#in the meantime of the actual caleb fic coming

[calebrity]

panty-thieving caleb

do we need to discuss this? caleb truly does this. nobody’s undergarments safe from this man. does homeboy feel guilty? yes. will he do it again? u can bet ur ass on it

It’s��� fine.

I mean, you’re gone for a few days, your little hunter’s gig requiring your presence elsewhere, and the apartment is quiet- almost uncomfortably quiet- for a short while; he has some room to wriggle. Be bad. He could throw a house party in your absence and you would never know. He’s good at keeping secrets, and he’s a masterclass in those pitiful puppy dog eyes that catch you for hook, line, and sinker. If he said he didn’t, then you’d believe him, ‘cause you’re a good girl.

(His good girl. Whether or not you’re aware of that has no effect on its truth.)

It’s not like the walls have eyes, that you’re watching, when he leans against the washing machine, his own dirty clothes swirling in a heap behind the clear window, and spots your hamper propped behind the door, a glint of interest in his eye- shameful as it may come.

You’re far from stupid. But you are naive, down to a fault- and Caleb thinks, flipping the lid of it and stooping over to rifle through your laundry, that it’s for the better.

It’s just marginally easier on his conscience if you’re unaware of what he’s about to do.

Look- to clear the air, he isn’t proud of it, alright? But fuck if he doesn’t need it. You’ve left him high and dry one too many times to count, and he doesn’t blame you for that, pipsqueak, he gets that your relationship had established boundaries from early on- too early to really even remember- and that you couldn’t begin to understand the depths of what he feels for you. He gets that. It’s only festering in the forefront of his brain on most days, squeezing in his chest in a way that reads longing just as much as it does guilt.

The knowing doesn’t stop him though, or the disgrace.

Might even drive him a little bit further, if he’s being honest.

He digs out a frilly pink article, pointedly ignoring all other clothes save for the few oversized shirts of his you must’ve snagged earlier this week- regarding them with a passive but somewhat smug smile- and pulls it taut between his fingers, marvelling a little at the intricate gusset.

Fuck.

And you know, the remnant of his guilt fades the longer he stares. Perverted or not, his imagination runs at a mile a minute and there’s a certain thrill he obtains in envisaging you wearing it. So, so beautiful, he’s sure, and how could you not be? A pretty nymphet strewn in blushing pink. He barely has the self restraint to pass up on finding the matching bra, but it’s a near thing.

He doesn’t think he really cares about how horrified you’d be, how much faith you’d lose in him- your precious Caleb- not as his cock stirs in his briefs and he pictures you wearing the underwear, sticking your ass out for him on full display. He’d touch it and grope it and guide you down onto his aching length- but not before getting your pretty pussy (well, he’s never seen it before, no, but he’s willing to bet his whole piggy bank that it’s as gorgeous as the rest of you) all primed and ready for him.

He’d worship you. Really, he’s just waiting on your green light.

In his dreams he kneels on the ground before you and laps at your folds ‘til you’re screaming and pulling his hair- but he doesn’t let up until he knows for sure you’ve nothing left to give him. When you’re wholly satisfied, then, and only then, does he hike his pants down his thighs and sink into your sopping heat.

The smell of you— “mmnh.”

Oh pretty girl, nothin’ compares.

Caleb lets out a little groan as he fists your dirty panties tight and thrusts it in his face, inhaling your scent- faded detergent mixed with an undeniably feminine musk- in lungfuls. He thumbs over the fabric with appreciation and gives it an oddly chaste kiss before getting to swift work on his growing problem.

This won’t happen again. He promises. If you were around for it, you’d hear him spew out his apologies and proffer out his little finger for a pinky swear. He never breaks a pinky swear, too. It’s sacrilegious in your household.

He’s half tempted to wrap your pretty panties around his cock and rub it that way, but he quickly thinks better of it, surprisingly clear-headed in his conviction to keep it untainted. Your underwear having been thrown in your dirty hamper or not- Caleb doesn’t want to mar them with his own release if he comes hard into the lacy folds of it- and no doubt he would. He respects you a little too much to tarnish your precious belonging, and while he knows his actions are disparaging in and of themselves, this is a front he’ll remain staunch on: your undies are valuable, not some material to use for jerking off before curtly disposing of.

He’ll be careful, he’ll be good to them. Okay?

Evidently, that respect he has for you isn’t quite enough to stop him from nabbing your dirty laundry and huffing it in like paint— but it’s the little things that count, right? The thought.

A rasping whine punches out from his chest, his eyes clamped shut as he strokes himself with long, slim fingers, desperately wishing them to be yours instead. Yours would be softer, more uncertain and unexperienced as they trail over his dick but fuck they’d feel so good, he knows this like he’s never known anything before. Just pines for it to become reality.

Of course, he’d start with something smaller to ease you in; he wants it to be romantic, your first time, full of sloppy, but meaningful kisses as confession and hands cupping your face as he vows to keep you happy forever.

But what he gets up to- you’d be so mad if you knew— He wants to save himself from the mortifying prospect of you ever unearthing his sordid inner world, but it’s a little too late to backtrack. He can’t reverse what he feels for you, in any case.

Shit. It sounds so bad- the dregs of his rationale rebuking him somewhere in the back of his head- but thinking about you frustrated just gets him riled up even more. ‘Cause you’re so cute like that... Furrowed brow and flushed cheeks, lips that pout and arms that cross over your breast and unwittingly press them up and present them to him before you either frown or inevitably turn your back on him.

He could die in peace to your catty moans and whines. And then he’d revive himself just to pull a few more out of you.

Hey, look, pipsqueak, he knows he’s a big meaniehead sometimes, but—

Pre dribbles from the tip and he smears it down the long column of his cock, sucking in a shaky breath as the washing machine drums out a steady tune. He could fuck you on it. It’d probably feel so good that way. Or he could drag you to the couch and eat you out for hours on end until his knees bruise on the carpet and you constrict your thighs around his head. Sounds like a dream. Like his dreams.

—but he just loves you so damn much.

And can you really fault him if he gets a little worked up over how you behave? I mean, yeah, he’s supposed to be your ‘gege’ and all, but c’mon... He’s still a man at the end of the day. You’re kind of setting a high bar for him, don’t you think? He’s only human. He’s fallen victim to love, and if you were experiencing even half of what he’s been for seeming eons now, then you’d understand it too.

It flourishes in his belly fast- the want to taste and take and consummate with you- pleasure reaching its peak as he keenly pumps his fist. He knows this is screwed up, he knows, but it feels so good and he just—

“Oh, ungh- pipsqueak-!” with a few sputtering gasps, he ruts his hips into his hand one more time before everything existing inside him erupts. He hurtles himself at the washing machine as it thumps, hugging your panties to his nose like it’s the one thing keeping him rooted in place right now and from buckling to the floor, dousing himself in the scent of you as his eyes flutter back. When he comes, he wants it to be to the essence of you and nothing else.

White gushes over the backs of his fingers; he rides himself through it, broad chest heaving as he talks himself down from his own high.

His inner dialogue is starker now as he settles and the desire searing his critical thinking abates. It’ll never happen again, he’s adamant on that. Because he’s more or less just betrayed your trust, to put it lightly, and it’s not right.

Guilt warms his heart to an unpleasant degree.

I-It’s fine.

When he’s done, he’s not quite comfortable with himself and the knowledge of what he’s just done- see? he’s not a completely depraved bastard, haha. He tucks himself in the waistband of his sweats with an almost rueful glance towards your hamper, grinding his jaw as post-nut clarity sinks its teeth into him— and pockets your panties.

It’ll make a nice triad to the other two he’s got stowed in his dresser.

You don’t need to know about any of this, though- you shouldn’t. Caleb’s the one who’ll shoulder this for the both of you. And if you come asking, he’ll just tell you the washer’s been eating up his laundry, too. No biggie.

It’s fine. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.

[yellowasasunflower]

Under Raven Wings (LaDS x BG3) - Chapter 1

Omg I can’t believe I’m finally sharing this. I’m so nervous

Please read the author’s note

Here’s the drawing of elven warlock Caleb! I am by no means a character designer, so if you hate it, by all means imagine him differently. Honestly, I’ll be revising this drawing over the next few days. (I kinda hate it myself, [I think it’s the red of his shirt that bothers me?] but I was getting tired of holding on to the completed first chapter)

Anyways, onto the stuff that’s actually relevant to the fic!

———

18+, Minors do not interact!

Pairing: Caleb x MC/Reader

Synopsis: One moment you’re getting groceries with Caleb in the Lower City of Baldur’s Gate, the next, you’re waking up on a mindflayer ship with a tadpole in your head. Your main goal? Get the damn thing out of your head. Secondary goal? Find Caleb; he has to be out there somewhere, right?

Word count: 4.3k

Content Warnings: Nothing in this particular chapter (everything else starts in later chapters)

Author’s Note: To start with, I’d like to thank everyone who put up with my poll spam, regardless of whether or not you partook in them. Special thanks to everyone who did; knowing there were so many of you who were interested in seeing this concept be brought to life helped me find my footing. I hope I don’t let you down, and thanks for coming along this ride.

If you were hoping for another LI, fret not! He’s totally present in this fic; all the LIs have a very important role here, even if they aren’t the main romance! On top of that, the LI for the next fic will be determined by popular vote; I just wanted to start out with the character I was most familiar with.

Don’t forget about the poll at the end of the chapter! It will dictate the events of the next chapter.

And if you can, please comment! I’d love to hear your thoughts!

———

A tentacled ship traverses the skies of Faerun, containing rather invaluable cargo; a veritable wellspring of mindflayer tadpoles, ripe for the making of fresh illithids, and the rather unfortunate souls who would soon be, or already were, their hosts. A tentacled ship traverses the skies of Faerun, containing rather invaluable cargo; a veritable wellspring of mindflayer tadpoles, ripe for the making of fresh illithids, and the rather unfortunate souls who would soon be, or already were, their hosts.

Red dragons, fierce as their dangerous riders, swarm the ship, tearing through its exterior walls and turning its fleshy interior to naught but rubble and ash. The ship, jostled and in great disarray, is set alight before jumping realms.

Your waking moment is brutal and sobering as you fall from the foreign pod which contains you. With bleary eyes and weary body, you lift yourself from the wreckage. It is no easy feat to detain you, or so you had once thought, and you could now feel the consequences of your earlier struggle in your worn muscles. The time spent helplessly screaming and slamming your now bruised knuckles against seemingly unbreaking glass does you no favors now.

You suppose it was not unbreaking after all, what with the various shards strewn about.

A dull ache behind your eye pulses, and you reach to cup your afflicted eye. Something is there that does not belong. Your body betrays you with an involuntary shudder as you recall the misplaced thing squirming in your skull.

