#implied/referenced kidnapping | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

osarina · 18 days ago

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ᡣ𐭩 I'LL TAKE A QUIET LIFE

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: you didn't mean for things to turn out the way they did—you swear you really didn't. but when a certain someone decides to provoke you when you're trying to do the right thing… well. things take a turn for the worse. all you wanted was to peacefully borrow dazai for his birthday, whisking him away for a one-week getaway from the city and work, but you know how dazai is, and you couldn't risk any of his coworkers letting something slip. so, now, instead of a nice peaceful surprise and maintaining relations with the agency, you've had to resort to kidnapping. again. you'll make the most of it anyway.

(word count: 13.2k, fem!reader, port mafia executive!reader, dazai-typical suicide mentions, past suicide attempts referenced, oral (male receiving), a bit of face fucking, unprotected sex, a little overstimulation, minor implied ptsd episode/grieving (reader))

AUTHOR'S NOTES: HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAYYYY TO THE CUTEST BOY IN THE WHOLEEE WORLD WAHHHHHHH take a cute little post-canon fic for the big day<33 i am so proud of how this fic came out. before you read, i do want you guys to take note that there's a bit of a time jump—i have this fic set around 5-6 months after the ada-pm swap fic. i have a lot to say about this fic so maybeee come back up here at the end to read this because there are some spoilers for it ... this is ur last warning ....... ANYWAY, so as you all know (even though you have no faith in me) pmreader universe DOES have a happy ending. to get to that happy ending, the biggest hurdle that needs to be crossed is what was addressed in one of the more recent pmreader fics (i think i've seen this love before): dazai struggles to find a reason to live. i can't really see him marrying pmreader when he still feels so hopeless about himself/living, for HER sake more than his mind you, because he knows he's very fickle with life and doesn't want to marry her and then leave her behind. so i do think that this is a necessary step to the happy ending: dazai needs to acknowledge that he does see himself having a future with her & their relationship gives him a reason to wake up in the morning. now, this of course doesn't take away from his depression—i dont want any of you to misunderstand and i dont think you will, but i just want to make it clear that him acknowledging this doesn't take away from his depression. it's something that i headcanon dazai struggles with his whole life, but i think this is a necessary step to the happy ending. also on another note, pmreader !!! i hope her whole thing doesn't feel like it comes out of the blue. once they get together again at age 22, i hc that the first few months of their relationship are so chaotic that neither of them can fully come to terms with their situation, and once she does, she really does begin to doubt things. because of course she loves him, and she wants him to feel like he's fulfilled odasaku's last request so he can feel better about himself, but she starts to feel like her presence in his life might be holding him back. so those lingering doubts + her doing something that reminds her of a past she can't remember puts her in a rlly vulnerable space. AND I THINK I CONVEYED IT WELL, but i just like explaining. ANYWAY if you guys got this far, i love you, thank u for entertaining my rambly thoughts

Dazai is over three hours late to work, but in his defense, it’s his birthday, and not even Kunikida is cruel enough to scold Dazai on his birthday. Still, he very much expects dirty looks from the man, and maybe a few loud comments about his terrible work ethic, but that’s just Kunikida. If he wasn’t giving Dazai dirty looks and making loud comments, Dazai would be concerned.

Which is why when he steps into the office at half past twelve and is met with dead silence, Dazai knows something is wrong. He shuts the door quietly behind him and looks around warily, trying to figure out what’s going on. There’s no sign of forced entry or any fighting—there’s an untouched stack of papers in the waiting area that he assumes are from a new client, and a hot coffee still steaming next to it.

It’s all so unassuming, it’s what he expects coming into work, but it’s too quiet. He can’t hear Naomi bothering Tanizaki, he can’t hear Yosano complaining about the stick up Kunikida’s ass or Kunikida promptly scolding her for her language, he can’t hear Kyouka, Kenji, and Atsushi chatting away whenever Kunikida is pulled away by something. There’s no furious typing from the clerks as they fix all of the mistakes in the reports being filed, and there’s no sighing when they think they finish, only to realize that there’s another report, likely one of Dazai’s, waiting for them to edit.

It’s too quiet, and that’s how Dazai knows something is seriously wrong.

When he steps into the office, he almost expects nobody to be there—maybe they were all called out to some emergency mission, and Dazai is going to have to race to catch up with them.

What he doesn’t expect is finding his coworkers all sitting stiffly and silently in their seats, and a heavy Port Mafia presence all over the room. Hirotsu is leaning against the far back wall, a cigarette dangling between his lips, Gin is hanging over Haruno, carelessly playing with one of her knives, and Tachihara is trying to convince Atsushi to play a game of cards with him as if Akutagawa isn’t looming right behind him.

If it were just the Black Lizards, Dazai thinks that they’d probably fight back, but naturally, the red-headed slug is here too, leaning up against the wall with Hirotsu, arms crossed and a bored expression on his face. Dazai’s eyes narrow when Chuuya gives him a smirk that’s far too smug, but the insult on his lips dies when his eyes land on the last person in the room.

You’re sitting on top of his desk, a pretty smile on your lips and a glitter in your eyes that promises no good. You look beautiful, and Dazai’s chest feels all warm and fuzzy—he hasn’t seen you in a few weeks now because you’ve been abroad dealing with pressure from some foreign organizations, and he didn’t think you’d be back for his birthday. He’s so enamored by the sight of you that he almost doesn’t catch the glint of metal on your lap or the way Kunikida is sitting tense at his desk next to where you’re lounging.

“Hey,” you say easily, like there isn’t a gun in your lap pointed at his coworker, safety off, finger firm on the trigger, ready to pull it at a moment’s notice. “Happy birthday.”

“What-” Dazai starts to say, baffled, but flinches when he feels something prick his neck, head snapping to the side to focus on a vaguely familiar figure now standing at his side—your new subordinate, Dazai can’t remember his name.

Whatever he injected Dazai with works fast, because he’s instantly dizzy, his gaze blurring, and his head all woozy. Just as his knees start to give out, he feels the kid grab under his arms to make sure he doesn’t hit the ground, and he hears you say proudly: “This is a kidnapping.”

---------

In your defense, you really did try to talk things out peacefully with the Armed Detective Agency before resorting to this.

You weren’t planning on kidnapping Dazai, but you knew he probably didn’t call out of work, and the last thing you needed was to be scolded by Mori for causing any more tension between the Armed Detective Agency and the Port Mafia if they realized that you were the reason Dazai didn’t show up to work.

Things have been rocky on both sides since the failed transfer—the Agency because the Port Mafia dared to take one of their own, and the Port Mafia because the Agency reneged on their deal and took their member back—but you can’t afford for things to be rocky when things are still incredibly unstable. So instead of just picking up Dazai and leaving for a few days and possibly pissing off the Agency for not giving them any forewarning, you decided to do the right thing and tell them before disappearing with one of their detectives.

Except the President of the Agency isn’t in town. So, you were stuck dealing with that bullheaded blonde who clearly still holds a grudge over the incident with Pushkin and he decided to act on his grudge by making your life as difficult as possible.

All too smugly, he refused to give Dazai leave for the week because they have an emergency case that needs all hands on deck, and when you offered up Klaus to replace him, much to the boy’s abject horror, he refused. Then you offered up Klaus and Akutagawa, and he still refused. You even proposed giving them Chuuya for the week, and that wasn’t enough, so that’s when you realized he was just being difficult to be petty.

And you doubt the man actually would’ve forced Dazai to miss out on time with you on his birthday, Dazai is his friend and he’s not that much of an asshole. He probably would've okay'd it as soon as Dazai showed up to the office, but he was clearly just trying to be a pain in your ass. And well, you didn’t take that kindly, obviously, so all thoughts of preserving the fragile peace went out the window as you quite promptly demanded all hands on deck for a possible conflict because you were not going to let Kunikida Doppo keep that smug expression on his face for a second longer.

Was Chuuya happy about it? No, you could tell when he gave you a side eye after he showed up, but you knew he wasn’t going to sit by and let the Agency get one over you. So, he was content to stand there as a looming threat, because you were pretty sure that the Black Lizards weren’t going to be enough to scare the Agency into backing down, but the threat of Nakahara Chuuya splattering one of their own against the wall so that there was nothing left for their doctor to revive was more than enough to keep them down.

The Black Lizards and Akutagawa didn’t have the authority to question your orders, and Klaus was more than willing to spill blood at any given moment, so the only thing you have left to worry about is Mori, and you’ll deal with that once you get back from your getaway with Dazai. If Chuuya’s feeling nice, he’ll probably handle it for you, but you don’t think he’s pleased with how you offered him up like a bargaining chip to the Agency.

Your lips curve up into a smile when Klaus tosses Dazai over his shoulder like a sack of flour. Was drugging him unnecessary? Probably, but you didn’t want to deal with his smug ass making comments about the lengths you go to so that you can steal him away for the week the whole way up to the house you and Chuuya bought on the coastline of Hokkaido. It wasn’t just for Dazai—it was your own pride on the line too, it was the principle.

As you motion for Klaus to bring Dazai out to the car, you rise to your feet and look down at Kunikida. You place your gun under his chin to tilt his head up so that he’s looking up at you; he swallows thickly as he glances down at where your finger is still resting on the trigger, throat bobbing before he glowers at you. You give him a too-sweet smile.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” you say, very pleased with yourself. You look back at Chuuya, signalling him to come with you as you put your gun away and start to make your way out of the Agency. You lift your hand in a lazy wave before saying, “I’ll bring him back in a few days.”

It’s only when the door to the Agency shuts behind you that he finally speaks to you, hands shoved in his pockets as he says dryly, “Mori specifically told us not to antagonize the Agency over the next few weeks.”

“The Agency antagonized me,” you reply airily. “It would’ve been a terrible look for us if we let them walk all over us and come out unscathed. There are already too many rumors circulating in the East about us being weak after the Guild Incident, and now, Dostoevsky, the failed transfer, and the Clocktower—preserving our reputation is more important than relations with the Agency.”

Chuuya barks out a laugh. “You can twist anything to fit your narrative, can't you? If you weren’t an executive, you’d make a great lawyer.”

You raise your eyebrows, unfazed. “It’s not twisting if it’s the truth.”

He scoffs, muttering something under his breath before shaking his head as he holds the door to the cafe open for you. “Right. Next time you decide to ‘preserve our reputation’ through a diplomatic disaster, at least give me a damn warning first.”

“There’s no fun in that,” you say with an easy smile. “Will you deal with Mori while I’m gone?”

“You’re shameless,” Chuuya tells you flatly. “No, I’m not dealing with Mori. You just tried to pawn me off to the Agency like a fucking mule. You can deal with him.”

“Please.” You flutter your eyelashes at him, pushing your lip out in a pout that has him rolling his eyes. You scowl and then offer, “I’ll take over your mission in Sapporo when I get back.”

“Deal,” Chuuya agrees immediately, reaching out to open the car door for you. You slide inside, and he shuts the door behind you; you immediately roll the window down. He gives you a sharp smile, resting his arms on the car door and leaning in. “I would’ve dealt with him either way.”

“I know because you’re a sucker,” you reply, raising your eyebrows and giving him an equally sharp smile. “I just thought I’d be nice and offer you something in return.”

Chuuya clicks his tongue sharply as he leans back. He stands up straight and gives you a side eye. “Bitch,” he mutters, but there’s a fond smile on his lips. “Enjoy your week with that bastard, you’re gonna be in for hell with Mori once you get back.”

“You don’t need to remind me,” you say dryly, turning to the side as Klaus opens the door to toss Dazai into the car. Literally. “Jesus, Klaus, be a bit more careful with him.”

“No.” Klaus says and then sneers down at Dazai before slamming the door shut behind him.

You shake your head and adjust Dazai into a more comfortable position. He should be out for at least two or three hours—you aren’t quite sure, he’s always had a freaky metabolism, but you don’t know if it’s gotten faster or slower in the four years he was gone. You rest his head in your lap, brushing his hair out of his face. You’ve missed him a lot; you’ve barely been able to see him at all the past few weeks because you’ve been so busy, and your chest aches just at the sight of him in your lap. You turn your gaze back up to the window to find Chuuya staring at you in disgust. Klaus is there too, scowling.

“What is your problem with him?” you ask the boy, giving him a weird look. “You’ve hardly even met him before now.”

“I don’t like him,” Klaus replies, raising his chin.

You stare at him in disbelief, but Klaus only huffs and stalks off, likely to cause chaos elsewhere. Chuuya snorts in amusement, trying to muffle a laugh as he turns his face away. You roll your eyes and fling your hand up dismissively. Klaus has always had something up his ass about Dazai, you never understood why. You’ve learned better than to question what runs through that boy’s head.

“You should get going,” Chuuya says, stepping back from the window. “The jet’s waiting for you.”

“Right,” you agree, stretching your arms and then resting your hand on Dazai’s forehead, fingers carding absently through his hair. “Thanks, Chuuya.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he replies dryly, turning his back to the car to walk over to where he’d parked his motorcycle. He lifts his hand up in a lazy wave. “See you next week.”

“See you next week.”

---------

Dazai wakes up to the whole world shaking. His heart rate spikes as he shoots up, disoriented and confused. His hand flies to his head, blinking hard to try to clear his blurry vision. He doesn’t even really remember what happened. He remembers waking up late for work and feeling smug because Kunikida couldn’t scold him because it’s his birthday, and he remembers…

Oh.

You.

Dazai glances around, trying to figure out where the hell he is. He’s laying on a white couch in a small room… or, this isn’t a room, is it? There’s a window next to him. Dazai squints at the sudden bright light that blinds him, but he shifts closer to the window so he can look out of it.

He is in the air.

Dazai blanches when he realizes that he’s in a plane. It must be close to landing because the ground is much closer than he expected. He doesn’t recognize the area—there doesn’t seem to be any big cities nearby, only forests and the ocean, so he’s not really sure where you’re bringing him.

He pushes himself out of his seat, stumbling a bit before he catches himself. Whatever you injected him with was strong, but at least now he has something he can whine and complain about. Maybe he’ll be able to convince you to make him the sweet buns you tried baking a few times back when you two were teenagers. You never liked the way they came out, but Dazai had been obsessed with them and was thoroughly upset when you refused to make them every time he asked.

He salivates a bit at the thought and decides to get a head start on his guilt tripping, making his way over to where you’re sitting. A smile unconsciously pulls at his lips when he sees you sitting a few seats away. Your back is facing him, but he can see you’re focused on your computer, typing furiously with earbuds plugged in your ears. He stumbles once more before kneeling on the seat behind yours, draping himself lazily over the back of it to rest his chin on the top of your head.

His lips part to make a complaint when he pauses, gaze focusing on what exactly it is that you’re doing on your laptop.

Are you on a… video call?

Dazai stares at the screen blankly, recognizing the several faces staring right back at him. Leo Tolstoy looks unbearably amused when he sees Dazai in the frame of the camera, hiding a smile with his hand. An older man who Dazai realizes is Carlo Goldoni raises his eyebrows, lips twitching. Mishima Yukio casually rubs at his lips, pretending he’s not smiling. There are three others, two men and a woman who Dazai doesn’t recognize—they must be new allies of the Port Mafia.

Well, Dazai thinks awkwardly, staring at the screen as he realizes that he just interrupted a meeting between you and several mob bosses. He doesn’t bother moving now, they’ve already seen him, and you don’t seem bothered, considering you don’t immediately shove his face out of view of the camera.

“I’ll contact you all when I’m available again to speak next week,” you say after a moment. “Thank you for meeting.”

You exit the call without waiting for them to answer, taking out the earbuds from your ears. Dazai lifts his chin when he feels you turning your head to look up at him. He gives you a sheepish smile.

“Did I interrupt?” he asks quietly.

“No,” you reply. “We’re almost here anyway.”

Dazai shuffles around to sit across from you, resting his arms on the table and his head on top of them. He looks up at you, eyes still a bit droopy from whatever you drugged him with. Your lips curl up into a soft smile, and warmth spreads through Dazai’s chest at the sight of it. His cheeks heat up, so he hides them in his arms and peeks up at you. The smile on your lips becomes a bit fonder, you place your arms on the table, mimicking him, and then rest your head down like he did, peeking up at him the same way as he is at you.

It’s a simple action. A nothing action, really. You’re just mimicking him. Teasing him for being flustered. He doesn’t know why his chest suddenly feels like it's about to cave in. He doesn’t know why he suddenly wants to cry. He doesn’t know why he’s so suddenly and violently reminded of how much he loves you.

Maybe it’s just because he’s missed you these past few weeks.

“Happy birthday,” you whisper.

A lump that’s shaped suspiciously like his heart forms in his throat as he looks up at you. He hides his smile behind his arms and says quietly, “You kidnapped me.” Then adds belatedly, “Again.”

“I did,” you agree, eyes glittering with amusement. “It’s a bit of a tradition now, don’t you think?”

“Where are we going?” he asks curiously, hand creeping forward to try to grab yours. He pokes your arm twice; you raise your eyebrows before realizing what he wants and putting your hand in his. Dazai’s fingers slide to your wrist to press against your pulse, feeling the familiar, even thrums and matching his own heartrate to to them.

“To a foreign countryside so I can kill you and dump your body,” you say without pause.

Dazai snorts, lifting your hand to his lips so he can kiss your palm, lashes fluttering shut when your fingers brush over his cheekbone. He says dreamily, “A woman after my own heart.”

“You’re such a freak,” you say fondly.

“Your freak,” he corrects with a flirty smile before setting your joined hands back down on the table. “I can’t believe you kidnapped me again. And drugged me. I still feel a bit woozy, y’know? How are you going to make it up to me?”

“A one week escape from work isn’t enough?” you ask dryly.

“Nope,” he agrees, popping the ‘p’. “How about you make me those sweet buns you used to make this week? I haven’t had them in ages, I miss them.”

You squint at him, leaning back in your seat but leaving your hand in his. “Maritozzi?” you ask, and Dazai faintly recognizes the name from back then, so he nods. “What flavor?”

Dazai pauses and then asks, “Strawberry? Or lemon?”

“Both?” you offer.

His eyes widen slightly. He didn’t expect you to give in so quickly. Back when you guys were teenagers, he’d whine and ask you to make them and it would turn into a six hour argument of him insisting that he deserves them and you refusing him.

“That was easier than I expected,” he admits sheepishly.

“It’s your birthday,” you say like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Again, Dazai’s heart flutters, and he squeezes your hand gently. “The first one we’ve celebrated together in four years. We can stop to get the ingredients on the way to the house.”

The house. Where is it that you’re taking him? Dazai’s mind bounces around with potential answers—far enough that you had to take him on a plane, but not so far that he’s just woken up and its already begun its descent. Dazai has a quick metabolism and a high tolerance for most drugs. You know this and probably would’ve accounted for it, but there’s a large margin of error. You don’t know if his metabolism has gotten quicker or slower over the years apart, and you don’t know if his tolerance has weakened, so you probably didn’t want to risk pushing the dosage anymore than you would’ve four years ago.

Which probably puts the time at… four hours after you injected him? Which would make sense from the position of the sun in the sky. Probably took forty minutes from injection to take off between getting him here and getting everything settled. So a three hour flight? About? Where would that leave you guys? Seoul? No, it couldn’t be—there were no cities anywhere in sight. One of the northern islands then?

“You didn’t answer my question,” he whines. “Where are we going?”

You hesitate for a moment like you don’t want to tell him, but he pouts and widens his eyes in the way that always makes you give in. You roll your eyes at him exagerratedly, and he gives you a sweet smile in response.

“A property up in Hokkaido,” you finally say. Dazai is smug, realizing his deductions were right, until you continue speaking. “It’s near a small village. Pretty. Me and Chuuya scoped it out and bought it a couple of months ago just to have.”

What. Dazai stares at you blankly, and you tilt your head to the side in confusion, unsure why he suddenly closed off. He narrows his eyes at you, willing away the bitterness that suddenly swells in his chest. It’s sharp and sour, and he definitely doesn’t like it, but when he tries to push it away, it only intensifies.

“You bought property with Chuuya,” he asks flatly. “You’re taking me to a property that you bought with the slug.”

You roll your eyes. “Stop that,” you say immediately. “I’m taking you to a property that I scoped out because I wanted to bring you here. Chuuya jumped on and offered to pay for half because he wanted a place to escape to outside the city.”

Dazai squints at you, and you raise your eyebrows challengingly. He immediately huffs and looks away, stomach lurching when the plane begins the final part of the descent to the ground. He decides to change the subject instead of pressing, maybe he’ll whine about it some more later.

“So,” he says slowly, voice dropping just enough to catch your attention from the way you tilt your head to the side. “You’ve kidnapped me away from the Agency… to bring me to a house in the middle of nowhere… and decided not to tell me about it until now…”

You hum in response, eyes narrowing, and Dazai leans closer over the table separating the two of you, lips curling up into a lecherous smirk that has you rolling your eyes. You already know what’s coming, but you must let him have his fun on his birthday.

“And we’ll be there for… how long again?”

You glance at him from the corner of your eye, seemingly intent on staring out the window. “A week.”

Dazai whistles, leaning back in his seat again. His eyes rove over you—it's been a hot minute since the two of you have been able to do anything intimate. He hasn’t even seen you in a few weeks. And before that, most days, you’re either too exhausted or he’s too in his own head about things to get in the mood. But this… Seven days. No work. No people interrupting. No reason to spiral in his own head. His lips unconsciously pull into another small smile, teeth scraping his tongue as his gaze lingers on the top few buttons of your dress shirt—they’re undone, just low enough for him to see a hint of…

You clear your throat. Dazai’s gaze snaps back up to your face. He gives you an innocent smile that makes you roll your eyes at him again.

“Pervert,” you accuse.

“Yeah,” Dazai breaths out, voice a bit raspy as he lifts your hand back to his lips. He kisses your knuckles and then the inside of your wrist, gaze flickering back up to your eyes. “I’m going to take advantage of this week.”

The corner of your mouth twitches like you’re fighting off a smile. “Oh, I counted on it.”

Dazai lets go of your wrist when the plane lands. He watches you tuck your hand back into your lap, pulling your phone out to shoot a text to someone before sliding it back into your pocket. His eyes stay on you as the plane rolls to a stop, watching the way the sunlight dances across your cheekbones. You look beautiful—always do—but you’ll look more beautiful tonight when he has you underneath him.

“Stop looking at me like that,” you tell him flatly as you rise to your feet. Dazai follows after you, standing too close, and when he leans down to ghost his lips to your neck, you swat at his head, but he immediately dodges and then drapes himself over your shoulders obnoxiously. “Osamu.”

Dazai lets his full body weight rest on you. You stumble forward, trying to walk toward the exit of the plane, but fail miserably because you’re dragging his dead weight with you. His lips curl up into a smile when he hears your frustrated groan, arms tightening around you.

“Get off of me, you freak,” you complain. “Walk on your own.”

“But I’m still so woozy,” he sighs dramatically. “You drugged me, take accountability and carry me to the car before I pass out and hit my head and die on my birthday. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

He pouts against your skin, nipping your neck for a second before resting his forehead in the crook of it, right next to the small mark he just left. Vision obscured, he misses the way you motion for the pilot, who had come out to lower the steps to the ground, to grab him until he feels two hands around his waist lifting him off the ground. Dazai yelps and flails, trying to figure out what exactly just happened, and blanches when he realizes he’s being held princess style by a grown man.

“Watanabe-san, please make sure Osamu makes it down the steps safely. We wouldn’t want him to pass out and hit his head and die on his birthday, would we?” you say with a sweet smile.

“Of course not, hime,” the man replies gruffly.

Mortified, Dazai tries to worm out of the man’s arms, but his grip is too tight. He looks at you, betrayed, but you’re only fighting giggles as you make your way over to the car waiting on the tarmac, leaving him in the arms of this man.

By the time he makes it to the sleek black car waiting for the two of you, Dazai’s face is flaming red. The moment he’s placed on the ground, he throws himself into the car and turns his back to you. You laugh and climb in after him, pressing your lips to his shoulder.

“I hate you,” he whines.

“I love you too.”

---------

Dazai naps once the two of you get to the house, so you focus on getting everything together to make the maritozzi in the morning. You don’t really like making it—the pastries make you upset. Or, well, it’s not the pastries that make you upset, but the fact that every time you make them, you get this strange, aching feeling in your chest—a sense of deja vu so strong that it nearly brings you to your knees.

Your hands always remember what to do, even when your mind doesn’t. You knead the dough with a practiced ease that doesn’t feel like it belongs to you. You know exactly how much flour to dust on the board, how warm the milk should be, how to press your thumb into the dough to check if it’s ready.

It’s muscle memory, maybe.

You sigh as you rest your hands on the kitchen counter. You plan to start baking in the morning, but you already feel that… odd feeling spreading through you, both sharp and tender at the same time. A homesickness for a place you can’t name. Grief for people you don’t remember. It happens every time: a flicker of something just out of reach. A child’s gleeful laugh, a pair of warm hands guiding yours, a whispered promise that isn’t kept.

You lay your head in your arms for a moment, eyes sliding shut. You can never get the maritozzi right, regardless of how hard you try. You don’t know what you’re doing wrong, or even what’s wrong with them at all, but you know it’s not right. You hate making them. Each time, you can’t help the hope that swells in your chest that maybe this time will be different. Maybe you’ll get it right.

Each time you’re disappointed.

And yet, here you are again trying.

The things you do for love.

You feel a familiar pair of arms wrap around your waist from behind, hands slipping beneath your shirt. Dazai drapes himself over your back, pinning you to the counter. He sighs softly as he kisses the nape of your neck and your shoulder before burying his face in the crook of your neck.

“Good morning, sleepy head,” you whisper softly, a smile pulling on your lips as you lift a hand to rest it on the top of his head. You feel his heartbeat thrumming against your back, and his fingers tracing absent patterns on your stomach. “You were tired.”

“You’ve been away for a few weeks,” he murmurs, voice muffled against your neck. You feel him yawn before nuzzling his face against your skin, eyes sliding shut. “I wasn’t sleeping well.”

“My apologies,” you say with faux remorse. “How dare I go away for work and mess up your sleeping schedule.”

He hums in agreement. “A crime worthy of capital punishment, honestly,” he says, and you feel him smile softly, kissing your neck again. You let out a breathy sigh and instinctively tilt your head to the side to give him more room. “I had to sleep without my favorite pillow. You know, the soft, warm, breathing one that makes cute little noises when I kiss her neck.”

“Oh, shut up,” you scowl, but the expression quickly fades when you feel him trailing slow kisses up your neck, deliberately lingering just below your ear.

“How are you ever going to make it up to me?” he whispers playfully before he nips your skin.

You ignore his noise of complaint when you shift in his arms so that you can face him, resting your hands on his hips as you look up at him through your lashes. You give him a sweet smile before saying, “I can think of a few ways.”

“Oh yeah,” Dazai drawls, lips curling up into a lazy smirk as his fingers slip beneath the hem of your shirt again. “Is this the part where you beg for forgiveness?”

