagar remained unscathed.

“Perhaps I should have been more forgiving, but he got in my way.”

What did you do? She wonders, but cannot bring herself to give a voice to her question.

That soldier had named Aemond as Regent. Not the title he wants, but it is a brutal reminder that only one life stands between him and the throne he pursues.

“And even when he is… incapacitated, my victory is named as his. It was meant to be mine.”

The dragon head was his doing after all.

Tears run freely down her cheeks, not that he will see.

He takes a breath and waits. She’s done this enough times by now to know he’s waiting for her to say something. He needs her to say something.

What loyalty has your brother ever shown you? He knows you were better suited to war, at least now he will not overestimate himself.

She does not wish to think of Aegon.

“You left me,” she utters.

Aemond tilts his head towards her. She meets his eye. When he sees the tears on her face his own expression softens.

“You left me to entertain those men. You didn’t even look back.”

Aemond swallows thickly, making a soft clicking sound with his tongue. “I had to.”

“Had to?”

“You would not understand.”

“I understand perfectly. You are a Prince. To you, I am nothing but a body to be used.”

“I’ve never said that.”

“You do not need to say it. It is the nature of the world we live in.”

He shifts himself to lay beside her, face-to-face. His thumb strokes over her cheek and at the corner of her mouth. “I’ve only ever admired you,” he says. “You came to me when I felt alone.”

Back when they were children, when she was innocent enough to think the gods favoured those who were kind, merciful, good.

“You looked lost. I was the same the first time…” the first time Sylvi brought her into a room with a strange man. When she sees girls of the same age, she wants to take them into her arms and shield them from strangers, from the people who promise to care for them and do not. “I knew how it felt to be used and then discarded, like none of it mattered. But it did. It mattered to me.”

Aemond’s eye shimmers like glass.

“I needed you, do you understand that? I needed your protection,” she says.

He blinks and a tear falls from his eye.

“You taunt me with this,” she says, wiping it away with her thumb.

He holds her hand against his jaw. “I’m not trying to taunt you,” he pleads. “You are the only one, the only one I can speak my mind to.”

She has seen his pride, his remorse, his shame, but she has never seen fear in Aemond. She does now. He clasps onto her hand like she’ll fade away.

“I try. I know my place in my family. I know what they need of me. I try, but I am not always strong enough.”

Jaehaerys, the little Prince who lost his head. He has a sister and a mother grieving his loss, what of them?

What of Aegon?

“I’ll protect you,” he says, kissing the heel of her palm, the inside of her wrist.

How will he do that? Before morning he will leave a purse of gold in her hand and return to his Keep. While he plots his war and demands taxes and tithes from the people of the Crownlands, she will endure in a city that is slowly starving to death.

And when the war of dragons comes to the skies over King’s Landing? Will he pick her out from the masses atop Vhagar? Will he find a way to spare her from the fire and the bloodshed?

It does not bear thinking about. She holds him and tries to forget anything other than this feeling, his weight and warmth, his hair between her fingertips, the points in his bones, his legs intertwined with hers. Everything about him that is cold and cruel. Everything about him that is quietly beautiful.

I've kinda given up on taglists <3

#my fics #aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen fanfiction #aemond targaryen fanfic #aemond targaryen oneshot #aemond targaryen smut #hotd fanfic #hotd fanfiction #house of the dragon fanfiction #house of the dragon fanfic #aemond x reader #aemond x you #aemond x y/n #aemond x oc #aemond x ofc

392 notes · View notes

eratosmusings · 10 months ago

Text

Stolen Destiny (II)

Feyd Rautha x fem!reader

summary: the na-baron takes an interest in you

warnings: adults only, all characters are over 18, smut in future chapters, misogyny, dark themes, canon typical violence

word count: 1.8k

previous chapter / dividers / masterlist

“...humiliating…disgusting…barbaric…”

You flinch as your father’s anger roars. Nothing you do will ever please him.

“What do you think will be said of me? Of how I raised you?”

“You didn’t,” you want to say. Instead you apologize. Harkonnens are animals you rationalize. They were testing to see if you were prey and you had to show them you aren’t.

“And in doing so you’ve tainted yourself.”

It’s like a slap. The cut on your hand still stings from the solution they’d scrubbed on it. It had only been a handshake. It was a show of strength. He’d understand that sentiment if there was a cock swinging between your legs. He doesn’t stay to say more, leaving you to nurse the wounds alone.

A feast is held that night. A welcome to your guests. You're squeezed into a new outfit, one you've been told your father deems more appropriate than the one you’d had chosen. It’s the first time he’s ever taken the initiative to dress you. It gives you no pleasure to recognize the dress as one of his courtesan’s.

“Your dress is lovely,” says the Princess Irulan when she sees you again after the food had been taken away and the party mills about in the Hall. She takes your arm and strolls with you between the bodies. The familiarity between you is striking. She speaks of her sisters, the planet she calls home. You tell her of your studies. It seems you share a fondness for the same authors.

It’s odd to feel her warm smile. There were few women in your life. Maids mostly, though they rotated frequently. A few of the castle’s regular entertainers when allowed. You don’t count the courtesans who keep your father company.

“Princess,” Paul greets her with a bow, intruding on your talks of taking an excursion around the palace grounds. Those green eyes turn on you and sweep across your form. “My lady, you look stunning.” He takes your hand again and bends to kiss it while you try not to flinch. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

“Not at all,” Irulan says with more kindness than deserved. “We were just making plans to visit the lake the day after tomorrow.”

The way his face lights up has your excitement plummeting. He’s eager to join. You stay as long as you can stand his conversation. It’s not long. You excuse yourself, claiming the need to check on the rest of your guests, and extract your arm from the princess’. You accept a kiss on your cheek from her before disappearing into the crowd.

You have no desire to mingle more. Whatever consequences you’ll face when your father finds out about you slipping out don’t worry you. His anger would have found something to punish you for anyways. Cool air greets you as you step into the gardens. It’s not your favorite place, but the training yard is too far in this getup.

“It’s rude to leave your own party.”

Hair raises on your arms, but you don’t turn to the voice. “You have my apologies for my rudeness then.”

“And it is unwise to keep your back to an armed man.”

“What fun is life without a little risk, na-Baron?”

He chuckles at that. There’s quiet footsteps as he paces behind you like a panther appraising a potential meal. You keep your eyes forward. “You and the princess seem to have bonded quite quickly.” He’s been watching you.

“She is easy to be fond of.”

Shadow swallows you as he steps behind you. Breath ruffling your hair he asks, “But Paul Atriedes is not?” He’s been watching you closely. A fingernail scraps down your bare arm. “Do you resent him for what he’s stolen from you?”

You spin.

The black void that is his smile is wide on his face. Humiliation sears your throat. How many people know of your father’s deepest shame? Feyd-Rautha seems to revel in that silent moment. Your pain brings him pleasure.

“I must return to my guests,” you say and step around him. His hand shoots out to grab your arm, but you're prepared. You evade, pull your arms taut to your chest, and dart down the hall as his laugh taunts. The respect you built with the Harkonnens was nothing more than delusion. It doesn’t matter what teeth you bare or claws you present, any show of weakness will be exploited.

You round a corner and nearly crash into a guard. The same one from earlier. He questions if you’re hurt, eyes darting the corridor behind you. He seems to find nothing. You agree with his warnings now. It’s best you don’t wander alone.

You wake unrested. Images of blackened teeth, slicing blades, and hoarse laughter haunt you into the morning hours. You’ve made the decision to retain a personal guard. The choice in who is easy.

You spend the day reviewing everything for your coming of age in a couple of days. Your father is supposed to do it, but he’s nowhere to be found. It’s tedious but the hours of distraction are welcome. And it gives you reason to decline Paul’s lunch invitation. It’s only when the sun is past its peak that you’re forced to hand over the remaining duties to your grumbling father. The swordmaster demands your time to refine a performance you still can’t rationalize. Who is it for?