The thing—the tadpole—is there, and there is little you can do about it. For now.

In the meantime, you observe. Your first priority is finding a way off this damned ship. Dust and smoke drift through a hole caused by the earlier Githyanki assault, and your hair whips about in the hot, dry winds of Avernus.

At your back is the pod you’d been violently freed from. With slow, calculated steps, you walk around it while taking care not to touch it. You determine you’re wasting precious time; you don’t know the first thing about where you are, all you need to know is how to escape.

This room, full of pods which are either empty or full of death, is eerily silent. You walk on, passing by an unmoving body, a feeling of dread sitting in the pit of your stomach. Uncertain, you nudge it with your foot, rolling it over onto its back. Upon seeing its ghastly face, you stumble back. Its charred purple flesh and bulbous head, the tendrils which cascade down over its maw, which hides various sharp teeth, tell you precisely what it is. A mindflayer.

Opposite the putrid creature is a bowl-like structure full of… some sort of brine?

Your eyes narrow at the concoction inside.

As your feet carry you closer, your head throbs. Upon recognizing the dead tadpoles within the pool, you realize you are looking upon an illithid nursery. Something about it compels you; it draws your hand nearer, but you break away from the shallow temptation and pull away just before your fingertips come into contact with the liquid. You linger for a beat, staring silently at the pool before you remember yourself.

Now is no time for pondering.

You carry on, searching for a way out.

Cerulean lights catch your attention, bright and glowing, and… strangely comforting? This time though, you cannot resist the urge which draws you toward it.

It’s cool to the touch, and all its light fades. You are reinvigorated. Your mind clears and your body is wired. It is a breath of fresh air; the waking moment after a long nap, or perhaps… your heart squeezes as you remember Caleb. Where is he? You had been together before… before…

You swallow thickly, shaking the thought from your head.

He is fine. Surely, he is fine. He is strong; you will return home to Baldur’s Gate, and you will find him there with open, waiting arms.

You purge the rushing thoughts of him from your mind, turning your attention to a glow which directs you towards a fleshy wall. Soft whispers for help float through the wall and you tentatively reach out to touch it, reeling back as it opens with a squelch, allowing you entrance to the next room.

Now on the other side, the whispers grow louder, and your attention is caught by a dead goblin, a brain floating in a jar, and glowing red tendrils with a red orb at its center. Your gaze keeps to the goblin as you pass by, stopping before the peculiar device in which the orb and tendrils resided.

You reach to touch it, unsettled when the ground beneath your feet raises.

When it reaches its peak, you find before you the source of the whispers. A scalped body with an exposed brain speaks to you, whispering softly for your help. For freedom.

Approaching slowly, you survey the scene. More brains in jars… Many more brains in jars. You suppose they were mindflayer food.

At last, you reach the whispering brain. The body convulses as you look upon it, evidently long-dead. For a moment, you wonder just how long, but it does not matter. Not now.

”Yes! You’ve come to save Us from this place! From this place you’ll free Us! Please, before they return. They return.”

”Who am I talking to—a man or a brain?”

”A newborn. Born new from this husk.” You know what it is, thanks to Caleb’s favorite horror stories. You are speaking with an intellect devourer. It serves the creatures which had abducted you.

And yet… it did not seem to recognize you as an enemy, or as a prisoner…

You watch the brain pulse, squirming in the head of its captive body.

”You sound afraid. Why?”

”The enemy. So many enemies.”

Your mind races with indecision. Would it be wise to set it free? An ally, however temporary, could be a great help… but to later be faced with another enemy in a place already swarming with them?

“What should I do?” you wonder aloud.

“Remove Us from this body—from this case free Us. Please!”

It strains against the skull, swollen. You’d heard Zayne mention this once. Oedema, he called it.

You carefully prise the brain from the casing which once protected it, mindful of the swelling.

You wince as you hold it in your hands, blood seeping between your fingers.

It leaps to the ground, launching itself from your hands.

”We are free. Our freedom is ours. Friend.” It pauses, and you feel a squirming behind your eye. “We must go to the helm. At the helm we are needed.”

You swallow thickly. You hope freeing it wasn’t a mistake on your part. “What’s at the helm?”

”Do you not hear it? We will not survive here. We are needed to navigate—we are needed to leave this realm.”

It’s right; even if you escaped here and now, you wouldn’t know where to go next. And who knows what dangers lurk in the hells? “What should I call you?”

“Us. We are Us.”

”All right, let’s go.”

”To the helm we go. We are going to the helm.”

You follow behind Us, observing its clawed feet and the tendrils upon its… back? When had they sprouted? They weren’t there when you’d plucked it from the skull of the poor elven man.

You pause, returning to the body to close his eyelids. “Rest in peace,” you mutter under your breath.

Stepping back onto the platform, you look to Us again. And then you go down.

You pass by more of the ship’s flaming flesh, the scent burning your nostrils. Red dragons fly overhead, their githyanki riders mysteriously missing, blasting at the ship.

Your head throbs and your skin tingles. Images of a great knight flash through your head, and fire. So much fire, and it… it burns. You sink to your knees unbidden, your fingers mindlessly clawing at your head. The knight takes you in her arms, rescuing you from the beasts which invaded your home. And then it ceases; your body is your own once more, and you catch sight of a human woman.

Her eyes are wide and fearful, and her sword is pointed at you. You hold your hands up.

”You… are not one of them?” She asked, voice trembling.

”One of the…?”

”You’re not!” She takes in a deep breath, looking less unsettled but no less afraid. “We might be able to survive this together!”

”And you are…?” You lower your hands, rubbing your wrist.

”Oh! You can call me Tara.”

”Why did you think I was one of them?”

”We have mindflayer parasites rooting around in our heads. You could have very easily been a thrall.” She pauses, putting her sword in its sheath. “If we’re lucky, we have days before turning. If we’re not, hours. Whatever the case, I don’t wanna be around when that happens.”

”Well, let’s not stand around and wait for it to happen. Let’s put an end to those imps, and then take control of the helm.”

”Right!”

She follows close behind as you ready a magic missile, charging into battle.

Two of your missiles hone in on an imp, killing it in an instant, and the third sinks into a second. It staggers back at the force, and turns its attention upon you.

You point Us to the injured imp, and you watch as Us’ claws tear through its bright red flesh, and it collapses.

Tara pursues the third and final imp, ending it in a quick and decisive blow.

”We really might be able to survive after all,” she says, grinning to you.

You pause, catching sight of a familiar cerulean blue glow. You approach it, basking in its restful light. With a reinvigorated sigh, you carry on.

”What was that?” Tara asks, flexing her fingers.

”I don’t know, but it did what we needed it to.”

The ship trembles under dragon fire, jostling you and Tara. She nearly falls, but you catch her arm.

”I don’t think this ship can handle another dragon attack… we need to find a way off.”

”Right.”

She scrunches her nose as she watches you climb a fleshy web.

”This place is so…” she pauses, “I don’t have to be nice. It’s disgusting! Our kidnappers are going to pay for this!” She gags when she watches you open another fleshy wall. “Eugh.”

She gasps upon seeing two unconscious bodies, somehow connected to something which beats like a heart at the center of the room.

”These people!” She approaches one, waving her hand in front of his face. She walks to the other, lifting his hand and letting it fall back to his side. “They’re entirely unresponsive…”

”Hello?” You hear a familiar voice call out. You look from the unconscious bodies to another half-elf slamming at the interior of a pod, just like the one you’d been in earlier.

“Zayne!?”

You rush to the pod, looking for a latch, or a release switch, or… something, anything!

”You know him?” Tara asks, looking at the cleric in the pod.

You don’t respond, assessing the magic at play. Warding runes. “They’re connected to a nearby console…” you think aloud, looking at Zayne. “I’ll get you out of there!”

He simply nods at you. Somehow, he is still calm. Calmer than you, at least, in your mad dash to free him.

The console is dormant when you approach it, but you won’t let it remain that way. You inscribe the glyphs you’d sensed from the pod’s warding runes, and it hums to life. As you examine the console, it occurs to you that it is more organic, fleshy parts than mechanical. In humming to life, it is… truly alive.

It doesn’t matter, though. All that matters is setting Zayne free, and then finding a way off.

You place your hand on the console, and the discomfort of the earlier squirming in your head returns. You stagger, but the sensation fades, quickly replaced by another. Connection. Authority.

You will Zayne’s pod to open.

The biomechanical brain of the console processes your command, and heeds it. You feel… sated.

Zayne stumbles from the pod, barely catching himself.

”Thank you,” is all he says.

”Are you alright?”

Your mind lurches into his memories. You see a proud tree, its snow-covered canopy reminiscent of clouds. In its shade is an umbrella. It shifts, changing to shackles of ice on a frozen throne, and a white flower growing between the bricks atop a snowy tower. That vision dissipates, turning to frostbitten fingers and scarred arms. It’s trembling hands holding bandages, caring for the undesirable patients of Baldur’s Gate. Cold floods your senses, incomprehensibly unfamiliar. You cannot remember ever feeling cold; you’d been resistant to it since your youth. It was an inherited trait from the white dragon that was somewhere in your bloodline.

You tremble as the last of his thoughts fall away from your mind.

“Fine,” he replies. “Any wounds need healing?”

”…Not at the moment.” You almost reached out to his mind again, curious to touch the snow and eager to feel the cold… but you resisted the urge.

You stand closer to him, closing your eyes and indulging in the familiar scent of jasmine. A piece of you wants so desperately to throw your arms around his neck and to hug him so tightly he might never breathe again, but you hold yourself back.

If he saw any of your thoughts or memories, he didn’t seem to have any reaction.

He simply nods.

Another fleshy door opens to your touch, and Tara’s “Eugh” comes quicker now. Zayne, though, says nothing.

The sounds of battle tell you that beyond the next door is the helm. Vicious grunts and a clang of steel were plain as day.

You swallow thickly, turning to your companions. “Are you ready?”

”We don’t have time not to be,” Zayne says. “I’ll follow your lead.”

”Right…” You turn to the door, taking a deep breath, and then you open it.

You witness a mindflayer wrap its tentacles around a cambion’s head, shredding its scalp with its vile teeth, rending its skull to naught but shards of bone, to feed upon its brain. Swiftly after, it is slashed by the piercing claws of imps and perishes from the festering wounds inflicted.

Another mindflayer, unfazed, calls out to you through your tadpole. ”Thrall. Connect the nerves of the transponder. We must escape. Now.”

”We’ll play along. For now,” you tell your companions, readying your quarterstaff for a fight.

Despite your readiness, you want to avoid the fight as much as you can. Your focus lies on the transponder and the hope to free yourself from this mess.

You direct your companions to only fight any creatures that approach. The helm comprises imps, hellboars, and the main fight between a cambion and mindflayer.