“Oh?” you hum, leaning in to ghost your lips against his jaw, kissing slowly to his ear as you murmur, “You want me to beg?”

He lets out a soft groan when you nip his skin. “I want you to convince me you’re sorry for leaving me to suffer all alone,” he corrects, breathing a little heavier when you start to kiss down the column of his throat. His voice catches over his words as you slide down the sweatpants he changed into and lower yourself to your knees in front of him. “Oh, fuck.”

“You poor thing,” you say softly, leaning in to press a kiss to his hip bone. “All alone for weeks. I bet you were just aching without me.”

“I—” His voice breaks into a groan as your mouth trails lower down the line of his ‘v’, lashes fluttering as he rests his hands back onto the counter and glances up at the ceiling before looking back down at you. His pupils are blown wide, eyes darker than you’ve ever seen them before. “You have no idea.”

“I think I have an idea,” you say more to yourself than to him, a teasing smile playing at your lips as you finally lift your hand to stroke his leaky cock. His hips jerk instinctively, he twitches in your hand like he’s already on the verge of finishing, and you lift your gaze. His chest is heaving, pink lips swollen and parted, head tilted back as he looks up at the ceiling again, desperately trying to gain control of himself.

God, you love him. You’ve loved him for years, since you were sixteen, even if you only started acknowledging the depths of your feelings for him when you were eighteen. He was always so flighty and unpredictable, you never expected one day he’d be yours the way he is now. You’ll never let him go now. You’ve missed him these past few weeks apart much more than you realized.

“I would do terrible things for you, Osamu,” you tell him softly, running your thumb over his tip just so you can hear the way he keens. “You’re mine.”

“Yours,” he pants. You’re not even sure if he fully hears what you say, already lost in the haze of pleasure, and you don’t really care. “Please.”

You don’t look away from him for a second as you take his tip into your mouth, flattening your tongue against his slit to lap up all of the precum that had beaded there. He lets out a ragged groan, but you can’t see his face, so you lift your hand to grab one of his and tug to get his attention.

His head falls forward, bangs falling in his eyes as he looks down at you. His tongue darts out to wet his lips as he breathes heavily, gaze entirely unfocused as need quickly fogs and dismantles the cogs of his quick brain. Having gotten what you wanted, you try to slip your hand free to hold his hips again, but his grip on your hand tightens, refusing to let go.

You hum softly, entwining your fingers with his instead as you slowly take him deeper into your mouth. His eyes half-roll back when his tip hits the back of your throat and your tongue presses against the vein on the underside of his cock. He almost lets his head fall back again, but your grip on his hand keeps him grounded to you. Even as fucked out as he is with his cock deep down your throat and your nails tracing patterns on his inner thighs, he manages to keep his gaze mostly locked to yours.

“I—haaah, fuck—you feel s’good,” he slurs, free hand coming up to cradle the back of your head. He lets you set the pace, and you pick a slow and steady one that you know kills him. You want to see how long he can last before he snaps. “I—so many nights…”

His sentences are garbled and mostly unintelligible. It makes you happy—you’re glad he lets his brain shut off when he’s with you like this. He used to try so hard to maintain control that you could tell it was stressing him out when he was supposed to be feeling good, but he doesn’t bother with the pretenses anymore, letting everything crumble away the moment he has you in bed with him. Or, in this case, in the middle of the kitchen.

You can’t respond, so you resign to letting out a soft hum of acknowledgment; the vibrations make him whimper, cock twitching in your mouth as he gnaws on his bottom lip, desperately trying not to cum so quickly. You can feel his thighs tense beneath your touch as holds himself back from fucking your face.

Your gaze traces his face, catching sight of the red flush of his cheeks, his wet lips, the way his expression is all twisted—he’s so pretty, so you decide to have a bit of mercy on him.

Plus, it is still his birthday after all.

You lift your hand to tap his hip twice, signaling to him that he can take control if he wants, and the effect is immediate. His eyes snap open fully, glassy and wild with need, and then he moves.

His grip on your hand tightens just a bit, and the hand on the back of your head slips down to cup your jaw, thumb brushing the corner of your lips, tracing how they’re stretched around his cock. He rocks his hips forward once—slowly, like he’s testing the waters, worried that you might change your mind, but you stay still and pliant, looking up at him through your lashes imploringly.

“Fuck,” he breathes out again. “Love you. So good to me. Always been so good to me.”

He thrusts again, this time deeper, more sure of himself, and you relax your throat for him, letting him set the rhythm. It's not rough or frantic—not yet—just a slow, needy grind of someone who’s waited for this too long. His hand slides back to cup the back of your head as he starts to pick up the pace; you gag a little on his cock, eyes tearing up, but you squeeze his hand encouragingly, telling him silently to continue. To give you more.

He does.

He rolls his hips forward sharply, cock thrusting deeper, harder, and you take it, eyes fluttering shut for just a second as your throat stretches around him. His thighs tremble under your hands, breath ragged as he fucks your throat. The noises in the kitchen—his low groans, the way you’re choking on his cock, each wet, sloppy thrust into your mouth—it makes your head all foggy, heat pooling in your lower stomach.

His free hand comes back to your jaw, thumb swiping at the drool spilling from the corner of your mouth before he squeezes your cheeks gently to feel his cock sliding in and out of your mouth. Your jaw aches, your throat burns, and still, you stay there, tears spilling freely down your cheeks, because he’s close. You can feel it. His thigh tenses under your palm, his fingers tighten around yours, his rhythm stutters and takes a more erratic turn, and his voice breaks on your name, groans shifting into pitched moans.

“Haah,” he gasps, hips jerking. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, please, please, baby, I—I’m gonna—”

Your nose is flush to his pubic hair as he cums deep down your throat—his cum tastes so familiar, too salty, after all of these years, he still hasn’t taken your advice of a better diet. Hazily, you remind yourself to scold him about it later, but right now, you’re too focused on trying not to choke over him, swallowing the copious amounts of cum he spilled into your mouth as he trembles above you violently, still feeling the aftershocks of the intense orgasm.

When he finally pulls out, he drops to his knees in front of you, hands cupping your cheeks as he leans in, kissing you deeply. He kisses you like he’s trying to devour you—claim you, even, like he hasn’t already, like you haven’t been his since the moment the two of you met. His breath is uneven, chest heaving, and there’s a flicker of something wild in his eyes as he pulls back to look at you, eyes roving over you. His eyes slide shut again as he rests his forehead against yours.

“You’re everything,” he whispers, hands sliding down to your sides as he ghosts his lips against yours. “God, you’re everything. You have no idea what you do to me.”

You lift your hands to cup his cheeks, pressing your lips to his again. You toy with the tips of his hair as your lips slide messily against his, letting out a soft moan when his hand slides to the small of your back, pulling your body flush to his. His hands dip lower, fingers slipping beneath the waistband of your cotton shorts, and you smile against his lips.

“I’m not fucking you on the kitchen floor,” you say, leaning back slightly. He chases your lips to kiss you again, a hazy smile on his lips as he gives you a half-lidded look.

“It would be hot though,” he murmurs, nipping at your bottom lip before letting out a low groan against your skin, dragging his lips from your jaw to your ear. You let out a shaky breath when his fingers slide down to your panties, pressing his finger down on your clit through thin silk and moaning again. “Have you face down, nails clawing against the tile, pinned between me and the floor—nowhere to go, can only take it.”

“Jesus, Osamu,” you say shakily, eyes sliding shut as his fingers curl into your hair, pulling your head back so he can kiss down your neck, kisses wet and lingering as he sucks at your skin. He traces slow circles around your clit, and your grip on his shoulders tightens as you try to ground yourself. “Not the kitchen floor.”

“Such a bore,” he complains. “Ruining my fun. It’s still my birthday, y’know?”

Before you can retort, Dazai’s hands drop to your thighs, and you yelp as he rises to his feet, bringing you with him. Sometimes you forget how strong Dazai is—it’s easy when he constantly acts like he’s helpless and drowns himself in long jackets and loose clothes. He used to be able to go blow-for-blow with Chuuya in combat, and although you know damn well he hasn’t kept up his training, you can feel the lean muscles of his biceps beneath his sweatshirt.

Your grip tightens on them; he’s still mouthing at your neck as he carries you into the back bedroom. You whisper softly, “You are so…”

When you don’t finish, Dazai nips your neck playfully and finishes, “Handsome? Charming? The image of your deepest, darkest desires?”

Usually, you would roll your eyes at him, but this time, you gasp, “Yeah. Yeah, you are.”

He nudges the door open with his foot before kicking it shut. He sets you down gently on the bed, pushing you back until your back is flat and hovering above you to steal another kiss. This one is slow and lazy as he settles above you on his elbows, tongue running along your bottom lip, and fingers dragging over your ribs reverently. You think you could kiss him forever and never get sick of it.

When he finally pulls back, it’s only by an inch, his eyes are half-lidded, and his breath is warm against your lips as he looks down at you.

“Still with me?” he murmurs, thumb circling your hip bone.

“Always,” you answer quietly.

His eyes soften as he looks down at you, lifting his hand from your hip so he can cup the side of your face. You lean into his touch, lashes fluttering shut momentarily as you bask in the familiar warmth of his skin.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

You give him a hazy smile as you look back up at him. “For what?” you ask, voice teasing, but Dazai’s smile only softens even more. He runs his thumb over your bottom lip, and you nip at it playfully.

“Everything.”

He doesn’t give you a chance to question him, leaning down to press his lips to yours again. This kiss is chaster than the last, like he just wants to savor in the taste of you rather than outright devour you. His thumb traces soft circles over your cheek, and his other hand slides down your body to your thigh, hiking your leg over his waist so he can slot his hips between your legs.

He kisses you and holds you so gently that you forget to breathe until your lungs start burning. When you push at his shoulder to get some air, he immediately leans down to keep kissing your neck, sliding your shirt up, and tapping you to beckon you to lift your shoulders so he can pull it off.

Once he has it off and flings it to the side, he leans back to let his eyes roam your body. His pupils are blown wide, and his fingers are a bit shaky; he slides them down your body, tracing your figure like he’s worshiping it.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispers more to himself than to you. “Divine. The kind of beauty that drives saints to sin and kings to kneel. You make the stars look dim, and the heavens seem dull. I still can’t believe you’re mine. There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do for you.”

“My god, Dazai,” you laugh, face heating up at his words. “A bit over the top with the poetry tonight, aren’t you?”

“Not nearly,” he says, voice low and serious as his gaze lifts back to your face. He repeats softly, “No, not nearly.”

Your throat swells as you look up at him, and he runs his knuckles across your cheek before trailing his fingers down your face. His thumb presses heavily against your bottom lip, and you give him a kittish smile before taking it into your mouth, swirling your tongue around the digit as you look up at him through your lashes.

His breath catches, and you hum around his finger when he presses down slightly on your tongue, rolling your hips up to grind against his clothed cock. He murmurs, voice strained, “You drive me insane.”

“Oh yeah?” you press, voice breathy. “Prove it?”

He kisses slowly to your collarbone, making sure to leave marks on his way down. “Gladly,” he rasps, swiping his tongue along your collarbone before biting over the bone lightly.

“You’re going to leave so many marks,” you complain, breath hitching when he slowly rocks his hips against yours. He’s already hard again; you can feel him through the thin material of your panties, and you want him desperately. Your walls clench around nothing, and the heat pooling in your stomach has your thighs trembling. “Shit, Osamu, will you just—”

“Good thing I have you to myself all week,” he croons, a smug smirk on his lips as he kisses down your chest to the swell of your breasts. He lets out a shaky puff of air as he pulls back just a bit to get an eyeful of your tits before his lips wrap around your nipple. He moans against you as he rolls it between his teeth, lifting his free hand to grope your other breast. Your back arches up as you press yourself into his touch, a keen escaping your lips. “Gonna mark you up all over, you won’t even have to hide them.”

“Please,” you gasp, head falling back against the pillows. “Please, Osamu, I—”

You choke over your words when you feel him slide your panties down your legs. He pulls his lips off your nipple with a pop before trailing wet kisses back up your chest until his face is hovering above yours. His thumb slips from your mouth so that he can pinch your chin between his fingers, forcing you to look him in the eye.

“Please, what?” he hums insufferably. “C’mon, baby, use your words.”

“You’re so—” You start to reply irritably, only to whimper when he rolls his hips again.

“So what?” he presses, giving you a cocky smile as he taps your cheek twice to get your attention again. “What am I? You’re so cute, I’ve barely done anything, and you’re already so close to finishing.”

“I hate you. I—haaaah, shit—” you moan, but your lashes flutter shut as Dazai slides his fingers between your wet folds. “Osamu—”

He lets out a ragged breath, hot against your skin. “Shit, baby, you’re drenched,” he groans. “All this just from letting me fuck your face? Fuck, I love you. Tell me what you need. Tell me. I want to hear you say it. It’s my birthday.”

“Fuck me,” you gasp, lifting trembling hands to cup his cheeks. “Please, fuck me, Osamu.”

“God, I love hearing you beg,” he breathes out, nipping at your jaw before his lips drag hot and slow up to your ear. “Love seeing you all worked up for me. Only I get to see you like this, yeah?”

His teeth graze your ear lobe, and you exhale shakily, shivering under his touch. He laughs softly, infuriatingly pleased with himself, and you can’t even hit him with a snide comment like you usually would, because your whole body shudders when you feel his cock slide between your folds.

“You don’t even know how good you look right now,” he goes on, voice low and smooth as he traces his fingers down your body again.

The noise you let out is embarrassing, something caught between a whine and a gasp of his name when he presses the tip of his cock to your entrance. Your hips jerk up, desperate for him to sink inside you again, but he holds your hips down. It’s been weeks since the two of you have done anything together, and your body is falling apart just at the idea of having him deep inside you again.

“Please,” you whisper again, voice coming out more of a whine than anything else. “Osamu, it’s been so long, I—”

Dazai doesn’t let you finish your sentence. The words are knocked from your lungs when he snaps his hips forward, thrusting deep inside you. Your hands slide underneath his sweatshirt, nails raking down his back as you writhe beneath him. His eyes are half-lidded as he looks down at you, and you’re pleased to realize he’s just as much of a mess as you. His lips are pink and swollen, his face is flushed, hair matted to his forehead, and dark eyes unfocused. He looks beautiful.

You love him. You’ve always loved him, but it hits you so suddenly that it makes your chest ache. You surge upwards to press your lips against his, and Dazai moans into your mouth, rocking his hips against yours suddenly as he presses you back down into the mattress, tongues sliding together messily. Each thrust is deep and even, less like he’s trying to chase release and more like he’s just savoring in the feeling of being with you like this again.

“Osamu,” you beg, and you don’t really know what you’re begging for, but your lashes suddenly feel wet, and he’s lifting one hand to wipe tears you didn’t realize were falling over your cheeks. “Osamu, I—”

Your words break into a moan when Dazai thrusts just a little harder, hitting that spot inside you that makes your vision go white at the edges. Dazai ghosts his lips against yours, laughing breathlessly.

“Aw, baby, you missed me, didn’t you?” His voice is teasing as he brushes kisses across your face, deceptively gentle when compared to the way he’s fucking the air right out of your lungs with every thrust. “I missed you too, we’ve both been so busy lately… Didn’t even know if you’d have time today with everything going on.”

Even with your brain fogged with pleasure, you can hear the brief waver of insecurity in his tone. You lift your hands up to cup his cheeks between your hands, forcing him to look you in the eye.

“Always have time for you,” you tell him softly. “Especially today.”

Dazai’s throat bobs at your words, and instead of responding, he buries his face in the crook of your neck, sucking and biting at the sensitive skin as he picks up the pace of his thrusts. The room is filled with the lewd sounds of skin-on-skin, breathless moans, and his cock driving in and out of your cunt. You gasp his name, hips bucking up to meet his, both of you now chasing release.

You’re so close that it hurts, abdomen coiled tight and thighs so tense that they’re shaking around his waist. When he slips his hand between you to rub tight circles on your clit, you finally fall apart. His name spills from your lips and your vision whitens at the edges, you let out a ragged sob that he swallows with a kiss as he fucks you through your high, gasping your name like a prayer over and over again. He’s close, too—you can feel it in the way his rhythm falters and how his breath hitches over every chant of your name.

Your walls spasm around him as he chases your high, pleasure shifting into overstimulation as he uses your body for himself now. You hiccup over a sob as your whole body squirms beneath him, but he holds you down, fucking you so hard that your body jolts further up the bed with each thrust. Your vision darkens at the edges a bit, your head feels woozy, and it’s when you really feel the pinpricks of numbness spreading from your fingertips up to your arms, that he finally finishes, burying himself deep inside you as he cums with a low, broken moan of your name.

He doesn’t move for a long moment, just breathing hard against your shoulder, body trembling above yours. He finally lifts his head, and with a lazy, sated grin, he says, “What a birthday gift.”

You roll your eyes at him, but the smile that curls at your lips is fond.

“I love you,” you whisper, reaching up to caress his face, thumb running along his cheekbone. “Happy birthday.”

“I love you,” he replies softly, eyes sliding shut as he kisses your palm. “Thank you.”

---------

You wake up early the next morning to make the maritozzi for Dazai. He’s still fast asleep in bed next to you by the time you wake up, tangled in the sheets and curled into your warmth. Slipping out of bed without waking him is no easy feat—he’s always clingy in the mornings, even more so when he’s exhausted. You know he hasn’t been sleeping well these past few weeks you’ve been away, and the last thing you want is to disturb the rare peace he’s found.

So, for a while, you stay. You hum softly under your breath, fingers trailing gently through his hair in slow, soothing strokes. It takes nearly half an hour before his grip on you slackens enough for you to ease out of his arms and tiptoe into the kitchen.

You’ve been up for a few hours now. Dazai is still sleeping, surprisingly; you underestimated just how tired he was. Usually, you can slip out of bed, but he’ll come wandering in, looking for you within the hour. His sleep rarely lasts when you’re not in bed with him.

The pastries are almost done now; though, you just took them out to cool, and you've put together a little basket for when they’re done. You think maybe you’ll drag him outside to eat. He needs to get some sun; all he’s been doing the past few months is rotting away in your apartment or his.

You hum softly to yourself as you grab a blanket out of the closet, folding it before placing it next to the basket. You need to clean still, too, but—

You jump slightly when you feel a pair of arms wrap around your waist. Dazai’s familiar weight settles on your back as he leans on you, burying his face in the crook of your neck to kiss your skin gently before resting his chin on your shoulder.

“Cheater,” he murmurs, voice thick with sleep. “Making my favorite, so I can’t be mad at you for sneaking out of bed. So unfair.”

You smile to yourself, looking to the side so you can see him. He still looks sleepy—his eyes are drooping shut and his breathing is heavy, but the bags beneath his eyes are lighter, if only a little. You lift up your hand so you can cup the side of his face before leaning in to press your lips against his cheek.

“Good morning,” you say quietly. “You slept for a while.”

His eyes slide shut when your lips brush his skin. “Come back to bed,” he whispers. “Lay with me a little longer.”

“I need to finish cleaning,” you tell him, ignoring the way he pushes his bottom lip out dramatically; he looks stupid pouting so hard with his eyes closed. Your chest bubbles with warmth. “It’ll be annoying to clean the cream after it hardens in the bowl.”

His eyes fly open at that, gaze suddenly sharp as he scans the counter. He lights up when he sees the two bowls on the counter in front of you, giving you imploring eyes and a sweet smile. You roll your eyes at him.

“You’re such a child,” you insult fondly, but you do reach forward to scoop up some of the leftover cream onto your finger, lifting it to his lips. Dazai immediately wraps his lips around the digit, sucking the thick cream right off your finger and moaning obnoxiously.

“Strawberry,” he says approvingly after he pulls his lips off your finger with a loud pop. He gives you a sharp smile before saying, “You taste better though. My favorite type of c—”

“Stop,” you interrupt before he can finish the sentence. He pouts again, but then presses a slow kiss to the back of your neck. You sigh, leaning into his touch despite yourself, and he hums softly as he rocks the two of you back and forth slowly, resting his forehead on the top of your head. You rest your hand over one of his, eye sliding shut and then admit, “I’ve missed you a lot.”

“It’s been a long three weeks,” he agrees softly. “I wish Mori would start sending someone else to handle business abroad.”

“I wish you could come with me,” you say with a frown. “The only time you’ve ever left the country, you were thrown in prison. There’s so many places I want to bring you.”

“You don’t know that,” he says petulantly. “I could’ve left during the two years I was underground.”

“Did you?”

“... No.”

“Do you like arguing for the sake of arguing?” you ask dryly, but you find yourself smiling fondly.

“Where do you want to take me?” he asks instead of answering the question, arms tightening around you. “Hmm? Tell me.”

Your lips part to list off all of your favorite travel destinations. Paris, the City of Love—Dazai would be horrendously obnoxious there with you, but he would love it, so it would probably be one of the first places you brought him. The Yucatán Peninsula too, you think, and maybe Egypt—he had a whole phase back when the two of you were teenagers where he would spend hours a day researching ancient civilizations, watching people explore old ruins with a pout and complaining incessantly about being stuck in Yokohama. You want to bring him to Zhuhai one day to show him the Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, but Qu Yuan and Cao Xueqin have been fighting for territory there for almost two years now so it won’t be any time soon.

But you don’t say anything, because your gaze draws back to the mess of bowls on the counter and then to where the maritozzi are cooling. More than anything, you want to bring him to a home that no longer exists. A home you don’t even remember. You don’t know why you’ve been yearning so badly for it lately; you went years without thinking of your past before you met Mori, not even once had it crossed your mind in that time, but over the last few months, it's crossed your mind frequently. You swear that you can feel familiar arms wrapping around you, a laugh that makes your chest ache that you can’t quite place; you find yourself looking up at the stars, and you can almost hear whispers of a voice you should know laying next to you, telling you all the stories of the constellations.

Dazai seems to recognize something is wrong, because he lifts his hand to your chin to tilt your face up and to the side so that your gaze lands on his. He frowns slightly, running his thumb over your skin before he says, “Dance with me?”

“Dance?” you ask, trying to laugh but it comes out too forced. Dazai only gives you a sweet smile in return before he spins you around to face him, one hand resting on your waist while the other reaches for yours, entwining his fingers with yours as he starts spinning to a song only he can hear, dragging you along with him as he dances the two of you around the island in the kitchen. “You’re so cheesy.”

“I prefer romantic,” he disagrees as he spins you beneath his arm, dipping you down slightly and holding you there for a moment so he can lean in and place an obnoxiously loud kiss right on your nose. “Isn’t this romantic?”

You laugh again, and this one is more genuine as you look up at him. His dark eyes are a warm golden color beneath the morning light, sickeningly soft as he looks down at you like you’re the only thing in the world that matters to him. Your throat suddenly feels too tight, and his lips curl up into a soft smile as he places another kiss on your face, this time on your lips.

He lifts you from the dip, and you slip your hand from his so you can hook both of your arms loosely around his neck. His hands settle on your hips as the two of you continue to sway slowly to an imaginary song.

“Why don’t you like baking them?” he asks quietly. It’s a question you know he’s been dying to know the answer to for years; you’re surprised it took him this long to ask.

Your gaze lowers. “I think… my mother was the one who taught me how to bake them,” you say softly. “I can never get them right. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

Dazai doesn’t say anything right away. His hold on you tightens just the slightest bit as he rests his forehead against yours. Your lips press together and your eyes sting with sudden tears. You think about how your hands move automatically through the steps, how your heart always sinks when they come out just a little too dense or the cream doesn’t taste quite right. It’s like there’s a version of the pastry that lives in your memory—light, sweet, perfect—and no matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to recreate it.

Like it belonged to another life. Another version of you. One that was pure, sweet, gentle, and this one doesn’t deserve it.

This version of you has seen too much, done too much. You carry too many shadows in your heart and have too much blood under your fingernails. You were softer then—before the Great War, before Mori, before the Port Mafia. Every time you make them, you’re reminded that you’ll never be that girl again. The one that exists now… you don’t even know if she can be considered human by most people. The pastries don’t come out right because they’re not meant to. You no longer know how to make something so sweet. You don’t deserve something so gentle.

You suddenly understand why you’ve been thinking so much of your past.

Your gaze flickers up to Dazai as he lifts his hands to cradle your face between his hands. His thumb brushes beneath your eye, catching the tear before it can fall. He gives you a small, sad smile before he asks quietly, “This isn’t about the pastries, is it?”

You try to look away but he doesn’t let you. Your voice is barely a rasp as you say, “They’re not right. They don’t—”

I’m not right. I don’t know if I deserve this.

“They’re yours,” he murmurs, cutting you off before you can finish what you’re about to say. He leans in to press his lips against your temple. “They’re perfect to me.”

You’re you. You’re perfect to me.

“It’s not what I want to give you,” you insist. Your voice cracks, much to your horror. You turn your face into his shoulder, not wanting him to see the tears that threaten to spill. “I feel like I’m holding you back, Osamu. That you’ll never be able separate yourself from your past as long as you’re with me, and you’ll never believe in your own goodness when you come home to me every night. I don’t want to be the reason you can never accept that you’ve fulfilled Oda’s last request.”

Dazai’s smile is unbearably soft as he gently pulls your face from his shoulder and forces you to look at him again. His gaze darts up to the basket you started putting together on the table and he asks quietly, “Did you want to eat breakfast outside?”

You nod, swallowing thickly.

“C’mon,” he nudges you. “Let’s finish getting it all together and go eat. We can talk out there.”

---------

Dazai has never had a reason to live.

The first time he tried to kill himself, he was eleven. It was when his grandfather had started pitting his siblings and cousins against each other, and Dazai first started questioning why he was even alive. He had no ambition for power like his siblings, he had no passion for any hobbies like his mother, and he had no friends, not even his own family liked him. His mother found him slumped over in the bathroom and rushed him to the hospital—she made him swear to never do something like this again. He agreed, but his promise to her died when she did when he was fourteen.

The second time he tried to kill himself, he was fourteen. His mother got caught trying to smuggle Dazai and his siblings out of his grandfather’s estate. Two of his siblings had already been killed by his cousins, and she was desperate to not lose anymore of her children. She got caught trying to escape with them, and his grandfather ordered his father to kill her. Dazai jumped from the rooftop that very night—that’s how he ended up in Mori’s clutches.

He’s not sure how many times he tried to die from fourteen to fifteen. More than he can count, and they got progressively more violent and desperate over time. When he met Chuuya and then Odasaku, he found his first friends—although at the time, he’d never been able to fully bring himself to believe that they viewed him that way. Dazai slowed down on his attempts after meeting them; he didn’t fully stop, he just became more… passive with it. Attempts to blow himself up shifted into recklessness during missions; instead of drinking various poisons, he would drink copious amounts of alcohol until his skin was gray and clammy and the room started spinning.

And then, he met you.