Your father? A man who despises any display of femininity from you? The princess? In some attempt at an apology for a marriage that can now no longer be? Or House Atreides? The ones who’d stolen your destiny before you’d been a seed in your mother’s womb? This artistry certainly isn’t for the brutes of House Harkonnen.

The music halts half way through the fourth run. “Your timing is wrong,” the swordmaster says and has you begin again.

By time he’s satisfied, your legs burn and your patience is worn thin. You can only glower at your guard, Fandral you’ve learned is his name, as he compliments the dance. “I like the story it tells,” he defends.

“There’s not a story.” You massage the shoulder of your sword arm. The ache isn’t unwelcome, but the cause is frustrating. The time would have been better spent actually training.

“All art tells a story,” he says.

You scoff. “And what’s the story? I go crazy and start fighting air?”

“You can see it that way, but I think there’s more nuance.” He eyes the girls as you hand off the swords as if expecting one of them to run you through. “It’s the story of a girl turning into a woman.”

A laugh erupts from you. It’s a fitting story for your coming of age, at least. He tries to explain his reasoning. The symbolism of the first sword as the first menstruation, the second as the final years of youthful rebellion, and the end is the acceptance of the new role as a woman. You don’t quite believe it.

There’s no dreams of black teeth or the bite of blades that night. This nightmare is of your mother. Her face unmoving. Silent as you scream. She never moves, but she’s forever out of reach. Then she’s gone and you’re left gasping in the dark alone.

“This is beautiful,” Paul says in awe as he stares out over the lake.

It’s difficult to not let every word out of his mouth annoy you. You remind yourself he didn’t steal anything from you. His mother did. “You should see it at sunrise.”

He tears his gaze off the water. “I’d like that.” He says it so earnestly you feel you’re missing something.

“As would I,” Irulan says. You turn your head to look at her on your otherside, but her eyes remain focused on the scenery.

“And I,” the Harkonnen rasps in your ear.

His addition to the excursion had been as unexpected as it was unwanted. He didn’t seem the type to enjoy a day by the water. Even now, he’s at odds with the world around him. His stark white skin and ghastly black clothes unsettling out amongst the colors. You doubt he truly wants to see the beauty of first light.

“Another day,” you say. It’s not a promise.

You only plan to stay for an hour at most, enjoying a light lunch under your favorite tree, but Paul asks about going out on the lake. There’s only a small canoe available on such short notice, but it’s enough. Irulan has no desire to get on the water and says she’d prefer to ask Feyd-Rautha about the Spice harvesting on Arrakis. You aren’t keen on leaving her with him, but she insists and there’s guards to keep her safe.

Paul tries to play the gentleman and offers you his hand once he’s in the canoe, but he’s unsteady and nearly tips it over. You return his apologetic smile as you hear hoarse, barking laughter from the tree.

He’s inquisitive as you row out of sight. About your studies, arts you partake in, foods you enjoy. He even asks about your favorite color. You try to respond in kind, but he doesn’t leave you much time to catch your breath between answers let alone ask your own questions. It’s frustrating but you smile and bear it.

“What’s that?”

Blinking at him confused, you follow his gaze. A few meters from the shoreline was a small marble pavilion. It’s overgrown with vines, graying from the accumulation of dirt and grime. You’ve forgotten it was here. It feels like there’s cotton in your mouth when you speak. “Just an old pavilion.”

You let him take the canoe further for a while longer, before turning it back. You don’t look at the pavilion when you pass it again. It’s a relief to come back into view of the others. The canoe floats to stop beside the small dock. Fandral is there waiting, his arm extended. But Paul stands too quickly and the canoe sways. Your hand brushes Fandral’s outstretched one for a moment, but you tilt the other way and spill into the frigid water.

It's not deep. Once you have bearings you’re able to stand and your head breaks through the surface. You take in a deep, shuddering breath. There’s a commotion beside you. Paul’s head pops out and sprays more water in your face.

Someone’s speaking, but there's a river flowing in your ears that makes it impossible to understand. It's a difficult walk to the dock. Your dress is heavy and the water slows your steps. An arm reaches out to you and you take it to help pull yourself up.

Feyd-Rautha stares down at you. Not with a smile. There’s no amusement on his face. There's something new in his eyes you don’t recognize. It takes Fandral’s interference to release you from the intensity of his gaze. The guard shrugs off the jacket of his uniform and drapes it around your shoulders.

Irulan frets despite your multiple assurances you’re fine. It wasn’t deep. There was no danger. You’re wet, that’s all. Paul apologizes over and over and over again. “It was an accident,” you say in hopes of appeasing his guilt. You want Paul Atreides to leave you alone.

your thoughts are appreciated!

join my taglist 💕

next chapter

#feyd rautha x reader #feyd x reader #feyd rautha harkonnen #feyd rautha smut #dune part two #stolen destiny

734 notes · View notes

wynnyfryd · 1 year ago

Text

Trailer Park Steve AU part 7

part 1 | part 6 | chapter 1 on ao3

cw: panic attack, ptsd flashback to minor character death, graphic depictions of… food? lol

Dinner is exactly as chaotic as Steve expected it to be. He and Claudia take opposite end seats with a glass of red wine each, and the kids take the middle and start acting like a pack of caffeinated raccoons: talking over each other, scraping forks against plates, stretching their entire upper bodies across the table and dragging their sleeves through the side dishes instead of just asking someone to pass them the butter; Steve’s starting to wonder if any of these kids have ever eaten at a table before, or if they maybe just wandered in from the surrounding woods. Feral asses.

When they do start asking for things, he regrets wishing they would, because Lucas goes “Erica, can you pass me the salt?” and Erica sneers “I don’t know, can I?” and Mike jabs “Whatever; nobody says ‘may’ anymore, you dork” and Claudia gasps “Michael!” and it all escalates from there until Dustin tries to catapult lasagna off the end of his fork and hits Steve in the side of the head with a glob of warm cheese.

Silence falls around the room.

The cheese plops onto his plate.

“Sh-ii-it,” Dustin breathes, face stuck in wide-eyed shock.

Steve gives Claudia an imploring look.

“Why don’t we clear the table for dessert?”

The commotion starts up again in double time, everyone scrambling to clean up and clear the room before Steve starts bitching about them messing up his hair (and his plate, and his clothes, because the cheese splash sent a spray of little tomato sauce droplets splattering all over him, and isn’t that just perfect; he’s gonna have to hand-scrub the stain out of his khakis), so it’s just him and Dustin left when Dustin’s elbow catches and tips over his wine.

The liquid spills onto his plate: dark, and red, oozing into the uneaten scraps of sauce and cheese and pasta to form a viscous, fleshy sludge. Red like his dad’s office, like his father’s mangled thigh, and it’s just food it’s just food it’s not blood it’s not blood but he can’t fucking breathe, can’t hearing anything beyond the wet, gasping sounds his dad made the night he died, and then he realizes that he’s making them, mouth moving fruitlessly around air that won’t pass, trapped in the bottleneck of his choked-off windpipe.

“Steve?” Dustin asks, and his voice sounds far away. “Shit, shit, Steve! Can you hear me? Are you choking? I know the Heimlich, just- just hold on!”

He snaps out of it when Dustin pulls him halfway from his chair, gets his fists under his ribs and all but punches the air from his lungs. It sets off a nasty coughing fit that leaves Steve snotty and ready to hurl, and he braces himself with his forearms on his knees and stares hard at the ground until the hacking finally stops.

There’s a scuff on his sneakers.

He can’t replace them any time soon.

A moment to catch his breath, and Dustin’s shaking him by the shoulders. “Are you okay??”

Steve keeps his head bowed. “Yeah.” He needs to get the fuck out of here. “Yeah, I’m good.”