You shoot a ray of frost at an imp as you pass it by, freezing it to death. Zayne and Tara mirror your actions as you work towards the transponder.

You blast your way through, relying on cantrips to not wear yourself out.

Additional imps fly in overhead as you draw nearer to the device.

When you take a claw to the shoulder, Zayne is not far behind with a healing word.

At last, you reach the end of the helm. Standing before the transponder, you grab a pair of nerves and fuse them together.

You pluck the connected nerves just as a red dragon rears its head into the overhead opening of the helm.

In moments, the ship begins its realm jump, lurching in what feels like a nose dive, sending you crashing into one of its fleshy walls just near an opening.

Your eyes meet with a mindflayer’s, but there is no soul. It is hollow and empty and… hungry.

Vicious wind whorls past you, reminiscent of thousands of needles poking and prodding your skin. Moisture is pulled from your tear ducts and you grit your teeth, clinging to anything and everything that’s around you.

As you enter another realm, a piece of rubble comes loose, crashing into your head and knocking you from the ship. You’re limply falling. Falling, falling, falling… until you’re not. The speed at which you fall slows as you near the ground, until you stop completely, hovering mid-air. And then you’re dropped to a sandy beach.

Ash descends upon your face, and as you wake, the tadpole squirms in your skull. Your first thought is to check yourself for injuries. Other than the infection, you’re more or less intact, by some miracle. But it will all be for nothing if you don’t find help soon. The tadpole is a death sentence, and the clock is ticking. You’ll soon need a cure.

You then orient yourself. The chaos of the crash site confuses the landscape, you’ll need to find a settlement or landmark. And you’ll need to do it quickly.

It is fire all around you, and the sprawling tentacles of the dead ship are limp in the water around you. Water. Fresh water. You catch sight of fishing nets, tangled with rubble.

There must be a settlement nearby.

And it occurs to you now… You are alone. It doesn’t take long to find Zayne, however; he is not far from where you wake. But as you approach him, you find a dead man along the way. He is in a pool of his own blood, and what remains of his clothes is tattered. He was likely the source of the fishing nets.

You search his body for some way to identify him, but all you find is his small stash of gold. Guiltily, you take it. Gold is of no use to the dead, after all. His eyes were closed without your interference, at the very least.

You sigh, turning your attention to Zayne.

He looks restful as you kneel beside him, pressing two fingers to his neck. He is breathing without issue. You purse your lips as you wonder how you should wake him, though you soon find that to be a non-issue.

His eyes flit open, and you withdraw your hand. He casts his gaze about the crash site, and you can see him assessing the situation in his head.

”Zayne, are you alright?”

”That is… complicated. I’m as right as I can be. What about you? Any injuries?”

”No, no. I’m fine. Or… like you said, fine as I can be. Um… alive. How are we alive?”

”It’s strange,” he said. “By all accounts, we should be dead. Or mindflayers, at the very least. Ceremorphosis should already have happened and yet, here we are…”

”I remember the ship, I remember falling… then… nothing. Any idea where we are?”

”It’s unfamiliar to me… but it’s certainly better than where we were. Any idea where your human friend disappeared to?”

“She’s probably somewhere around here. She can’t have gone far, right?”

As you venture on together, you encounter more bodies. Local fishers, like the first, by the looks of it. You also find a dead intellect devourer. You wonder briefly if it’s Us, but determine the answer unimportant. In a nearby backpack, you find a kit of tools. A lockpick, as luck would have it. Not that you had any clue how to use it.

Zayne is searching the beach for other resources, and he calls you over upon finding a door. The rotten wooden panels are embellished by rusted metal, and the handle fares no better. It’s clearly been abandoned for… well, who knows how long?

The stone of the building around it is decrepit, chipped and covered in moss and vines.

”I doubt that will open for us,” Zayne says.

You shrug your shoulders. “Worth a shot, right?”

You haphazardly stick the lockpick into the keyhole, wiggling it about until you hear a click. You look to Zayne with a side-eye, surprised.

”I think… I got it…”

He shakes his head. “Of course you did.”

Rust chips off into your hand as you reach for the handle, and the door creaks open. “Let’s find Tara before we go inside.”

“Okay.”

You’re careful as you pass by flaming brush and rubble, covering your mouth and nose in the thick of the smoke.

You traipse through the wreckage, relishing in the destruction of your kidnappers. You blast through the intellect devourers that leapt into action on sight.

The wreckage of the ship gave way to a dirt path surrounded by lush flora, save for a single pod and its surrounding smoking brambles. A shock of white hair comes into view as you near the pod, and the way his red tail wags is so slight, you almost hadn’t noticed. He’s toying with some object; it’s made of a blackened iron, engraved with pulsing runes. You don’t see much more of it before he tucks it out of sight.

The tiefling’s head turns, and sharp red eyes meet yours. The object in his hands is hidden away, and a dangerous look flickers briefly across his face, but ultimately gives way to a charming smile.

”Hello, Kitten. Kind enough to assist a stranger?”

You start to approach, but Zayne grabs your arm, giving you a look.

”Oh, come now. Is it so wrong of me to ask for help? I saw you fighting those… things. I think there’s another one in the bushes.”

You place an assuaging hand over Zayne’s. “It’s fine, it won’t hurt to check, right?”

He swallows, rescinding his hand.

You approach him, hands held out to show that you mean no harm. It would mean little if he knows you are a sorcerer, but you do it all the same.

“You look plenty capable. What is it you need me for?”

He haphazardly shrugs his shoulders. “Did it ever hurt anyone to ask for help?”

”I suppose not. Stand back, I’ll handle it myself.”

You walk nearer to the bush, quarterstaff at the ready, only to see a boar dart away. You’re relieved, until you see the flash of a dagger. You’re quick to rip it from his hands, and you barrel into him in an attempt to send him off balance.

It works better than you’d anticipated, as you fall down on top of him. You right yourself quickly, pinning him down with his dagger in your hand, raised over his chest.

”And here I thought you were claiming to be an innocent stranger,” you sneered.

“I don’t think I ever claimed such a thing. In need of help, yes…” he ripped his hand from your grip, holding his hand over the one you held the dagger in. He guided your hand from his chest to his neck. “If you mean to kill me, here would be the easiest place.”

“And what if I don’t mean to kill you?”

He chuckles. You can almost swear you’re hearing gold pieces clattering in the laugh. “You’re quite a bit weaker than you look, so you should use every piece of advice you get.”

”You’re not going to kill me, then?”

”I suppose not.”

You pull yourself off of him, and you glance back to Zayne. He’s got a guiding bolt at the ready, but when he sees you’re unscathed, he relaxes.

”I just want answers,” he says. “I saw you on the ship, wandering about without so much as a leash…”

Your mind twists. You’re flying above an ivory city, razed to the ground. It is bittersweet, and you feel… You don’t know how you feel. It’s all so blurry… It fades away, blending into the roads of the Lower City. You’re looking out of unfamiliar eyes, prowling the darkest corners of Baldur’s Gate. You see gold, and murder, and ruthlessness. You try to peer further into the memory, but it fades just as quickly as it entered your mind.

”You’re…” you hesitate, not sure if you’re right.

“What was that?” he interjects.

“The brain worms. They connect us.”

”Of course. That explains it. And to think I was ready to slice your throat and leave you for dead. Apologies.”

”Glad we’re all caught up now.”

”You can call me Sylus.”

”Right…” You were right. You were right. You’d heard his name before. He is no innocent man; he’s the leader of Onychinus, the largest smuggling ring on the Sword Coast. No, all of Faerun. And you’d passed by him once, in Baldur’s Gate… if memory serves you right. Not that his is an easily forgotten face.

“I was in Baldur’s Gate when-“

”I know who you are.”

”Well, I still don’t know who you are,” he tapped a finger against his temple, resting his elbow on his other hand. “Maybe you should tell me. I’m not fond of being known without knowing.”

You introduce yourself—sparse on the details, of course.

”Back onto our more important dilemma… Did you learn anything while wandering the ship?”

”Only that we’ll be turned to mindflayers.”

”Of all the dreaded…” He sighs. “What else did I expect?”

”It hasn’t happened yet. That alone is bizarre enough.”

”That’s true enough. Then there must still be some way to control it…”

”You should join us. Our odds are better together.”

”You know, I was ready to go it alone, but I suppose that’s not such a bad idea.”

”Isn’t it, though?” Zayne asks you under his breath.

”I think this journey is going to be more than we ever asked for. The more allies, the better.”

He nods. He knows you’re right. At the same time, bringing a man who already threatened your life along? You know he won’t rest well tonight.

”What now?” Sylus asks.

You ponder your options.

[theradicalscrivener]

Anything new with Caleb & Felipe?

(... I don't think I ever posted the fic I wrote months ago... Been kinda trying to spread out micro stuff and I had a lot of Trevor stuff done.)

As far as a life update, Felipe thinks he has a decent grasp on how to adjust the formula to reverse the process, but Caleb has ingested so much of the shrink stuff that even if they try to pump him full of growth juice, he'll shrink a lot when given the catalyst. They don't want him to get too small, so unless Felipe finds a way to fully negate the previous doses, Caleb's size is not going to change which leaves him at about a foot and a half.

The biggest issue has been Caleb's job. He makes the majority of the money for the two of them (although Felipe's been making a lot more recently due to changes at his place of employment, but even if he's all but running the shop, small-time pharmacist doesn't make as much as an advertising exec). If they do decide to have him shrink again, he'll have to quit his job unless he can get clearance to work from home... Which is an awkward conversation to have with his bosses. Having a conversation like that with an exec with a stressful enough situation without the dude being several times larger than you. Caleb is literally the size of a child's doll.

In the meantime, Caleb has been commuting to work in the front basket of Felipe's bike. Fortunately, they have an apartment that is relatively close to downtown so the commute isn't too bad. People around town have even gotten used to seeing them around. The amount of double takes people do seeing a tiny guy riding in the grocery basket attached to the bikes handlebar like he's E.T. has gone down significantly. Although, there are plenty of times when they are at the grocery store or something where people assume that they are father and son and not boyfriends... At least until they see the five o clock shadow the little guy is rocking.

As for his actual job, Caleb's been managing. It can be difficult to get some people to listen to him when he only comes up to their knees, but he still has the respect of a lot of his coworkers, and he's still good at his job. The biggest stumbling block he has now is that keyboards are so huge that it takes him longer to type than it used to. He's getting better at it, but his laptop is the size of a couch cushion. He feels more like he's typing at a massive control console than a laptop. Not to mention how difficult it is to carry the damn thing everywhere. He had to get arm straps attached to it so he can wear it like a backpack, but he looks less like a student and more like Beetle carrying his entire shop on his back.