Dazai’s lips curl up into a soft smile as he watches you set up all the stuff you’d prepared for breakfast. He keeps trying to sneak one of the maritozzi buns, but you catch him every time, slapping his hand away and giving him an accusing look. You’re still upset, but you’re a bit calmer now as you focus on something else.

You drove him mad. You drive him mad. You didn’t flinch at his barbed humor or the way he suddenly and irrationally tried to push you away after worming his way into your life. You never gave up when he deflected conversation with a smile or silence. You didn’t recoil from the mess that he was; you just acknowledged it like it was something as simple as the weather, accepting it, him, into your life so easily. You saw through the cocky facade and self-destruction, and you stayed anyway.

It terrified him. He couldn’t fathom it for years—you didn’t lecture him over his self-destructive tendencies, and you never pulled the whole ‘please, stop for me’ shit that he hated so much. You just sat with him. On the nights when his hands wouldn’t stop shaking, and he couldn’t remember how many bottles he’d emptied, you were there. You didn’t touch him unless he asked, didn’t talk unless he initiated it, and over time, Dazai found himself relying on you in a way that scared him.

After meeting you, for the first time in maybe his whole life, he started to want things again—small, stupid things, but things nonetheless. He wanted a morning that didn’t start with a hangover so he could wake up early and have coffee with you before you left for your meetings. He wanted to come back from a mission in one piece so he could watch a movie with you before laying down. He wanted to be able to sit beside you and not feel like a grenade with the pin halfway out, ready to take you out with him. Dazai has never believed that he deserved you, and a part of him almost wants to laugh when he realizes that you feel the same about him.

He thinks back to the conversation he had with you a few months ago when you came back from Rome early to be with him, and he feels so silly.

“What are you thinking?” you ask quietly as you set the basket to the side, finally looking up at him, but only briefly.

“Do you remember the conversation we had a few months ago? When you came back early from Rome?”

You raise your eyebrows at him, and Dazai wiggles across the blanket so that he can sit beside you. He nudges your shoulder with his, beckoning you to look at him again. You turn your head to the side, gaze focusing on him.

“Yeah,” you answer after a moment. “Of course.”

“It’s us,” he whispers. “It’s always been us.”

You look at him, tilting your head to the side. You press your lips together tightly, an expression on your face like you understand what he’s saying, but you think maybe you’re misunderstanding and don’t want to get your hopes up. You set the napkins in your hands down, and Dazai continues, voice low.

“I didn’t understand it then,” he admits quietly. “I think maybe I haven’t understood it until right now, but it’s us. My reason to live—it’s you and me, has been for years. Since we were sixteen. I—”

“Osamu,” you start to say, and your voice wavers. You want to believe him, but you’re scared of being disappointed, like maybe he’s just saying this in the spur of the moment to make you feel better.

He shifts to sit on his knees, grabbing your hands and pulling them into his lap, squeezing them tightly. He can feel your fingers shaking ever so slightly.

“It’s true,” he insists. “Being with you… it gives me something to look forward to every day. You make me want things I didn’t think I could want. You make me feel things I didn’t think I was capable of feeling.”

He lifts one of your hands to his lips, kissing your knuckles and then your palm. His voice is shaking a bit now, but he continues. “You make me want to live. Not just survive. Not just keep breathing because I haven't figured out how to stop. Live. Really live. I want a future with you, I want—”

Dazai’s voice breaks, his grip tightens on your hand. Your eyes are wet with tears, and your lips are trembling, and Dazai loves you. He loves you so much that it makes him sick sometimes.

“I want to marry you,” he rasps. “I want to wake up every morning your husband. I want you to be my wife.”

He watches as you inhale deeply. He can feel your nails digging into his hands and it stings, but he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t realize just how much he means the words until he says them. And he realizes, a bit belatedly, that he doesn’t have a ring and this isn’t the proposal you deserve, but there’s so much hope in your eyes that he can’t take it back now.

“Don’t say that if you don’t mean it, Osamu,” you whisper. “Please, don’t say that if you don’t mean it.”

“I mean it.” He lets go of your hands to cup your cheeks. He lets out a broken laugh, blinking hard. “I’ve never been more certain of anything. You’re the only thing in my life that’s ever made sense. I want to live, and I want to live with you. As your husband. And I—I don’t have a ring. I didn’t plan this, I didn’t, uh, I didn’t think I was capable of ever asking anyone—of ever wanting this.”

He leans in to press his forehead to yours. He can taste the mint on your breath, and he can’t help himself from stealing a kiss, a brief brush of his lips against yours that makes his chest ache.

“But I want it with you. I want to be yours in every way a person can belong to someone. And I want you to be mine,” he says softly, hands sliding down from your face to cradle your neck instead. “This—it isn’t me asking, okay? I want to get a ring, I want to do it right, make it special, but I want you to know, because there is no world where you’re ever holding me back. You’re what keeps me going, so whatever silly thoughts you have going on in that pretty head of yours, they need to stop, okay?”

You take in a ragged breath and lean forward, pressing your face into the crook of his neck, and Dazai pulls you into his lap, holding you close, one hand wrapped rightly around your waist, the other cradling the back of your head. He kisses the top of your head and lets out a long breath, a weight lifting from his chest. Your body fits against his like it always has, like you’re made to be here, curled in his arms with the early afternoon light painting you in gold. He shuts his eyes and buries his face in your hair, breathing in the familiar scent of your shampoo.

“You don’t know what you do to me,” he finally murmurs, pressing his lips to your temple in a lingering kiss. “I don’t even fully understand it, but I know that I want you. I need you. You don’t have to change for me; you don’t have to be someone else for my sake. You as you are—it’s enough. You’re enough. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted; it doesn’t matter that you’re still with the Mafia and I’m with the Agency. None of that matters to me. What Odasaku asked of me… you being in my life doesn’t change anything. He’d never have wanted me to chase after his last request if it meant coming at the cost of you. Do you even know how many years he spent trying to get me to pull my head out of my ass and make a move on you? I think he was more relieved than either of us were when we finally got together.”

You let out a watery laugh, or maybe it’s a sob, Dazai can’t really tell, but he holds you a bit tighter, savoring in the feeling of having you in his arms. He thinks he could stay here forever if given the chance. Live a quiet life away from everything, just you, him and the rest of your lives together.

Maybe one day.

“I love you,” you whisper, brushing your lips against his throat before settling against him. The tension in your shoulders slowly dissipates, and you let out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what got into me.”

He kisses the top of your head again. “Don’t apologize,” he says. “I love you too.”

The two of you bask in each others arms, relaxing beneath the early afternoon sun. He toys with your hair absently, running soothing circles on your upper back. After a few moments, he glances back on the maritozzi you’d pulled out of the basket.

“... Can I have one now?” he asks, giving you an imploring look when you pull back to give him a deadpan one. “Please. It’s literally been five years, do you know how much self control I’ve had the past hour?”

Your lips curl up into a fond smile. “Fine.”

Dazai’s hand snatches out immediately before you can change your mind, shovelling the sweet bun into his mouth all at once. Your eyes shoot open in shock.

“Jesus Christ, Osamu,” you say, scrambling for a water bottle when he chokes over it. “What is wrong with you? My god, could you eat it normally?”

His eyes sting with tears, but he manages to give you a thumbs-up between coughs and wheezes. “So worth it,” he gasps, mouth-half-full, cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk.

You hand him the water, watching with a mixture of horror and amusement as he gulps it down. You shake your head when he finally manages to swallow, muttering, “You’re insane.”

Dazai leans back with a dramatic groan, collapsing onto the blanket like he’s completed a Herculean task. He reaches out for your hand, entwining your fingers again and tugging you to lay on top of him.

“So perfect,” he sighs dreamily, voice still a bit hoarse. He winks at you and gives you a flirty smile and then coos, “Just like the baker.”

“You’re so corny,” you complain, but you’re smiling when you look away from him.

“I’m so yours,” he corrects teasingly, kissing your knuckles.

Your smile softens.

“You are,” you agree quietly, “and I’m yours.”

Yeah, Dazai thinks, an adoring expression on his face as you lean in to brush some of the cream at the corner of his mouth away with your thumb. Yeah, this is definitely all he ever needs.

#dazai x reader #dazai x you #dazai smut #dazai osamu x you #dazai osamu x reader #dazai osamu smut #bsd x reader #bsd x you #bsd smut #bungo stray dogs x reader #bungo stray dogs x you #bungo stray dogs smut

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ollieofthebeholder · 1 year ago

Text

to find promise of peace (and the solace of rest): a TMA fanfic

Read from the beginning on Tumblr || AO3 || My Website

Chapter 116: May 2018

Jon was not strong. Physically or otherwise. But adrenaline could do wonderful things, and right now it was enabling him to keep Martin’s shoulders and back steady while Melanie tried to find a good place to start cutting the web away from him.

“It’s not sticky,” he said. “Not really.”

“Good, that means that probably won’t hurt when we peel it off him,” Melanie grunted. Despite her words and tone, her eyes were worried. “Jesus. How far behind him were we? How long has he been wrapped up like this?”

“I—I don’t know.” Jon was trying not to think too hard about that, actually. If he let himself wonder how early Martin had arrived at Hill Top Road, how long he’d been tied up and dangling and not knowing if he’d be rescued, he would start panicking. Only the fact that he’d been moving earlier, and the fact—all right, the belief that if Martin was—if Martin was—if they were too late, he’d have known, kept him from collapsing in despair.

When was the last time he’d told Martin he loved him? Yes, they had gone to sleep in one another’s arms the night before—they always did, even if Jon always seemed to wake up wrapped in nothing but blankets that still held Martin’s scent if not his warmth—but had they actually said anything? It was silly. Jon knew Martin loved him, and he knew Martin knew that Jon loved him, and they didn’t need to say the words any more than Martin and Melanie and Gerry needed to say them to one another. Still, he liked to say them every once in a while…and he’d like to know that Martin had that to hold on to when he was scared. This had to have been terrifying.

Maybe it still was.

“I love you,” he murmured into what he hoped was Martin’s ear. He’d like to have said Martin wriggled in response, but in truth, he was as still as he’d been since Annabelle Cane left.

“Hold him steady. And stay behind him,” Melanie ordered, scrambling up onto a stack of wooden crates that had no real reason to be in a room that had never been lived in.

Jon glanced up at her briefly. “I can’t see his face. How am I supposed to know which side is front or back?”

“His feet, Jon. They haven’t changed direction. Besides, his arms are behind his back and his left leg is bent behind the right one.” Melanie stretched up to just below where the web bound Martin’s ankle to the ceiling.

“Oh.” That made sense, Jon had to admit. Then he paused. “Wait, how do you know that?”

“The Hanged Man. Hold him steady,” Melanie said again. She pulled back the knife, hesitated, and inserted it into the mess of webbing.

She barely had to cut it. The whole thing split open like an overripe pea pod with a somewhat unpleasant cracking, tearing noise. Melanie fell back, nearly toppling from her box, and Jon couldn’t help it—he jumped away to keep the webbing that had encased Martin from dropping over him like a blanket. It fell in two halves like a plaster cast but landed like a small cloud of cotton wool and spread itself over the floor.

Martin himself didn’t seem to move. His leg remained perfectly bent, his hands pressed to his back, but Jon could tell they weren’t bound there, just…resting. Melanie gave a small yelp and did fall off the box this time, with a muffled curse. Even though Jon was behind Martin, he could guess why. Even from where he stood, he could see the green glow radiating as if from a pair of twinned spotlights, directly in front of his face.

“Martin?” Jon said, hearing the barely controlled panic in his voice.

Martin let out a gasp, although that was a mild term for it—it sounded like the gulp of air a previously drowning man might take upon breaking the surface, the sort of sound often followed by a great bout of hacking coughs. What followed this time, however, was Martin managing a single word in a hoarse, scratchy voice, even as the light vanished and his arms dropped to hang loosely at his side. “Jon?”

Jon looked around desperately and spotted what he’d been looking for on the tilted wooden slat serving as a windowsill under the improbably boarded-up window—Martin’s glasses, lined up neatly alongside a tape recorder. He left the recorder for the moment, picked up the glasses, knelt beside Martin—who had indeed closed his eyes—fumbled for a moment to get them turned in the right direction, and slid them onto his face, then leaned forward and kissed him softly. “I’m here, Martin.”

Martin took one or two slow, deep breaths, then opened his eyes. They were, if possible, more intensely green than they had been just yesterday, but at least they weren’t glowing. They were also full of pain and contrition. “Jon. How—why—”

“Shh.” Jon kissed him again, just for sheer relief of being able to. He was still shaking with adrenaline. “You didn’t think we were going to leave you here, did you?”

“We?”

“We,” Melanie said, standing up and adjusting her shirt. “Hold on, let me get your ankle undone…”

Martin, with seeming difficulty owing to the blood rushing into it, managed to angle his head to look up at his ankle, then sighed and let his head fall back. With a sharp but simple twist of his leg, the webbing binding him to the ceiling came undone and he collapsed rather heavily to the floor. He groaned softly as he sat up.

Jon threw his arms around Martin and clung tightly. Tears welled up in his eyes, and he only just stopped himself from bursting into sobs. “Promise me you won’t ever go off on your own like this again. Please. Just…please. I-I don’t like worrying about you like that, and…and I…”

Martin hugged Jon back and kissed the top of his head gently. “I promise. No more…solo adventures. Certainly not investigating statements.”

Melanie came over and hugged both of them; Martin freed an arm from Jon to hug her, too. Jon didn’t, but he glanced up at her face and saw that she understood he was too scared and relieved to let go of Martin just yet. For a few moments, none of them said anything.

At last, Martin sighed heavily. “We should probably get back to the Institute. Please tell me the others knew you two were coming.”

“Tim loaned us his car.” Melanie got to her feet and held out a hand, a bit uncertainly, like she wasn’t sure which one of them she was offering to help up.

Jon accepted it, on the probably not unreasonable suspicion it would take both of them to help Martin up. “Speaking of, we should probably call…oh,” he said with a small grimace. The image floated to his mind of his phone, sitting on the desk in the Archivist’s office, still plugged into the charger. “Melanie, do you…?”

Melanie assisted Jon in levering Martin to his feet, then reached for her back pocket and sighed. “Unless it fell out in the car, no, damn it, I left mine at h—at the Institute, too. I wasn’t thinking about it. Martin?”

Martin bent down and picked up a small object Jon somehow hadn’t noticed—his phone, held together in the loosest possible sense with fragments of web, but there were enough bits missing from the screen that it was clear to Jon that even if it turned on, it wouldn’t work for long. “I wonder if the Institute will reimburse me for possessions with damage caused by being kidnapped in the line of duty.”

“Basira does all the paperwork. She’ll probably sign off on it,” Jon muttered. “She likes you.”

“I’m not having this conversation again. Come on, let’s get out of here.” Martin looked around, then crossed over to the windowsill—Jon only just stopped himself from clinging to his hand like a small child desperate not to lose his mother in a crowd—and reached for the tape recorder.

The soft click was the first clue Jon had that it had been running the whole time.

“Well,” Melanie muttered in his ear, “at least we’ll get some idea of what happened before we got here.”

Jon glanced at her as briefly as possible. “You don’t like it either?”

“I don’t think Martin left that tape for me. I definitely don’t think he dug through fifteen years’ worth of rubbish to find my tape recorder. Or his,” Melanie added. “Because if that isn’t the recorder Granddad gave him, I’ll eat it.” Louder, she asked, “Did you bring that on purpose?”

“No.” Martin was staring at the recorder as if he’d never seen it before…or, Jon supposed, as if he hadn’t seen it in a very long time. “I didn’t remember I had it until I got here and it turned itself on. And…Jesus. It looks almost like the one Granddad gave me for Christmas, but Mum smashed that when she had one of her temper tantrums.”

“If she wasn’t dead, I’d kill her,” Melanie said. “Turn it over.”

Martin did—and went pale. Jon went over to him and touched his arm tentatively. “It—Melanie found hers, too. I-it had—look, let’s, let’s talk about this on the way back, shall we?”

“Yeah.” Melanie came over and looped her arm through Martin’s. “Fuck this place. The Web can have it.”

“Sure.” Martin shook himself and pocketed the recorder, then reached for Jon, who tucked under his arm willingly enough.

It had stopped raining, but the clouds hung awfully low to the ground. Jon found himself eyeballing them nervously and tightening his grip on Martin’s waist. It probably wasn’t the Lonely, not this close to the Web’s stronghold, but that didn’t mean he was going to take any chances. Martin, however, stopped and stared at the small tree at the foot of the path, then at Jon, before turning to look at Melanie.

“Is it the twenty-fifth already?” he asked.

Melanie punched him lightly. “You forget every year.”

Martin smiled faintly in reply, then reached up and broke off a sprig of lilac, which he tucked into the pocket of his shirt.

Jon had…a number of questions. Most of them could, and probably should, wait until they were in the car and away from here, but there was one that couldn’t wait. “Martin?”

“Mm?”

“What were you dressed as?” In response to the look Martin gave him, Jon clarified, “For Halloween. The year you…Melanie told me about your, ah, encounter with the—well, the Dark—and she said she was dressed as the Beast and that you had a coat, but…”

Martin blinked, then laughed softly. “Dmitri. From Anastasia.”

Jon looked up at Martin and managed a smile. “I can see that.”

It was a stolen moment in a world gone mad, and Jon was going to cling to it as hard as he could. He had a feeling things were going to get worse before they got better.

“I hate your instincts,” Melanie said when he voiced that. She unlocked Tim’s car and looked in the driver’s seat. “Nope, no phone. Let’s get back before the rest of them panic.”

Jon hesitated, torn between sitting in the backseat with Martin and sitting up front. Finally, reluctantly, he took the seat next to Melanie. Martin reached his hand through the gap between the seats to hold his, though, which helped a lot.

As Melanie navigated onto the A240, Jon plucked up the courage to ask the least important of his questions. “What’s so significant about the twenty-fifth?”

“Nothing really,” Martin said. “It’s a Discworld reference.”

“The Glorious Revolution,” Melanie explained, shifting lanes to avoid yet another unsuspecting, law-abiding motorist. “Citizens pushing back against a bloody and homicidal regime. It’s just a silly little thing.” She was quiet for a moment. “We always loved those books.”

“I’ll dig them out for you sometime,” Martin promised. “You’ll love them.”

“I’m sure.” Jon squeezed Martin’s hand gently.

Martin squeezed back. “You…said you found your recorder from Granddad, Neens? I thought yours wore out.”

“It did. But it was sitting on my desk. Had my name scratched on it and everything.” Melanie’s eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror briefly. “The tape you recorded…this morning, I guess…when you talked about going to Hill Top Road was in it.”

“I didn’t remember recording that, either,” Martin murmured. “It clicked off when I said I was coming here…I assumed it was approval.”

“More likely it was trying to get downstairs before you got too far for us to catch you,” Jon said. “Except we…didn’t find it quickly enough. I wonder where it was before it turned up on your desk?”

“Probably a lot of really fucking obvious places,” Melanie said. “Tim and Sasha probably moved around it getting breakfast together. Hell, the cats were probably playing with it.”

Martin’s hand tightened around Jon’s. “You’re talking like they’re sentient.”

“You don’t think they are?” Jon twisted around to frown at his boyfriend. “We’ve all seen the tapes, or the recorders, turn up in odd places. You said even back when—even last year when I went after the Not-Them, the tape I’d been recording just…appeared at the bookstore. You always find the ones you need right when you need them, and there’s always something recording when you’re in a truly desperate spot.”

“You even said it turned off when you asked it to,” Melanie pointed out. “When you were in the shack in the swamp.”

“Yes, but…that was the recorders, not the tapes,” Martin said.

“I had the recorder I’d been using with me when I went up to smash the table,” Jon said. “I don’t know how the tape got to you without it, but…”

Martin sighed rather heavily. “I’ve always felt there was something comforting about them,” he admitted. “Certainly I feel less alone when they’re around. That doesn’t mean I understand them.” He glanced down at the recorder in his hand and added, “Still, thank you for fetching them. Bit stupid of me to expect I could just walk into the Web’s stronghold and walk out again.”

“Did you know that’s what it was?” Jon asked. Which, he realized a moment later, was a silly question. Martin was the nearest thing to omniscient there was, of course he’d known…

“Do you know,” Martin said, sounding a bit surprised, “I don’t think I did, actually. I, I knew the Web had been there, but…I just assumed it was the table. Not the place itself.” He shook his head. “Gertrude was right, I guess. It’s only after the fact that you can see all the subtle manipulations.”

“Why did it want you there?” Melanie asked.

“Dunno. To Mark me, maybe, although I can’t think why.” Martin paused. “Or it just wanted me away from the Institute.”

“Or us.” Terror suddenly struck Jon. “Annabelle said it was for my protection—”

“Annabelle. Cane?” Martin leaned forward. “The one from the spider experiment?”

“Were you awake in there?” Melanie asked. “Could you hear what was going on?”

“Not really. I was…” Martin hesitated. “Once she started wrapping me up in the webbing, I…sort of went inside myself? Or something took over. Something was keeping me alive, anyway. I, I was trying to See through the web, but it was…I-I must have pushed too hard. It was like trying to drink the entire ocean through a straw. I was getting everything all at once—every statement I’ve ever read or listened to or taken, every Leitner I’ve ever touched, every encounter I’ve ever had, all playing on top of each other like an overexposed film. But I could—there was something, some kind of truth, something that I—I was reaching for it, I almost had it, and then you called my name and—” He broke off.

“And you lost it,” Jon completed quietly. “I-I’m sorry. If—”

“No, don’t be. Whatever it was, I think actually reaching it would have been the last straw. Something would have come out of that cocoon, but it sure as hell wouldn’t have been me.”

If it had been safe to crawl into the backseat, Jon would have. As it was, he tightened his grip on Martin’s hand, and they drove the rest of the way back to London in silence.

There was more sun near the Institute than there had been in Oxford, but it was still cloudy enough that things felt a bit oppressive. Jon shivered and tucked up against Martin’s side. Weather aside, he needed the comfort. From the way Martin’s arm wrapped around his shoulders, he evidently felt the same.

The three of them made their way in through the side door into the Archives. The second it banged shut behind them, Melanie yelled into the space, “Got him!”

Gerry appeared out of nowhere and tackled Martin in a bear hug that nearly knocked Jon off his feet. “Martin, Jesus, we’ve been trying to get hold of you three for ages and both of these impulsive idiots forgot their phones…”

“Mine got, uh, Webbed.” Martin hugged Gerry back. “I’m okay. I promise. We’re all okay.”

“You won’t be for long. That’s not a threat.” Gerry tugged his arm. “Come on. Something’s up.”

Jon trailed after Gerry and Martin back to the main cluster of desks. Daisy was prowling back and forth like a caged animal, Wynken trotting at her side like a small calico shadow and wisely staying clear of her feet; Tim stood in front of the door to Martin’s office, arms folded across his chest and face grim; Sasha sat on the edge of her desk, looking worried. She leaped up when she saw them and hurried over to hug Melanie, which probably shouldn’t have surprised Jon as much as it did. Daisy, her attention drawn by Sasha’s movement, pounced on Martin in all ways but physical. “She’s gone.”

“What?” Martin blinked at Daisy, looking totally nonplussed. Jon, too, was lost.

“She’s gone, Basira’s gone.” Daisy looked agitated—not angry, not really frightened, but like she was mentally hopping from one foot to the other. “Something’s happened.”

“How can you tell?” The words that came out of Martin’s mouth crackled with static, and he looked instantly contrite. “Shit, sorry, I—”

Daisy didn’t seem to notice, though, or if she did, she didn’t care. “I just…can. Even when she’s in the Lonely, I can feel when she’s around, but she’s not. It’s not like she left for the day, she’s just…gone. And this was in my desk.”

Jon suspected what it would be, even before Daisy held it up, just from the laser-sharp way Martin focused on her hand. He was right. Clutched in Daisy’s long, slender white fingers was a cassette tape. Martin started to reach for it, then stopped himself. “Have you listened to it?”

“No. Listened to the statement you took this morning, tried calling the three of you, spent a while arguing over whether we should go after you or wait until you got back.” Daisy laid the tape on the desk. “Found this in the top drawer, on top of a new pack of gum. It’s from Basira, it has to be. She knows I like the purple pack.” She hesitated, then added, “Besides, it was just the tape. No recorder. Whatever’s putting them in your way didn’t want me to listen yet.”

Martin hesitated, then pulled out the recorder from his pocket. Gerry’s eyes widened at the sight of it. “May I?”

“Please.” Daisy pushed it towards him.

Martin picked up the tape, opened the recorder, removed the tape that was already in there, inserted the one Daisy had given him, and pressed PLAY. He then sat on the edge of the desk to listen.

Jon sat next to him, as close to on his lap as he dared, and listened to the statement. Basira had never got as deep into the statements as Jon or Martin had, but she read in a flat, emotionless voice that nevertheless conveyed everything that needed to be conveyed. She seemed…distant from the whole thing, and while Jon was certainly a bit creeped out by the statement, the whole thing seemed to bore her, merely making her express a wish that Peter Lukas would simply tell her what they were going to do about it.

And then he turned up to do just that.

Or at least, he told her some of the things about it. He asked if she remembered about the tunnels. He told her there was a “device” in the center that would enable them to see what was allegedly going on with the Extinction. He told her it would be hard to find without a map, which made Jon a bit uneasy, especially when he claimed he would have one by “tomorrow”, whenever that was, and that they would be going.

“I suppose I’m not coming back then.” Basira’s voice was as flat and emotionless as it had been reading the statement, and Jon found his eyes flicking briefly over to Daisy.

“You’re not going to die, if that’s what you’re asking, but—no.” Peter Lukas’ voice was calm but surprisingly jovial, considering the topic of conversation. “If all goes well, you won’t be. How does that make you feel?”

There was the shortest of pauses, in which Jon could hear the static building, and then Basira’s voice replied. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Excellent.” Peter sounded really pleased at that. “I’m so proud of you, Basira.”

“I really don’t care.”

“Perfect.”

Click.

Sasha’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. Melanie wrapped an arm around her. “Fairgrounds. Great. That didn’t sound like the Web, though. Didn’t sound like any Extinction to me, either. Dekker’s right, he’s looking to confirm his own bias. That was the Flesh. Maybe a bit of the Spiral.” She wavered. “I think.”

Tim put a hand on Daisy’s shoulder and squeezed absently; she reached up and covered his hand briefly with hers, which surprised Jon just a little. He rallied and tried to think rationally. “‘By tomorrow,’ Peter Lukas said. When did she record this?”

“Yesterday,” Martin replied immediately.

Daisy looked up sharply. “How do you know?”

“Has to be.” Martin slid off the desk and popped open the recorder, handing the tape back to Daisy. “The tape wasn’t there last night, but it was this morning. She probably slipped in and left it there for you on her way down to the tunnels. Either she was giving us—giving you—a hint to stop this, or she was saying goodbye. Either way, she and Peter are down there looking for…whatever it is.”