He rises from his chair, grateful that everyone else already cleared out before they could witness his little moment, that the blare of the TV from the family room covered the sound of his retching coughs; more grateful still that they won’t notice him now, scampering out of here with his tail between his legs. “Hey listen, man, I’m not feeling so well,” he says absently, fishing his keys from the pocket of his jeans. “Can you get your mom to drive everyone home?”

“Shouldn’t you stay?” Dustin frowns in concern. “If you’re sick? You can go lie down in my room or something, it’s—”

“—Nah, man; I mean, thanks, but…” His hand trembles around his keys, the muscles in his calves screaming bolt, bolt, bolt. “I just- I gotta go.”

He makes a break for it, rushing out the side door so no one else will see him leave (and he knows it’s fucking rude to head out without saying goodbye, but he’s also pretty convinced he’s going to combust if he doesn’t go right now.) “Tell your mom I said thanks, okay?”

“Tell her yourself!” Dustin chases after him, clumsy and slow across the darkened yard. “Dude, will you slow down? Talk to me!”

Steve throws himself into his car like there’s a demodog on his heels. “I’ll call you!”

“What the fuck!” Dustin shouts, but Steve’s already gone.

—

part 8

tagging a few people i know have been following along 🩷 @slowandsteddie @paintsplatteredandimperfect @stevesbipanic @pennyplainknits @ledleaf @hellion-child @formosusiniquis @missjashin @runninriot @xpaperheartso @steddieas-shegoes

#trailer park steve au #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie #stranger things #steddie fic #steve harrington fic #dustin henderson #claudia henderson #lucas sinclair #erica sinclair #mike wheeler #tw: panic attack #tw: ptsd

1K notes · View notes

tkwrites · 2 months ago

Note

Okay I'm done now and heading to bed, one last question.

Can you name a favourite fic for each of the boys?

Hi my Lovely,

There are quite a few of your asks I haven't answered, but please know I'm not ignoring them. They'll just take a little more time to respond to.

I can tell you my favorite fics, though:

Matthew Tkachuk - Back To You because it's such a complete story. I love the way he and Jessie meet, lose each other, and then are thrown together by fate again. I also feel like I really captured that sassy side of Matthew's personality in this fic, which I was really worried about at the time I was writing it. This is also the story that I think would be easiest to flesh out into a full length novel.

Nico Hischier - I love all the parts of his story for different reasons, but I think It Doesn't Matter Part II is my favorite. I had actually written the whole sequence of nude sketches for another character, but ended up scrapping the whole story because I couldn't find any real conflict for them to resolve. When I realized I could use it for Nico and Lena if she was an artist, I was thrilled and got to work rewriting it for them. In the end, the only things that stayed the same were 5 of the 6 poses. Getting into and out of them changed, as did the characters relating to each other during them. I love all the longing and awkward tension between them in this piece, as well as how they finally end up confessing their love for each other. Finally, the culmination of all of their longing into the final sex scene? Chefs kiss.

Quinn Hughes - This one is so hard. I've written so much about Quinn and Sarah and I love all of the pieces for one reason or another. If I had to pick three favorites, they would be:

1). Five Days of Joy because I'm so proud of this fic. It took SO long to write, but I love the way it turned out. I love that we go through so many consecutive days and such a gamut of emotions with Sarah and Quinn.

2). The Second Time is Better because I love the portrayal of a more real first time. One of the things that drives me batty about romance novels is how the characters get together and always seem to have this instantly amazing sexual connection. No room for human failing or first time jitters. In reality, it takes time to build sexual chemistry and connection, and I went into this piece wanting to show at least some of that.

and 3). Second Nature because I think it has the prettiest prose. I still think this passage is some of the best writing I've ever done:

This was ultimate flirting in Quinn’s book. Something he knew he could do. When someone wanted to talk about music, or art or classic cars, he was a fish out of water. But talking hockey? He could do that all day long. Convincing someone to like the sport he loved so much? There wasn't a more ideal situation.

“Oh, good,” she said, leaning forward to kiss him.

This was a perfect evening. Casual and comfortable. Cooking for someone he - liked, and kissing her whenever he wanted, taking no worry of who might be watching.

Letting himself get swept up in the kiss, he slid his hands over her hips and tried to commit her scent to memory. No matter what happened - though he was pretty sure nothing bad was ever going to happen with Sarah - he wanted to remember this. She smelled like a dream he’d had as a boy. Like vanilla and warm skin and fireside, summer nights. It was an outlandish notion, but he couldn’t shake it.

All her life, Sarah had read stories about star-crossed, fated lovers thrown together by chance and circumstance and serendipity. But those were all just stories. Even when her grandpa talked about meeting her grandma - like they were always meant to be together, and just had to find each other to make it happen - it seemed like folklore. A tall tale he spun to make their love story seem more epic.

After writing all this out, I realized perhaps you meant favorite writing from other authors. Let me know if that's something you'd like me to answer.

#tkanswers 📮#writing #favorites #quinn & sarah snapshots #quinn hughes #quinn hughes fanfiction #quinn hughes smut #nico & lena #nico hischier #nico hischier fanfiction #nico hischier smut #matthew tkachuk #matthew tkachuk fanfiction #matthew tkachuk smut #nhl fanfiction #nhl smut #hockey fanfiction #hockey romance #hockey smut

69 notes · View notes

wjbs-bonkle-au · 2 months ago

Text

Portraits for various Bionicle characters in the style of the Toa Disks from 2004! Most of them were traced from Studio screenshots (credits for any custom masks used are below)

More information below.

Image 1

Apart from Vakama's (which is a recreation of the print from the set, based on a picture from Bricklink), all the Metru disks are traced from on their respective Gold Canister designs from Bionicle Heroes, hence their shoulders connecting to the corner circles at different heights and some having sloped shoulders. Their background colours are based on their Turaga designs' primary colour.

@nattarthetimedragon suggested I do the Metrutoran disks, so I did. I decided to give Ehrye's mask a scope and remove Orkahm's.

The Mata were actually the second ones I did; I moved them down to accommodate the Metrutoran. The scratches around their icons are all the same ones, just rotated slightly. I couldn't be bothered to draw new ones, and I didn't put the scratches on any of the other ones.

I was going to do the Inika and the Mahri, but I couldn't get the set-accurate Inika masks to look good in this style, so I scrapped them. Remember this for later.

And by later, I mean now; instead of doing 1:1 adaptations of the Kadin and Suletu, I messed with the layout and design of their features to create my own personal "inorganic" designs for them; the Kadin's "mouth" is replaced with a pair of horizontal lines next to a mouth-hole, and the Suletu is symmetrical and has several Matatu-style mouth-lines angled to resemble the original mask's teeth. Their eyes have also been moved slightly. Originally, Varian's Calix was the same, but it didn't look good so I replaced it with Galva's Inorganic Calix Redux.

Image 2

The masks used as references for Gaaki, Bomonga, Pouks and Kualus are Rothanak's most recent interpretation of Gaaki's mask (which isn't actually meant to be what a Mask of Clairvoyance looks like, like it's canon that it's a Mask of Clairvoyance, but one in the shape of a different, unspecified mask), Galva's non-aquatic Faxon and champion Kakama, and Bigphan's Mask of Sensory Aptitude, respectively.

I wanted to do Nidhiki's mutated form, but I couldn't figure out how it would work in this style so instead I did an alternate version based on Rothanak's Kualsi/Volitak hybrid. Also Tuyet's designs are based on both of Galva's Mask of Intangibility designs (normal Tuyet is the original one, while Empress!Tuyet is the updated version).

I don't really have any notes for the third row. Moving on,

I worked on the fourth row simultaneously with the one below it. Also trying to differentiate Icarax from Teridax was pretty hard to figure out.

I'm not massively proud with how Gorast turned out, but otherwise. Yeah this is fine.