[theoriginalladya]

OOH for the WIP game: The Jack or First Kiss? (Or both, I won't complain!)

Both it is, my friend! :D Thanks so much for asking!!!

So, The Jack is part 2 of a three part ficlet thing I'm working on for Caleb and Kaidan, and eventually Coats. It's set right after Akuze and spans the years of Caleb's N training. Each chapter is from one of their POVs. The title of each chapter comes from an important card in the reading Caleb does in each chapter. The Jack comes from Kaidan's reading. I've you've read some of my other fics with them, you'll know that the King of Clubs is Caleb's card that represents Kaidan. Well, Kaidan has one that represents Caleb in his readings - The Jack of Clubs: Reliable person.Dark-haired, youthful friend.

(unfortunately, this is all I have at the moment! lol but I'm nearly done with the Caleb's chapter, and this comes after that!)

Due to a delay at the relay, Kaidan’s shuttle is late arriving at Arcturus. Normally, it isn’t something that would bother him. Today, however, it’s pushing the limits of his patience. He has twenty-seven hours – a quick glance at his omni-tool determines it’s now twenty-two – before the transport leaves for his new duty station. In the meantime, he has a ‘date’ to keep.

The neighborhood surrounding Murph’s is just as crowded and noisy as ever, a sure sign the pub’s reputation is intact. He’s still a block from the door when the lilting strains of The Boys of Kildare comes barreling down the walkway aided and abetted by a handful of Alliance soldiers walking arm-in-arm, shoulder-to-shoulder, belting it out at the top of their inebriated lungs. Kaidan spares them a quick glance but doesn’t bother to hide the smile that slides across his lips. He knows good and well it’s quite possible he and Shepard will end up departing in a similar manner in a couple of hours. Running his fingers over his omni-tool, he sets a cut-off alarm. No sense risking showing up on station with a hangover.

Shaking his head, he continues on his way. It’s been a little over a year since his last visit, but only now does he realize how much he’s missed it. An unexpected sense of ‘home’.

He weaves his way through the crowd of patrons gathered just outside the entrance and makes his way inside. A server veers his direction to intercept, but he waves her off and heads straight to the back of the pub where they met the last time. This meeting is planned, right down to the same booth, rather than a chance encounter. On his way, he swings by the bar, ordering a bottle of the ‘good stuff;’ it’s his turn to buy this time. Bottle and a pair of glasses in hand, he finds the booth and isn’t surprised to find it occupied.

Okay, so, First Kiss is the point at which these two idiots finally decide to stop dancing around one another. I actually have three documents where I've been trying to sort out the exact way it plays out - this is part of one that was a writing prompt I thought I posted (but I guess I only shared it as a WIP?) and will likely stay mostly the same (a few tweaks?) when I get there, but they finally gave me some idea of how it's going to go.

(This is what I get for making it a sloooooooooooow fucking burn, I swear! lol)

I think we bury it.

The idea of burying the past and moving forward is great, but at what cost? They’ve been friends for a decade practically. Friendship – like they had in the beginning – Caleb wants that, but he wants more than that, too. Right now, whatever is between them is more of an awkward in-between-friendship-and-something-else stage, and that leaves Caleb’s belly tied into knots on a good day. Is this my fault? Did I misread the signs? The looks? The smiles? That mischievous sparkle in whiskey-gold eyes that is just as intoxicating as any bottle of the good stuff?

Caleb’s fingers tighten around the edge of the counter until his knuckles ache, and he cannot breathe.

Or… maybe Kaidan isn’t interested at all. Maybe what I think is there is my imagination. Did I just ruin everything? Can I get us back to where we were before? The friendship is good – great, even – and if that’s all he wants, I find a way and gladly accept that. But…

Kaidan shifts his weight and starts towardst he door again.

The bubble of panic inside him bursts, and Caleb has no more time. “Stay.” He practically chokes on the word that comes out as the softest rasp; he wonders if Kaidan even hears it.

The other man stops, now ten feet from the door.

Throwing all caution to the wind, Caleb turns to face him. “You can stay... I'd like you to stay.” His hand rises to rub at his chest where his heart thumps wildly beneath. “I… What…” He chews on his lower lip. “What if I told you I don’t want you to leave?”

Waiting is agony. One – two – three heartbeats pass before Kaidan moves, slowly turning to face him. For the second time this evening, Caleb meets Kaidan’s shocked and surprised gaze. God only knows what he finds in return.

Time hangs in suspension – the silence slowly killing him as he can’t breathe for fear he’ll miss something important. A look, a sound, a touch, a movement… Finally, he blinks – he has to – and when his eyes open, Kaidan stands right in front of him, the closest he’s been all evening.

“What exactly are you asking, Shepard?”

Shepard, not commander. A flutter of hope swells in Caleb’s chest, a sensation not unlike a butterfly’s wings brushing against the skin.

But that flutter of hope is met by an ache so great, it’s nearly impossible to speak. “I –” His voice catches, sticks in the back of his throat for a moment. The panic churns wildly in his gut. “The… the other night, before we left for the casino. Were you… flirting with me?”

Kaidan’s lips twist into a thin, wry smile. “If you have to ask, then clearly I’m out of practice.”

The butterfly’s wings flutter again, this time more rapidly, and he has to clear his throat before he can speak. “Or, maybe I am? It’s… been a long time for me.”

Kaidan’s brow arches and Caleb can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not. When Kaidan closes the distance between them, a warm and easy smile plays across his full lips that sends Caleb’s belly flipping somersaults. “Or, maybe,” Kaidan tells him as his voice dips an octave, “we both need practice?”

[that-myllesstrauss-guy]

Idea that i had in mind about my fanfic, i gave Travis a whole wolf.

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So for Coreless, my fic between Travis x my OC i gave Travis a wolf dog, now hear me out it can be a little goofy but it actually have context. For thoses that somehow want to see this work stop here rigth now but for thoses that don't care or will never touch that history go ahead because i just want to speak my mind.

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So about that, i gave him a wolf dog because the history got this way, in the middle of the developing all that werewolf Travis and his dilemmas he tried to train himself. Pass the nigth starving while he was transformed, put himself into a place with water while he was binded, all that, so between those trains he tried to control forcing his hand between a thing that would remind something close to him as a wolf shaped creature, a dog. He catched a dog around the area of North Kill and he passed a whole month caring over him, the act of care could bring him a snap outta something that could bring a new thing for his feral mind while he was a werewolf, but that wasn't the case, unfortunately in that moment it wasn't the case, he killed the dog when the full moon came "and i'm sorry for that!", Off course it would happen, but that didn't stop him, he noticed the way that he killed the dog, he didn't eat him even though his werewolf side didn't ate since his first lockdown, he didn't quarter, he just killed with a quick attack on the dogs neck, something really happen to him, territorialism? He thought this way.

Something to add: The Werewolf Caleb will not attack Kaitlyn if she is already bitten in the Hacketts Quarry summer camp, meaning them recognize their own.

Now knowing that he did the same in the next month with female dog, now he didn't kill her, but she got hurt real bad after all his failed attempts to try to kill her, he was holding on, trying all the time to contain himself and it worked in a way, the dog didn't die that night but in the vet's bed she had passed away "I know, I know, it's dark but it's for the story sake", now he needed a final prove that he could handle himself with at least between animals/people that he knew however, in the meantime some co-workers felt his loss (in this fic only Caleb survived along side with him) so them menage a organized party to honor the Hackett family for all their years of service to the entire North Kill in a cabin further north, Travis didn't want to go but Caleb thought it was a good idea, wanting to do the will of the nephew who couldn't get happy with anything else he accepted. It was something basic, almost tacky but the real "gift" for them would come when the party was almost over, some of them decided to go on a hunt because they knew the Hacketts had a history with it so with the agreement of some local legal hunters who also participated of the party they would hunt wolves, more precisely a pack that was causing a lot of trouble in the area. That irritated Travis but Caleb was once again curious, they argued a little but he tried to make his nephew's liking just one more time, going against his will to the place where the pack was scattered, the hunt went on until they realized that they arrived at a point where they saw the cubs, which had a mother as a dog and the father a wolf that had already died in the meantime, the hunters suggested finding the dog's owners and taking the cubs to a shelter that took care of wild animals, however they could take two puppies, seeing that opportunity to prove his theory he took a male pup for himself and Caleb took a female, the boy was really happy with that despite the irony.

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

When both came back to North Kill Travis once more did the same thing, he took care of the wolf dog cub whitout even try put a name on him and when the full moon came he needed to prove just once for all, he turned and the cub was terrified at first but both didn't have nothing to do with each other, both were equal, the same.

Fun fact: Wolfs will babysit, play and let the puppies eat part of the meal while the parents are ocuppied hunting or doing any other thing.

When the sun comes up the cub was all well on his side, sleeping a sleep he'd never had in his little life, he was snuggled near to a close family member, a father. After that he was sure he could control himself, at least in case something went wrong. He kept the dog and named him Dallas, trained him to be a guard and hunting dog, disciplined him to a point where all the wolf's ferocity was only used when he wanted to.

[mithrilwren]

I really, really wanted to contribute something to Essek Week​, but unfortunately with two essays and a novel chapter due by Monday, I didn’t have the time or mental energy to write anything new. Cue me remembering that I’d actually started working on an Essek-centric shadowgast Pirate!AU last summer, that never saw the light of day! Though I did a whole bunch of research for it, summer ended before I could get farther than the first couple chapters. Still, I’m very fond of the premise, and I’d like to finish it one day. I can’t guarantee I will (life’s too busy to commit myself to another Big Fic Project atm) but in the meantime, here’s a little taste in the form of the first chapter.

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For @essek-week Day 7: AU

Courts of Silk (Chapter 1)

Essek startled from his trance to the crackle of blistering thunder overhead.

Mind bled of all drowsiness in an instant, he unfolded his legs and slid off the berth, drifting to the center of the room and tilting his ear towards the boards above. 

A storm…  but the skies were meant to be clear for days, and he trusted Avus to know it. Could the weather have turned so–

Boom.

Essek’s eyebrows flew up as the deck visibly lurched below his feet. 

Not thunder.

Cannon fire.

More sounds now, hurried ones – an erratic tempo of feet pounding through the corridor outside his little room, the floorboards creaking dully under the weight of the crew scrambling over the deck above. He flinched as a louder noise pierced through the commotion: the rattling of a heavy fist falling against the door of his cabin, hard enough to shake the wooden frame. 

“We’ve been boarded!” Zel’ra’s guttural shout startled him out of his confused stupor, and he flew to the door and flung it open. The quartermaster stood outside, her snarling jaw dripping with whitish battle foam, the kind that bugbears of Rosohna so seldom have occasion to sport within city walls. “Come on, magic boy, time for you to earn your– Shit!”