“Can you find it, too?” Daisy pressed.

“I—I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not knowing what it is…I-I don’t know that I could find it just by Knowing. Besides, those tunnels are hard to See in. Whatever’s hidden at the center of them, it’s there by design, and it’s probably something meant to be hidden from us.” Martin ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, I wish I could, but…”

“Well, maybe I can.” Daisy glanced at the trapdoor. “Or maybe if we work together.”

Melanie grunted. “Shit, do you think that might be why the Web lured you to Hill Top Road? To get you out of the way so Peter and Basira could get down there without being Seen?”

“It’s possible, but…” Martin shook his head impatiently. “That doesn’t…feel right. I don’t know. The Web never explains itself.”

Tim poked at something on the desk nearest him. “Think there’s an explanation on one of these?”

Jon looked—and did a double-take. Tim was nudging a pair of tapes sitting on Jon’s desk, right at the foot of the photograph he’d printed off and framed, the one they’d taken in Regent’s Park the month before for Gerry’s birthday: Melanie perched on Gerry and Martin’s linked arms, Jon standing practically on Martin’s feet, Sasha laughing as she leaned against Gerry’s shoulder, and Tim and Daisy lounging on the ground and posing outrageously. They had definitely not been there before he left to go after Martin.

“What on Earth…?” he began, reaching over to pick the closer one up. It had more than a few cracks in it, like someone had dropped it a few times or run it over with a lorry or slammed it in a door, and was labeled with two simple words in Gertrude’s by now familiar handwriting: Head Archivist.

He passed it to Martin. “I think this is for you.”

Martin stared at it for a moment, frowning, then slid it into the tape recorder. He didn’t even have to touch it; it began playing almost as soon as it closed. Gertrude Robinson’s voice sounded unusually determined. “Right. If you’re listening to this, it is extremely likely that—no. Let’s not beat about the bush. If you’re listening to this, it means I’m dead. And you have been chosen to be my replacement as Head Archivist.”

Jon glanced up at Sasha in surprise, and not a little guilt, as Gertrude addressed her directly, obviously having selected her as her successor. Sasha didn’t seem particularly upset, though, and he realized—though how he couldn’t tell—that, whatever she may have felt three years ago when Jon took the position she’d wanted, she sure as hell didn’t envy him or Martin now. She probably wouldn’t have at the time, either, if she’d had this tape. Gertrude was laying everything out, up to and including the fact that the Archivist was part of a ritual to bring the Eye to ascendancy, and that Elias was likely behind it.

“Oh, yes,” Gertrude’s voice said, almost as if it was an afterthought. “On the subject of Elias: Trust nothing he says. He was originally known as Jonah Magnus, the founder of this Institute—”

“What?” Jon, Melanie, and Sasha all cried out at once.

“Shh,” Tim said, face pale but eyes fixed intently on the recorder.

Jon listened, his heart in his throat, but Gertrude gave no further explanation for her extraordinary assertion that Elias was, or had once been, Jonah Magnus; she only went on to explain more things they already knew, that Martin as the Archivist was in great danger and that the world was now on his shoulders, before stating that she hoped she would be able to prevent him from having to listen to it.

“But if you are hearing it, then—good luck. Do what you have to do.” There was a heavy sigh, and then a brief pause before Gertrude’s voice added, a bit tremulously, “One last thing. Should you have the opportunity…please pass the message to Martin Blackwood that—that Mrs. Smith regrets he was unable to complete his studies, and regrets even more that he works here, but that she is thankful he is only in the Library…and that she is very, very proud of him.”

The recorder clicked off, much more quietly than usual.

“What,” Melanie finally said, “and I cannot stress this enough, the actual goddamn fuck.”

“Elias Bouchard is Jonah Magnus,” Jon said, his voice shaking as the realization settled on him.

Gerry pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why does that not surprise me?”

“He’s been body-hopping,” Daisy said. “Like Rayner. No wonder your dad was so surprised Bouchard became head of the Institute. He was a white streak of nothing and shouldn’t have got the job. James Wright—or Jonah Magnus or whoever—must’ve picked him out because nobody would miss him.”

Tim suddenly slapped his hand on the desk in front of him, making Jon jump. “Fuck! The tunnels!”

“The—what about them?” Martin jerked his head up and focused on Tim.

“They’re the remains of the old Millbank Prison complex,” Tim said, the words falling over one another rapid fire. “And what was at the center of Millbank Prison?”

“The Panopticon,” Melanie breathed. “You think that’s the device?”

“Must be. What does it do? It lets you see everything. Or, more to the point, it makes you feel like people could see everything. But it’s also isolating, which is why Peter Lukas needs someone touched by both the Eye and the Lonely to work it.”

Martin pressed his lips together. “And if that’s where Jonah Magnus’ original body is stored…”

“Basira has to destroy it,” Daisy said. “You think? That’s how it usually works in the stories. To destroy the monster, you have to kill the root.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t know, but—” Martin sighed, sounding frustrated. “There has to be a key. Some way of getting down there easily. A-a statement, or, or something. Peter Lukas can’t be the only one with a map.”

Jon looked over at the shelves, which were in better order than they had been—whether that had hastened whatever was about to happen or not—but were still stuffed with papers and a bit on the chaotic side in the places they hadn’t quite got to yet. “Where do we even start looking?”

Melanie looked at the surface of Jon’s desk and indicated the second tape. “What about this one? It’s not labeled.”

Gerry picked up the tape and went still. His hazel eyes seemed to drain of color, growing pale along with his skin, and he swayed as if caught in a high wind.

“Gerry?” Martin reached out for him, obviously concerned.

Gerry turned to face him. Jon swore he rippled, like he was standing in three places at the same time, as he held the tape out to Martin. “It’s your grandfather.”

#ollie writes fanfic #tma fanfic #the magnus archives #to find promise of peace (and the solace of rest)#jonathan sims #melanie king #martin blackwood #gerard keay #daisy tonner #tim stoker #sasha james #being trapped #kidnapping (mentioned)#panic #manipulation #slight misuse of Beholding powers #death mention #implied/referenced body horror

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acosmicbee · 3 months ago

Note

Would you be open to wring a yandere parental woman who’s like a mob boss and wants a child but can’t have any so she finds reader who already doesn’t have a good home life and like kidnaps her into making reader her kid?

Bad Home, Good Kid

TWs: Implied child abuse, referenced drug abuse

Artemis was supposed to have everything, and she almost did. She had the good looks, the large mansion, the perfect control over the city. To any other mafia boss, this would be enough, but not for Artemis.

She was missing the one thing she wanted, the one thing she craved. A dream that had been brutally ripped away from her after a failed murder attempt. She'd never tortured any man for longer, pain mixing with the anger as she made him suffer.

After all, if his bullet had hit just a little higher, if he'd had better aim, her uterus wouldn't have been hit. She'd still be able to have a child, just the way she'd always dreamed. In the mansion the bedroom next to hers had always been saved for a nursery or kids bedroom. But now...? Now, she'd have to find some other way to have the child she'd dreamed of.

•❅───✧❅✦❅✧───❅•

It was a cloudy day, but there was no forecast of rain so you went to the playground. It wasn't a good neighborhood you lived in, there were more than a few unsavory characters on your floor of your apartment building alone. But most in the area followed the moral code of the mafia, if only to avoid becoming a target, and that meant children were to be left alone.

You were often the only child at the playground. You'd get the swings all to yourself, going back and forth for hours at a time. You never had to wait in line to go down the slide or play on the monkey bars, but it wasn't as fun as it seemed.

You've seen things, things no child should have to see. There was a reason you spent as much time as you could outside, pretending you didn't have a home to go back to. There was a reason you knew to never investigate any sudden sounds, especially sharp cracks.

Today there seemed to be a lot of those a couple of blocks over. The sounds rang through the air as you sat on the swing, swaying back and forth. It was easy for you to disassociate from the noises, letting your mind wander somewhere away from the trauma. Instead of the swing, your mind took you to a ship, one that swayed in the waves and carried you far far away.

A small smile crossed your face as you thought to all the shows you'd watched that showed the ocean. The pretty blue water and warm sun. The gentle swishing sound as it came into contact with things. You never noticed the sounds stopping, lost in your daydream as you swung back and forth.

You eventually stopped swinging, the delusion fading away as you got a little dizzy. You let the swing slow, your shoes dragging against the ground as you tried to decide what you wanted to do next. You glanced up when you heard a demanding voice nearing the playground.

A woman, flanked by a couple of others, walked down the sidewalk. Her voice was sharp and cold and she carried herself with an air of command. You noted her clothes, dressed way too nicely to be from anywhere near this neighborhood. You also noticed the gun in her hand that she was cleaning while she walked.

The swing set creaked as it finally came to a stop and all of a sudden you were looking into icy blue eyes. She stopped dead in her tracks, staring at you, and you felt a pit of fear in your stomach as you stared back. Getting noticed was never a good thing, especially not by someone who stood out.

With a trembling hand you released one of the chains, hesitantly waving hi to her. Almost instantly her demeanor shifted as a warm smile crossed her face. The gun was instantly moved out of your view as she waved back, murmuring something to one of the others with her.

You breathed a sigh of relief as they left, your legs shaking when you finally stood up from the swing. You didn't feel like playing anymore, but going home was always the worse option. Instead you tucked yourself out of view on one of the play structures, hiding from the world for as long as you could.

•❅───✧❅✦❅✧───❅•

"I need info." Artemis' tone was sharp as she approached a man standing on a street corner. He just groaned, looking more put off than anything.

She pulled out her phone, showing the man a picture. There was a flicker of recognition in his eyes as his posture shifted to be more defensive. "What do you want with the kid? I thought it was your rule to leave kids alone."

"I'm not going to hurt them." She said, her voice cold as she glared at him. "And I don't appreciate the insinuation. I want info on their parents and that means info on them as well. Trust me when I say the kid will be fine."

His posture relaxed just a little as he glanced around before speaking. "They're crackhead Corrine's kid, bet you can guess why thats her nickname. No father in the picture, nor has there ever been one as far as I'm aware. Kid's name is Y/N..." He paused before leaning in closer. "They're a good kid in a bad place. Between you and me, someone should've called CPS on Corrine a long time ago."

"And why haven't you? Especially if you're implying what I think you are." Artemis asked. Her gaze was sharp and accusatory, but her info broker didn't flinch, long since used to her intimidation tactics.

"You know the first rule about living here? Mind your own business. If you don't, you'll probably end up on the wrong end of someone's gun. If someone ever traced the CPS call back to me, I'd be labeled a snitch and be shot dead in a week. My job is to give you info, not to act on it. That's your job." He said defensively.

"Where do they live?" She asked, already preparing in her head. She'd need to have your room ready quicker than she expected, not wanting to leave you in a bad situation.

"136 Whittaker Street, I think floor 6 but I'm not sure the exact apartment number." He said, taking a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it.

"If anything happens to the kid, you call me. Immediately." She finally said, slipping him some cash for his information. He just grinned, counting the bills as she walked away.

"Pleasure doing business with ya."

•❅───✧❅✦❅✧───❅•

You started to find little gifts left for you in the playground. At least, somewhere in your mind you realized they were meant for you. They were always left on your swing, brand new and clean. Even if you tried to rationalize it as someone coincidentally losing things over and over, you knew the gifts were supposed to be for you.

Sometimes, when you played with the jump rope that had been left or one of the balls, you'd see that same woman. She never stayed for long, usually just waving at you before disappearing to go do whatever it is she was in this neighborhood for.

Everything seemed to come crashing down the day you came home late with a small stuffed tiger tucked under your arm. You weren't expecting your mother to be home and flinched when she suddenly grabbed you, pulling you into the apartment.

"Look at you, you little thief! Did you steal that off some other brat?!" She yelled, grabbing the toy from your arms. She dragged you into the kitchen, hissing mean words and calling you names.

She let go of you for a second to grab a pair of scissors which she used to decapitate the poor toy. When she turned to you, still holding the scissors and a dark look in her eyes, you ran.

You darted out the front door and down the staircase, never stoping even though you landed on your ankle funny coming off the stairs. The streets were dark and the worst of the worst were starting to come out, but anywhere felt safer then that cramped apartment.

In your panic, running for the only place you felt safe, you never noticed the man under an awning on the phone. You didn't notice how his eyes followed you or how he subtly stepped further out onto the street to block you mother's view before you turned a corner, leaving her with no clue of where you'd gone.

You slipped through the gate of the playground, panting as you stumbled onto the play structure. Your ankle was throbbing and it felt so hard to breathe over the panic you felt. You started quietly sobbing, trying to force your body to take in air.

You weren't sure how long you sat there, quietly panicking, before you heard the roar of an engine as a car parked somewhere close. There was the squeak of the playground gate, followed by the sound of high heeled shoes on concrete.

You peeked out, seeing a woman standing in the middle of the playground, frantically looking around. It was the woman who always watched you, the one who dressed nicely and waved hello every time she saw you. This time when she saw you she approached the structure quickly.

You were too worn out to run and could only sob harder when she pulled you into her lap, holding you close. She was warm, so warm compared to the cool night. Her hands stroked through your hair as she gently soothed you, helping you find your breath.

When she stood, she took you with her, carrying you towards her waiting car. You hadn't been carried in a very long time and the feeling of being so close to someone without being hurt was novel to you.

She helped buckle you in, holding your hand as her driver started the car. The gentle movement of the car was enough to put you to sleep, your head against the window as the darkened city streets passed.

"Don't worry now, love. I promise you'll never have to run like that again, to be scared like that again. Your mommy will protect you, for now and forever."

#platonic yandere #yandere platonic #yandere #yandere oc x reader #yandere x reader #platonic #yandere ocs #parental yandere

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sometimesraven · 4 months ago

Text

@febuwhump Day 19 - Death Wish

Fandom: Cyberpunk 2077 POV: 3rd Person Whumpee: femme V

Summary: Okay, so in hindsight, the "most nova specced, geeked-out, turnt up virtu" was obviously a scam.

Warnings: Implied/Referenced SA, Kidnapping, Drug Withdrawal/Use/Addiction, Panic Attacks & Flashbacks, Canon-Typical Violence, Self-Destructive Behaviour

AO3 Link

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

It wasn't like she actually wanted to die. Stalling for time, that's all it was. The nights spent partying, the dumb gigs she still took... just ways to pass the time, blow off steam or top up on Eddies while she waited for a breakthrough. She needed to keep up her rep if she wanted to get any real progress made.

So what if she was getting sloppy? Given the fact she was literally dying - technically already dead - she was doing fucking nova.

Okay, so in hindsight, the "most nova specced, geeked-out, turnt up virtu" was obviously a scam. And V knew that! 'Dorphs or not, she wasn't completely gonk. She knew the moment the damn BD didn't work in her own wreath that she was headed into a trap. In all honesty, V had no idea why she agreed to it. Curiosity? Some tiny, stupid part of her brain that somehow forgot that 'sus as fuck' in Night City always translated to the literal worst-case scenario? Maybe there were too many drugs in her system to think straight, or maybe it was just the tired impulse that told her nothing really mattered anymore. The worst it could do was fry her brain (again), right?

Wrong.

"Just like me, isn't it? Getting trapped in the brain of Night City's dumbest merc..."

Johnny's voice roused her from whatever depths of hell the trapped Braindance had thrown her into. Cold, filthy tile against her skin; the acrid scent of stale piss and death assaulting her nostrils. Her body ached, head pounded, static screaming in her ears as withdrawal mated with her struggling, poisoned systems specifically to fuck her. She groaned, forcing herself into something resembling a sitting position. "What... what happened?"

"Look around and connect the dots." Though his voice held the same dull judgement as always, V couIdn't miss that it was lacking its usual edge; his eyes glinting with something she might mistake for concern if he were anyone else.

As she slowly came to her senses, she understood why. The stench was coming from behind her: bodies in a tub of ice that was all too familiar. Her guns, her gear - fuck, even her clothes were gone. She was completely vulnerable, trapped in the same fucking Scav hideout she'd cleared out with Jackie what felt like a lifetime ago.

"Scavs..." she breathed aloud, her heartbeat kicking up a gear to join the screaming in her ears. Immediately her mind raced with thoughts of what they could have done to her. Of what they might already have done. "Shit."

"So your brain isn't completely fried to a crisp... That's good." Again, Johnny's quip didn't hold its usual bite, and for once she wished it would; that he'd cuss her out, call her a dumb whore, be a complete piece of shit like he was to Evelyn. She felt fucking sick. Her skin crawled, old scars itching underneath the tattoos that covered them like they were warning her to get the fuck out, now.

Every instinct made her want to curl up and scream. She felt nineteen again, little Valerie, stuck cowering in the dirt and blood, wishing she would die already so this would all be over. She could feel Johnny's eyes on her like brands, found herself hyper aware of his presence in her mind, seeing her every thought. Knew he could see exactly what she was thinking and was thankfully choosing to keep his mouth shut.

Vik wasn't going to save her this time. The Mox weren't here- except they were.

With a deep breath, V's fingertips brushed the neon-pink tattoo on her shoulder. She swallowed down the memories, reminded herself Valerie was dead, and pushed to her feet.

"Time to wake up," Johnny encouraged, a hint of relief in his gruff tone, "'Cause you're about to be breakfast."

She moved slowly at first, hesitant and cautious as she picked off Scavs one by one. The first satisfying crunch of bone in her hands spurred her onward, and as she took out the assholes talking about her, about Jackie... V scooped up their shotgun.

One by one they fell, gore and synthblood painting the floor, the walls, V's skin. With every splattered skull and torn limb adrenaline fuelled rage boiled in her chest, replacing the anxiety, the withdrawal, the shame until all that remained was the animalistic instinct to kill. To rip and tear and shout until there was nobody left to carry on this sick fucking game. By the time she was done redecorating this place in Scav guts she would be able to breathe again.

Still, she paused when she found her equipment marked in a locker, taking a moment to make sure she'd cleaned out enough to go uninterrupted before gratefully tossing the borrowed shotgun aside and shimmying back into her tee and skirt. She left the rest to come back for and scoped up her own shotgun with a wicked smile. Thanks, Judy.

"Should've asked if he had any used hypos for sale, too. What could go wrong?" V glared at Johnny as she passed him, his sunglasses firmly back on his nose as the condescension finally returned to his voice.

"Not now, Johnny," she hissed, pausing to offload a round into another Scav's face and watch with glee as the shock charge within made the decapitated corpse convulse.

The last few Scavs up here were a cakewalk and V quickly gathered and donned the rest of her gear before heading out to the elevator.

She could still feel Johnny lingering at the front of her mind, disappointment and disdain dripping from every quip and muffled thought like nasty little bugs in her ears and she focused on the feeling, let it fuel the fury still swirling in her gut. Maybe that was the point of it. It was hard to tell Johnny's motivation. Either way, she dispatched the scopsuckers posted outside with tunnel vision, hopping on her bike before it had even parked and tearing off towards Cherry Blossom Market, single-minded hatred the only thing keeping the nausea at bay.

As expected, the sick cunt that set this whole thing up for them (Stefan or someshit) was exactly where she'd found him. Bold, or maybe stupid. Either way, her hands shook with rage as she drew her pistol, griming maniacally as he shot to his feet, hands lifted and eyes wide with terror. "I'd like a refund."

"Woah, hey, chill girl! A-after you booted up that virtu, y-you started glitchin' out and-"

"Save your breath," V snapped, levelling her aim and forcing it steady. "You knew what you were doing. Wanna know what I do, though? Hm?"

There way no room for negotiation in her voice. Stefan whimpered a plea, crumpling into a pathetic, cowering mess amidst the trash he'd been rummaging through. It was almost enough to make her hesitate, and the conflict making her aim waver again only infuriated her more.

He hit the ground with a heavy thud, blood pooling and trailing in vivid rivulets down the plastic of the trash bags he lay in. V was already gone before he hit the ground.

#febuwhump #febuwhump2025 #febuwhumpday19 #self destruction #violence vw #implied/referenced sa #drugs cw #kidnapping cw #flashbacks cw #cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk v #silverv #johnny silverhand #sweet dreams cyberpunk #cyberpunk2077 #cp2077

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osamucide · 6 months ago

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⊹ I KNOW

I WILL PRETEND THAT I DON’T KNOW OF YOUR SINS UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO CONFESS . . . ft. Osamu Dazai

wc: 2.1k

cw: gn!reader, implied/referenced dissociation+anxiety+self harm+scars+past suicide attempts, hurt/comfort but it's him so of course it's a little unhinged, mentions of dying and being dead, mentions of kidnapping but it's not serious, minor suicidal ideation but it's romantic i guess? non-sexual nudity/intimacy, showering together, lots of kisses, just unbandaging a fragile Dazai and covering him in kisses

reid: draft i been sittin on. how many times will i do an iteration of unwrap and clean him. idk. a million billion. i love him so bad

He’s looking down at his hands—or his wrists, or his fingers, or the spaces between his fingers; you’re not sure. But he’s looking down, emptily, when you nudge the cracked bathroom door further open.

He’s sitting on the lid of the closed toilet. He has no shirt on. His bandages are unraveling at each end of their respective reaches. It’s long past time they should be changed, long past time the flesh beneath them breathe and be washed.

Changing the bandages is just something that has to be done; he will not give them up, nor will he give up the habit evidenced beneath them, and you’ve been with him long enough to know this is how he survives. The bandages do the holding-together when you’re not there to, which is far more often than he’d like. Ideally, he’d be able to shrink you down and keep you in his pocket for safe-keeping and take you out whenever he needs, like a good luck charm; he’d be able to have you on his arm all day, every day, but that’s not possible when you’re an adult with a job and a life. Like him. Right? Right. He’d shuck this skin sooner than the habit, anyway, so, like showering, it’s just something that has to be done.

He doesn’t particularly love when you watch him do it, or offer to do it for him, but you certainly drive off the impulses, hazes, and tremors that come with doing it alone. So, he lets you.

He didn’t always; he went out of his way, bent over backwards for a long time to make sure you never could, much less had to. Somewhere deep down, though, beneath that resolve and the facade stilted upon it, he knew he couldn’t hide his ugliness from you forever.

Despite the normality—the domestic intimacy that standing beneath the water with you suggests now, so much that he has to admit it stills the expansion of the ever-growing black hole inside him—he still always fears it’ll be the last time you want to look at it.

“Osamu?” you mumble from the doorframe.

He does not move, does not look at you over the white noise of the shower running—if he’s noticed you’re here, he doesn't show it. You move to him, slowly, like approaching a skittish cat.

Before you touch him, you bend down—beneath the sink are the rolls of fresh bandages, the clean, new ones that make him look less like a mummy unearthed from Victorian times and more like what he understands himself to be in his purest form: a basket case of the modern era, the worst gift you unwrap every Christmas and birthday and have to pretend to fawn over until it’s safe to be rid of it. You’ll never be rid of him, he thinks regretfully while you shuffle next to him; he’ll never get by without you now, and it almost makes him wish he never met you in the first place, just so he never could’ve inflicted himself upon you.

But you never send him back. Dazai can’t seem to understand, even with all that sharp intelligence of his, that you don’t ever plan to.

Four rolls. One for each of his legs, one for both of his arms, the rest for miscellaneous spots like around his neck or across his chest or wherever else he decides he needs them this time. That’s how many you set on the counter before you land in front of him, your hands pushing his hair back, your proximity forcing his cheek to lay tired against your stomach while those hands curl around the backs of your legs and pull you closer to stand between his.

You cradle Dazai’s head like you’re some sort of saint. To him, you might as well be.

Thumbs brushing his temple and the base of his skull, you speak again, just as quiet. “Come on, let’s wash.” Or, let me unwrap you and look at all that ugliness. He can’t help that he doesn’t move for a firm fifteen seconds; why would he want to, when you hold him so sweetly like this?

But eventually, he rises.

You don’t feed him formalities or those silly questions anymore when you do this. No more can I? Or, you’re gorgeous, or, is this okay? He doesn’t want those during this, you’ve come to find out; you’ll tell him you love him plenty in a few minutes, when he’s only marginally more ready to receive it, but right now you go to work like a tinker repairing a broken doll. Your touch is objective, but not cold or clinical. You treat him with a tenderness he couldn’t have fathomed until he knew you.

After he steps out of his slacks, you loosen the strips with one hand and twirl them around the other; they accumulate in a graying mass of two or more weeks worth of sweat, and you place them in the trash, softly, like you adore and respect those, too, as he skitters past you toward the water for a sense of cover. He knows you’ll be in right after him, but at least the light behind the shower curtain is dimmer. When he disappears, it’s as if he was never there.

But he says, “I’m okay,” unprompted, as you step beneath the water.

He is, really. It’s just jarring when it’s the focus.

The process of becoming accustomed to vulnerability is often more painful than the vulnerability itself, Dazai has learned. While the realization can be sudden, like the flipping of a switch, the vulnerability on its own can actually be quite nice. Peaceful. He knows this because you showed him—continue to show him.

He’s just a man in the shower with his beloved, so, now you’ll talk to him.

“I know,” you say. And you do, really. The hardest part is over, and he’s practically pranced through it this time. You crack a smile.

And he mirrors your smile, not so bright and smug as under normal circumstances but soft and searching. Dazai reaches for your arms, your waist, and pulls you into him; the water hits your back—hot, how he likes it—and you tuck your head into his shoulder and wrap yourself around his middle, whispering I love yous into his shoulder.

It's peaceful. He sways you ever so subtly.

But in true Dazai fashion, he'll shatter the peace. Ever the disruptor.

“I'm sorry you have to love this part of me, too.”

The ugliness, he means. Not just the marred and keloided skin that maps out his history of self-destruction, but his resignation to it. The scabs that touch the small of your back are freshly healing and peeling. If you didn't have him beneath your watch right now they'd probably be scratched open, raw and bleeding again, but as previously mentioned, your presence staves off the itching need to do so.

The tips of his fingers squeeze you when you pull back to look up at him, sliding your hands up his shoulders and behind his neck to link.

“I love every part of you,” you murmur as his forehead dips to rest against yours. Your stunted slow-dance deepens as he sighs himself back into his body, back into the clearer image of you in his grasp. “Don’t be sorry about it. Wouldn’t do it if I didn’t want to.”

The demons snap at his ankles, though. “What if you change your mind one day?”

If he was a hair more insane, he might take you hostage. Keep you to himself forever, and never let you leave. But that would take the peace out of it, he thinks. Your volition makes it all sweeter. You want to be here. You want to love him.

He just doesn’t want that to change.

You hum patiently, although hating when he what ifs. That’s the plague of the ever-moving mind he keeps, you suppose; so intelligent, but so restless. “I don’t think I will.”

You don’t think you will, but that doesn’t settle the insecurity that’s settled in his stomach like a coiled snake.

You don’t think you will, but you will. He knows you will, because that’s how it’s fated to unfold for him.