Image 3

For the Chronicler's Company, I went with their MNOG II masks and colour schemes.

@nattarthetimedragon also suggested that I do Turaga versions of the Metru Disks, so I did that. The boxy parts next to the "shoulders" are meant to evoke the way the Turaga robes look in the Miramax movies, as well as the Turaga's rectangular bodies in their sets.

Artakha's mask is based on Galva's canon Mask of Creation, and Karzahni's Olisi is based on Godfyr's Olisi (with elements of the original illustration). Tren Krom's icon is inspired by his description on Biosector, along with how I personally imagine him looking; also, unlike all the other icons, his colours aren't sampled from Studio. At this point I ran out of ideas, hence why the third image only has like two and a half rows instead of five.

#bionicle

79 notes · View notes

myworldau · 1 month ago

Text

Story:

Taking place after II 17, Meeple began to fall on hard times without the power from the Prime Shimmer. Thus, Cobs searched for a new way to improve Meeple’s products. Instead of looking for answers in space, he searched for answers underground, leading him to find an unknown substance called Ichor. Using the ichor, any and all creations that were connected to Melife could live without the program being unplugged or destroyed. The project was successful, spawning 24 experiments. However, 6 of them became unstable. One of them now roams the shadows around Meeple. It’s unknown what the future for Meeple holds from this point on, but Cobs hopes to make it work.

—

Characters available for questioning:

—

Staff:

- Steve Cobs: The CEO of Meeple and overseer of the Ichor Project.

- Mephone4, The main subject for the ichor project and the creator of the toons. His original core was ripped out by unknown means, being replaced with a generic one.

- Mepad & Toilet, Assistant caretakers for the toons.

- Radlynn Sativus, Vice CEO of Meeple and Cobs’ ex-wife.

- Bot & Baxter, not actual staff but were taken in shortly after MeLife’s initial unplugging.

—

Toons:

—

- B-007/Boxten

- B-008/Brightney

- C-009/Cosmo

- C-010/Connie

- F-011/Finn

- F-012/Flutter

- G-013/Gigi

- G-014/Glisten

- G-015/Goob

- L-016/Looey

- P-017/Poppy

- RD-018/Razzle & Dazzle

- R-019/Rodger

- S-020/Scraps

- S-021/Shrimpo

- T-022/Teagan

- T-023/Tisha

- T-024/Toodles

- Specialty Case H-R/Rudie

- Specialty Case H-G/Ginger

- Coal (Still classified as an experiment despite not being a toon. At least in this au.)

—

Extra:

- Bow & Dough: The only remaining contestants who haven’t been fragmented. They remain on Earth.

- L-001/Dandy: …

—

PLEASE DO NOT ASK ANY INAPPROPRIATE QUESTIONS!!

37 notes · View notes

hannahhook7744 · 8 months ago

Text

Canon & Semi-Canon Character List!;

For @askauradonprep .

LMK if you want me to add kids from other disney media like non-descendants books, sequels, and shows.

This list only includes the next gen kids from descendants (as well as Uliana).

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

Descendants (Mobile Game):

Scarlet.

Carter (Maybe a gender bent version of Scarlet who is dependent on your character's gender or could be a completely separate character).

Note: Diego de Vil was also in this game, if you want a visual on him.

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

Twitter-confirmed:

Elle, daughter of Eric and Ariel.

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

Evie's Wicked Runway:

Mia.

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

Scrapped Characters:

Aziz, son of Aladdin and Jasmine (mentioned in ‘the isle of the lost’ and the d1 script).

Anxelin, daughter of Rapunzel and Eugene Fitzherbert (mentioned somewhere unknown as of now).

Hadie, son of Hades (mentioned in ‘Return to the Isle of the Lost’).

Gigi, daughter of Mother Gothel (Mentioned in an early draft of a d2 script).

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

Concept Art Characters:

Lil Yaz, son of Yzma.

Quinlynn, daughter of the Queen of Hearts (can be seen in 'Good to be Bad'.)

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

Escape from the Isle of the Lost (Book):

Ariana Rose, niece of Aurora and Prince Phillip

Bobby Hood, the son of Robin Hood and Maid Marian.

Derek, the son of Dopey.

Shy, the son of Bashful.

Crabby, the son of Grumpy.

Hap and Cheerful, the sons of Happy.

Snoozy, the son of Sleepy.

Doc II, the son of Doc.

Gesundheit, the son of Sneezy. Nicknamed Gus.

Note: I also remember there being a Sneezy Jr but I can't find proof, so for now I'll just have them here.

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

Players Mentioned on the Tourney Wiki:

Brendan.

Miguel (#44).

Tyrone (#32).

Akio (#42).

William (#12).

Li (#85).

Emir (#26).

Note: Aziz was also mentioned here on the wiki.

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

Kids Named Only in the Movie:

Taylor (Coach Jenkins called for him during one of the tourney scenes).

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

School of Secrets (Book Series):

Opal, the daughter of Mama Odie.

The Tweedledum and Tweedledee cousins, the sons of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Yi-min, the daughter of Yao.

Carina Potts, the daughter of Mrs. Potts.

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

School of Secrets (Web Series):

Unnamed Kid/Best Bro who's Great Uncle is Smee.

Dianne Doan (narration) and Andrea Savo (screen appearances) as Secret Blogger–the unidentified girl filming Auradon Prep's students who may or may not be Lonnie.

Mark Daugherty as School Reporter.

Blake Rosier as Sleepy Jr, son of Sleepy.

Bashful Jr, son of Bashful.

Ben Stillwell as Happy student.

Maxwell Chase as Jock.

Miles Tagtmeyer as Reasonable Student.

Maybe Sarah? (As shown in Chad's phone).

Unnamed Girl as Ariel's niece.

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

Carlos‘s Scavenger hunt (Book):

Henry (White haired little boy who is Carlos's biggest fan).

Unnamed Seven Year Old Son of John Darling.

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

Beyond the isle of the lost (Book):

Ace.

Chester, son of the Cheshire Cat.

Katy/Katy, daughter of the smoking caterpillar.

Twee and Dee, twin daughters of Tweedledee.

Dora, daughter of the Dormouse.

Bill, the former cook of the Duchess's nephew.

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

Descendants 1 (Movie):

Mal, the daughter of Maleficent and Hades.

Evie, the daughter of Evil Queen.

Jay, the son of Jafar.

Carlos De Vil, the son of Cruella De Vil.

Ben, the son of Belle and Beast.

Audrey, the daughter of Aurora and Prince Phillip.

Lonnie, the daughter of Fa Mulan and Li Shang.

Chad Charming, the son of Cinderella and Prince Charming.

Jane, the daughter of the Fairy Godmother.

Doug, the son of Dopey and Doug's mother.

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

Rise of Red (Movie):

Red, daughter of the Queen of Hearts.

Chloe Charming, daughter of Cinderella and Prince Charming.

Maddox Hatter, the Mad Hatter's son.

Morgie, the son of Morgana le Fay.

Uliana/Ulyana, the younger sister of Ursula, and the aunt of Uma.

Unnamed Jasladdin/Jaladdin kid who can't be Aziz because the timeline doesn't work.

Zellie/Meadow, daughter of Rapunzel who may actually be Rapunzel (EDITED TO ADD NOTE: rumor has it that the actress who played Zellie/Meadow does not want her photos used, so if you do write Zellie or plan to use her character you may want to fancast/use a background character from the movies as her or avoid using photos all together. Unless it's proven otherwise).

Note: I’ve only included characters who didn’t exist before the movie. So no teenage versions of the adults. No Merlin, , and no Jack of Diamonds (since we see him as an adult only).

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

The Isle of the Lost (Book):

Anthony Tremaine, the son of Anastasia Tremaine.

Beelzebub, the daughter of Lucifer.