Then she was gone, and Essek was left staring dumbly at the empty corridor, as Zel’ra raced back the way she came. A moment later, there was a yelp, and the grisly crack of metal hitting bone. Then there was no sound at all, save the rocking of the ocean’s pulse against the hull, and the thump of confident, unfamiliar footsteps, coming closer and closer to his open door.

He had only a few moments to make his decision. The fight might still be going on above deck, but if intruders had already made it below, there was little hope of a favorable outcome for the crew of the Barren Bow. He hadn’t thought the Empire would be brazen enough to attack a diplomatic ship in open waters, but there were soldiers of all ilks on the open sea, and no government to hold them to account so far from land. He would not put it past a Dwendalian crew to sight a Dynasty flag on the horizon and decide to take the matter of revenge in their own hands. If so, there was no telling what treatment they might expect at the hands of their attackers. Rage was rarely tamed by abstract rules of engagement, and he doubted anyone would care to ask what the nature of their mission was, once the killing began.

But perhaps…

Quickly, Essek drew aside his sleeve and materialized the leather–bound contents of his wristpocket into his hands. His spellbook lay beside precious components in their embroidered fold, and there, at the bottom of the pile: the folio. He whispered a quiet word and the paper folded apart, revealing its damning – and perhaps, in the right hands, lifesaving – contents. 

The letters. 

If the tides were so unfavorable that he could not fight, perhaps that might be enough to–

He vanished the whole affair back into the ether as two shadows fell across the door. 

From the darkness of the hallway, two figures stepped over the threshold. In front was a young woman: human, with swarthy skin made darker still by the weathering burn of long days at sea. Her hands were tucked beneath bare arms and her hip turned out to an unconcerned jaunt, adorned by a sash of deep blue. Behind her, and looming so tall that she had to hunch to fit through the frame of the door, was a giant of a woman. Taller even than Zel’ra, her bare shoulders glistening with rippling muscles and sweat, pale as moonlight – or as the steely glint of the broadsword at her back. The younger woman swept him over with piercing eyes, her confident grin not quite masking the focused gaze beneath. Though she bore no weapons, Essek could feel the stain of threat in every taut sinew of her body. He held still, waiting to see who would make the first move.

Her eyes finally paused, centered on the floor beneath his feet, and her grin dropped into something more like a startled ‘oh’. Too late, he realized his mistake – that his levitation, as natural and instinctive as standing on his own two feet, had just given him away. 

“Mage!” she sputtered, and her hand was gripping his arm and twisting it behind his back before he even realized she’d moved. Essek dropped the levitation spell, hoping to get enough leverage from the sudden height difference to slip out of her grasp, but before he could so much as shuffle to the left, the taller woman was at his right, clutching his other arm with a grip strong enough to break bone. 

“Shit,” the first woman spat as she stepped back, allowing the second to take both of his arms into custody. “Who the fuck did we just board?”

Essek kept silent, staring at her, searching for any sign of weakness and finding less than nothing. If he had just had his hands free for a moment longer… but that didn’t matter now. There weren’t many spells without a somatic component at his disposal, and cantrips wouldn’t save his neck, should the giantess move quicker to snap it than he could speak. 

Without a means of immediate escape, he looked next for any way to identify his captors. They were human, but their loose, subdued dress – for the younger woman, a vest of blue cotton, the other, a braided grey tunic, and frayed ribbons in both their hair – was nothing like the silver and crimson finery of the Righteous Brand. 

If not from the Empire, who were these people? Hired thugs? Mercenaries?

“Are there more of you skulking down here?” 

He didn’t ask the woman to clarify, though he wasn’t sure exactly what she was asking. More drow? Yes, but he was not about to reveal the nature of the delegation travelling under his protection to her. More mages? No. As always, he had convinced the Bright Queen that his effort alone would be sufficient. For the first time in a very long time, he wished he’d been a little more conservative in estimating his own skills. Given the current situation, someone else’s power at his back might actually be welcome, rather than distracting. 

Her burning gaze made it clear that he had to say something, and soon, but for once, the right words did not come. The truth did not matter: he knew that any unfavorable answer would be taken as a lie.

Still, Essek would not panic. The only way to regain control of the situation was by carefully gathering information, finding something that he could use to shift the balance of power at a more advantageous moment. That was his particular specialty. 

“I do not know,” he answered coolly. “For I do not know who is above and below deck at all hours of the day. I can only speak for myself.”

“Beau! Fjor– fuck– Captain Tusktooth wants you on deck!” A new voice, its timbre high and grating, like glass against cold iron, echoed from around the corner. The woman – Beau, he filed away – turned her head and shouted back out the door. 

“Just a second, we’ve got one more!” Then, “Tell him to get Caleb over here, we’ve got a goddamn mage to deal with!” 

The giantess at his back leaned down, so close that her dreaded locks nestled amidst the silver chains that hung from tip to base of his pointed ear. “You aren’t going to give us any trouble, are you?” she murmured, and despite every ounce of training he’d undergone for exactly this sort of intimidation, he still couldn’t help the way he shivered at her dark tone. There was a deep quality to her voice that sung of violence, for violence’s sake, and though he wasn’t yet truly afraid, he had no wish to provoke her.

“How could I?” Essek gently flexed his arms in her grasp: not enough to challenge, but enough to reassure her of his helplessness.

Her lips curled back, and… yes. There was a little fear gathering there, in the back of his throat. A good kind of fear – the prudent kind. It would keep him alert, and focused, and ready to strike back when the moment was right. 

When she started pushing him forward, he followed her lead willingly, and the two of them shadowed Beau into the corridor and up the steps that led back above deck. Essek winced as the bright noonday sun slipped into view, already anticipating the stinging burn that was sure to follow. He’d managed to avoid the deck for most of the voyage, much to the chagrin of the Assarian crew. He was not born into a body made for manning rigging, and certainly not under an unrepentant sky determined to scorch his face and hands and neck and leave him itching and miserable for days without relief. His better use was below deck, planning for the engagement ahead, and his hours of fresh air better taken in the evening, when the gentler light of the moons was merely a prickle beneath his skin, rather than a flame. 

Everywhere he looked, he saw mismatched bodies. Though Essek hadn’t met the entire complement of the Barren Bow’s crew, he had to assume most of the scattered orcs, goblins, and bugbears belonged to their side. Most of the ones on their feet were being held in the shallow recess at the centre of the deck, where great cannons might have been lodged on a more modern ship. A handful of unremarkable humans, each equipped with a rapier – or, in one man’s case, a salt-encrusted retort – stood above them, keeping watch. Amidst all that humanity stood a wild–eyed goblin in a blaring yellow dress, hefting a crossbow composed of whirring gears and levers of an intricate make that rivaled Waccoh’s own craftsmanship. She was currently in the process of shouting threats down across the heads of his cowed compatriots. Some were clutching broken arms or wiping blood from contusions and burnt welts. Lying at the center of the group was an unconscious Zel’ra, the goose egg at the back of her skull already angry and red. 

Finally, he spied the remainder of the drow contingent clustered by the ship’s rail. Diplomats, all of them, bound for a parley at sea and not trained for conflict beyond what it took to hold a dagger right-way up. He was the only one among them battle-tested, and even then, his means leaned more towards subterfuge than outright combat. Theoretically, the Assarian crew was meant to be their main line of defence in case of attack. Clearly they had not proven up to the task. 

Essek would be filing a very unfavorable report with their commanders upon his return, if any of them survived the day. 

“Captain!” Beau shouted, and a tall half-orc stepped away from the railing, his wide-brimmed hat only partially disguising the many scars that littered his face. 

“Weather’s turning,” he said, casting his eyes towards the – as far as Essek could tell – clear horizon. Those same yellow eyes flickered up, above Essek’s head, and for a moment seemed to narrow before turning back to Beau. “You finished clearing the hold yet?”

“Didn’t make it that far.” Beau jerked her head, and Essek was thrust into the sunlight all at once. The glare was blinding, and apparently not just to him. The giantess’s hands jerked around his arms, like they wanted to fly up and shield her eyes as well. That was all the opportunity he needed. 

With one quick motion, he jerked his arms from her grasp and drew his hands together, tracing familiar glyphs out of nothing but muscle memory as his mouth uttered an incantation, and the world exploded around him. The giantess was flung back against the doorframe, wood splintering beneath her weight, and both Beau and the half-orc slammed into the deck and began to hurtle towards the side of the boat. Forcing his eyes to stay focused amidst the chaos and the harsh light, Essek caught the glitter of a cutlass skittering along the boards as he took stock of his position on the newly reborn battlefield.

Nearly all of the boarders were in a concentrated area in front of him, and the rest of the Assarian crew were protected by the lip of the recess in the deck. The terrain could not be more advantageous. Essek allowed himself a small smirk as he raised his hand and prepared a vacuum blast that would level the whole of the upper deck, and deliver them all to safety in one swift stroke. 

How arrogant, that this petty group of mercenaries thought they could capture–

“Counterspell.”

The magic sizzled and died in his hand, and Essek whirled, searching for whoever had spoken behind him. Thugs he could handle, but it was always best to deal with a mage first, when they could do such infuriating things as what had just occurred. But once he turned, he found himself facing an empty doorway, and an empty deck above that. No trace of whoever had cast the counterspell. 

The giantess was gone as well.

He heard the click before he could parse what cold and heavy thing was tugging on his wrist, but he was horribly aware of what was happening by the time his other wrist was wrenched behind his back and small hands clasped the second iron band shut. A stomach-churning wave of exhaustion passed through him from scalp to toe, and he staggered, only barely holding on to consciousness. Head lolling towards the floor, he saw two soft-soled boots landing lightly on the deck in front of him.

With great effort, he managed to drag his head up from his chest, and found himself staring into blue eyes and dusty freckles, lips pressed into a thin line, all framed by tangles of copper-red hair. 

“Good work, Nott,” the man said. His accent was one Essek had only heard once before, though through the mire of exhaustion he could not remember where.

Behind Essek, the half-orc groaned and pushed himself up off the deck. “Next time you have a brilliant plan for subduing the prisoner, maybe let’s try not putting us all in the line of fire, hm?” 

The man ignored the sarcasm, still looking all too carefully at Essek.

“Are you finished?” he murmured, and though his body was lithe, his soft voice sung of as much violence as the giantess’s darker growl. 

With a sigh, Essek let his shoulders drop. He could still feel the pulses of magic coursing through the iron bands around his wrists. Even if he got his arms free again, the cuffs would not be easily slipped, or broken. These people, whoever they were, came equipped to handle wizards like himself. Was that what they were, then? Assassins in disguise? Privateers? The blunt instrument of some government or another?

Not that it made much difference now. Whoever they were, he was at their mercy. 

“Spin him around.”