Your short words don’t corral him away from the snake, but the less you treat him like he’s a gaping wound, the better. You see it. You don’t cry or gasp or lament or promise how you could never leave him, will never leave him; you don’t like to make promises that reach beyond your control.

The human existence is so strange and fluid, and while you’re confident you won’t tire of him, well, your reciprocated touches aren’t the only things stitching you together, you know; there’s a world, much larger than both of you, that you live in, and a universe even more incomprehensible and its whims are fickle—but they’re also serendipitous. Everything is a miracle, if you think about it. A big, beautiful mistake. You don’t know how much he buys into this, and you’d rather him not read into it as an excuse not to answer with a resounding I’ll never leave you, my love, so you just do what you always do best: spin it in a direction his troubled mind can find solace in, pair it with kisses that have all your soul for him to inhale, and promise what you can: your hope.

You start with his lips. The best place, arguably; one of your hands tilts his chin toward yours and you kiss him softly, simply. Dazai responds hesitantly, still holding onto you tight. You kiss him for minutes, until he's humming, until his grip loosens comfortably and his shoulders untense and his palms rest on either of your hips.

You have a habit of kissing him silly, literally. Your lips move against his and he feels high. His head gets light, and his hands get restless, and between the short puffs of air he draws in through his nose he croons at the way your fingers push his hair back, trail down his neck.

“I’m confident,” you say, sliding across his cheek to beneath his ear while he grabs at you in soft and absent-minded desperation, “that I’ll love you ‘til the end of my days.”

“But what if the e—”

“I’m certain—” You cut him off, first with speech and then with a kiss before you begin pressing your lips into a necklace around his throat, “—that I want to get old with you.” On one side, you bite softly. “That I want to die with you.” You bite the other. “That I want to be buried next to you.”

Osamu’s breath catches on the words buried next to you. Of course it’s crossed his mind before that if you were to go before him, he certainly wouldn’t be long after you. The thought that you want to live a full life with him before any of that can happen, however, makes his heart swell almost uncomfortably, like it’s no longer meant to fit inside his chest—like it wants to crawl up his throat and go home to yours. It will one day, you say, when you’re rotting next to each other. He wants to melt at the idea of it.

“And then… I don’t know what, if anything, will happen after that. But it’s my purest hope—” You traverse from one shoulder, across his collarbones, stopping only above his sternum to finish, “—that I’ll be with you forever,” before making your way to the other. He’s a mistake you’d make again and again, given the opportunity. If reincarnation is real, you’re sure of it, more than anything—you will.

And you know not expect anything but speechlessness from Osamu until after you’ve kissed a circle around that heart of his that’s beating so frantically for you, until after you’ve brought his knuckles to your lips, all twenty-eight of them, until after you’ve made your way back up one arm just to kiss down the other, until you’ve bent to scatter kisses across his stomach, his hips, until you’ve knelt to descend the ladder marking each of his thighs, until you’ve sat at his feet with your arms looped around the backs of his knees with your head pressed against him like he’s the saint this time. You sit at the feet of a sinner and make him taste redemption. It tastes like the shower water that’s touched your skin and the dinner you both ate before wandering into this strange place between his disillusion and his sheer need. You kiss him back into his humanity.

When you stand, level with him again, he smiles that smile you love so much—not the cocky, performative smile nor the uneasy, misgiving one that wants to trust but has forgotten how to but the smile that’s altogether subtle and plain and sad and the most radiant thing you’ve ever known. Every time he falls apart, you just stitch him right back up what he’s always wanted to be: loved, held, loving and holding.

Osamu touches your lips with his fingertips like you’re not quite real, like you’ve not just reminded every other inch of him that you very much are; he speaks, not a progenitor of pretty promises himself—but he owes you forever, he thinks, as long as it’s what you want. “Thank you.”

You laugh once, breathy, in no need. “Thank you,” you echo, “for being the most wonderful thing to love.”

Not the easiest, you both know—but it’s just something that has to be done, and there’s no law forbidding you from reminding him how beautiful he is in the process. Until you can be buried next to him. There’s hardly anything keeping forever from beginning right now.

He holds you, and you hold him, and he feels clean.

#osamu dazai x reader #dazai x reader #bsd x reader #bungou stray dogs x reader #bsd fluff #dazai fluff #with love—reid

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empress-ghoul · 5 months ago

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Rising Waters

141 x witch!reader | Old Gods of Appalachian au | Ongoing

You didn’t know where to go when the water rose. When the creek came up and lapped in waves at the four walls of the cabin you’d lived in your whole life.

cw: supernatural elements, blood, stalking, implied/referenced abduction/captivity, implied/referenced domestic abuse, kidnapping, threats of violence, typical canon violence

ao3

moodboard

moodboard 2

1. when the waters rose

2. company men

3. wards

4. venison

5. progress

6. swarm

7. spew

8. eye for an eye

#risingwaters

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lovelake · 13 days ago

Text

JUST PATHETIC AT THIS POINT

In which you ask your stalker (Kylar) to milk you after weeks of getting no relief

m!kylar x gn!reader | mdni, 2.2k wc, lactation (bovine tf!reader), nipple play, dry humping, stalking, kylar has kidnapped reader before (references to his abduction event), implied/referenced sexual assault

note: i love this freak

read on ao3

Translucent white—your bathwater was no longer clear. Frequent puffs of breath managed to fog up the mirror. Your hands were too tired to continue, but your chest was still full to the point it was downright painful.

How long have you been here for? Your room was out of the question when it came to doing this since it would make too much of a mess. This way, you could just watch it all go down the drain and be left squeaky clean.

You couldn’t go on like this, you needed relief. You were desperate.

So desperate, that your mind went to the person who would usually be the last solution to your problems. Surely, he would be more than eager to please.

Yeah, the classmate you’ve pushed away time and time again. The guy whose manor you escaped from—and who you should probably have a restraining order against by now (not like those would even be maintained in a town like this).

Kylar.

You reach for the drain to let the water start going down and get out the tub to dry up and get dressed. If you let the idea marinate, you would throw it in the trash.

I can’t believe I’m actually doing this, you think to yourself when you finally exit.

“Hey, stop hogging up the restroom! This is the third time this week!”

“Shit, sorry.” You cast your orphan hall mate an apologetic smile. “Won’t happen again.”

It probably will happen again.

You never thought you’d be willingly walking to Kylar’s place, but here you were. You kicked at rocks as you walked, ignoring the occasional catcalls thrown your way—your thoughts silenced them.

Fuck Remy. Fuck his goons. Fuck Harper. Bless the centaurs—they were the only ones you wished prosperity upon, but they weren’t enough to make you want to return.

Oh, but the imagery of lush green hills and cloudless skies called out to your soul. The dribbles of sweetness that rolled down your chin from the occasional apples you chose not to share remained unrivaled. Headpats and praises were handed to you every time you were good.

No!

You shook your head and tried not to fall for the deception that was forcibly drilled into your head. Collar. Riding crop. Hypnosis. Shadows looming over you when you woke up. It was terrible.

Danube street was cleaner than the one you lived on, and just a tad bit safer (not much at all, though). The houses were nicer to look at despite the envy that built up inside you. Eventually, you find a worn down path and make your way toward the forest.

His parents must be really rich. Last time you hadn’t had the time to pay attention to just how big the manor was, you were too busy escaping to care.

It gave you the creeps—it looked like it could be the main setting in a horror movie.

You heard the rustling of nearby bushes. Seconds later, you heard a series of doors slam shut. Looking up, you saw a curtain sway before quickly falling back into place.

Ah. Looks like Kylar had been stalking you as you walked to his place. Frankly, you weren’t in the mood to lecture him.

He left the front door open, what a gentleman—you didn’t even have to knock. You let yourself in, nearly tripping over some vines on the floor.

“Jesus…”

Finding his room wasn’t hard at all, not with the fast-paced footsteps you heard above you to your left. Each stair creaked as you went up, you held onto the railing just in case.

He visibly flinched when his door swung open, reclining back on his desktop chair and trying to act normal—like his hair wasn’t ruffled with leaves on top of it, like he wasn’t out of breath from trying to beat you to his room.

“Sorry for the mess…I wasn’t expecting company.”

You weren’t really here for small talk though.

“Kylar…I need you to help me.” You walk up to him and tug at his hoodie, leading him off his chair and to his bed. You didn’t have to pull him strongly at all, he was always ready to be dragged around by you like a doll whenever you pleased.

“What?! Now?” He stopped listening after the first four words. Had you forgiven him for betraying your trust? Were you coming to your senses and realizing that you belonged with him?

Kylar obediently sat on his bed, dick already hard as you straddled his lap. He almost felt like running because of the long-awaited anticipation—he wanted to touch you, badly. And you came here willingly.

He started rambling. “W-What positions do you like? Do you want me to put on some music? I have some lube in my drawer! If you’re still mad at me you can put a leash on me or use my knife!”

“What?” Oh. Right. You straddled him, this gave him the wrong idea. “Nonono, I meant something…else.”

Disappointed flashed across his face, but he nodded, not wanting to upset you anymore than he already had in the past months. This was progress, maybe you’d start liking him.

Fuck. You didn’t really think about how you’d actually bring it up. You felt a bit embarrassed for some reason—which is ridiculous considering that this guy is fucked up in the head for you.

“I um…I need you to milk me.” You tell him, voice quiet.

His face flushed, he blinked a couple times as he processed what you said. Your horns and fluffy ears had his attention, back and forth. He then felt something swish against his thighs—your tail.

“So…they’re actually real? I always thought you were just cosplaying or something.”

“Don’t act so surprised, I’m sure you already caught on by now anyway.” How could he be unaware when he practically knew everything about you through creepy methods?

“I-I…” He looks down at his sheets, idly picking at them. “I didn’t know about this, I swear.”

Ever since you got rid of the owl plushie in your room, he had been watching you directly from your window. But he had never noticed your predicament, because unbeknownst to him, you’d only been milking yourself in the restroom.

“Is that why…” He murmured to himself, thinking of the shirts he had stolen from you and how some occasionally carried a sweet smell (that didn’t align with any of your fragrances—he would know). “Never mind.”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes or no?” He copied your question out of confusion, head cocked to the side.

God, he was cute despite everything he’d subjected you to and it pissed you off.

“Will you help me?”

“Yes!” The answer slipped out naturally and all too eagerly—he was visibly shaking with excitement.

Fabric rustled, you started taking your top off.

He averted his eyes and gulped—he would drool otherwise.

“Now you’re too shy to look?” You ask with a scoff. “You didn’t seem to care when you had me naked and chained up.”

He squeaks in response, wide eyes flitting to yours before softening and trailing down to your chest. Your nipples were hard—his were too underneath his shirt, but solely from arousal unlike yours.

“A-Are you still mad at me?” His voice trembled, he didn’t want you to be upset. “Please don’t be mad.”

“I am,” you admitted quietly. “I can’t forgive you. Maybe you can start redeeming yourself, though.”

He nodded, willing to do anything for you to no longer ignore his existence. Things had been somewhat okay before he kidnapped you—you’d talk to him at lunch sometimes and would approach him at the park.

Everything would go back to normal eventually, right?

He took a deep breath before placing his hands on your chest. The warmth of your skin transferred to him and lit his face up in flames.

“Like this?” Milk started to trickle once he tweaked your nipples between his forefingers and thumbs.

“You can add more pressure,” you tell him, able to feel that he was holding back—maybe from the fear of hurting you (which was ironic for reasons you wouldn’t bring up again).

“Okay.”

This isn’t weird at all, you internally repeated that like a mantra. You shut your eyes, not wanting to see the blush on his face or the look of worship in his intense gaze.

“I was thinking breast pumps could help.” You voiced your thoughts, wanting to detach from what was actually happening—the tingling feeling building inside you wasn’t helping. “But um…I don’t like the doctor at the hospital.”

“Mm,” he was listening, but was more transfixed on the way your milk rolled down your stomach. Kylar’s mouth watered, he had half the mind to dip his head down and lick you clean.

“Was thinking maybe Sirris would have something to help, but his store isn’t open yet and I’m too ashamed to ask if he’s gotten any packages.”

Your breathing gradually grew heavier. You were turned on, much to your demise. How could you not be when your nipples were getting tugged at and pinched? Plus, it was really hard to ignore the bulge pressed up against your right inner thigh.

Don’t open your eyes, don’t open your eyes, don’t open your eyes.

But you did—and they were met with the sight of Kylar’s bottom lip tucked between his teeth, he was drooling a little regardless. When he noticed you staring, he let go.

“Can I use my mouth?” His words were slurred together.

God, yes. You weren’t thinking properly. You nodded, cradling the back of his head and pressing his face close to your chest.

His tongue flicked against your nipple before he latched onto it to provide actual suction. Your other one didn’t go neglected and was still being played with by his fingers. Pleased whimpers filled the room, mostly from him as he drank greedily from you.

“That feels good…” Your lower abdomen was heating up.

“Mmph,” Kylar liked the praise—now sucking at you with renewed determination. Somewhere along the way, his hips started rutting up against yours.

“It’s…” He pulled away with a pop and took a deep breath, “sweet.”

He positioned himself in front of your other nipple to give it the same treatment. How would he ever go back to drinking regular milk after this? Yours was addictive like candy, the taste would linger in his dreams for the rest of his life. He lost count of how many times he’s gulped.

You felt some relief for the first time in weeks, your chest was less heavy. Your fingers thread through his hair, pulling on it gently. Your hips started moving too. Clouds, you were in the clouds. It didn’t matter that you were panting erratically and moaning from the touch of your stalker and were close to cumming and—

“Ow, teeth!”

“S-Sorry!” Kylar yelped, pulling away immediately and checking up on you, tears brimming at the edge of his eyes from concern. “I didn’t mean to, are you okay? I got carried away.”

You shouldn’t want to, but you really wanted to kiss him. Glazed eyes, messy chin from fluids, the dick rubbing up against you. Fuck, the need was making you lose yourself.

Your lips smashed against his—you could taste your milk.

Kylar pawed at you, hands running up and down your sides before reaching back to cup your ass. Kisses aren’t meant to be quiet by any means, but he was really kicking it up a notch by whimpering loudly into your mouth.

“I-I’m gonna…”

“Me too.”

You tried to match the pace of his hips but it was no use, he was unpredictable, the two of you were an uncoordinated mess. There was nothing sensual about it, just pure desire. The friction sent sparks flying everywhere until you saw stars.

Shockwaves of pleasure left you writhing in his arms, you held onto him tight, nails digging into his shoulders—he moaned even louder from the rough treatment. The top of his shirt was soaked from the leakage of your milk (he was never going to wash this shirt ever again).

He felt like jelly. His body fell back but he managed to keep himself upright with his forearms until you toppled over him and pushed him flat on his back.

An ache formed in his chest, Kylar was fully prepared for you to immediately get off and leave.

But you didn’t. You snuggled closer to him instead. Your horns gently rubbed against his right shoulder over and over again.

Heavy breathing filled the room for a minute before he hesitantly raised his hand to stroke the back of your head. “How did this happen to you?”

Silence was your answer. He frowned but didn’t push it—he figured it had something to do with that one week where you’d gone missing.

“I’ll kill whoever did this one day,” he whispered to you, planting a kiss against one of your ears.

You shivered, was that supposed to be romantic?

“Thanks for helping me with this.” Forgiveness still wasn’t in store for him, but you were still grateful. “I should go.”

He held onto your arm as you got up, staring at you pleadingly—but you could recognize the glint of obsession seeping through, Kylar wouldn’t be leaving you alone anytime soon after this.

“I’ll be back. Probably.”

He didn’t let go.

“Fuck…next week?”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

#dol x reader #degrees of lewdity x reader #kylar the loner #kylar the loner x reader #dol #degrees of lewdity #dol kylar #kylar x reader #don’t know how else to tag

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laffy-taffy-creations · 2 years ago

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Wooooooooo day 29!!!! >:D

This fic was cross-posted on AO3 here

Hot Seat

Scented Candle | Troubled Past Resurfacing | "What happened to me?"

Fandom: My Hero Academia

Words: 1,347

Warnings: trauma block, PTSD, childhood trauma, implied/referenced child abuse, past experimentation, implied kidnapping

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Mmmm, something smells good, whatcha making?” Jirou asked.

“Hm? Oh, just a small dinner for myself.”

She looked over at it. Her brow furrowed in confusion. “I dont think I’ve seen that before,” she commented.

“It’s called eintopf, it’s german! I actually…” I trailed off. I was gonna say something but I couldn’t quite remember.

“You actually…” she encouraged.

“I… I dont know what I was gonna say.” I tried to laugh it off. The nagging feeling something was wrong, that I’d forgotten something was ever present… But what was it?

“Yo, what’s that?” Kaminari asked.

“Ein… In… Vee help me out here…”

I giggled. “Eintopf. I can make you some if you like,” I offered.

“Please do!” he said enthusiastically.

I started up a second serving for him. He watched me make it, being sure to give me adequate space to work but still completely enthralled by it nonetheless.

I started the time for about 15 mins to let it sit on the stove and stepped away, checking the time on mine. Still about 5 minutes left.

“Where’d you learn to make this?” he asked.

“I mean it’s a pretty simple recipe, it’s not like-”

“I mean who taught you, like, who’d you learn the recipe from? There had to have been some way you learned about it cause I dont think I’ve ever seen it before.”

“There was someone who introduced me, his name was C-” I cut myself off. No, that couldn’t be right… who on earth would have the name C-7?

“C?”

“No… it… hang on…” My mind started racing. Who was C-7? That cant have been his name. Why am I getting flashbacks to… to doctors, and needles, and weird names-

“Vee!”

“Huh?” I looked up.

“We asked if you were okay, you started hyperventilating and spacing out…”

“Yeah, I- I dont know what happened, it’s like there’s some sort of… gap in my brain, I cant really-” The buzzer went off for my serving. I took a breath of clarity and put it in my mug.

“...Were you gonna finish that sentence?”

I got a spoon and sat down on the couch in the common room. The scent of strawberries welcomed my nose, Momo was burning another scented candle.

The other two followed me. “OV? Are you alright?”

I took a bite of my eintopf. “Make sure to get your share off the stove in about 9 minutes so it doesn’t burn.”

“That isn’t what we asked OV,” Jirou said sternly.

“I dont care, I… “

“What happened back there?”

“Woah, what’s going on?” Ochako asked, walking into the room.

“OV had some sort of moment in the kitchen and we’re trying to figure out what happened,” Kaminari answered.

“We can show you. OV, who taught you about einto… however you say it again?”

“It’s eintopf, it’s german, and I was taught about it by…” My mind knew the answer but wouldn’t give it to me. “There’s no fucking way that’s what his name was, it was something like…”

The flashes started again. Memories of a spider-like child, some sort of room I was at the center of, the feeling of obligation to something…

“BRAIN FUCKING WORK WITH ME!” I shouted.

The sound of a crash brought me back to reality. I hadn’t realized that more people had gathered around. Just… watching me.

Focus… anything but here… focus on the scent of strawberries, it’ll be fine…

The echoing words of ‘it’ll be fine’ from a voice not of my own clouded my mind. A girl. An older girl. With blue hair. Dark blue hair. And similar eyes.

Something touched my shoulder and I flinched.

“Woah, hey! It’s just me! I’m just… gonna take this so you dont burn yourself…” Sero said.

I nodded. Why is everybody staring at me?

Dont focus on that Clo, focus on the candle… the bright flame… flickering, calm… the sweet smell it’s flooding the room with…

I took a deep breath. “Why are you all staring at me.” It was not a question, because I already knew the answer.

“You know damn fucking well. Care to explain?” Bakugou demanded, receiving a smack on the arm for his rudeness from Kirishima.

“I-I dont know, just stop fucking looking at me! I’m not a show monkey!”

“No, you’re our friend, and we’re worried.” Kirishima said. “If some of us,” he said giving Bakugou a harsh side-eye, “leave the room, would you feel more comfortable talking about it?”

I thought about it for a bit with a few deep breaths then nodded.

About half of them left the room with whispers, leaving only Jirou, Kaminari, Ochako, Todoroki, Kirishima, and Bakugou who refused to leave probably just to spite Kiri.

“Sooo, what happened?”

I took some breaths. “There’s some sort of, gap in my memories? And, I cant shake the feeling something’s missing… When you asked where I learned the recipe…” I started.

All 6 of them were looking at me intently.

“I-I’m sorry I’m gonna need more of you to leave!” I ended up saying.

Kirishima sighed, and got up while Bakugou smirked. Whatever sort of battle they were having, Bakugou clearly won.

Jirou left as well, and so did Todoroki.

Which left Kaminari, Ochako, and Bakugou. An odd assortment to be sure, but a small enough group that I could feel my anxiety lifting off me bit by bit.

“Okay, so where you learned the recipe…?” Ocha offered.

I nodded. “Yeah, so, when you asked where, I got some sort of a flashback to… a place, I dont know where, just…” I took another breath and focused back on the candle. Just pretend you’re talking to the candle. There’s nobody else listening, just the candle… such a pretty, calming flame…

“The person that taught me how to make eintopf was… some person, I dont remember exactly what his name was, but for some reason he’s in my mind as ‘C-7’,” I told the candle. “When I tried to figure it out again, I got flashes of… doctors, and needles, and these people that I feel like I should know but I just, dont.” I took in another breath.

“There was… a girl, a some years older than me, reassuring me… she had, dark blue hair, and really dark blue eyes… and a nose piercing…”

Ochako’s brow furrowed. “What was her name? Do you… remember?”

“Uhh, yeah. It was Relena… But her other name was… MEQAT9?” The memories started up again.

“She called me… 3 for some reason…”

“OV, I dont know how to tell you this but uhm…” Kaminari started.

I looked up at them. Somehow all 3 of them, -Bakugou included- had a concerned look on their face.

“W-what?” I asked.

“That was-”

“You’re talking about Himokya Relena, and she went missing like 7 years ago,” Bakugou cut in.

“Huh?”

“Yeah, it was a really big thing a while ago, everyone knows about her… Didnt you say you were a foreigner?” Kaminari asked.

“Uh, yeah, I-” my mind flooded again. I dont know what with. Emptiness I suppose, what should be there but isnt. Someone reached out and grabbed my hand. Ochako. I took a deep breath and focused on what I knew. “I’m European-American, I was with my parents up until like… 9 I think?” I guessed. “I… dont know much after that… I know that I’m self-sufficient, there’s some sort of obligation I have to fill but cant… there’s… I dont…”

I started hyperventilating again as I felt tears running down my face.

“Wh-hat ha-appened to me-e?” I asked through broken sobs.

Ocha reached up and wrapped me in a hug. “Shh, shh, it’s alright, we’ll figure this out, dont worry, we’re here for you, okay? We’ll help you through this, just breathe for now, alright? We’ve got you, let it out…”

I dont think I ever managed to fully tell any of them how much that meant. Not when I remembered just who did this and what exactly happened during my time as MEQAT3.

I was going to kill the hero responsible for all this.

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serickswrites · 1 year ago

Text

Pocket

Warnings: referenced captivity, referenced kidnapping, implied torture

Teammate One patted their pockets, "Where are my keys?" They said to no one in particular.

"On your desk," Teammate Three said loudly.

"Where you always keep them," Teammate two muttered under their breath.

Tensions were running high at the base as the days since Team Leader had been kidnapped stretched on. The team knew Whumper had grabbed Team Leader. The team knew what Whumper was doing to Team Leader. But they were powerless to stop Whumper.

Because they couldn't find Team Leader. Couldn't find Whumper. And until the team could find and extract Team Leader, they knew Whumper was taking their time hurting Team Leader. Exacting revenge for some perceived wrong that none of the team knew why.

And there was nothing they could do to stop it.

#serickswrites #whump #whumpblr #whump writing #whump community #tw referenced captivity #tw referenced kidnapping #tw implied torture #team whump #mwm2024 #mwmday26 #prompt: pocket #queue

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cressidagrey · 8 months ago

Text

Stars all aligned - Chapter 15

Summary:

If there was one thing that both Azriel and Zahra Archeron had in common, it was that they were both very good at blending into the background.

They just never thought that their family were going to be the ones who never saw them at all.

Warning:

Penultimate chapter! Bashing of like...every IC member, though we have now reached the point where Rhys and Cassian are the good guys, discussion of chronic pain, discussion of Infertility, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Underage Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Accidental Baby Procurement

If any of this triggers you or makes you uncomfortable, please, take care of your own mental health and don't read it.

(Lovely dividers thanks to @sweetmelodygraphics)

She overheard Rhys and Cassian.

Feyre didn’t mean to eavesdrop…actually she just meant to tell her mate goodbye, as Nesta, Elain and her were meeting for tea at one of the many teahouses dotted around Velaris.

It was weird…the more they did realise how badly they had fucked up with Zahra…the more the three of them tried to at least keep close with each other.

Feye’s eyebrows rose in surprise as she heard Rhys and Cassian’s conversation.

She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but the two of them were being rather…loud.

She heard Cassian’s voice first, his tone animated as he spoke. “You can’t be serious,” he exclaimed.

Curiosity piqued, Feye leaned in closer, her ears straining.

Rhys’s voice came in next, his tone serious but filled with a hint of amusement. “I assure you, I am quite serious.”

Feyre could practically picture the smirk on his face as he spoke.

“They got married?! And didn’t bother telling us?!?” Cassian’s exclamation nearly made Feyre jump. The shock in his voice was palpable.

Married? Who got married?

No. No. No, no… had Zahra…and Azriel… had her sister…had they?

She got the answer seconds later.

"Yes,” Rhys answered simply, amusement threading through the word. “Azriel and Zahra came home a few days ago, all filled with newly-wed bliss.”

And Feyre was done.

This wasn’t funny. None of this was.

Ignoring the conversation still going on between her mate and Cassian, Feyre stalked out of the River House, her footsteps heavy on the cobblestones. Her heart raced as she tried in vain to control the tempest of emotions within her chest.

She was supposed to meet Nesta and Elain for an afternoon of shopping...they were supposed to try and get their mind of the fact that Azriel had pretty much kidnapped their fucking sister and now this.

As Feyre neared the small shop, her and her sisters had arranged to meet up, she paused to take a deep, steadying breath.

Her emotions were still roiling inside her, a mix of anger, confusion, and frustration. She couldn’t even really put it into words why…why this upset her so much. She pushed open the door to the shop. Her sisters were waiting for her, their faces brightening as they spotted her. “Hey Feyre,” Nesta greeted, her eyes narrowing slightly as she took in her sister's expression.

"Azriel and Zahra got married," she blurted out.

Elain and Nesta gasped almost simultaneously, their eyes widening in surprise.

"What?," Elain exclaimed, her mouth agape.

Nesta looked like she'd been slapped, her eyes narrowing slightly. "When?" she demanded, her voice low.

“A few days ago, I overheard Rhys and Cassian," Feyre answered weakly.

Nesta's expression darkened, her voice dropping to a low growl. "Damn him," she muttered, her lips curling. "I’m gonna rip his balls off.”