Claudine Frollo, the daughter of Claude Frollo.

Clay Clayton, the son of Clayton.

Diego De Vil, the nephew of Cruella De Vil.

Gaston Jr. and Gaston the Third, the twin sons of Gaston.

Ginny Gothel, the daughter of Mother Gothel.

Harry Badun, the son of Horace.

Jace Badun, the son of Jasper.

Jade, the niece of Jafar.

Harriet Hook, the daughter of Captain Hook.

Lagan and Derelict, the children of Flotsam and Jetsam.

LeFou Deux, the son of LeFou.

Madam Mim's granddaughters.

Othello, the son of Iago.

Sammy Smee, the son of Mr. Smee.

The Evil Step-Granddaughters, six or seven unnamed daughters of Drizella Tremaine.

The Sea Witches who may or may not be related to Ursula.

Spotted Hyenas, the children of Shenzi, Benzai, and Ed.

Reza, the son of a former Royal Astronomer of Agrabah.

Yzla, the daughter of Yzma.

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

Descendants Wicked World (Show):

Freddie Facilier, the daughter of Dr. Facilier.

CJ Hook, the daughter of Captain Hook.

Zevon, the son of Yzma.

Jordan, the daughter of the Genie.

Ally, the daughter of Alice.

Ruby, the daughter of Rapunzel and Eugene Fitzherbert.

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

Return to the Isle of the Lost (Book):

Hadie, the son of Hades.

Mad Maddy, the granddaughter of Madam Mim.

Rick Ratcliffe, the son of Governor Ratcliffe.

Hermie Bing, the daughter of The Ringmaster.

Crocodile Descendants, the children of Tick Tock.

Herkie, the son of Hercules and Megara.

Tiger Peony, the daughter of Tiger Lily.

Artie, the son of King Arthur.

Gordon, the son of Grumpy.

Pin, the son of Pinocchio.

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

Rise of the Isle of the Lost (Book):

Stabbington cousins, the children of the Stabbington brothers.

Arabella, the niece of Ariel and Eric

Li Shang Jr., the son of Fa Mulan and Li Shang.

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

Descendants 2 (Movie):

Kristie Sita plays an unnamed blonde pirate girl amputee in purple seen in Uma’s Crew.

Uma, the daughter of Ursula.

Harry Hook, the son of Captain Hook.

Gil, the son of Gaston.

Dizzy Tremaine, the daughter of Drizella Tremaine.

Note: characters of Uma’s crew have been named in her book, but not all of them and there were plenty of other background kids from the movies and stuff that weren't named.

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

Uma’s Wicked Book:

Jonas, member of Uma’s crew.

Gonzo, member of Uma’s crew.

Bonny, member of Uma’s crew.

Desiree, member of Uma’s crew.

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

Descendants 3 (Movie):

Celia Facilier, the daughter of Dr. Facilier.

Squeaky Smee, one of the twin sons of Mr. Smee.

Squirmy Smee, one of the twin sons of Mr. Smee.

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

Characters Who Were Mentioned That I Have Zero Clue Where They Were Mentioned:

Pirate named Maria/Marya.

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

Application Kids:

A kid who's name starts with Do or Da. Might be named Dawn. May be the child of a witch/someone selling something & a builder.

Cozzy/Coco, child of a writer named 'William' and a doctor named 'Martha'.

Hector/Sticks, child of an entertaynor/entertainer named Vivian and Lotso.

Bug, child of a bug eater (mom) and the implied child of Oogie Boogie.

Seen in this post by @leftbehindtorot :

If I missed anyone, let me know. Thank you for the help, @casinotrio1965 .

#descendants #disney descendants #melissa de la cruz #disney #wicked world #descendants au #disney descendants au #descendants lists #etc

90 notes · View notes

snailsgoingdowntown · 1 year ago

Text

Intrigued With You

I ii iii iiii

Yandere! Pinocchio x Fem! Mechanic! Reader

Warnings: Slight mental breakdown (?), mention death of a minor character, vomit, implied depression, paranoia, mentioned violence and death, unhealthy coping methods, blood, I THINK implied toxic familial relationship(s), just to be safe.

This blog contains dark content.

Disclaimer: contents/lore may differ from the game.

Minors/blank/blogs that don’t reblog/interact with fics and fanart dni.

Idk the word count cuz I forgot to check lmao.

Overall story summary: Your uncle’s puppet takes a bit too much of an interest in you: in which your body finally gave out in this chapter.

It does not speak. Nor does it move, staying as still as a doll would. But it is not a doll, it is a puppet that was worked on for a great while. And it was that very puppet that was staring at you with glassy blue eyes. It reminds you of a curious cat, round features narrowing into confusion.

The puppet then slowly moves its head left to right, checking the surroundings. The sight it’s met with is a cluttered room, with puppet parts scattered throughout, and the smell of grease thick. Could it even smell? Feel the plushness of the chair it was currently resting in, or how ticklish the hair must be at the nape of its neck? Or was it as bleak as every other puppet before a personality was programmed into it, unless it was faithed to be scrapped?

Creak

The gears are turning too harsh inside it. Loud enough to hear, yet the body does not look like it’s on the verge of overheating. Everything comes to a halt once it turns its head forward, gaze landing on you once more.

Sweat forms and slides down your temple. Hot, cold, hot, cold – you feel both at once, a cool breeze biting at your exposed skin. Your clothes feel too hot, the scent of musk strong underneath your nose. Gulping down a scream, your wobbly legs manage to keep up. You resist the urge to fall to the floor like a disregarded ragdoll.

Your purpose is not done yet.

One step, another, and it takes you an odd number to get back to the table. Your hands grasp the edge of it, your legs weak and knees on the verge of knocking against each other. Breathe. Just. Breathe.

“Ah… It is a… it is a pleasure to met you. Can you understand me? Nod your head or use your voice, it doesn’t matter.” You sound steadier than you feel. Several seconds pass before the puppet nods its head, slowly and uncertain. You try to think of it as a newborn – something that barely came to ‘life’ – and like all the puppets, this one will be clumsy and will need a hand to hold before everything becomes natural to it.

But it won’t be your hand.

“Right. That’s good, excellent even.” You’re clapping lightly by reflex. Autopilot is taking over. “Now, I have a few things I need to… hm, what’s the word… test you on. However!”

Slowly, like a scared animal, you back away, turning your back towards it and making way towards the door. You look over your shoulder, neither a frown nor smile on your face. It feels like a line. Turning the doorknob, you talk again.

“I left the materials outside. Truthfully, I did not think you would come on. It wasn’t the first time I put in the ‘heart,’ and it was because of that I thought you would remain well, off. Do you mind waiting here? Just for a bit.”

You give it the illusion of choice. Regardless, you would still leave. But you would rather walk out calmly than run out like a mad man. The puppet doesn’t make any attempt to get up. Looks up at the ceiling before down at you again, the eyes far too innocent, yet blank. How could the two exist within it?

A sour-bitter taste starts to form in your mouth. Your glands feel tight. Slick.

The puppet nods its head after observing you for a bit. Your heart leaps with joy, but bursts with fright the moment you close the door with a “I’ll be right back.”

There is a tree several feet in front of your uncle’s personal workshop. Years ago, when you first joined hands with him, you would often sit underneath it. Hugged your parents by it. Read books using the trunk as a backrest. Kissed Howard underneath it.

Carve your names with a heart. And it is this same tree where you place a hand on the trunk to support yourself. The taste of bile was always bitter. And it was always slimy and uncomfortable whenever it builds up.

“Ugh”

Up goes your lunch, wheezing with every convulsion. Nails digging into the tree bark, the wood digs into your flesh, underneath the nails. You’re going to have splinters. More comes up and you’re barely breathing by the time your body decides it was enough.