Essek felt himself being maneuvered away from the man’s incisive gaze. Through bleary eyes he caught the looks of frustrated disbelief from the four drow delegates, lamenting their crushed hope in silent, huddled unity. He was meant to be their protection. Now that Essek was taken, what else could save them? Not one of them was brave enough to attempt it themselves. A shiver of disgust ran through Essek, as heady as the self-recrimination it concealed at having allowed himself to be captured so easily.

The half-orc strode up to Essek, the sword in his hand now replaced, though Essek hadn’t seen the man move to retrieve it. It was a silver cutlass, fine enough to cleave a person clean through and leave one half still propped up on the other. Too rich a prize by far for a simple mercenary – he must have come by it dishonestly, or been given it as boon or bribe. Neither prospect boded well. 

The hand that gripped the sword told an equally foreboding story, for only the thumb was composed of green flesh. The rest of the fingers were severed at the third knuckle, and replaced by metal imitations fixed to the wrist by a harness of leather cords. Still, he held the hilt with all the confidence of a trained fighter, and the surety of his grasp left Essek little doubt as to its effectiveness, mechanical augmentation or no.

“My name,” said the half-orc, “is Captain Tusktooth.” A hint of bright teeth flashed from below the wide brim of the hat. “And this ship is mine now. Its cargo, mine too.”

The answer about the identity of his captors, at last, became clear, for what little good it did him.

Pirates.

“By whose authority?” Essek shot a harsh look at the foolish dignitary who had chosen this moment to find their courage, but Tusktooth only grinned harder.

“By my own.” Behind Essek’s back, Nott and Beau slipped back through the splintered doorframe and down into the depths of the ship once more. “Now, my crew is going to finish taking a look through your cargo. I trust that your captain has been honest about the contents of your hold. Are there any other surprises I should be warning my people of? Anybody else looking to make trouble?”

Would that there were. “You will find little of value to take. We travelled light.” He spoke the truth, having no more useful lie at his disposal. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, and another wave of exhaustion teased at the edges of his mind. He fought it with all the strength he had – which was growing less and less by the minute.

“So your captain told me. But that wasn’t my question.” Tusktooth’s voice grew as keen as the blade in his hand as he lifted it and placed the edge to the shallow of Essek’s throat. “Are there others like you aboard?”

He did not flinch. Torment and torture were old friends: his own cherished instruments. He did not fear what this man would do to him, any more than he feared death itself. At least, that is what he told his errant heart, as sweat began to bead at the nape of his neck.

“No.”

Tusktooth stared him down for a minute longer, and Essek held his gaze as best he could with the sun still searing his eyes. But at last, the sword withdrew, and Essek’s breath came a little easier. “Then let’s call this an exercise in… mutual trust.” He smiled once more, and Essek returned the expression with a vague twitch of lips.

The tense exchange was followed by ten excruciating minutes of silence, during which Essek did his best not to fidget in his heavy robes, even when his exposed skin grew so heated he felt liable to burst into flames. As they waited, the redheaded man pulled Tusktooth aside for a private conversation, and Essek sweated, and watched, and tried to formulate a plan.

The pirates would find nothing of value to steal. The Barren Bow had provisions for the voyage, but anything else aboard was the purview of the Assarian crew, who had planned to head back towards the shores of Igrathad as soon as the parley concluded. There were no scheduled stops for trade, and thus, no trade goods in their hold. There weren’t even guns to offer. Essek would never dare to admit it aloud, but the Dynasty lagged sorely behind the rest of Wildemount in outfitting its fleet with the relatively new technology of cannonry, at least of the type that lacked a magical component. Firearms had only entered the sphere of weaponmaking some thirty years prior, and with Xhorhas primarily landlocked, the navy hadn’t been high on the priority list for refurbishment. 

His best hope was that some of the crew had hidden stashes of coin in their quarters. Otherwise, there would be nothing for the pirates to take, and without anything to satisfy them, well… he did not want to be in manacles when that news was delivered to a man who’d already put a sword to his throat. 

If only to convince himself he was not totally beaten yet, Essek watched Tusktooth and the redhead carefully, seeing what he could glean from body language alone. Their conversation was hushed but tense, and every few moments the redhead would turn his eyes towards the drow delegation, and then to Essek himself. He made sure to drop his own eyes before they could meet again, not wanting to spark another confrontation by appearing insolent. As for the pirate captain… there was confidence, yes, but the unwavering edge of confidence seemed to drop away from his shoulders as he spoke to the other man. His arms moved more wildly; his words were more rapid, and at a higher pitch. Perhaps his earlier confidence was not so unshakeable as it at first appeared.

At last, Beau and the goblin re-emerged from the staircase. “We got shit all,” Beau said, tossing down a half-empty sack by Essek’s feet. He winced as a few bruised tubers rolled out across the warped deck.

“...Shit.” Tusktooth ran a hand over his mouth. “Shit. Nothing?”

“Nott and I checked every inch of that hold, the crew quarters, everything. No money, no timber, no – fuck, I don’t know – fine silks or–”

“No cannons,” Nott added mournfully. “No black powder.”

“We went through all this for nothing?”

“Maybe someone’s holding out on us,” Nott said, brandishing her crossbow. “I could make ‘em talk for you, Captain. Make them squeal–”

“Oh–kay, Nott,” Tusktooth said, “let’s take it down a notch.” But despite his placating tone, his look was thoughtful. Again, he turned to Essek. “You never never did say what you all were doing out here, so far from home. You don’t look like a sailor to me.”

“Yes, friend,” said the redhead, stepping up to Essek from Tusktooth’s other side, alarmingly calm, and placing altogether too much emphasis on the second word to be trusted, “what is it you do here?” Essek took a half-step back, not liking the feeling of being pressed in from all angles, and walked himself straight into the chest of the giantess. 

Nowhere to hide. And with his hands bound behind his back, no way to levitate up to a level where he didn’t feel every inch of height his captors had over him. Which, at his firmly average height for a drow, was many.

Focus, Thelyss. Focus.

“Why should I answer your questions,” he sneered, “when you have not done me the same courtesy? Who are you, to board a vessel commissioned lawfully by the Bright Queen herself?” It was a dangerous ploy, but a considered one – a hastily calculated risk. If the pirates could not be convinced there was nothing of value to be found, they might decide to punish the crew for concealing their rightful prize, and when even a beating couldn’t drive his compatriots to forfeit non-existent gold, the pirates might well scuttle the ship and leave them all to drown at sea. He doubted simple brigands would care much for the particulars of a diplomatic mission if there was no treasure involved, so there was little harm in broaching a subject that might be far more dangerous to discuss with more educated captors.

But apparently, some aspect of Essek’s logic had failed him again, because the redhead immediately shot a wide-eyed look at Tusktooth, before looking back to Essek. “The Bright Queen?”

Essek gave a little bow. His head swam as he dipped back up – the handcuffs, no doubt, though it could just as easily be the beginnings of heatstroke – and he had to swallow twice to find the fortitude to speak without slurring. “Essek Thelyss, Shadowhand of the Kryn Dynasty and ambassador of the realm.” The last part was an… embellishment, and if he chanced a glance over at the true ambassadors, he imagined there would be many offended looks. But thankfully, all attention was solely focused on him. “I assure you, you won’t find the prize you’re looking for on a diplomatic vessel, gentleman. Your friends have already given you proof – we carry nothing beyond our own provision. Unless you have a particular taste for the delicacies of Xhorhasian fashion, I’m afraid we have little to offer you.”

Nott snarled, but the redhead put up a hand. “Captain,” he said slowly, looking at Tusktooth. “Might I… make a suggestion?” 

“You may.”

“It’s not something I’d usually propose, but times being what they are…” Tusktooth nodded grimly.

“We haven’t got many options left.”

“Precisely. I believe that our friend Mr. Thelyss here has lied to us.” He could laugh for the irony of it all; this was the most truthful Essek had been in years. “There is indeed something very valuable aboard this ship.” His blue eyes pierced through Essek, and it was only his determination to keep the – now violently pitching – contents of his stomach where they belonged, that stopped him from speaking up in his own defense.

“And that is...?”

“Himself.”

[etherrealoblivion]

Chapter Two: Crude Awakening

Table Of Contents

Fic summary: Owning a bookstore in downtown D.C. came with its fair share of downsides. You never thought that being the target of a serial killer would be one of them. Luckily, a nice FBI agent by the name of Spencer Reid is assigned to watch over you. What's the worst that could happen?

Pairing: Spencer Reid/Reader

Words: 1,191

MASTERLIST

~

When you woke the next morning, you knew immediately that something was wrong. The air didn’t smell like a Saturday morning. There was a distinct aroma that you could only classify as . . . man.

Fuck, you thought, getting out of bed as quietly as you could. You’d only had someone break in once before, but that was enough to scare you now.

Heart pounding softly, you tiptoed to your bedroom closet, withdrawing the bat kept just inside. Feeling a bit ridiculous, but scared, all the same, you crept into the living room, holding your phone with 911 pre-dialed, ready to press at the slightest threat.

“AH!” you shouted as you jumped forward ready to swing at—

—your empty living room.

You sighed, dropping the bat and making your way to the bathroom. It was probably just the landlord smoking again, blowing in through the vent.

Nearly out of bitter toothpaste and barely any money left from last week's paycheck. Great. It’s not like you could give yourself a raise, that’s not the kind of business owner you were. If you gave yourself a raise, you’d have to give one to your employees. And you certainly couldn’t afford to give Claire and Caleb a fatter check. 

Stale coffee and a migraine was a horrible way to start a weekend. Not to mention you actually thought someone had broken into your apartment. Thinking back on it, it was rather far-fetched. You had nothing of value here. Your TV was years old and your computer probably held the world record for the slowest system ever. The only thing of value you had was cash and your Grandmother’s locket.

You reached up to your neck to hold the locket for comfort but all you felt was your clavicle.

Rushing to the bathroom mirror, you pulled off your pajama top and scoured your neck and chest for the pendant.

Instead, you were met with your shirtless self staring back at you, no necklace in sight.

You ran to the bed, stripping it of all covers and scrambling to find it. You had surely had it on last night, you remembered!

But the locket was nowhere to be found. Anywhere in your apartment. 

Thinking you might have left it at the bookstore, you slipped on some shoes and made to unlock the front door . . . only to find that it wasn’t locked.

You froze. There was no way you hadn’t locked the door last night. It had become such a part of your habit you didn’t even notice doing it anymore. Fear settled in the pit of your stomach like a stone. 

Within 10 minutes you were on the phone with the police, trying to explain your situation.

“No, it’s more than a feeling,” you said, annoyed, “I locked my door last night and when I woke up this morning, it was unlocked and my necklace is gone and I can’t find my hairbrush, just. . . . Send someone over here . . . please.”