Feyre struggled to maintain her composure. She could feel her own anger simmering beneath the surface, but she wasn’t sure if it was because of Azriel and Zahra’s sudden marriage or the fact that no one had told her beforehand.

She couldn’t help but feel betrayed…couldn’t help but…

"It's just...it's so unlike Zahra to just...run off and do something like this," Elain murmured after a moment of silence. Nesta’s eyes flashed. "And Azriel. Why didn't we know?."

"Maybe because he knows we would’ve tried to stop them," Feyre said with a sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I just…aren’t they going at it way too fast?” she said weakly.

“They barely know each other. Who knows what Zahra’s actually getting herself into?” Nesta agreed back.

“She didn’t even bother telling us,” Elain whispered.

"Well, why should she?” Feyre said weakly. "She's an adult. She doesn't answer to us."

Nesta’s expression hardened. "We’re her family," she insisted. "We have a right to know." “Are they still in Rosehall?” Nesta asked.

“No, they came home a few days ago,” she answered absentmindedly and then came up short.

Wait, what?

They came home. Home to Velaris. Which meant that their sister was…

She jumped up, Nesta and Elain scrambling after her, as she strode towards Zahra’s house.

The last time she had seen the cottage…it had been clean but downtrodden. Now though…Now though it seemingly sparkled.

Feyre's breath hitched in her throat as she took in the sight of the house.

It looked…good.

Better than good. The walls that had been patched up before, now gleamed with fresh paint, the windows gleaming with their new panes of glass.

The house looked like a home. There were little bits and pieces dotted around the outside, like the rocking chair on the proch and the windchimes hanging from the overhang…Thoughtful little touches that hadn’t been there before.

“Is this where Zahra lives?” Elain asked. ”It’s a bit small, isn’t it?” she wondered but Feyre was already walking up the steps of the porch, her sisters trailing behind her.

Her heart was in her throat as she approached the front door.

When she reached the front door, she knocked. It took only a moment, but then the door swung open. Standing in the doorway was Azriel. Looking absolutely furious.

His face was set in a fierce scowl, his jaw clenched. His eyes flashed as his gaze flicked from Feyre, to Nesta, to Elain. "What are you doing here?," he growled, his voice low and dangerous.

“What do you think?,” Feyre snapped back. She could feel her own anger rising to match Azriel's, her skin prickling. "We came to see Zahra.”

“She doesn’t want to see you,” Azriel said sharply.

Feyre bristled at his words. "She’s our sister."

Azriel's gaze darkened. "She's also my wife,” he snapped. “And she doesn’t want to see you,” he repeated.

"How do you know?," Feyre shot back, her hands balling into fists. "Did you ask her?"

Azriel let out a humorless laugh. "I know her quite well," he ground out. "I’d like to think I have a pretty good idea of what makes her happy.”

“You are locking her up!” Feyre snapped sharply. Azriel was locking Zahra up. He was keeping her away from everybody. “And you are keeping her away from people that care about her, and you think that will make her happy?!”

Azriel reared back like she had slapped him and his expression darkened even further, his eyes blazing with anger.

"How dare you?," he growled, his voice low and dangerous. "I would never keep Zahra captive.I would never do that,“ he whispered.

“Let them in,” came Zahra’s voice suddenly behind him.

Feyre’s head snapped up to see her sister. She looked…well. Non the worse for wear at least. She was dressed in a comfortable woolen dress, with the sleeves pushed up.

Azriel’s face twisted as Zahra stepped up beside him, her eyes dark. “Let them in, Azriel,” she said softly, her hand coming to rest on her mate’s arm. Azriel’s gaze flicked to Zahra, his eyes softening for a moment.

Then, with a huff of irritation, he stepped back from the door, gesturing for Feyre and her sisters to enter the house.

***

Zahra should have known that their peace wasn’t going to last.

Zahra had hoped for a peaceful day with her daughter and Azriel, but those hopes were dashed by midday.

Azalea was sleeping in the bedroom, stretched out all over the big bed, because their daughter didn’t really seem to enjoy the crib at all. (And quite frankly, neither Zahra or Azriel had it in themselves to insists that she sleep all alone, when they could just let her sleep in the big bed with them and Azalea would snuggle up to them.)

A couple of shadows had self appointed them as Azalea’s babysitters and would alert Azriel and Zahra whenever she woke… or as much as twitched.

Right now, Zahra was in the kitchen cooking, trying to make these spicy meatballs Esmeray had showed her how to make and Azriel, was keeping her company while catching up on paperwork. Azriel's hand had stilled on the page he was writing, his eyes distant.

Zahra noticed the sudden change in his demeanor, setting down the bowl of meatballs she had been forming.

“Az?,” she questioned quietly. Concern laced her words. Azriel didn’t respond, his focus firmly fixed on some point in the distance.

"Your sisters are coming," he said, his voice flat.

Zahra felt her heart seize. How did they …she bit back a curse. “You’re certain?,” she asked warily, though she already knew the answer to that. Azriel’s lips pressed together, forming a thin line of displeasure.

Right.

Zahra couldn't just ignore them for the rest of her life. Even when she wanted to.

Or maybe she didn't want to ignore them for the rest of her life, But she also wasn't particularly looking forward to talking to them about what had happened to her.

"Do you want to talk to them?" Azriel asked her. He was giving her the choice. Respecting any decision she would make.

"I don't but I will," Zahra gave back flatly.

Azriel’s stoic demeanor didn’t waver, but his hazel eyes were filled with understanding. “You don’t have to,” he told her quietly, his voice gruff.

“I know,” Zahra said with a sigh. “But they’ll never leave me alone until I do talk to them.” She was certain of that.

“You don’t owe them anything,” Azriel told her sharply. Zahra glanced at him, feeling a small measure of joy at Azriel’s defense. Her hand found his, a silent thanks for his support. His grip was warm and comforting, a stark contrast to his hardened expression.

“Maybe not. But they’ll keep coming. If I don’t talk to them now, they’ll just come back later.” She sighed. She hated how right her words sounded.

“If you don’t want to deal with them, I’ll do it,” Azriel told her.

Zahra raised her eyebrows, a flicker of amusement crossing her face. “And what would you say? ‘Get lost’?” she suggested drily.

Azriel’s face turned serious, the shadows swirling around him like a cloak. “If necessary,” he said seriously.

Zahra chuckled despite the situation, the sound almost a bark.

The knock at the door sounded in that moment. Startled, Zahra exchanged glances with Azriel.

It could only be the sisters.

Azriel let out a heavy sigh, rising from his chair and stalking towards the door. Zahra watched him go, her heart thudding in her chest.

She could see how furious he was in every fibre of his being.

His voice was harsh as he opened the door, the words sounding like a growl. "What are you doing here?"

She could feel the protectiveness pour all over their fledgling bond. Zahra could feel how furious he was on her behalf.

And there was also that little inkling of fear that was rearing it's ugly little head. She didn't truly want to see her sisters. She didn't want to talk about what happened to her. She had been willing to take that particular secret to the grave.

And now there it was, out there to be gawked at, to be used to pass judgement at her.

“What do you think?” Feyre's voice was equally harsh. "We came to see Zahra.”

Zahra watched Azriel, her heart thundering in her chest. It seemed like Feyre’s words had struck a chord with him, the anger rolling off him in waves. She could feel his rage through their fledgling bond, a fiery storm of protectiveness that coursed through them like a cyclone.

“She doesn't want to see you,” Azriel responded, his voice sharp enough to cut glass.

"She’s our sister," Feyre responded, and Zahra's teeth clenched against themselves. Was she really? Was she really their sister?

Zahra watched, her breath caught in her throat, as Azriel bristled at Feyre’s words.

“She’s also my wife,” Azriel told her coldly, his eyes blazing.

He stood like a wall in the doorway, his broad frame filling the space, his shadows circling him like a cloak.

They had never treated her like she was. They had never...never truly accepted her as one of their own. Feyre had…for a time… but then Feyre had been probably too young to understand everything that had gone on...Nesta hated her. And Elain...Elain was embarrassed by her existence.

Zahra's hands balled into fists, her nails digging into her palms. Azriel’s words struck a chord deep within her.

She had been treated by her sisters…as a nuisance. An inconvenience.

Nesta had never hidden her animosity, her eyes burning with resentment whenever she so much as glanced in Zahra’s direction.

And Elain had hidden her embarrassment behind a veneer of sweet innocence, but Zahra had always seen through it.

“And she doesn’t want to see you," Azriel said at that moment, his words harsh but truthful.

"How do you know?," Feyre demanded. "Did you ask her?"

Zahra’s heart skipped a beat, her head snapping to Azriel as if to confirm what she had just heard. His jaw was clenched, his anger evident.

Her stomach churned as she heard her sisters speak. She could already see the situation deteriorating, the tension building.

"I know her quite well,"Azriel said through gritted teeth. "I’d like to think I have a pretty good idea of what makes her happy.”

“You are locking her up!” Feyre snapped at that moment! “And you are keeping her away from people that care about her, and you think that will make her happy?!”

What?!

But Zahra didn't really hear that. All her attention was on Azriel...on Azriel who had flinched at the barbed words shot his way.

And the anger built in Zahra's chest.

He had never locked her up. He had done everything in his power to give her choices, to give her agency...to make her feel like she was in control. He had done nothing to lock her away.

Zahra could see the anger flare in Azriel's eyes at Feyre's words. She could feel the tension radiating from him.

And then...then she saw him flinch. A small movement, so fast she almost missed it.

But she saw it.

Her heart swelled with anger, a red-hot fire burning within her. How dare they?

How dare they think that he had mistreated her?

And she could feel how even just the insinuation of this...how much this was hurting her mate, her husband. "How dare you?," Azriel whispered "I would never keep Zahra captive. I would never do that,“ he whispered. She could hear the desperation in his voice. She could hear how hurt he was.

And she was done.

"Let them in," Zahra said icily, crossing the room to stand next to him, facing her sisters. “Let them in, Azriel,” she said evenly, her hand coming to rest on her mate’s arm. Azriel stared at her, and she pushed all the love, all the adoration she had for him onto him at that moment.

He huffed but he stepped back from the door.

Zahra felt a wave of gratitude for Azriel wash over her. She wanted to thank him for defending her, for standing up for her...but she knew he would shrug it off. Still. She would tell him.

Her gaze sharpened as she regarded her sisters. “Come in,” Zahra said coolly, stepping back to allow Feyre, Elain and Nesta to enter.

Zahra watched, her expression stony, as her sisters walked into the kitchen. Elain’s eyes darted around the room curiously, while Feyre’s gaze lingered on Azriel, who had taken up a stance near the door.

Nesta met her eyes with a defiant glare, her chin held high. Zahra gave a silent sigh. Of course Nesta would be the most difficult.

"What do you want?" she asked flatly, crossing her arms.

"What we want?" Feyre echoed weakly. "Zahra, we..." she trailed off, searching for words.

But Zahra was done. "What do you think gives you the right to show up here? To berate my husband like that?" she snapped. "Azriel has done nothing but protect me, to shelter me. What gives you the right to talk to him like that?!" she demanded

"I...I don't want you to be in a...situation like me," Feyre said weakly. "Zahra, we didn't even know the two of you were friendly and now you...you married him!"

"I am an adult. I can manage my private life how I see fit," Zahra shot back, her voice icy. “He’s my mate. Besides, it's not like you actually cared about it before.”

"That's not true," Feyre protested.

Zahra just rolled her eyes. "Look, I get it," she said drily. "You feel bad because you found out that I wasn't a homewrecker with loose morals after all," she told Nesta drily. "But you hate me, so for you to show up here and berate my husband about keeping me locked up is ridiculous," she spat out. "And you, Elain...you have made it very clear what I meant to you when you invited Feyre and Nesta to our father's grave but not me." She had no idea where this was even coming from. But decades of pent up frustration was bubbling to the surface. “And Feyre…we all know which sisters you prefer to spend time with, so what are you even doing here?”

Zahra was fuming. Her heart was pounding furiously beneath her ribcage, her hands balled up into fists by her sides as she confronted her sisters.

But a small part of her was satisfied. Seeing them flounder, seeing them realize how wrong they had been. It was almost cathartic. She could feel Azriel's eyes on her, and she glanced at him, taking in his stoic expression. For a brief moment, she wondered what he was thinking, but she didn't have time to dwell on it as she turned back to her sisters.

"I did not choose to be born a bastard," she spat out. "I did not choose for our father to betray your mother with my own. I did not choose to be an embarrassment that needs to be hidden away from your suitors. I did not choose any of it. And believe me if I could chose, I would have chosen to grow up somewhere else." Zahra was on a roll now, the truth pouring out of her like a torrent. She could see the shock in her sisters' eyes, the realization of how they had treated her sinking in. But she wasn't done. She still had more to say, more to get off her chest.

"But I couldn't choose. Instead, I was stuck in that house with you three. Being a constant reminder of your father's affair. Being the outcast, the embarrassment." Zahra's voice cracked slightly, the pain and hurt from all those years coming to the surface.

She clenched her fists, taking a deep breath to steady herself.

"I endured it all. The looks, the whispers. I endured being the bastard, the one no one wanted. But I survived. And now..." Zahra's voice trembled. "And now I'm married to the male of my choice. A male who accepts me, protects me, and loves me." Zahra's gaze darted to Azriel briefly, the depth of her affection for him apparent in her eyes. "And you three want to take that away from me? You want to come here and accuse Azriel, one of the best, most caring, protective and noble men I have ever had the pleasure to meet...you want to accuse him of mistreating me?" Zahra's eyes flamed with indignation.

She took a step forward, her eyes blazing. "No. I won't let you. Azriel has given me more freedom, more support, and more love than I have ever known. And I will not let you come into our home, into our life, and slander him with your false judgment!"

Tears glimmered in Zahra's eyes, but she held her sisters' gaze, her determination unwavering.

There was a long silence. Her sisters were stunned, their faces pale. Zahra felt the weight of her words hang in the air, the raw emotion still pulsing through her veins. Azriel's gaze was heavy on her, his presence a steady anchor in the midst of the emotional storm she had unleashed.

And only then, she realised that golden glow that was covering her...like a thin film, clinging to her skin.

Zahra felt a shiver course down her spine as she realized what was happening. The power, the ancient magic that had lain dormant within her for so long, was stirring once again.

It seemed that her emotional outburst had provoked it, and now it was reacting, awakening in response to her strong feelings.

Zahra's hands trembled as she looked down at them, the golden aura visible as it enveloped her.

The glow seemed to pulse with each beat of her heart, responding to her emotions. With great effort, Zahra calmed herself, taking deep breaths to quell the anger that had initially sparked this power. Soon, the aura flickered and faded, once again sinking back beneath her skin.

Zahra looked up to find her sisters watching her, their eyes wide with shock and fear. The weight of their stares was almost crushing.

"So I ask again, what do you want?" she asked, her voice icy.

Zahra could see her sisters exchange quick glances, their faces still shocked. None of them had anticipated this turn of events.

"I am sorry," Elain blurted out suddenly. "I didn't know."

Zahra blinked, surprised that Elain of all her sisters was apologizing.

"And what could you possibly have not known?" Zahra asked, her voice still hard. The anger hadn't completely left her yet.

"I...I didn't know that you...that...that affair wasn't..."

"It wasn't an affair at all!" Azriel snapped at that moment. Zahra looked over to Azriel. His hands were clenched into fists, his eyes narrowed in anger.

It was clear that he was furious. And Zahra couldn't help but feel a surge of affection for him in that moment.

But she also knew that an outburst from him would not help the situation. She looked back to her sisters, her eyes searching their faces. She could see the shock and confusion there, the dawning realization of how wrong they were.

“It’s wasn’t an affair, It was an arragement,” she corrected her sister drily.

"How can you call it that?" Feyre breathed out.

Zahra shrugged. "Because that's what it was," she gave back, her voice harsh. "I let myself be raped. I allowed it to happen. I let him do whatever he wanted to me and in return, we didn't starve."

Zahra's words hung heavy in the air. The truth, laid out bare and stark. She could see the horror and shock on her sisters' faces, the disbelief in their eyes.

It was a truth Zahra had never spoken out loud, never allowed herself to fully acknowledge. But now, in this moment, she felt strangely calm. As if saying the words, finally giving voice to her pain, was a release.

"I endured it because I had to," Zahra continued with a bitter laugh. "You all have no idea what I went through. You never bothered to ask. And I didn’t tell you. I hid away all the evidence of what he did to me, all the wounds and the bruises and the pain. And you were too busy burying your heads in the sand, too busy pretending I didn't exist."

Zahra's voice trembled slightly, but she pressed on. "But now, for the first time in my life, I have some resemblance of happiness. I have a mate who cares for me, protects me. I have a daughter I love. And you..." Zahra's eyes burned as she looked at her sisters. "You want to take that away from me?!"

"You have a daughter?!?" Nesta blurted out, staring at her.

"Yes," Zahra said, her voice cold, "a daughter. A beautiful, wonderful daughter. Azriel accepted me, married me, even though he knew my secret. Even though he knew and he never judged me for it or scorned me…He gave me a family, a home. And I will not let you take that away from me."

#acotar fanfiction #azriel x oc #azriel x reader #azriel fanfiction #azriel fanfic #Azriel x Archeron!Reader #Stars all aligned

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millermouth · 3 months ago

Text

Chapter 4

Summary: In the time between when he took you to now, something changed. His hands grew gentler. Your fear turned quiet. And somewhere in the stillness, love kindled.

|| angst & fluff, Pre-Boston QZ, Stockholm Syndrome, Pre-Boston QZ, slow burn, raider!joel, captor!joel, a little bit of dark!joel, homestead, kidnapping, dark themes, morally gray comfort, slow burn, referenced abusive family, joel says things he doesn't mean, fmc is going thru some shit so her emotions are pretty volatile, implied age gap ||

a/n: your honor I love them so much

The next morning was pale and gray, the kind of cold that clung to the floorboards and curled beneath the edges of your sleeves. Joel had brought you more clothes from his run into town—sweaters, thick socks, some long johns that looked like they belonged to a man twice your size. None of it fit. Everything still hung off you like it didn’t want to stay. But it was warm, and that was the only part you couldn’t bring yourself to resent.

You hadn’t slept well. It was hard to, curling yourself into a tight ball above the covers every night on the opposite side of his bed. You were cold, angry, mostly stubborn. But you’d never admit it out loud. And since Joel didn’t say anything about it, you figured maybe he was just grateful you still shared the bed at all.

Your body felt strange that morning. Not sore, not exactly, just… off. Like you’d been holding too much for too long and now your limbs didn’t know how to carry it. There was a weight in your chest that pressed, unnameable, and no matter how tightly you crossed your arms over it, it wouldn’t go away.

When you walked into the main room of the cabin, Joel was already there. Sitting in his usual armchair, poking at the fire he’d just rekindled. The air still carried the scent of smoke and ash from the night before, mixing with something faintly earthy—wet wood and cold stone.

He looked up when you entered, eyes skimming over you with that same quiet, unreadable expression he always wore when he didn’t know what to say. Or maybe he just didn’t want to say anything.

He just nodded once in greeting, then nodded again—to the floor in front of his chair.

Samson noticed you too, his head lifting from his paws at the sound of your footsteps. His ears perked, eyes blinking slowly as he watched you from his spot beside Joel’s feet. He looked at home already, like he’d been here forever. You wondered if it would ever feel that easy for you.

You stood there for a moment too long, frozen in the doorway, arms crossed loosely over your chest.

Not because you were afraid. Not exactly.

But because you weren’t sure what it meant anymore, to sit there. To kneel in front of him, to let him touch you, to go through the motions of this quiet ritual that had started as rough, and sometimes even painful, that now was turning into something you didn’t know how to define. You weren’t sure what message you were sending by giving in to it now.

But your feet still moved. You crossed the room, slow and hesitant, and sank to your knees in front of his chair, spine straight, chin lifted. Your hands folded stiffly in your lap. The floor was cold under your legs, the fire warming just one side of your face.

Joel leaned forward with a grunt, the old chair creaking beneath him as he reached for the drawer beside him. You heard the soft rustle of the brush, the creak of the worn wooden handle in his palm.

When his fingers touched your hair, you flinched–just a flicker, barely a breath. But he felt it.

“I’ll be gentle,” he said, voice low and careful.

You didn’t answer. You weren’t sure if you believed him. Not because he’d been cruel—not lately—but because something in you still held the memory of it. Still wore the shape of that first day like a bruise under the surface.

The first pass of the brush was slow. He started at the ends, working up like he’d learned to. The bristles tugged lightly, but they didn’t snag, and he didn’t rush. It was methodical and gentle, his hands following muscle memory now. He didn’t say anything, and neither did you.

The brush moved again. And again.

You hated how easily your body responded to it. How your shoulders slackened without permission. How your breath came deeper, slower. You hated the flutter behind your ribs when his knuckles brushed the back of your neck, the heat in your chest when you let your eyes shut for too long.

You didn’t want to enjoy it.

When he was finished, he tied the leather strip around the end of your braid, hands gentle, firm. You could feel the tension in his fingertips, like he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words. Like he was waiting for yours.

You moved to stand, but you were stopped by the sound of his voice.

“Almost forgot—” he grunted, twisting to reach for his pack on the other side of him. He winced slightly, then rummaged through it, pulling out a few supplies before his hand closed around something bulkier. Something heavy by the way his arm flexed with the weight of it.

“Found this at the shops. Think it still has a few shots left.”

You blinked up at it. A camera. A beat-up old Polaroid—boxy and worn, duct tape along one edge, the light of the flash cracked. But it was still intact, still holding something of the old world. His hand hovered in the space between you, offering it gently.

“Figured… Well, spring gets real pretty ‘round here,” he said, voice a little softer now. “Might be nice to take some pictures.”

Your eyes lifted slowly from the camera to his face, and for a second, you could see it: the hope behind the gesture. The earnestness, as warped and clumsy as it was.

And it burned something sharp and twisted in your chest, something red and sick and furious. Before you could even think, you shoved his hand away, the camera jostling in his grip, almost slipping from his fingers.

“I don’t want pictures,” you snapped, rising so fast your head rushed as you stood. “I don’t want souvenirs of this place. Of you.”

His jaw flexed hard as he looked up at you, expression hardening. “Was just tryin’ to—”

“To what?” Your voice cracked, high and raw as you stood to your feet, looking down at him. “Make me feel at home? Make it easier to forget that I didn’t choose this? That I didn’t choose you? I don’t want to be here, Joel!”

His jaw clenched, and something behind his eyes went cold.

“You act like I pulled you outta some goddamn fairytale, girl.” he growled. “Like you weren’t half-dead when I found you. Covered in bruises. Lip split open and starvin’.”

Your stomach twisted.

“Remember how long it took me to brush through that rat’s nest of hair? You cryin’ cause of the mats in it? That sure as shit wasn’t me who did that to you.”

You mirrored his fury now, face twisting with it. At your feet, Samson moved to cower under the table in the kitchen at the sound of your voices rising.

“I gave you a bed,” Joel snapped. “I gave you food. I haven’t laid a fuckin’ hand on you. And you still act like I’m the monster for tryin’ to give you anything.”

Tears welled in your eyes, hot and fast and blinding. Your voice came out low and shaking.

“You are a monster.”

Joel’s face twisted. His lip curled, brows knitting like something buried deep had snapped free. But when he spoke, his voice didn’t rise. It stayed low. Cold. Tight with the kind of control that could snap at any second.

“You wanna call me a monster?” he stood so fast, so close to your face as his fury blazed. “Fine. But at least I ain’t the one who left a goddamn kid to starve under my roof.”

You flinched, but he wasn’t done.

“Your family didn’t give a damn about you,” he hissed, stepping closer. “They left you to rot. They let that low life of a man beat you. And you still talk about them like they were somethin’ worth runnin’ back to?”

Your breath hitched. The tears slipped free now, burning hot down your cheeks.

“They’re better off dead,” he growled. “And here I was, thinkin’ you were different. Thought you wanted to live.” He scoffed, bitter and ugly. “But if you’d rather run back to a fuckin’ grave—then maybe you’re better off in one too.”

The room went silent.

Even the fire stopped crackling.

The words just hung there—vile, bitter, final.

His face went pale, furrowed brow unknitting itself and eyes softening like even he regretted it the moment it passed his lips. But he didn’t take it back.

“Fuck you, Joel.” you breathed. Turning on your heel, you moved quickly, already halfway to the door.

He called your name—softly, pained.

The hinges groaned in protest as you yanked the door open. The cold wind hit your face like a slap, but you barely felt it.

The pulse in your ears was too loud, a scream wrapped in thunder, and your boots were already hitting the porch, the grass, the trees.

You didn’t know where you were going.

Didn’t care.

You just needed distance. From him. From that house. From the words you couldn’t unhear and the ones you wished you’d thrown back harder.

You didn’t get far.

At this point, there was nowhere to go. No one who was waiting for you to return home anymore. And now, as the fight churned inside your chest, raw and aching, you found yourself drawn to the first thing that resembled shelter, anything to put space between you and him. There was an old tree out in the field, grown crooked and thick at the base, its roots gnarled and rising just above the earth like ribs. You crossed the grass without thinking, boots sinking into the damp ground, until you reached it.

You pressed your back against the bark, rough and cold, and let yourself slide down to the base, knees drawn to your chest. Your face was hot and swollen, wet with tears you hadn’t bothered to wipe away. Your hands covered your face like they might hold the sobs in.

But they came anyway.

Big, heaving sobs—ugly, gasping things that clawed their way out of your throat. You didn’t even know who you were crying for. Yourself. Your family. Him. All of it. None of it. You didn’t know anymore.

You didn’t hear anyone approaching until the soft wet pressure of a cold nose was pressed against your palm.

When you peeked through your fingers, the scruffy little mutt was right there in front of you, tail thumping softly against the grass.

“Samson,” you whispered, voice breaking. “Did you get all the way out here by yourself?”

He let out a soft whine, licking at your cheek, your jaw, your chin—lapping up the salt of your tears like he was trying to wash them away. His tongue tickled, warm and eager, and you couldn’t help but let your lips twitch at the corners.

His breath smelled sweet, something you hadn’t noticed before. Like the first bloom of spring. Earthy and new. You’d never smelled anything like it, not out here in this ruined world.

You curled into him, burying your face against his fur. He stayed still beneath your hands, soft and solid and warm.

“What are we gonna do, buddy?” you murmured, rubbing behind his ears, voice thick with grief. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

And then, like ice down your spine, there was a sound.

All wrong, throaty and wet. It was close enough that the hair on the back of your neck stood up. A rustle in the trees, just beyond the field that was too quick to be the wind, too concentrated in one bush, behind one large, grey rock. Your breath caught in your throat, and you scanned the woods ahead, eyes straining against the low sun that couldn't quite cut through the trees. But you couldn’t see anything beyond the shadows and brambles. Still—you heard it.