“Fuck…,” heaving, you wipe your mouth with your sleeve. You should change, you think, supporting yourself with your free hand still on the tree. Everything feels heavy, and everything feels dizzy. You fucked up big time. Too big to giggle and say, ‘sorry uncle,’ and get away with it. You could have ruined the puppet.

The puppet could have also ruined you. In short, you fucked up. You should have kept your hands to yourself. Frustration at bay. Mind at ‘ease,’ no matter how forced it was. Fake it until you make it. Maybe you weren’t capable of that.

“Haah… fuck, why did I do that?” lifting your head, you look ahead – a tight street where it was annoying to get in. Twists and turns, hidden corners; a good place to hide something precious. But a horrible spot to run from. Especially when everything looked the same, from the buildings to even the stupid posters, both encouraging and protesting against the puppets.

Krat was starting to become a city of repetition. Dull.

Sluggishly, you look over your shoulder, to where the shop was behind you. The door was still closed. The puppet was probably – hopefully – inside. On that stupid red plush chair, surrounded by disregarded parts and paperwork that needed to be filled out. You wonder if it could read.

What would happen if you just… ran?

Your uncle would find you, certainly. Maybe he would kill you. Or send you back to your parents, disappointment in their eyes once they find out about your sudden appearance. Or maybe Lorenzini Venigni – a man you only met but once – would put you in debt one way or another?

He was your uncle’s friend, after all.

Maybe the puppet would go to find you and rip you apart. The puppet this, the puppet that, it’s now sitting ‘awake’ and ‘alive,’ in the workshop. You were with it alone. No-one would come running in this part of town.

You suddenly feel sick again.

“Mm, I’m sorry it took me so long.” You feel like a professor, with children’s books bundled up in your arms as you let the door shut closed. Two more bags hung by their handles on your arm. Sweaty and slightly out of breath, there’s strands of hair sticking to your face. Your ponytail was a mess, and you could smell the sweat.

Your eyes were dropping, and body felt heavy. It took effort to even stand.

The sun was barely setting, and your uncle still wasn’t back. You also took an hour running around town to buy these last minute ‘supplies.’

It jolts to life, lifting its head, tilting it next once it notices your exhausted state and scrambled appearance. Its gaze then lands on the items you’re carrying, like it didn’t notice them before. It probably didn’t. It probably thought you had left for good. And you wish you did.

“I just… mm, I just wanted to see if you could,” you draw out, placing everything on the table with a ‘plop.’ “If you could read. And maybe write. Of course, if you don’t want to, then by no means do you need to do these… things.”

Selecting a book at random, you flip through the thick pages and large word formats. It had pictures to go alongside it, showing what was taking place in the text. Does this count as making fun of it? Now that you think about it, was the puppet even programed to read…?

Hell, could it even write?

Heat creeps up your neck like ants the closer you get to the puppet. It shuffles in place, adjusting itself. Your fingers twitch when you hand the book over… only to look at its left arm. Or rather, where the left arm should be. There was nothing there. You look behind you to see the arm on the table.

Oh. Right. You forgot about that.

Everything felt heavy and unsteady.

“…” you could offer to read the book to it. But if you do, then won’t it look like you’re trying to bond with it? It could use the arm it has, surely, right? But what if it keeps dropping the book? Oh, and the writing, you’re not sure which hand –

“Okay, how about this? Let me push the table – can you hold this for a bit? – closer to you.” scuff marks are left behind as the table squeaks against the floor. The puppet merely looks on, almost as though it could tell you didn’t want its help. You should consider that a good thing. But it makes everything feel worse.

Your arms are strained but the table is close enough to where the puppet can lean on it without trouble. “Thank you,” you take the book from its grasp gently, “and, here we go. I’m going to place this here…”

You lay the book on the table. With your permission (a nod when it looks at you) the puppet traces the cover. Whether it could feel the texture, or read the words, something caught its attention. It blinks just like a human before looking at you again.

Insects crawl up your skin, eating away at your flesh. A cold sweat spreads throughout your body, hairs standing on edge. The bitterness is forming on your tongue again, foot tapping harshly and rapidly. It’s louder than your heartbeat, drumming in your ear as your blood rushes through every tunnel within.

Despite everything, you were starting to feel… drained past the point of simple tiredness.

“Are you able to read… Hm, do you know what ‘reading’ means?” The foot tapping increases the longer you speak to it. Stay near it. It nods its head, and you feel a tiny bit of relief. Because it means you don’t have to baby it completely. Hopefully not at all.

Your uncle could do all he wants.

… you said you were not going to hold its hand, but isn’t that what you’re doing? Your brain is starting to turn into mush. Maybe just once wouldn’t hurt. Right?

“Okay, good. Can you read this, please?”

Summer’s Fair, was the title of the book. It was a small book, but the pages were thick. A sun, wildflowers with a pretty woman in yellow were engraved on the cover. Leatherback, you think. Secondhand, used but greatly cared for and perhaps even loved by the pervious owner.

You almost feel bad for putting it to use like this. For this.

The puppet takes its time inspecting it. Gently yet clumsily, it goes through the pages, trying its best not to rip the pages. With a boyish and innocent appearance, you could almost find it cute. But you don’t, you can’t, and you won’t. Because it is a puppet, and puppets unnerve you.

But humans do too, these days. Shaking your head, you wait until it is done with its little field trip. It flips to the first page, and its attention is fully on the words written on it. Slowly, you walk away, and bring a stool over to sit near the table. Near, but not at. Because if you sat at the table, it would imply you were willing to do more than this.

The only thing stopping you from turning it off was the puppet itself. Ignoring the fact it resembled a young man, it was a puppet. Metal like material, or steel, or whatever it was made from. A human man would be stronger than you. But a full-sized puppet? You had even less of a chance of getting away if it decided it didn’t like what you were doing.

It could easily snap your neck if you even try to sneak behind it. And the arms – they look like they’re meant for combat. Maybe the puppet knows how to fight. It’s probably been programed into it. A nice little detail you were kept in the dark about if it was proven to be true.

What was the purpose of this puppet? Calling it ‘son,’ only to obsess over it. Creating it into an image you could not comprehend. A mockery of the dead. A mockery of the puppet itself.

His grief was understandable. You would feel the same if your child was taken away from you just like that. A child you didn’t spend time with yet loved with all your heart –

But this puppet was not his son. It would never be. To replace a human, a loved one was…

“… may I see what page you’re on?” Polite, and not as stiff as you thought you would sound. It slides the book over to you. It’s near the edge and after taking a glance, you push it back. It starts reading again, and you’re met with nothing but harsh silence. The ticking of the clock, the flipping of the pages, your heartbeat, the gears inside of it moving –

It’s all white noise. Like a buzzing fly, settling into your head. Everything feels fuzzy, but prickly too, poking at you. It stings. Teeth shattering pain that courses through your body. It’s deep inside, unable to soothe the pain. You rub your head with your fingers.

It does little to help. When you look at the puppet again, you notice that it is looking at you from the corner of its eye – not at the book. When its gaze meets yours, it quickly goes back to reading. Heart drops, head aches too much, harder to think. Now that you finally had some time to ‘rest,’ you realize how fatigued your body was.

You needed some fresh air.

Before the room fully turns black, the dots decorating your vision get larger. When was the last time you had a sip of water today? Or proper sleep? Not those thirty-minute naps you would take three times a day.

Your eyes were probably dark, and face unhealthy. Nap. Yes, you should take a nap.

But the puppet…

The puppet…

The…

…puppet…

… there’s a dull pain pounding at your head.

… did something fall?

… there’s a shuffling of clothes.

…. Your body feels a little less heavy now.

… but the surface against your head was still firm, more than human skin.

… when you finally manage to open your eyes, you’re met with the hazy sight of a boyish face. Pretty eyes that are a color they shouldn’t be. Too blue. The hair was too fluffy, but the freckles looked familiar. Just like the portrait hanging in your uncle’s house.