The voice on the other end of the line was patronizing and bored, spiking anger in your gut.

“Are you positive that you locked your door last night?”

“As positive as I am that you’re an asshole!” 

Before the man could retort, you slammed the phone down on the receiver and dropped your head into your hands. The bourbon in your kitchen cabinet was calling your name, but you weren’t ready to let your guard down yet. The situation was too unnerving.

Deciding that an in-person confrontation would have a stronger impact on the police, you grabbed your purse and took the elevator down to the lobby. You only lived ten minutes walking distance from the police station. A brisk pace would get you there in five. And after that exchange with the idiot on the phone, you didn’t feel like wasting any time.

~

“And when did you first notice something was off?”

The cop taking care of you was a woman, thank god. All the men you’d spoken to were so dismissive. This lady was a nice change of pace. You could do without the interrogation room, though.

“I guess the moment I woke up? I just sorta knew something was . . . off,” you said, shivering at the thought of someone being in your apartment while you slept.

“Don’t worry, Miss. I’ve taken your report and sent a unit to your apartment. In the meantime, is there someone you can stay with? A friend? A family member?”

Maybe Steve would let you crash on his couch. Claire was out of the question. Other than those two, you didn’t have any friends in the city.

“No,” you responded sadly, “There’s no one.”

The door to the interrogation room slammed open and five people wearing thick vests that said FBI barged in, quickly moving the officer with you away.

“Officer Lombardo, if you’d come with me,” a tall skinny man said, escorting her from the room.

You slid your chair back, alarmed, and stood against the wall, hands up in a defensive position.

“What’s going on? I don’t—“

A neat woman with black, pinned-back hair came up to you and put a gentle hand on your shoulder.

“Hello, hi, I’m Emily. Everything’s alright.”

She had soft eyes and her tone was gentle but you could tell this was a front she was putting on to comfort you. 

“What’s going on Emily?” you asked, voice wavering.

She spoke calmly, trying to keep you distracted from the men holding guns behind her.

“The report you just filed came up flagged on our database — in reference to an alleged new serial killer. The second it was in the system we were called over here to. . .”

But everything had gone silent. You watched her lips move but no sound came out. Why is the room tilting? was the last thought you had before you hit the ground.

~

Bright light hit your eyes. Squinting, you tried to take in your surroundings. There were tubes in your arm and you weren’t wearing clothes. Ok. Hospital.

To your left, the woman from earlier, Emily, was talking quietly with a muscular bald man.

“Emily?” you rasped, still foggy from sleep.

Both of them looked at you, Emily stepping closer and holding your hand.

“Hey, how are you?” she said, then, to the man behind her, “get Hotch.”

“Who’s that?” you were confused and your head hurt. I just want to go home, you thought.

“That’s my boss, he’s gonna help you. We all are.”

Head pounding, sick to your stomach, you managed to get up out of the hospital bed and yank out the IV.

“Hey, woah. Slow down,” Emily tried to block your path, and you would have given in but for some reason, you kept pushing past her.

“I need to know what’s going on!” you said, a little too loud. “Please, just let me go home.”

“We can’t.”

You turned to a tall man with sharp facial features and a set jaw. He wasn’t smiling. The lack of lines on his face hinted he’d never smiled.

“Why not?” you whispered, unsure if he’d be able to hear you.

“You’re a target for a serial killer.”

~

taglist: @aperrywilliams @mjloveskids666 @dolanfivsosxox

[liardelphi1]

Double Trouble Week: Gift Exchange/Free day

For the gift exchange I got @wlwcarries not sure if I'll think of anything for the free day part

Alive/Resurrected AU

The boys (and soon after Willie) got resurrected but Julie, how did they do it? Who knows? This takes place around a month after that though and we ain't going to worry about Nick/Caleb in this story, Carrie and Flynn are lesbians, Flynn's pronouns will be she/they, Julie is bi and Luke is pan, but now let's get on to the actual story

“What do you mean you have nothing to wear? You literally have 3 walk-in closets”

“Yes, I do and absolutely nothing to wear in any of them”

Flynn being rightfully annoyed at Carrie had been close to walking out of the house multiple times, this had again been one of those times

“Come on, Care you've been at this all day .Would it help if I came to look with you?”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll find something and I’m sure you have other things to do”

“Alright, I’ll wait for you at Julie's then”

Walking to Julie’s house from Carrie’s is a pain since from Carrie’s house you kind of have to go through the beach and then it’s a pretty long walk, so she decided to call an uber. Sure, they weren’t always safe (Always be weary of creeps) but it was the faster way to get to Julie’s house

Though during all of Carrie’s fashion problems and by association also Flynn’s problems, Julie and Luke were having their own problems. Luke had never been to a pride parade and since pride month was first made in 1999-2000 for gay and lesbian people later being for all LGBT+ in 2016(or 2009, I'm really not sure), Luke didn’t even know what pride month was. 

"Wait, what are we doing later again?"

"We're going to a pride parade, you know where you celebrate who you are and like the one time in the year you can piss off homophobic people"

Seeing some confusion on Luke's face Julie just decided to give up on it for the meantime, they were going either way so it didn't really matter. She couldn't blame Luke, or Reggie and Alex for that matter, they all have issues catching up on everything, they did die in 1995 so she had to give them a break but it could be slightly frustrating at times.

“I’m going to put on a movie, anything you want to watch?“

“Put on whatever you want, Flynn says they’re on their way and I still need to get ready. Are you sure you can put on a movie by yourself?”

“Of course I’m sure. Do you really doubt me that much?”

Julie was obviously joking but it ended up taking Luke 15 minutes to even get to Netflix. In that time Flynn arrived, Julie got ready and they both made popcorn. Luke insisted that he could do it himself so they left him alone, he eventually put on The Princess And The Frog

Flynn had come over to do Julie's makeup, sure Julie could do it herself but Flynn is better and takes way less time. They both decided on eyeshadow with the bi flag colors for Julie, Flynn offered to do Luke's makeup but he said no, Julie's makeup ended up amazing with much praise for Flynn.

Julie and Luke were cuddled up at the end of the couch watching The Princess And The Frog. Flynn was on the other end of the couch busy texting Carrie, she had finally found an outfit and was on her way to Julie's house.

Half an hour later, Carrie had gotten to Julie's house. The outfit she picked was a kind of third version of her Dirty Candy outfit, it looked like a combination of the other two outfits. The jacket going with the outfit had an almost rainbow shine to it. Flynn also did Carrie's make-up similar to her own which was inspired by the lesbian flag.

"Alright, make-up's all done, we should get going, don't want to be late" Flynn said getting up.

"But the movie's not done yet" Luke began in a whiny tone.

"We can finish it when we get back. Flynn's right, we don't want to be late" Julie sighed also hoping they could've have finished the movie first

Finally, they were able to leave to go to the pride parade. Reggie, Alex, Willie, Ray, Carlos, Julie and Carlos' Tía Victoria and the rest of Dirty Candy came along. Dirty Candy and Julie and the Phantoms were there to perform and the others were there to be supportive and celebrate pride.

Dirty Candy was performing a song called 'Shining Star' and Julie and the Phantoms performed a song called 'Better Together'. They were both great performances, both Alex and Carrie brought up their partners and effectively came out to everyone while the others cleared up their sexualities.

Everything went great and everyone was happy, until Caleb showed up- no, I won't go that way, this is the end I the fic. I hope y'all enjoyed it

[souridealist]

A prompt if you’d like: Caleb and Yeza having an awkward talk that leads them to bond over how much they care for Nott (romantically or otherwise)

hmm, yes, 2am is the perfect time to post this. I can’t wait to discover what Yeza is actually like, but in the meantime I’m apparently going to come up with a whole bunch of extremely different versions of him? this absolutely ended up as pre-OT3 fic, and I... can’t think of any warnings that would apply, which is a new one.

In a corner of the cavern, tuckedbetween the stalagmites, Nott was brewing up a vial of acid. She hadher kit spread out around her, jars of powder wedged between thestone; her ears were pinned flat to her head, her lower lip caughtbetween her teeth. The black leathery tip of her tongue stuck out thecorner of her mouth, all fierce concentration. Caleb moved slow andstill across the cave, not wanting to startle her. Frumpkin purred,low and steady in his ear.

Something shifted by the fire, andCaleb jolted, nearly tripping over the stone. Pebbles clinked. Nottdidn't look up.

“Sorry, sorry!” Yeza's low voicerasped. He sat up straighter, firelight flickering over the tufts ofhis beard. “Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you.”

“It... is fine,” Caleb said,waiting for his heart to stop racing. Frumpkin curled closer aroundhis neck. Caleb glanced at Nott, still lost in thought, and thensettled to a slow seat by the fire. On the opposite side from Yeza.Beau snored next to him. (Fjord and Caduceus were on watch proper,standing further out in the cave. Caleb wasn't ready to sleep, notyet.)

“I always loved watching her work,”Yeza said softly. “She never really believed she was much of analchemist, but I always thought she was as good as me. She's soclever.” His gaze was still fixed on Nott, utterly rapt.

“That sounds like –” Calebstopped as Yeza's words actually sank in. “Then you know? Who sheis?”

That got Yeza to glance over at him,shaking his head. “Of course I know. She's my wife.” He smiled,faint and rueful. “I love her, but... she's never really been agood liar.”

“She has some help with this one,”Caleb pointed out, reaching up to run his fingers through Frumpkin'sfur. His mouth felt dry.

“It took me a few days,” Yezaadmitted, shrugging. “She does look... really different, and thewhole thing is pretty weird.”

“That's an understatement,” Calebmuttered. He wasn't expecting Yeza's bright, broad grin.

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “Butshe doesn't really sound that different, once you listen. And shestill sticks her tongue out of the corner of her mouth the same waywhen she's concentrating, and she still does that little shimmy withher shoulders when she's happy.” He demonstrated, smiling into thedistance. “I mean, I've known herfor... a pretty long time. And I always paid attention.”

“Didshe always sleep like a cat?” Caleb asked, before he could stophimself. But Yeza didn't look offended, only nodded, smiling.

“Allcurled up? Yeah, with her face scrunched up against her hands, evenwhen there's a pillow right there. And her knees curled up to herchest, too. She used to have a foot hanging off the side of the bedall the time.”

“Yes.”It had usually been the end of the bed, with them. Caleb cleared histhroat. “You should know, we never did anything that would...compromise your marriage. We spent a lot of time together, when itwas very cold, and we got used to – to sharing a bed, to stay warm.But it was never anything more than that.” Nothing to be jealousabout. Nothing for Caleb tobe jealous about, watching Yeza watch her with naked adoration.Stupid, and simple, and too late.