You’d only ever heard that sound a handful of times in your life, mostly spoken in tales your parents whispered when they didn’t think you or your sister were listening. That sound lived in nightmares, in the stories of what used to roam before your father cleared the area. Or so you thought he did.

Samson stiffened in your lap, his nose twitched. And then, he growled, low and warning, teeth baring at the trees. You pulled him tighter against you, blood thudding in your ears.

Adrenaline surged fast and heightened every sound, feeling, sight before you. Your knees dug into the dirt as you forced yourself to stand, eyes never leaving the darkened stretch of woods as you started to back away.

Step by step, careful and controlled. Never turning your back.

But then, not watching where you were going, your foot snags on a root jutting from the base of the gnarled tree. It caught your ankle just enough to throw your balance off, your arms flailing as you tried to right yourself.

Your eyes dropped for just a second to steady your footing.

And that moment, that lapse of your eyes leaving the trees, was when it happened.

A scream tore through the air. One that wasn’t coming from you, one that was pained and animalistic.

The body came out of nowhere, bursting from the brambles like it had been lying in wait, low and silent and deadly.

Like it was stalking you.

All wiry limbs and rot, half-human, half-fungus, it had camouflaged itself perfectly in the shaded trees, patiently waiting for you to be distracted.

Samson fell from your arms as you tried to hold your hands out, to brace, to fight it off, but it was too fast, too heavy.

The two of you hit the ground hard.

The impact knocked the wind out of you, and for a second all you could hear was the thud of your back hitting the dirt and the dull ringing in your ears. Then it was on you—clawing, snarling, that half-jaw hanging open as its teeth gnashed toward your face. Tendrils of fungus had grown out from the skin of its face, its hair and neck, some brittle and flaking, others fresh and wet, pulsing like they were alive.

Its hands grabbed at your coat, your arms, its weight pinning you to the earth.

Samson is barking furiously, teeth snapping, his small body leaping against the infected’s side, trying to pull at the tattered clothing it still wore. But it didn’t budge. The thing didn’t even register him.

Your screams tore from your throat raw and high, your arms pushing, your legs kicking, but it was still too strong. Its weight bore down, pinning you to the ground. Its breath on your cheek–hot, wet, and reeking of rot—and its mouth too close, teeth gnashing as it let out a garbled, monstrous shriek.

You couldn't help but think: This is it.This was how you died. Alone. Stupid. Angry.

“No!” you sobbed, voice cracking open in panic, your eyes wide and wild as you fought with everything left in you. Your arms strained, muscles screaming, hands locked against the infected’s chest, trying to keep its snapping, fungal-covered face away from yours. Your legs were useless, caught beneath its weight. Your breath came shallow, useless, barely coming in at all.

You had always thought that in moments like this—when death was staring you in the face—you’d see something. Flashes of your life. Your happiest memories. The people you loved.

But there was nothing. Nothing but the bloodshot, ruined eyes of the thing on top of you. Nothing but the stink of decay and fungus and the mindless rage of something that used to be a person.

Maybe you should have prayed.

But when you tried, another thought came—unbidden, as they so often did in moments of clarity like this.

I’m sorry.I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

Your arms were giving out, trembling from the effort, your hands slick with sweat and tears and dirt. You were losing. You knew you were losing. A sob ripped from your throat, full and animal, just as your strength collapsed.

And then, a blast thundered so loud it split the air wide open. Like a strike of lightning.

The stalker jerked sideways, a spray of red and black mist filling your vision as its head exploded just inches from your face. Bone and rot and muscle scattered across the grass, and the body collapsed off of you with a sickening thud.

You sucked in air like it might be your last. Your lungs didn’t work. Your chest was heaving, but nothing was steady. You were sobbing, choking, trying to pull in breath as you scrambled blindly through the dirt, arms slipping out from under you.

And then he was there.

Joel.

On his knees beside you, hands grabbing, hauling, pulling you up against his chest.

“Hey—hey, I got you.” His voice was rough, breathless, panicked. “I got you. It’s alright. You’re alright. It’s me.”

You barely even hesitated as your arms reached for him, fists twisting into the front of his coat like you’d die if you let go. Your face pressed into him, shaking, wet, your whole body trembling violently. You couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t even speak. There was nothing but the sound of your gasping breath and his heartbeat pounding under your ear.

You didn’t care that it was him. You didn’t care about anything except the fact that he came.

He came. Again.He saved you. Again.

You kept whispering through your sobs, again and again, voice barely audible as it fell apart in his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” you said through gasping breaths. “I’m so sorry.”

Joel pulled back just enough to see your face, his hands cupping your cheeks, calloused thumbs brushing blood and tears from your skin.

His eyes, lit faintly by the sun beginning to peer through the gray sky, were full of something so tender it made your stomach twist. The lines around his mouth were pulled down, frowning, pained.

“Look at me,” he whispered, ducking his head to meet your eyes, “You don’t gotta be. I’m sorry. I never should’ve said that to you. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t—” He swallowed hard, his thumb brushing just under your eye. “I was angry. But I never meant it.”

You nodded at him, but it was weak, trembling. The kind of nod that wasn’t agreement so much as a reflex. You weren’t even sure what you were nodding to.

His words? His apology? The fact that he was there and you weren’t dead?

You couldn’t untangle any of it. How many times now had you been separated from him, only to have a fate worse than anything he’d ever done to you? It was like everything was slotting into place as you looked at him now.

Your eyes stayed locked on his face, tracing the lines you’d gotten to know over these weeks together. The crease between his brows, the deep scar on his nose, the scruff of his jaw where the morning sun hit it in patches. You couldn’t stop looking at him. You didn’t want to, and you didn’t know why.

It was like you were memorizing him. Every inch, every quiet, steady part that had held onto you even when you were angry, when you pushed and clawed at him.

There was a surge in your chest, big and tight and unbearable. It wasn’t like before, when you’d wanted him just to take your mind off your unending thoughts. This was a need, something chemical you couldn’t explain anymore.

You weren’t thinking when you reached for him again, your fingers wrapping around the collar of his jacket. You weren’t weighing the consequences as you pulled him closer. You weren’t thinking of anything at all except that it was like surfacing after being underwater too long. Like he was the first breath after you thought you were drowning.

You pulled him forward, clumsy and quick, your pulse roaring in your ears for an entirely different reason now.

And then you pressed your mouth onto his.

It wasn’t delicate. Not like you might’ve planned for, if you’d ever let yourself plan for this. It wasn’t sweet or careful or romantic. It was desperate. Messy. It was full of everything you couldn’t say. You kissed him like you were still scared of never getting the chance to say you were sorry. Sorry for running. Sorry for every terrible thing you’d thrown at him. Sorry for being stubborn, for being mean, for being so full of your own anger you couldn’t see what he was trying to be for you. You kissed him like gratitude. Like relief. Like grief. Because somehow, despite all of it, he came back. He saved you. Again. And that meant something you couldn’t begin to hold in your chest.

Joel froze at first, stiff under your hands. But you held him there, fingers gripping at the collar of his coat, clutching like your life depended on it. Then slowly, his mouth began to move against yours. Hesitant at first. Then deeper, surer. His hand stayed at your cheek, holding you steady, his thumb brushing your wet, tear stained skin as if he couldn’t believe this was real—that you were really letting him in. That you wanted to.

He eased you back onto the ground, bracing his weight so he didn’t crush you, but still pressing close, warm and heavy, like he could anchor you to the earth. He smelled like woodsmoke and pine and something that didn’t have a name but belonged only to him. The kiss was slower now, not urgent anymore. It was patient, intentional. Like he’d been holding this moment in his hands for weeks and didn’t want to waste a single second of it.

Your hands were still curled in his jacket when something cold and wet smeared across your cheek, startling you both. You gasped as Joel jerked back, and suddenly there was a blur of fur and flailing paws between you.

Samson.

The puppy’s tongue dragged sloppily over Joel’s jaw, then yours, tail wagging wildly, whining with excitement like he’d just discovered you were trying to leave him out of something important.

Joel groaned, half laughing as he wiped a hand across his face. “Jesus, alright—alright, you little shit.”

You let out a sharp sound, surprised, caught somewhere between a gasp and a laugh.

And then it came—real laughter.

It bubbled up from your throat before you could stop it, breathless and clumsy, cracking loose like a dam finally giving way. It felt strange in your chest—light, unburdened, unfamiliar. Like you didn’t quite remember how to do it, but your body was figuring it out anyway.

Joel looked at you then as he held the dog back with his hand, and something shifted in his face. A smile tugged at his mouth, soft and amazed, and he just... watched you. His expression full of quiet awe, as if he was seeing sunlight for the first time in weeks and didn’t dare move in case it disappeared.

He was memorizing it, like this version of you, the one that was laughing, alive with a sparkle in your eyes, was something rare, something holy. Like he couldn’t believe it came from him. From this.

And for the first time in so long you couldn’t even remember, your face felt sore in a way that had nothing to do with bruises, or cuts, or dried tears.

But from the unfamiliar stretch of smiling.

taglist: @orcasoul, @ilovetoomanymen, @niceforcum, @glaszdoll, @therewastherewas, @axionn, @aleariixx, @izzy698, @shivispunk

#that house in nebraska #joel miller #joel miller x you #joel miller x reader #joel miller angst #joel miller fluff #joel miller fic #tlou #the last of us #tlou fic #the last of us fanfic

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bumblebeeonthistle · 1 month ago

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You've been hurt, and Levi is not happy about it

Tags: Levi/Reader, slow burn, pining, injury, mild yandere Levi Ackerman, implied/referenced torture

Excerpt from my Levi X Reader fic.

You’ve never been late for your training sessions before.

Had it been any other person, Levi would’ve been annoyed. But because it’s you, he’s worried. You don’t strike him as someone who’s ever late for anything. Like him, you seem too punctual and meticulous to be late.

After twenty minutes have passed, he begins the trek back towards the barracks.

He knocks once when he reaches the door to Shadis’ office and doesn’t bother to wait for an answer before opening the door and entering.

Shadis lifts his gaze to meet Levi’s cold stare, abandoning the paperwork he’d been in the middle of finishing when Levi barged in.

The door slams shut behind him, but he doesn’t break eye contact with his former Commander as he strides over to the desk.

“I thought your training session was cancelled this week,” Shadis says, unperturbed.

“Where is she?”

A pause.

"Where. Is. She."

“In the medical wards.”

Levi's eyes narrow into slits.

“What happened?”

Shadis lets out a huff.

“Some thugs attacked one of the groups during the cadets’ wasteland excursion. Said they were after the ODM gear. She was captured but escaped by herself, apparently killing one and knocking out four of her other kidnappers in the process. One escaped on horseback. A bullet grazed her right temple and she got shot in her left thigh. Lost a lot of blood and is still unconscious, but otherwise she’ll be fine.”

Levi feels the blood in his veins freeze, cold fury seeping into every crack of his being. A metallic taste fills his mouth as he bites the inside of his cheek so hard that it draws blood.

“Wasn’t that excursion supposed to be without dangers? Where the fuck were the Instructors when it happened? And where are those shitheads who did it now?”

The Instructor ignores his first two questions, but answers his third.

“As we're speaking, the four surviving kidnappers are being transferred to the Interior to be questioned by the First Interior Squad.”

Levi just glowers at the him. After a moment of silence, Shadis sighs.

“I don’t know any more besides what I’ve already told you. She hasn’t woken up yet, so we haven’t gotten a chance to question her. All we know is from the other cadets present during the kidnapping.”

Not entirely satisfied, but accepting that he won’t get any more information out of Shadis, Levi leaves the office without another word.

Before Levi can think about what he’s doing, his feet lead him to the Training Camp's hospital wards.

You'll be fine. You’re fine.

He chants the words in his head like a prayer.

This is why he keeps people at an arm’s length. This is why he never lets anyone get close. He is so fucking tired of worrying about people, of caring, of being scared. Scared of losing.

He has already lost so many.

If Levi hadn't been so engrossed in his own thoughts, he would have heard the muffled voices from inside the hospital wards from far away. But as it is, it’s first when he steps inside the wards and is met with three pairs of curious eyes that he realises that you already have visitors. Had he known, he probably wouldn’t have come. For the other cadets to witness him in this state would be unacceptable.

He freezes in the doorframe.

Then, before he can help himself, his gaze wanders to the only occupied bed in the room.

You look smaller, much less...intimidating in your unconscious state, one side of your head wrapped in bandages, splotches of brownish-red peeking through the otherwise white fabric. His eyes linger on your left thigh but find that it’s covered in white sheets, hiding your injury from his view.

Well, at least you don’t look like you’re in pain, which is a good thing, he guesses. Because if you’re anything like him, then he knows anaesthetics won’t work on you.

Then, he shifts his attention to your visitors. Two boys are sitting on the left side of your bed, one brunette and one blonde. Levi assumes one of them must be Yeager. Another young man is sitting on the other side of your bed, idly stroking the back of your hand.

For some reason, the sight makes his blood boil. Despite the other man’s seated position, Levi can see that he’s tall, much taller than himself. And blonde with golden eyes.

His diametrical opposite, he thinks bitterly.

Why does he care?

It’s the younger blonde who moves first. He scrambles to his feet, salutes, and addresses him with a squeaky, albeit respectful Captain. The brunette’s eyes suddenly grow wide with realisation, jaw dropping before he hastily follows suit.

The young man is the last to rise. His salute is impeccable, so unfortunately Levi can’t scold him for it.

“Shouldn’t you brats be in bed by now?” Levi asks, not giving away any of the emotions currently threatening to shatter his mask of indifference.

“Yes, Captain,” the two boys comply in unison, but the young man remains silent.

Instead, he raises his eyebrows, his eyes trailing up and down Levi as if seizing him up. Levi only offers a cold stare in return. After a couple of seconds, the man lowers his gaze, and all three of your friends file out of the room.

As soon as they’re gone, Levi strides over to your bedside. For a long moment he just stands there, content to merely observe your breathing, unconscious figure. He reaches out a hand to swipe a stray lock of hair away from your face but stops himself before he can touch you. His eyes travel yet again to your thigh covered in white hospital sheets and he has to resist the urge to take a look at the injury.

He doesn’t want to be a creep, after all.

After one last look, he leaves the wards to fetch his horse. Not to go back to headquarters, though. No, he’s going to the Interior. He’s going to make those four men sing. He’s going to make them talk, and then, he’s going to make them wish they’d never been born.

And lastly, he will grant them their wishes.

Read the rest on ao3! Call my name || Levi X Reader

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wangxianficfinder · 3 months ago

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In the mood for...

March 29th

link limit reached

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1. I'm itmf pregxian fics, i read a bunch on here already any less popular ones?

In God’s Eyes by VividestList (E, 23k, WangXian, LSZ & WWX, NHS & WWX, Gods & Goddesses, Kid Fic, Mpreg, Public Sex, Wall Sex, Floor Sex, Self-Lubrication, There is sex immediately, Mortal WWX, Moon God LWJ, Servant WWX, No Powers, Good Person WWX, Except hiding his son from his dad, But he has a good reason!, Going into hiding, Older Man/Younger Man, NHS knows EXACTLY whats going on, but he’s having too good a time, very mild dubcon?, just because WWX has no idea who he’s having sex with, and it’s very likely he would have refused if he knew, Marathon Sex, Dirty Talk, Identity Reveal, Pregnancy Kink, Unplanned Pregnancy, Riding, Angst with a Happy Ending)

in a river you wade by bleuett (M, 20k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Mpreg, Postpartum Depression, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Good Uncle LQR, Family Feels, Happy Ending, Kid Fic)

🔒 hold me fast, fear me not by cicer (M, 16k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Fairy Tale Elements, Ballad 39: Tam Lin, Mpreg, Bottom LWJ/Top WWX, YLLZ WWX, brief reference to abortificants, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, may be interpreted as noncon by some)

🔒 Come Lay Your Head Down Beside Me by Preludian_Staves (Not Rated, 9k, WangXian, No Sunshot Campaign, Fluff and Angst, protective Lans, Not Jiang Clan Friendly, Mpreg, Established Relationship, Getting Together, Past Abuse, Child Abuse, Getting to Know Each Other, Inventor WWX, Genius WWX)

crimson blue by cherrywhiskey (E, 138k, WangXian, Modern, Arranged Marriage, Angst with a Happy Ending, Marriage of Convenience, Genius WWX, Not Jiang Family Friendly, Supportive LQR, Bottom LWJ, Eventual mpreg, Protective WWX, BAMF WWX, Caring LWJ, Soap Opera, with plenty of telenovela tropes, like scheming in-laws, sizzling drama, Angst, Romance, AND SO MUCH LOVE & DEVOTION, Power Couple Wangxian, they're smitten with each other, WWX × LQR bonding, Soft LWJ, but he's also got a temper, WWX's debt & duty factor is heavily focused, it's a bit whumpy initially, but Very Very Happy ending, Melodrama)

All I Want by Selenay (E, 47k, WangXian, Modern AU, No Powers, Mpreg, Post Holiday Romance, Consequences, Reunions, Idiots in Love, Teacher WWX, Rating earned in later chapters, Handwavey Biology)

🔒🧡 Many Lan babies Series by LuckyMoonly (Varied, 396k, WIP, WangXian, Story collection, Mpreg, Pregnant WWX only, Family Fluff, Found Family, Kid fics)

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2. Hi! I'm itmf dark lwj (no age gap please)

🔒Honor Good People by Aki_no_hikari (M, 2k, Blood and Violence, Dark LWJ, Revenge, Serial Killers, Mild Gore, mentioned one-sided wangxian)

A Measure Of Time by NebulusCharlie (Not Rated, 309k, WangXian, Revenge, Darkji, jiang bashing, Protective LWJ, protective wwx, Time Travel Fix It, good uncle lqr, Murder Babies, Heavy on the angst in the middle but i swear it gets better, Canon Typical Violence, Kidfic, Hugs, Good Parental Figures, Found Family, bad Qingheng-Jun, Heavenly Trials, destroying the Yin Iron pieces)

Obelus by Celestios (Not rated, 167k, WangXian, SL/XXC, LXC/NMJ, JYL/JZX, Rape/Non-Con, non-con elements, NO rape, Non-Consensual Spanking, Non-Consensual Punishments, Spanking, Punishments, Dubious Morality, Dubious Consent, physical discipline, Physical Abuse, Toxic Relationships, Abusive Relationship, Kidnapping, Stockholm Syndrome, mention of violence, mention of drugs, Mention of alcohol, Possessive Behavior, Obsessive Behavior, Unhealthy Relationships, dark LWJ, Baker WWX, Bodyguard WN, Mentions of weapons, Gun mentions, Slow Burn, Long, Doctor WQ, Self Medicating, WWX has ADHD, Trauma Bonding, Psychological Manipulation, Gaslighting, Organized Crime, underground crime, Underground business, illegal business)

A Matter of Time by mrcformoso (E, 41k, wangxian, Time Travel Fix-It, POV LWJ, POV JC, Dark LWJ, Top LWJ/Bottom WWX, LWJ goes crazy, Manipulation, Grooming, Except LWJ and WWX are physically the same age, but LWJ kept his 30 year old mind, WangXian Get a Happy Ending, Consensual Underage Sex, Except problematic please read warning in first chapter, Blood and Violence, Insane LWJ, Manic LWJ, Hand Jobs, Blow Jobs, Conditioning, Come Eating, Come Swallowing, Anal Fingering, WWX is a Lan, Minor Character Death, Golden Core Reveal, Good Friend NHS, WWX Isn’t Adopted by the Jiangs, Abusive Jiang Family, Jiang Family Bashing, POV NHS, Dark NHS, Anal Sex, Marathon Sex, Dual Cultivation, Horny WangXian, Qingheng-jun Lives, LWJ Has a Big Dick, WWX Self-Lubricates, Plot Twists, Porn With Plot, Lanling Jin Sect Bashing, Scheming NHS, Manipulative NHS, BAMF LWJ, BAMF WWX, BAMF NHS, Burial Mounds Lore, Sentient Burial Mounds, Married WangXian, Adopted LSZ, Breathplay, Dark WWX, Yandere LWJ, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat)

Do not take that which does not belong to you by Selene210 (E, 7k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Protective LWJ, Possessive LWJ, Jealous LWJ, Possessive Sex, Kidnapping, Murder, Blood and Violence, wangxian married and have a son, Explicit Sexual Content, Biting, Marathon Sex, Multiple Orgasms, Bath Sex, Rimming, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Top LWJ/Bottom WWX, WWX has an angry LWJ kink, Wangxian canon breeding kink, LWJ canon massive dick)

To Ride A Stygian Tiger by Madyamisam for Duochanfan (M, 115k, WIP, WangXian, JYL/JZX, JC/WQ, Fix-It, Canon Divergence, Dismemberment, Sick Character, Sickfic, Psychosis, Slow Burn, Misunderstandings, Cultivators are assholes, Child Abuse, Everyday is everyday, Delirium, Foreshadowing, Reincarnation, BAMF FEMALES, Family Feels, Family Issues, Protective JC, Brotherhood, Family Drama, Cinnamon Roll WN, Premonitions, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF WWX, YLLZ WWX, Demonic Cultivation, Protective LWJ, Surgery, Soulmates, Hand Jobs, Time Travel, Depression, Sibling Bonding, Self-Harm, Triggers, Protective NHS, Stygian Tiger Amulet, Dark LWJ, Multiple Universes Colliding, Suicidal WWX)

Not This Time by Marinelifeclub (M, 93k, WIP, WangXian, SangNing, NieLan, Canon Divergence, Time Travel, Angst, Dark LWJ, Protective LWJ, YLLZ WWX, Resentful WWX, Established Relationship, POV Alternating, Sunshot Campaign, Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, Minor XuanLi, not for jc fans, eventual 3zun, Kid Fic)

singularity by azuresummer (E, 7k, WangXian, Modern AU, Dom/sub Undertones, Dominant LWJ, Submissive WWX, Serial Killers, Dark LWJ, Possessive LWJ, Protective LWJ, Serial Killer LWJ, Doctor LWJ, Stalking, Manipulation, Obsession, Mentions of Murder)

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3. Im not sure if I sent in this request already but Im looking for a super duper long bby gurl bottom bi awakening WEi Ying fic. Id like if his and Lan Zhan's dynamic stayed similar to conon🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏in other aspects as well. @wangxianbff

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4. Hi mods!! For the next ITMF im looking for a fic which has wwx with a baby. But not his biological baby. I dunno i just want to read a fic that has wy acting like a mother would for a baby not even from his own blood 🥺 the baby can be a-yuan or someone else. The au can be modern or post canon or anything it doesnt matter. Only no cql verse pls♥️ and i already read so take my hand(take my whole life too) hope you can find some fics like that🥳🥳

As always, thank u in advance!!! @for13years-i-play-inquiry-foryou

🔒 Baby Whisperer Wei Wuxian by Preludian_Staves (T, 15k, WangXian, Accidental Baby Acquisition, Canon Divergence, Cloud Recesses Study Arc, Not Jiang Clan Friendly, Arranged Marriage, (eventually for reasons), endgame wangxian, Parent-Child Relationship, Soft WWX, Pining LWJ, Good Parent WWX, WWX Is Good With Children, Single Parent WWX, Fluff and Angst, Rituals, Protective WWX, Protective LWJ, Developing Relationship)

The Edge of Night by Hobbsy3 (M, 277k, WangXian, XuanLi, Modern AU, Zombie Apocalypse, Yúnmèng Siblings Dynamics, Accidental Baby Acquisition During a Zombie Apocalypse, Junior Quartet, (except they’re all babies), Angst with a Happy Ending, Minor Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Gore, Ensemble Cast, Worst Zombie Fighting Team Ever, Found Family)

🔒 Meet-Tired by SimpleSoupsandAppleTarts (T, 2.3M, WIP, WangXian, Modern, Single Parent WWX, meet tired, it's like a meet cute but there's a baby involved, A Yuan setting up his dads through the power of being cute, Fluff, Getting Together, Quantum Mechanics, A Yuan is a very spoiled child, NHS in the role of best friend, Slow Burn, WWX's canonical relationship with alcohol, WWX Has Memory Issues, Canon Backstory, ace spectrum JC, ace spectrum WQ, Slice of Life)

💖Two for the price of one by ULTIOcean (G, 42k, MXY & WWX; LSZ & WWX, JL & WWX, JC & WWX, LWJ & WWX, LWJ & MXY, hints of wangxian, Fluff and Angst, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, basically WWX bullshitting his way around with a kid attached at the hip, because MXY deserved better, Found Family, WWX adopts a child, Kinda, more like the child adopts him, Canon Divergence, MXY knows what's up, Accidental Baby Acquisition, post by Mojo)

~*~

5. I love your work, you guys! The best!

I'm in the mood for JC looking at how WWX is treated, realising it is shit and doing something about it. Just JC being a good brother and ready to go apeshit at everyone, even at the Secound Jade....especially at the Secound Jade. @alyholmesz

The Threads of Fate by WaitForTheSnitch (E, 176k, WIP, WangXian, Time Travel Fix-It, Canon Divergence, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Cloud Recesses Study Arc, Cloud Recesses Shenanigans, Good Uncle LQR, Protective LWJ, WangXian Get a Happy Ending, Pining LWJ, WWX in WWX’s Body, JC & WWX Reconciliation, Oblivious WWX, Siblings JC & WWX, Supportive JYL, Protective NHS, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Comic Book Science) Jiang Cheng travels back in time (with Huaisang) and decides to do better in everything for WWX. He treats him with love and respect and demands everyone to do the same (especially his parents, Lan Qiren etc.)

The Stranger Inside My Son by Mademoiselle_A (T, 73k, WangXian, Time Travel Fix-It, But from an outsider’s POV, JC is So Done, JFM’s A+ parenting, YZY’s A+ Parenting, Both are not great but this is not a bashing fic, JC-centric, But from JFM’s POV lol, POV Outsider)

Wei Wuxian’s Kidnapping Back and Forth Farce (Starring Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji) by misscam (M, 5k, wangxian, JC & WWX, Humor, Switching)

The Twin Blades of Yunmeng by GhostySword & ofmindelans (T, 89k, JC & WWX, WangXian, JC/NHS, Canon Divergence, Yunmeng Brothers Reconciliation, BAMF JC, Protective LWJ, Golden Core Reveal, Swords and Feelings, WWX Resurrection, Canon-Typical Violence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Slow Burn, Embedded Images, Sect Leader QS)

Lynchpin by ShanaStoryteller (Not Rated, 103k, WangXian, JC & WWX, Time Travel, Fix-It, Lynchpin [PODFIC] by Opalsong, [PODFIC] Lynchpin by Gwogobo)

❤️ For Both Of Us (And Time Is But A Paper Moon) by sami (E, 65k, WangXian, Time Travel, Some People Live/Not Everyone Dies, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Healing, Yunmeng Shuangjie, Canon Divergence, Asexual JC, First Time, Getting Together, BAMF JC, BAMF LWJ, [Podfic] Cold read of For Both Of Us (And Time Is But A Paper Moon) by kisahawklin, Для нас обоих (И время лишь бумажная луна) (Russian translation) by nomuad)

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6. hiii! do u have A) any fic recs for super fluffy fics where wwx and lwj are disgustingly in love and super cheesy and sappy (for example, The Sweetest Morsel to the Mouth That Ever Was Cooked In Hell by Silvarbelle)?