…. And it looked less frustrated, less lonely like that little boy waiting for his father to return home. You wish you could have met that little boy. That little boy he’s so overwhelmed by feelings of regret and grief drowning him in the dark depts of the ocean.

… Maybe if you met that little boy then…

No. Nothing would have changed. Because you did not have a purpose then. You did not know Krat until a year later, did not know how puppets worked or how the parts looked. You did not know who was who, and…

When he returned with Howard, there was blood on the floor.

There was blood on the floor, and your body was being cradled in the single arm of his masterpiece.

hate to be that person, but please reblog fanfiction and fanart in general. While i am always greateful that people comment and reblog my own stuff, it is a bit disheartening to see blogs who follow/interact who have only one or two posts that were dated from last year, or not having any reblogs or content from fandoms, especially the ones i am in interact. It is not a just 'me' problem. I have seen many bring this up too, and even had a few mutual deactivate because of it, and honestly, it is stuff like that that makes me want to not contuine running this account. But with all of the recent comments and even reblogs, it rekindled my inspriation.

However, i am not saying to do that on every fic. Just some, at the very least and often enough, if that makes sense.

But from here on out, if you ask to be tag (and don't have anything on your blog that relates to what i said above), or spam like my posts without even reblogging one or just commenting, then there is a higher chance of being blocked. leave a comment, reblog, interact with your favorite creators, not just me. It helps a lot.

I am extremely grateful and happy for the people who do comment and reblog (Insert heart, on laptop)

Tag list: @ijustreblogstuff-i-like @chiofany @quzbea @cute-angi @nealcaffrey2129 @connorsoddsock @rositabluemoon @shiro-from-cafeberry @sunnyhascome

#lies of p #lies of p x reader #lies of p pinocchio #yandere lies of p #yandere pinocchio x reader #pinocchio x reader

249 notes · View notes

pearlcatcher-problems · 4 months ago

Text

a few finished projects that I've been vibing with a lot! and their bonus lore rambles under the cut to keep things a little more trim ; w;

» the wives [ Padparadscha | Bunanuhnanuh ]

antique jaguar ᛜ ginger breakup ᛜ terracotta koi bronze piebald ᛜ white basic ᛜ terracotta koi

» the twins [ Naberius | custard ]

stone piebald ᛜ white basic ᛜ spruce koi tarnish pharaoh ᛜ white basic ᛜ brown basic

» acolyte goblin ambassador [ moss ]

white basic ᛜ obsidian paint ᛜ hickory koi

I swear I'm normal about naming dragons-- I'll have serious names alongside dumb meme ones and treat them equally as seriously as characters. I swear, it makes sense in my lair. I promise.

» the wives [ Padparadscha | Bunanuhnanuh ]

Pad and Bun are wives, with Bun being the elegant airhead and Pad being the gruff behemoth. Pad is near twice Bun's size and tends to be more protective/defensive than the wildclaw is. Her pearl tends to stay with Bun when not in her pearl pouch, who keeps it in one of her silk scarves padded with dry moss and lavender sprigs.

The two of them are residing in the Bazaar, currently travelling between there and the Oasis to finalise some trade agreements before the encampments decide to make proper paths between them. While Bun is more than happy to keep the conversation for the two of them, Pad is just.... always listening. The pearlcatcher beast somehow always seems to know what is going on and can quickly get the answer to the most obscure questions if given enough time to think. This includes knowledge from any of their other outposts, somehow able to just.... know. ( Behind the scenes, she's actually a fraction of a hydra, and despite them being split, they are still able to communicate telepathically with each other, resulting in easy relay of information between allied outposts nearly instantly but the only one who controls/knows of this is Quail. )

Bun used to be part of the Roost outpost, which is why her namesake is so strange compared to the desert-dwellers. She's kept her name, although able to change it any time given how Roost customs are, and finds some joy in how hers and Pad's mirror each other in length. Those close to her may call her Bun or Bana, although Pad tends to call her Sprig, Sweetbean, and other soft little nicknames. When relaxing, Pad often gnaws on Bun's horns when cuddling to keep her tusks in check, something Bun doesn't mind as her horns constantly grow regardless.

» the twins [ Naberius | custard ]

The youngest of the Acolytes ( a subterranean clan that only emerges for three weeks a year and spends the rest of the year worshiping the Solstice trio I / II / III and tunnelling. More Info on them is heeeeeere! ) They have the same affliction post-hatchling that ogi and his younger sibling do, where they just haven't progressed further physically or mentally. They have a lot of inherent volatile magics because of what they are, but they can't always act on it in the way they want due to whatever is stunting them. This leaves the two a little hard to predict, scrapping as often as they'd play, all while leaving arcs of fulgurite along the tunnels from their warring elements.

They are often underfoot, eager to help tunnelling efforts and harvesting lichen, but are easy to tire out and will just nap wherever they run out of energy. It's not uncommon to find both of them blocking a tunnel because they need a quick powernap. Good luck moving them.

Naberius and custard's energy came from an old elemental, also named Naberius, who decayed on the Acolyte border after leaving the bounds of the Oasis. The two spawned from his fall and have many of his powers, but with the stunt and divide between them, it is just a grain of what it used to be. Sezha knew what they grew from, and decided to keep Naberius' name for one as a way to honour his fall, while casket was allowed to name the other, resulting in the mock-roost name: custard.

» acolyte goblin ambassador [ moss ]

Moss is the 'ambassador' for the Acolytes when they're out of the ground, or when dealing with people who come to 'trade' ( drop gifts and supplies, they don't actually want anything from the Acolytes in exchange and are just encouraged to do so by Quail and repaid for it in other ways ) at the outposts' entrance during their submerged seasons. She loves the idea of bartering and making a trade, only really knowing how trade works from her few visits to the Oasis grounds and seeing the elementals make pacts.

When trading, she wears The Hat. The hat is a combination of a few hats she's traded for over the years, worn around the edges and lovingly cared for. She often puts feathers, gemstones, or dried flowers tucked into the brim for flair, and will outright refuse to accept offers from other outposts if she can't get her claws on her hat at that time. All business MUST be done with the hat.

When not being Very Important, she spends most of her time tunnelling and setting up the lighting system in the deeper section of the lair. The Acolytes currently use a lighting method that leeches off the ley lines beneath them, giving them an easy method to track the health of the flow of magic and know when their worship is required. These free-floating orbs can be placed at any area of the lair as long as they're still connected to the earth, and so often will be rooted to the walls with vining plants from handsome's farm.

#I will do art soon just learning how to use new tablet lmao #fr dragon share #dragon share #pearlcatcher dragon #mirror dragon #wildclaw dragon #fr pearlcatcher #fr mirror #fr wildclaw #fr dragon showoff #fr lore #flight rising #flightrising

36 notes · View notes

felassan · 11 months ago

Text

Article: 'The Industry Is Divided On How To Write Video Game Romance', by Kenneth Shepard

Baldur’s Gate 3 is the latest big game to follow an inclusive (but divisive) trend in video game courtship

excerpts from the article are under a cut due to length and mentions and discussions of queerphobia, biphobia etc.

(note: I have censored the term "pl****sexual" throughout these quotes).