“Allright,” Yeza said slowly, eyebrows drawing down together. “Okay.You know, uh, Veth and I always had a modern marriage, you know,human-style, but traditional halfling marriages are...  usually threeor four people, maybe adding a few more, you know, over time.”

“I...oh.” Caleb did not know that. How did he not know that? Years andyears of schooling, and he'd never picked up a book on halflingmarriage. It had never occurred to him that it was something thatwould matter. “I didn't know,” he said, out loud. The wordsechoed oddly.

“Yeah.”Yeza shrugged. “It's pretty old-fashioned, these days, but... I'mnot jealous. I mean. She got me out of Hell.” He said it withperfect, matter-of-fact sincerity. “I don't think I have anythingto worry about.”

“I'msure you don't,” Caleb said. “She loves you very much.”

“Iknow.” Yeza smiled, bashful; the firelight played over a pinknessin his cheeks. He was a good man, the kind of man that Nott deserved.

“Butyou're not telling her that you've recognized her?” Caleb asked. Itwas a jolt in the flow of conversation; he didn't care.

“Ifigure...” Yeza held his hands out to the fire, turning them slowlyin front of the flames. His head tilted, watching Nott work again. “Ifigure she'll tell me when she's ready. Veth always...” He sighed,shaking his head a little. “She never really saw the good inherself, so she always kind of had trouble understanding that I loveher so much. It stung for a while, but then I figured out that itwasn't that she doubted me, she just... it was herself that shedoubted, I guess. Sometimes I just had to sit back and love her andlet her figure that out on her own time. She's smart.”

“Shereally is,” Caleb said, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Andkind. And – I'm glad she has you.”

“Yeah.”Yeza paused, meeting his eyes over the embers of the fire. “I'mglad she had you, too. It seems like you... it seems like you mattera lot to each other.”

“She'sthe first friend I've had in more than fifteen years,” Calebadmitted in a low breath.

“Notthe last, though.” For a moment Yeza reminded Caleb of Caducues;something in the steadiness of his gaze. “I could watch her domagic all day, too. It's not something... it's was never part of ourlives, before. But it's incredible.”

“Sheis very good at it,” Caleb said, knowing he was demurring.

“Sheis,” Yeza said. “It's great.” Something clinked in the cornerwhere Nott worked. “Oh, I – she's going to need another pair ofhands in about a minute, I think. If she'll let me help.” He stood,moving a little slowly around the fire. He'd been in rough shape whenthey found him, and all the magic at their command hadn't been enoughto fix it all. At Caleb's side, he paused.

“It'scold down here,” he said, softly. “Veth always got cold reallyeasily. If, uh, if you're getting cold without her – I mean, like Isaid, I know I don't have anything to worry about. And I don't wanther to be cold while she's not ready to tell me.”

“I–” Caleb's tongue felt massive in his mouth. Frumpkin nosed athis ear. “I –” Slowly, minutely, he shook his head. (His feethad been freezing, lately; he shifted in his bedroll, looking for theweight at the end, looking to press his feet against her back andfeel it rise and fall with her breath. To know, when he woke in thenight, that he wasn't alone in the world.)

“Okay,”Yeza said slowly. “Okay. Just, uh – keep it in mind.” Gently,he reached down and squeezed Caleb's cat-free shoulder, one quickgesture. “That's all.” And then he was limping away across thecave to Nott's temporary workroom corner, and Nott looked up at hisapproach and beamed at him, toothy and jagged and bright as sunlight.It was the most beautiful smile that Caleb had ever seen.    

[bedlamsbard]

I know you have had a lot of little ideas for random Rebel's AU's that haven't made it past concept writing -- is there a reason that Backbone made too full story vs any of the other concepts? I know time can be a huge limiting factor for which ideas get more fleshed out so I was just curious. How do you pick which stories to write full out when you have so many awesome ones?

This is actually a weirdly complicated story because it depends on a lot of factors, of which the various concepts are the least of them.

Back in late spring/summer 2015, it was either going to be Backbone or Trade All Your Tomorrows, the Kanan and Hera time travel story, which actually preceded Backbone’s earliest concepts.  (You can still read the Tomorrows concept writing, if you like.)  Checking the dates, it looks like I started doing concept work for Tomorrows right after the Rebels S1 finale aired.  (And my earliest Rebels fic was a follow-up to Call to Action.)  There were a couple of stories I started but didn’t go anywhere -- a Kanan and Hera story set after AND, and then the werewolf AU, which was just for fun and which I never intended to potentially fill out into a full story.  There was another story about Kanan having to go undercover as an Imperial officer that never even made it to the concept stages.  (You can find any of the posted concepts in my cut scenes and concept writing tag.)

Now, what was going on at the time is that Queen’s Gambit was actually still in progress, because I didn’t wrap up Gambit until June 2015.  As I recall, I wrote about 30K of Tomorrows in March 2015, then dragged myself out of Rebels hell because I needed to finish Gambit.  This was in about late April.  The earliest Backbone stuff I started doing was in late May, and then Gambit wrapped up at the beginning of June.

I had always intended to take a break between Gambit and Watchtower, and there is actually a completely different story I meant to write then, because as originally planned, Gambit was going to wrap up around the end of summer 2014.  Now, obviously this did not happen, because I moved cross-country and started graduate school.  The story that I had planned to write was a TCW AU where the chip triggered early in a lot of clones and Anakin ended up framed for that and had to go on the run with Rex.  Well, Rebels started airing in fall 2014, and over the course of the following eight or nine months I got really into Rebels, and in the run-up from Call to Action to FatG I decided that I really wanted to write an Inquisitor!Kanan story, somehow, someway.  But I just didn’t really have a route to that that I was really interested in at the time.

In late May 2015, as I was half-crazed from (a) finishing Gambit and (b) taking a summer course in French, I had my “wait, what if it is ISB Agent Hera and Inquisitor Kanan?” breakthrough.  So I was turning that over and turning that over and talking that out at various people, but at that point I still intended Tomorrows to be my next big story.

In the meantime, several different things happened.

Lords of the Sith came out -- well, it actually came out in late April, I just did not read it until the end of May.  “Siege of Lothal” aired at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim, and I got a friend who had attended to tell me how much it contradicted the Tomorrows and agents of the Empire concepts.  And, most crucially for Tomorrows, Kanan - The Last Padawan began in April 2015.

Now, if you’ve read the Tomorrows concepts, you know that Depa Billaba’s clone troopers play a major role.  However, because I did up all the Tomorrows concepts before TLP came out, those clones are all OCs.  TLP also very plainly lays out how inexperienced Caleb was at the time of Order 66, so all my background for Caleb and my clone OCs all got very quickly jossed by canon in one fell swoop.  I did keep working on Tomorrows for a while after that, but I really dislike writing at a moving target, which TLP was at the time, and then Tomorrows got set aside so that I could finish Gambit.  I’d also done some plotting and some concepts for something that was called the post time travel story, which dealt with Caleb and Hera and the repercussions of their time travel years after Tomorrows had wrapped up.  (It looks like the latest dates on that are mid-April 2015, so about the same time as Tomorrows.)

When I finished Gambit I was still weighing Tomorrows and the story that didn’t yet have a title, but which I was calling the agents of the Empire AU.  Now, Gambit isn’t a time travel story, but its prequel, Wake the Storm, is, and I was really unwilling to write two time travel stories so close together.  (Wake wrapped in February 2014, but Gambit is essentially a straight continuation of Wake.)  And the other thing is that with Tomorrows while I had the concept, I actually did not have an action plot.  I like action plots.  I like them a lot.  It’s really hard for me to write a story without one, and Tomorrows was essentially a whole mess of emotions but no plot.

However, I did have an action plot for the agents of the Empire story.  (And this plot has actually consistently remained the same for the past two years, though it got filled out a lot.)  And I also had people who were willing to talk about it, which is a really good way to get enthused about a story.  For a while after Gambit wrapped I was alternating working on Tomorrows and agents of the Empire concept writing, but Tomorrows eventually trailed off as I got more into the agents of the Empire story, and eventually it got shelved entirely and I dug into what later became On the Edge of the Devil’s Backbone.

Now: a lot of things that were originally written for Tomorrows ended up in Backbone, like Alecto Syndulla, her sister Clotho, and I believe that Cham’s sisters Seku and Aleema were originally conceived of for Tomorrows as well.  Tomorrows was written with a much darker backstory for canon!Hera that involved her entire family being murdered, and for those that were in the Rebels fandom back in S1 and before the bulk of S2 aired, you may remember that there was a lot of discussion about what Hera’s backstory actually was -- if her father was dead, if she had been enslaved and that’s where her markings came from, what had happened to Ryloth after LotS, and so on.  If you look at the Tomorrows concepts, you can see some of this there in the Hera scenes.  When I was doing the backstory for Backbone, I didn’t want to go with any of that because I am a pretty contrary person and it had just tipped over from “plausible” to “I am very contrary and am going to do the exact opposite.”  Which is why Backbone!Hera’s mother is still alive while Tomorrows!Hera’s mother is dead, along with most of the rest of the family.

Now!  “Homecoming” didn’t air until February 2016, and if I remember correctly, the S2 trailer that aired in summer 2015 didn’t feature Cham Syndulla, though I think the special features from the S1 DVD/Blu-Ray release mentioned that we would see Cham Syndulla in S2, but that wasn’t until September 2015, at which point Backbone was already in progress.  The omnibus Rise of the Empire, which includes Tarkin and A New Dawn, also includes a short story about a fifteen-year-old Hera, but that didn’t release until October 2015.  Backbone started posting in July 2015, and at that point between LotS and AND there was NOTHING that dealt with Ryloth, so I had a relatively free hand to work.  I wanted to do some things that I knew canon would never do -- I mean, beyond the fact it was an Imperial AU -- which is why the Free Ryloth fleet exists and why Hera’s extended family is featured so prominently.

So that’s the backstory for Backbone.

Now, over the past year and change I’ve done a lot of smaller concepts, and none of those were ever intended to make it to a full story stage, because if you look at them closely, you’ll notice that they’re all actually Backbone AUs in one variation or another.  I don’t multitask well, which is why I haven’t done any concept writing for Watchtower yet and why I haven’t done any concepts for non-Backbone-based Rebels stories.  Like, do I have some that I have ideas for?  Sure; there’s a “post-AND Kanan and Hera meet Baze and Chirrut on Jedha and have an adventure” story that would be cool, and there’s a “pre-Wrong Jedi arc Caleb drags Ahsoka and Rex into an adventure on Coruscant” story that would be adorable.  But if I do that, knowing my brain, there’s a really good chance that I won’t go back to Backbone, and come hell or high water I am going to finish this story.

(There is one piece of concept writing for the sequel to Backbone that will not be written, but I try not to do sequel concepts because things change in progress.)