B) also, any fics where lwj takes care of and supports wei ying mentally (for example, hunters seeking solid ground by Attila)?

thank you! @ashxi-wx

6A)

🔒Forget Gold by mondengel (T, 1k, WangXian, Fluff, Romance)

Playing Nice by deliciousblizzardshark (T, 11k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Love Confessions, First Kiss, Mildly Dubious Consent, Drunk LWJ, Phoenix Mountain, The wens are fine, Public Display of Affection, Soft WangXian, Fluff and Crack, POV Alternating, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 1-1.5 Hours)

Wei Wuxian, worst supervillain by antebunny (G, 3k, WangXian, WWX & WQ, WWX & WN, Modern, Superheroes/Superpowers, Fluff, Attempt at Humor, Light Angst, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Crack Treated Seriously, superhero LWJ, supervillain WWX, but it’s stupid)

the most beautiful man in the world by deliciousblizzardshark (G, 8k, WangXian, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Humor, Soft boys being soft, Soft WangXian, YLLZ WWX, Cursed LWJ, Arranged Marriage, Canon Divergence, Burial Mounds, Trans LWJ, No Smut, Boys In Love, POV Alternating)

6B)

I hope that you will come and meet me by feyburner (M, 28k, WangXian Post-Canon, Getting Together, Love Letters, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Cuddling & Snuggling, Literal Sleeping Together, Intimacy, CQL Compliant, No Plot Just Feelings, First Time)

and I can't break free by Kika988 (T, 4k, WangXian, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Scars, Touch-Starved, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post-Canon, 🔒 and I can't break free by Kika988 [podfic] by Rhea314 (Rhea))

Rewritten by yamadori (Katsumi27) (G, 6k, WangXian, JC & WWX, Age Regression/De-Aging, Emotional Hurt/Comfort)

💖 the absence of hunger by parsnipit (M, 27k, WangXian, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Starvation, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Body WorshipPraise Kink, ft. WWX’s really fucked up relationship with food, PTSD, Flashbacks, Blood and Injury, Additional Warnings In Author’s Note, Cannibalism)

When You Wake, 怎能当梦一场 by acertainrogue (T, 39k, WangXian, WWX is in a coma, Angst with a Happy Ending, Modern AU, Single Dad LWJ, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Parenthood, YZY’s A+ Parenting, JFM’s A+ parenting, wangxian family)

总有一天; a place to hide (can’t find one near) by yiqie (E, 76k, WangXian, Modern AU, Pianist, Getting Together, Mental Health Issues, Suicide Attempt, Suicidal Thoughts, Depression, Hospitals, Overdosing, Eventual Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Additional Warnings In Author’s Note)

🔒 salt to the sea by starmins (M, 31k, WangXian, WWX & JYL, Modern AU, Grief/Mourning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Road Trips, Additional Warnings In Author’s Note, Canonical Character Death)

feast and famine by luckymarrow (E, 49k, WangXian, JYL/JZX, JYL & WWX, JC & WWX, JYL & LWJ, Rape/Non-Con, Modern, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Trauma, PTSD, Medical Procedures, noncon not in wangxian, porn tags do not apply to non-con, Anal Sex, Rape Recovery, Oral Sex, Kink Negotiation, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Injury Recovery, Recreational Drug Use, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Fist Fights, Rage, Rimming, Established Relationship, Switching, abrupt tonal shifts, Sex Toys, Crying, Caregiver Fatigue, Therapy, Rape Aftermath, the actual depiction of the assault is not detailed but ymmv, Date Rape Drug/Roofies)

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7. hii do you guys have any good ghost!wwx interacting with any of the juniors (one of the lans or jin ling) with a reveal scene to lwj 🙏🙏 thank you!!

💖 Ghosts Shouldn't by ShanaStoryteller (Not rated, 15k, wangxian, canon divergence, grief/mourning, angst w happy ending)

Death of a Ghost by Gotcocomilk (E, 107k, WangXian, WWX & JL, Canon Divergence, Ghost WWX, Hurt/comfort, Family bonding, Fluff, Angst)

as i stumble homewards by the_pretzel (T, 27k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death - WWX, Found Family, Food Issues, Trauma, Canon-Typical Violence, LSZ pov, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff)

~*~

8. Hello,

Please help find fics where WY is resurrected in mxy body, meets lz, but not timid and courteous with others, as the killing of the wens is still fresh.

Maybe he don't get why lxc is starting to "admonish" him when his hands are bloody

Thank you!

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9. Hello, good morning! For the itmf, does anybody know if there are fics that explore the three months that Jiang Cheng and Lan Wangji combine efforts to find Wei Wuxian? No Chengji please! Just two dickheads barely tolerating each other while they search for the one they love most <3 @peebls

in our respective ways by Lise (T, 5k, JC & WWX, JC & LWJ, Missing Scene, Bonding, (sort of??), POV JC, Canon Compliant, that brief period of time when lwj and jc were solidly on the same page, JC’s jealousy could be a third character, Twin Prides of Yunmeng Feels, Brothers, Canon Era, Not Friends to Still Not Friends, canon typical abuse of pows)

waiting, shivering by kornevable (T, 2k, JC & WWX, Introspection, Missing Scene, background wangxian)

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10. hey! I was wondering if there were any wangxian fics that described the gusu winters in detail. or any season in gusu really. Thanks

🔒 The Moon Reflected Upon Two Springs by Rubberduckieassassin (M, 2k, Post-Canon, Fierce Corpse WN, WN-centric, Farmer WN, WN Needs a Hug, Gusu Lan Juniors Dynamics, Good Kid LSZ, Good Kid LJY, Wen Remnants Mentioned, Burial Mounds Settlement Days Mentioned, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Five Stages of Grief, Melancholy, Building A Home, Family Feels, WN is learning how to 'live’ again)

the hidden source is the watchful heart by o_honeybees (E, 10k, WangXian, Post-Canon, Getting Together, Domesticity, Touch-Starved, Grief/Mourning, Misunderstandings, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Unresolved Sexual Tension,Eventual Smut, reflections on selfishness and selflessness)

call me home and I’ll build you a throne by anaphoricae (E, 51k, WangXian, Post-Canon, Post-CQL, Canon Compliant, Getting Together, Developing Relationship, Self-Indulgent, Gusu Lan Juniors Dynamics, Touch-Starved, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Sexual Intimacy, Lán Juniors Gossiping about Wangxian, Nightmares, Hurt/Comfort, Domestic Fluff, WWX Has a New Golden Core, Farmer WWX, Chief Cultivator LWJ, Mutual Pining, Communication, Quietly Falling Into a Married Life, Light Angst, Wholesome, POV LWJ, POV WWX, LWJ in braids agenda, Sharing a Bed, Semi-Public Sex, Inventor WWX, Jealous WWX)

Preparing the Soil by Rynne (T, 26k, WangXian, LQR & LWJ, Post-Canon, Established Relationship, Family Issues, Family Conflict, Uncle-Nephew Relationship, Chinese Holidays, Chinese New Year, Birthdays, Good Kid LSZ, Meta Arguments, POV LWJ, Protective LWJ, Married WangXian, LWJ’s Birthday, LSZ’s Birthday, Soft WangXian, LWJ Has to Talk a Lot, Gusu Lan Sect Rules, Gusu Lan Sect, Letting Go of Resentment, The WWX Rule, Good Sibling LXC, Improving Uncle LQR, Grappling with the Lans’ Part in the Siege, learning to be better, Music, LWJ is a Composer, LWJ Is Good at Communicating Actually, Not JC Friendly)

~*~

11. Hello again. Thank you for all your help. I'm in the mood for an arranged marriage wangxian fic. I just have one specific request. I'd like a scene that WWX is tossing and turning in his bed beside his husband. He can't sleep. Then LWJ just brings him close and cuddles him to sleep. I wondered if wangxian had a fic like that.

Thanks very much in advance. @lailan-rosie

~*~

12. I'm in the mood for a fic where wangji is really possessive that he locks wei wuxian in cloud recesses itself @mysteriouslywangxian

A Way Out by pinkquilts (E, 143k, WangXian, Angst with a Happy Ending, Living Together, Canon Divergence, Slow Burn, First Love, Locked In, Major Character Injury, Fluff, Sharing a Bed, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Tension, Drunken Shenanigans, WWX misinterprets literally everything, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Eventual Smut, Fix-It, Injury)

Good Days by darkbrokenreaper (T, 9k, WangXian, Domestic Fluff, dark LWJ, Manipulative Relationship, Dubious Consent, Drug Use)

Take Him Back, Hide Him Away by Anonymous (E, 5k, WangXian, Rape/Non-Con, Forced Marriage, Forced Orgasm, Wedding Night, Somnophilia, Dark LWJ, a bit of blood but not much, Kidnapping, Breeding Kink, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Rape/Non-con Elements) please mind the tags on this last one.

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13. hi. i've been following you for years and i just wanted to say thank you so much for still being active. i always find my way back here when im in the mood for wangxian fics ❤️❤️

i was wondering if you know any fics that are similar to love song in reverse? in which wwx comes back to life 13 years later but for some reason has lost his memory and so he doesn't know he's wwx and lwj falls for him (while guiltily thinking he shouldn't because wwx is his one and only true love). thank you!! ❤️❤️

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14. IITMF wwx showing 👏 off 👏 his 👏 archery 👏 skills!! 👏👏👏👏 he was literally the best archer in story, let him actually use that!! I'll take anything as long as wwx is using a bow!! @broken-synchronicity

If you liked it then you should have put a (sect robe) on it by KizuKatana (T, 39k, WIP, WangXian, WWX & NHS, Canon divergent after Cloud Recesses lectures, Public humiliation (not the sexy kind), Sect posturing, no golden core transfer, Madam Yu and JFM's A+ Sect Leadership, WWX joins the Nie) WWX's archery skills will become important later in the story.

Nice work if you can get it by deliciousblizzardshark (M, 11k, WangXian, Protective LWJ, Genius WWX, Post-Canon, Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, the make people respect wwx agenda, Chief Cultivator LWJ, Soft WangXian, Hand Jobs, Blow Jobs, a very very small amount of smut, also a possessed squirrel, [Podfic] Nice work if you can get it by deliciousblizzardshark)

❤️ The One-Body Problem by metisket (T, 29k, LJY & WWX, LJY & LSZ, WangXian, fun times with possession, WWX has done a lot of terrible things but surely he doesn't deserve this, LXC is just a ball of stress wrapped in attractive robes, is it more, Possession, or, Cohabitation, Jury's still outin the sense that LSZ is the jury, and he's laughing too hard to decide, warnings for WWX's mental state in general, (he thinks he's fine obviously)) 1st chapter

A Thousand Things by tickertape (M, 108k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, WWX Isn’t Adopted by the Jiāngs, Developing Friendships, lots of OCs, miscommunication and misunderstandings (they’re idiots your honor), Nightmares, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Cloud Recesses Shenanigans, Slow Burn) chapter 9

I Have Arranged to Tie You to Me by xxxMiaHikarixxx (G, 89k, WIP, WangXian, Lan protective team, Time Travel, Past, LWJ oriented, Arranged Marriage, Boys In Love, Soulmates, Fix-It, Jiang siblings, not jiang parents friendly, JC is slowly becoming a good sibling, Soft LWJ, Protective LWJ, Genius WWX) chapter 14

my age has never made me wise by idrilka (E, 63k, wangxian, Post-Canon, Part-epistolary, Mutual Pining, Getting Together, Marriage Proposal, Homecoming, One Brain Cell WWX Strikes Again) chapter 7

Dispersing Clouds by dreamingofcake (E, 283k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Genius WWX, Inventor WWX, Not Jiang Family Friendly, Abusive YZY, Canonical Child Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Eventual Sex, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm (Background Character), Background Character Deaths, child deaths, Canon JC, Good Uncle LQR, Accidental Baby Acquisition, Cultivation Sect Politics, Homophobia, Heteronormativity, Feelings Realization, WWX is Not Oblivious) Wei Wuxian’s archery skills are highlighted throughout Dispersing Clouds

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15. Hello! ITMF angst with happy ending where Wei Ying is going through homelessness as a young adult/teen, after a scandal and/or disownment from Jiang family. How he finds himself alone and without support, but fights the challenge, finds his place in the world again and becomes happy and stable in the end.

Preferably modern AU, but canon era is ok! Wen found family and wangxian is amazing, other pairings that are presented as healthy are good too. I read some works where the theme is lightly discussed/mentioned (that is also OK for me), but i wonder if there are any which concentrate more on that. Thank you!! ❤️ @shellennium

a lot of these mention Wei Ying’s past experiences with homelessness but a few feature Wei Ying currently unhoused: Am I (Gusu Lan Cultivator, 24 M) the Asshole? by moonwaif (M, 41k, WangXian, Mutual Pining, Friends to Lovers, modern cultivation au, Oblivious LWJ, Jealous LWJ, Jealous WWX, Misunderstandings, No actual WWX x Others, A “What If WWX Figured Out His Own Feelings First?”, AU Hanguang-jun unlearns compulsory heteronormativity, Implied/Referenced Homophobia)

the soft animal of your body by sysrae (T, 15k, WangXian, Modern Cultivation, Golden Core Reveal, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, Animal Transformation, Shapeshifting, Getting Together, Confessions)

With No Particular Affection by Chrononautical (E, 92k, wangxian, Arranged Marriage, Modern, Kid Fic, Miscommunication, Family Drama, JFM & YZY’s A+ Parenting, Canon typical consent during sex, canon typical violence revamped for a modern setting, canon typical behavior from villains and honestly I toned it down a lot, Good Uncle JC, Wedding Fluff, Wedding Night, Genius WWX, Street Kid WWX, Homelessness, Rich LWJ, Oblivious WWX, LWJ’s canon typical communication skills, Cinnamon Roll WN, Implied/Referenced Suicide, WWX Has a Pregnancy Kink, WWX Has a Fear of Dogs, Curtain Fic, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst)

🧡 Like a House on Fire by KouriArashi (T, 82k, WangXian, Modern au, Paramedics, Firefighters, Light angst, Mutual pining, Kid fic, Past drug use, Past child abuse, Families of choice, Domestic fluff)

🔒 all is bright by sunflowersfield (T, 4k, WangXian, Neighbors, Modern, Fluff, Angst, Domestic Fluff, Strangers to Lovers, Falling In Love, Getting Together, Happy Ending, First Kiss, Sharing a Bed, Found Family, References to the Death of WWX's Parents, Flashbacks, Non-Linear Narrative, Winter, Holidays, Christmas) this one doesn’t involve the Jiangs but does a great job of showing what Wei Ying has gone through to get his first place

Year of the Rabbit by SingingInTheRaiin (T, 32k, WangXian, LXC & LWJ, WIP, Fruits Basket Fusion, Modern AU, Lan family is cursed, LWJ is obviously the rabbit, Temporary Homelessness, any hug will transform not just opposite gender, Bad Parenting, And Lots of It, WQ is a good friend, Found Family, Bad Parents JFM & YZY, very episodic chapters lol)

Against Entropy by Duochanfan (M, 40k, WangXian, NieLan, Modern AU, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, of an underaged character, Amnesia, Drama, Romance, Family Feels, Hurt WWX, Older JC, Homelessness, Angst with a Happy Ending, Protective LWJ, Protective LXC, Supportive LXC, Protective NMJ, Supportive LQR)

~*~

16. Heyy. Once again I seek your help I finding ITMF (thank you so much for everything you do to this Fandom).

A) I've always come across fics where people (mostly Xichen, the Lan Sect, the cultivators, etc.) say that Wei WuXian doesn't deserve Lan Wangji and he has to prove himself, or they give Wei WuXian the Shovel talk to not hurt Lan Wangji.

So I wanted to know if there any fic where it's the opposite and Lan Zhan is the one getting the Shovel talk, or basically has to prove to others/seek permission, that he deserves Wei WuXian.

B) Any space horror/murder mystery/trapped in a cabin with a killer, etc. aus. Kudos if Wei WuXian is like super intelligent in them.

C) Underestimated Wei WuXian. Where people underestimate Wei WuXian and his intelligence or realize that there's more to Wei WuXian and his playful/jokster persona is just a mask.

Thank youu in advance. @thewintersoldier2002

16A)

❤️ And Time Is But a Paper Moon by sami (M, 138k, WangXian, XiChengQing, Time Travel, Fix-It, Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Healing, Mental Health Issues, PTSD, Hurt/Comfort, Depression, BAMF WWX, BAMF JC, BAMF LWJ, BAMF JYL, Getting Together, And Time is But a Paper Moon [PODFIC] by sami, Winterstar1412, [Podfic] Cold read of And Time Is But A Paper Moon by kisahawklin, multiple translations available) the shovel talk is in chapter 3

Post-war baby! by like_a_bird_that_flew (E, 24k, WangXian, JYL & WWX & JC, Canon Divergence, Fix-It, wangxian get together in the Zuanwu cave, this affects the plot, Mpreg, Secret Relationship, Relationship Reveal, Domestic Fluff, Good Uncle LQR, A-Yuan is Wangxian's son, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Humor, Crack Treated Seriously, brief mention of the Lan parent's dubious marriage, Weddings, Wedding Night, Eventual Smut, Established Relationship, petnames, Non-Graphic Depiction of Childbirth, Happy Ending, Pregnant WWX, Unplanned Pregnancy) Lan Zhan receives a shovel talk from Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli in chapter 3

You Are My Euphoria by orphan_account (M, 18k, WangXian, Canon Divergence, Fluff, Making Out, 5+1 Things, Mutual Pining) from Jiang Cheng in the “+1” portion

All Things Belong by kuroi_atropos (M, 93k, WRH & WWX, WangXian, WWX is a Wēn, Abuse, Whipping, Manipulations, Warning: WRH, Smart WWX, Possessive Behavior, Warning: JGS, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Past Rape/Non-con, Society Level Victim Blaming, Victim Blaming) from Wen Ruohan in chapter 7

🔒💙 Wish I could forget the taste of your skin and the feel of your hands pinning me down by KizuKatana (E, 63k, WangXian, WQ & WWX & WN, weapons-grade thirst, Getting Back Together, Trying REALLY hard to not still like your Ex, but failing, BAMF WWX, BAMF LWJ, Canon Divergence, Modern Cultivation, Case Fic, LWJ’s canonically big dick, sort of a ‘thirsting for your co-worker ex’ vibe, it eventually gets worked out, Mutual Pining, Guest-starring LWJ’s canonically poor communication choices after romantic cave encounters, novel canon relationship dynamics, basically this fic is about escalating sexual tension)

Picture Perfect by manaika (M, 22k, WangXian, WWX/Other(s), Past Relationship(s), Widower WWX, Grief/Mourning, Getting Together, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Stepfather WWX, WWX is the father who stepped up, LSZ is a Wei, Single Parent WWX, Asexual Character, Aromantic Relationship, Platonic Life Partners, it’s all in the past and only mentioned/discussed when relevant, Sex-Favorable Asexual WWX, Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Modern, Past Character Death, Food Intake Related Medical Issue (not what you think))

16B)

🔒 when the sun goes out by travelingneuritis (E, 176k, WangXian, Modern AU, Modern Cultivation, tech cultivation, Necromancy, Angst with a Happy Ending, insecurity around adoption, Dad!WWX, dad!lwj, Grief/Mourning, Mistaken Identity, Mood Whiplash, Body Swap, sex tears!, Falling In Love, Consensual Somnophilia, apocalypse (localized), Smut, unrealistic sexual stamina, Flashbacks, Time Skips, Illustrations)

when I look over my shoulder by cafecliche (T, 10k, WangXian, Modern, Exorcist LWJ, Medium WWX, vague The Conjuring AU, some horror elements, Pre-Relationship, Mutual Pining, Hurt/Comfort)

datelines by tillsunrise (T, 5k, WangXian, Science Fiction, Time Loop, Light Angst, Mystery, Existentialism, Strangers to Lovers, Space Flight, Cryogenics, Utopian, References to Depression, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Temporary Character Death, Explosions, Horror, Thriller)

Something at the Door by Pip (Moirail) (E, 50k, WangXian, Modern with Magic, Modern Cultivation, background 3zun, Background Yi City trio, Intrusive Thoughts, Horror, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporary Character Death, Blood, Explicit Sexual Content, Mutual Pining, Angst with a Happy Ending, Mystery, Urban Fantasy)

Found in the Sharpness of Contrasts by nickel710 (T, 35k, wangxian, modern cultivation, Antarctic Expedition, Magic and Science, Fear, Survival Horror, Body Horror but pretty minimal, chapter notes will explain if you need more info, idiots to lovers, Mystery, Falling In Love, Case Fic, Worldbuilding, Featuring a Generator Named Bertha, Panic/Acute Anxiety)

won’t take the easy road by twigofwillow (T, 47k, WangXian, JC & WWX & JYL, WWX & WQ, Space AU, domestic space opera with cultivation, Yearning, Found Family, Complicated Family Feels, Yunmeng Sibling Feels, Ghosts, lots of ghosts, casefic adjacent, Food, LWJ's Feed WWX agenda, competent & yet extremely insecure WWX, Teacher WWX)

Blood and Bone and Ash by trippednfell (M, 34k, WangXian, Amnesia, Hurt/Comfort, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Curses, casefic, Modern Cultivation, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Temporary Character Death, Dom/sub Undertones, but like the very briefest and tenderest of undertones, romantic cave encounters that inevitably end in misunderstandings, Angst with a Happy Ending, getting together (again...because one doesn't remember the first time)

and his wanting grows teeth by yukla (T, 25k, WangXian, canon setting au, traveling cultivator LWJ, WWX adopted by village chief, Angst with a Happy Ending, Pining, the smallest bit of mystery, typical jiang family dynamics, warmth and belonging and the conflict between duty and desire, slight elements of horror)

I called your name 'til the fever broke by darkredloveknot (enheduane) (M, 9k, WangXian, Modern with Magic, Witch LWJ, The Deep Dark Woods, Grief/Mourning, Falling In Love, Blood Magic, Age Difference, (the canon ish kind), Identity, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Slight horror, Amnesia, Cottagecore)

The Guests of Cloud Recesses by cafecliche (T, 10k, WangXian, Post-Canon, brief horror imagery, Grief/Mourning, parsing out your trauma and also your in-laws: now with ghosts, Fluff, Light Angst, Case Fic, The Guests of Cloud Recesses by cafecliche [Podfic] by Rhea314 (Rhea))

there is no limited dimensions by Stratisphyre (M, 104k, WangXian, LXC/NMJ, WQ/MM, WN/Other(s), Star Trek Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Slow Burn, Friends to Lovers, Assumed Character Death, Minor Character Death, Tags on Each Chapter, references to non-con, references to canonical slavery, (The Orion Syndicate is just really bad okay?), bizarre space mpreg, Implied Future Pairings, POV Multiple, The Author Indulges in a Crack Pairing or Two, Accidental Child Acquisition, Found Family, Genius WWX)

16C)

🔒 in the shadow of moonlit flowers by Reverie (cl410) (T, 56k, wangxian, LXC/NMJ, Cloud Recesses, LWJ & NHS Friendship, Developing Relationship, POV LWJ, Minor Injuries, Autistic LWJ, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, aka the Madam Yu warning, Genius WWX, Light Angst And Hurt/Comfort, WWX Protection Squad, Gusu Lan Sect, Slow Burn, Protective LWJ, LWJ-centric)

🔒💖 Hoards and treasures by apathyinreverie (T, 21k, WangXian, Siblings, Family, not particularly Jiang friendly, YZY Bashing, slightly darker Gusu Lans, LXC being the best brother, Some manipulation, But with the best of intentions, and not between wangxian, Dragon LWJ, Fox WWX, Smitten LWJ, Fluff, perfect happiness, adorable WWX, Romance, Some worldbuilding, courting)

Chronicles of Sect Leader Wei Wuxian by Muggle_Diary (E, 115k, WangXian, XuanLi, JFM/YZY, CSSR/WCZ, LXC/LQY, NMJ/QS, WQ/OC, OFC/ OFC, JC/ OFC, Sect Leader WWX, BAMF WWX, BAMF LWJ, Genius WWX, Inventor WWX, Different First Meeting, Canon Divergence, Minor Character Death, Anal Sex, Top LWJ/Bottom WWX, Sex Toys, Explicit Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Rough Sex, Child Abuse, Child Death, War Hero WWX, Sunshot Campaign, No Golden Core Transfer, WWX Leaves the Yunmeng Jiang Sect, Cultivation Sect Politics, Wen Remnants Live, Abusive YZY, Abusive Jiang Family, Bad Parents JFM and YZY, JC Bashing, JFM and YZY Bashing, Yunmeng Jiang Sect Bashing, JYL and JZX Live, Jiang Family Bashing)

pretty much anything by kizukatana, especially: 🔒 The Second Jade of Lan’s late but incendiary sexual awakening by KizuKatana (E, 41k, wangxian, First Time, LWJ’s Horny Grip,LWJ does not know what hit him, and yet somehow he still realizes it before WWX, canon wangxian dynamics, college AU, LWJ starts off annoyed at WWXBut quickly discovers both his competency kink and a caretaking kink, Genius WWX)

🔒🧡 Rule Number One: Never get attached. by KizuKatana (E, 130k, WangXian, Modern AU, A/B/O, Criminal underworld AU, Fluff and angst, Crime boss LWJ, Rouge criminal genius WWX, Explicit Sex)

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17. I don't know how this thing of asking for a fanfic works, but I'll try. Is there a fanfic with the plot "previously dead characters come back and live again"? I saw two on ao3 where characters like wen qing, the jiang family and those who have already died appear again as ghosts or just revive. It's like these characters reacting to the future, i would like to know if there is more of this plot written ( with wangxian!!!) @poisonlittle

CHARACTERS REACT FICS Comp these you can give a try

🔒 care by everbrighter (T, 35k, LSZ & WWX, WangXian, LSZ & JL & LJY & OYZZ, Resurrection, they have a son, Family Bonding, Getting to Know Each Other, Past Character Death, Mutual Pining, Kid Fic, Sexual Tension, (between LSZ's pining dads), Modern with Magic)

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If you didn’t get an answer to your ask here, don’t forget to make use of @mdzs-kinkmeme and MDZS KINK MEME on Dreamwidth. Authors actually do use them for ideas. You may get what you order!***Your prompt doesn’t have to be kink! Fluff, crack, whatever - it’s all good!***

#wangxian #mdzs #wangxian fic recs #i'm in the mood for a fic #the untamed #wangxian fic search #wangxianficfinder #long post

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