Some excerpts:

"In 2011, BioWare’s Dragon Age II portrayed its four main romantic conquests as bisexual, allowing them to be pursued by either the male or female version of main character Hawke. At the time, I was a young, mostly-but-not-completely out gay high school student, and I spent hours each week on the BioWare forums, hoping for some information about which men I’d be able to pursue as I ventured through the fantasy city of Kirkwall. When the game finally came out, much to my delight, there were no restrictions. I wasn’t forced into one choice like I was with the roguish elf Zevran in Dragon Age: Origins, or excluded completely like the first two Mass Effect games. The approach was met with predictable pushback from bigots, and Lead Writer David Gaider responded to criticisms that the game neglected the “main demographic” of the “straight male” in what became a core text about who deserves to be depicted in video game romances. He wrote: “The romances in the game are not for ‘the straight male gamer’. They’re for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention. We have good numbers, after all, on the number of people who actually used similar sorts of content in DAO and thus don’t need to resort to anecdotal evidence to support our idea that their numbers are not insignificant... and that’s ignoring the idea that they don’t have just as much right to play the kind of game they wish as anyone else. The ‘rights’ of anyone with regards to a game are murky at best, but anyone who takes that stance must apply it equally to both the minority as well as the majority. The majority has no inherent ‘right’ to get more options than anyone else.” The idea that romances could be “for everyone” stuck with me, and with the video game industry. Dragon Age II was an early example of what has become colloquially known as “pl****sexual” experiences, in which every romanceable character is pursuable regardless of your character’s gender. Everyone got an equal piece of the pie. Queer people weren’t relegated to table scraps while straight people got to have a feast. But it turns out, giving everyone all the same options brings its own baggage, and in the years since Dragon Age II, developers are still struggling to find the best approach. The mother of invention According to Gaider, while Dragon Age II’s love stories have become a model for inclusive romance design, they originally took this form due to the sequel’s breakneck development timeline. “We were working on far fewer resources compared to Dragon Age: Origins,” Gaider told Kotaku. “The whole game was gonna be done within a year and a half. So when it came up to how are we gonna do the romances, it was really a matter of economy. We’re gonna have four romances. If we decide to make them sort of a spread of sexualities that are immutable, then there’s no choice for the player. They have one character available to them, and we didn’t like that idea.” Resource division and lack of choice remains a cloud that hangs over even the biggest games that feature romance."

"When every romanceable character is pursuable regardless of who the player is, it creates a perception that these characters’ identities are defined by the protagonist’s presence. Gaider likens this to treating characters like a “toy” just meant to be romanced. This is part of how the “pl****sexual” moniker came to be, as it implies that characters weren’t bisexual or pansexual, but adhered to whatever main character they came across in any given playthrough. Dragon Age II has a specific plot beat that added to this: If the player chose to play a male version of Hawke, Anders would be forthcoming about his past relationship with another man, but that conversation doesn’t come up when playing as a woman. Gaider explained this was meant to distinguish how Anders related to male and female versions of the same character, with the BioWare team believing he might keep a past relationship with a man “close to his chest” if he were interested in a woman. In retrospect, he says he understands how it could be read as something only real in one version of the story. “Unfortunately, we just didn’t have enough time to get enough feedback and iterate on those situations,” he said. “We would hit a particular interaction, we would make a judgment call either as a group or the writer on their own, and that was it. There was no time for anything more than one gut-check, which is probably not the way to go.” Room to explore While Dragon Age II was written to accommodate any pairing because of the economic realities of its development, it’s become a recurring blueprint for several romance-driven games."

"As Dragon Age II has been pivotal in discussions around the pl****sexual design philosophy, its successor Dragon Age: Inquisition has been hugely influential on relationship systems featuring more defined identities. Gaider said the decision to tweak the approach came from a desire to decenter the protagonist in each of these character’s lives. “We didn’t like how [pl****sexual] made the characters feel like they existed in service of the player; like they were there in the game to be a toy. [...] We felt like that wasn’t why those characters existed. That wasn’t the kind of game we were making. These characters were characters first, and they had their own stories, and the player could interact with them, but it wasn’t always about the player.” The result of this shift is characters like Dorian Pavus, a mage from the land of the Tevinter Emperium, who is a gay man. His backstory involves nearly being put through a magical version of conversion therapy, an abusive and baseless real-world practice reliant on mental and often religious conditioning. Dorian’s parents planned to use dark magic to make him straight and take part in an arranged marriage, prompting him to run from his family. His story touches on real-life experiences of queer people, and fills in Dragon Age’s world in the process. “Dorian’s story could not be told if he was in a game where pl****exuality was the rule of the day,” Gaider said. “When I say that it opens up different types of stories, Dorian is the best example, because his story is about being homosexual and that doesn’t work in any other context. So that was very special. [...] it meant a lot to me as a gay man that I had this opportunity.” Defining Dorian as a gay man is intrinsic to his story, but sometimes the effects of this approach aren’t as grandiose. Cassandra, the first party member you get in Inquisition, is a straight woman, and if you flirt with her as a female protagonist, she takes you aside and tells you…well, straight up. Whether that’s a fun wrinkle to your story or feels like the game is gating content is in the eye of the beholder. “For players who just wanted to romance whoever they wanted, they would do something like encounter Cassandra as a female character and get turned down and be like, ‘that’s not the game I wanted,’” Gaider said. “But then you had other people who were like, ‘that was really cool that Cassandra has her own identity, and it has nothing to do with who the player is.’ I think that makes for more realistic characters, and a more coherent world, and allowed us to create characters that were more self-realized.” The middle ground between opting for pl****sexual romances and representing the queer experience is making sure those bisexual and pansexual identities exist whether the player is there or not. Baldur’s Gate 3’s party is a solid example of this. Characters like Gale, Wyll, Astarion, and Shadowheart have established relationships and flirt with others of different genders, regardless of whether the player romances them. This ensures their identity doesn’t come off like a switch to be flipped depending on which protagonist shows up at the beginning of the game. Gaider points out that part of circumventing the weaknesses of the pl****sexual approach is adding “a metric ton of content” as Baldur’s Gate 3 did. Overcoming those hurdles is “possible, just very expensive.” Howard-Arias cited Dorian from Inquisition as an example of a story that could not be told in a pl****sexual game"

"When you’re on the outside looking in, it’s tempting to assume developers are intentionally snubbing certain groups of people. The Mass Effect series pushed the envelope for sex and romance in its time, but it was deeply dismissive of queer men, and BioWare’s explanations of Commander Shepard supposedly being a “predefined” character weren’t satisfactory considering the series’ emphasis on choice. Breaking down choices to numbers isn’t telling the whole story, but it does ultimately leave some people feeling burned. “[Some players reacted to limited romance] like it was unfair that I didn’t get more options, as if in-game romances were a matter of social justice,” Gaider said. “Like, in terms of how fairly you allotted them to players, like candy being divided. It’s such an awkward conversation to have because it’s so removed from the realm of game development. But still, game developers do need to stop and have that conversation.”"

"Even the word “pl****sexual” sounds like it’s an identity, which can be problematic. Gaider points out this is especially touchy for bisexual and pansexual people, who often face erasure in the real world, so labeling characters as something other than what they actually are sours the discussion before it even starts. Hunter echoed the sentiment, saying having characters “flip flop” felt like a betrayal. “The difference between a bisexual character versus a pl****sexual character really is a matter of context,” Gaider says. “By calling a character ‘pl****exual,’ you’re sort of erasing the fact that they are bisexual, but, the part where having a term for that becomes useful is when you start to investigate, like, why is this character bisexual?” So these two distinct approaches aim to be inclusive, but both can carry a perception of unfairness to either queer identity or queer experience. The sentiment from everyone I spoke to was that both approaches are legitimate; they just have their own pitfalls that anyone making a game should be aware of. Sometimes you just have to accept when one game is aspiring to something different than another. Gaider says the key to making either approach work is to stop trying to please everyone. “Say something with your writing, with your game, with your romances. Because if you don’t say anything, if your goal is to make it inoffensive, then it’s gonna land like a wet fart. It’s not gonna have any substance to it,” he said. “So say something and just be aware of how it can be interpreted and stand by it. That’s all you can do as a creator.”"

[source and full article link. the full article also discusses and covers other games]

#dragon age #bioware #mass effect #video games #lgbtq #cassandra pentaghast #my lady paladin #long post #longpost #queerphobia cw #biphobia cw

142 notes · View notes