#infinitesimal-grey

[kurokawaia]

❛ I'VE GOT YOU ❜

Uchiha Itachi X Fem!Reader

WC; 1.8k+ | !MDNI! | TW/CW :: x fem reader, oral -> female recieving, reader is feeling a lil sad and itachi makes her feel better, ofc don't do this irl (if smo is feeling down the solution is sex, bc no it is not, this is purely fictional)

˚ ༘ * 𝑅𝐸𝒬𝒰𝐸𝒮𝒯 :: (filled request) hii hope you’re well! can i request itachi x fem or gn reader comfort sex? i need him so bad rn it’s not even funny - ANON

m.list | naruto/boruto m.list | uchiha m.list

You get home to your apartment and you see your man in the kitchen, seems like he just came to see you because he was still donned in his Akatsuki cloak.

"Itachi," you whispered.

"It's late," his voice was soft, concern laced in his words, he must have realised that you had come home from work later than usual.

You didn't have a good day, not at all.

You sink into the couch, your body against the plushness of the cushions. You feel the couch shift as he sits beside you, his cloak discarded to only grey pants and a shirt underneath. For a moment, there was no speaking. He didn't push, didn't ask what was wrong. He just knew when to give you space.

You tried to steady your breathing, but when he sat down beside you, you let it go. Your shoulders shook and a choked sob escaped before you could stop it. Your cheeks streamed with tears as the weight of the day crashed on you all at once.

Itachi leaned in closer without a word. His hand reached out and lay against your back, reassuring in its touch. Warm fingers mapped slow, comforting circles across your back as he let you cry.

"You don't have to explain," he said softly-barely more than a whisper above silent. "I'm here."

His words snapped something in you, and then you knew you had turned into him, burying your face in his chest. His shirt felt cool against your skin, while his body was warm. You clung to him, your hands clutching the material of his shirt, as your sobs wet the cloth. He held you tightly, yet tenderly, never once drawing away.

"You're allowed to feel this," Itachi whispered some time later, his lips brushing against the top of your head. "You don't have to be strong all the time."

His arms wrapped more closely around you, his fingers threading softly through your hair. You could feel the steady rise and fall of his chest, the beat of his heart beating now to the same speeed as yours. He pressed his chin against the top of your head.

After a few minutes of this, your sobs finally died down and left you with deep exhaustion. You just remained there, tucked against him, not wanting to move yet.

"Itachi." you whispered, your head rising just slightly so you could look up at him. His eyes met yours, deep, dark eyes that always seemed to understand you in ways no one else did.

His hand brushed against your cheek, wiping away one errant tear with the pad of his thumb. He leaves his hand there long enough that your breathing hitches a bit, a warmth starting to build in your chest. His fingers trace along your jawline-soft, unhurried.

You leaned into his hand, closing your eyes for a moment as one let the sensation wash over him. The light caress of his fingertips danced down your back; a soft shiver overspread you, and opening your eyes again, you found him watching you, his gaze steady yet deeper with something that quickened the beat of your heart.

His forehead finally came to rest against yours. His breathing grazed your lips, and your heart was racing with the thought of how much closer the distance between them was getting. His hand tracing around your cheek a moment before now made its way down to rest on your neck. His thumb lightly brushed over the sensitive pulse point of your neck. The simple touch sent shivers across your skin, and you swallowed hard while trying to steady your breathing.

"Itachi...", you whispered lowly.

His hand on your neck tightened infinitesimally, his other arm wrapping around your waist as he tugged you closer to him-you felt the firm warmth of his body through his shirt.

"Itachi," you said again, but with a lot more purpose this time as your fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt and you looked up at him, searching eyes for what came next. There was something magnetic in the way he looked at you; his silence a great deal more than any words.

He leaned in toward me, his lips barely touching mine-light as a whisper-but to his nerves, it was a raging fire. It seemed he waited, tested the waters gave one the chance to retreat if so wished-but I did not. That light teasing touch from his lips had sent a surge of heat through me, and before I knew it, I leaned the rest of the way in, closing the gap completely.

The kiss was slow, deliberate. His lips danced against yours, leaving you out of breath, his hand on your neck guiding you with ease. It was as if the world melted away and, in its place, there was only the two of you.

His heart rate showed in the clutch of fingers that closed on your waist, pulling you closer still until no space existed between bodies. A soft moan escaped your throat, his kiss deepening, his tongue slipping past your lips to taste you with a languorous sensual intensity. You gasped against him, your hands shifting from his cloak onto his chest-hard muscle beneath his shirt. His lips left yours, trailing down your jawline, down toward your neck, sending shivers down your spine. "Itachi..." His name fell from your lips again this time more breathless, more needy as you leaned to the side, granting him further access. He required no further encouragement. His mouth found the sensitive skin of your neck, kissing and nibbling lightly, sending waves of pleasure across your body. His hands slid lower, coming to rest on your hips, his thumbs stroking over the skin just beneath your shirt. The light touch was enough to set your senses alight, and you arched into him, your body responding to every one of his movements. "You're beautiful," he murmured against your skin, low and husky, the words sending a thrill through you. His lips moved back up to capture yours once more in a kiss that was hotter, more urgent this time. His body pressed against yours in a way that left no doubt about where this moment could lead. "Is this okay?" he asked softly, voice low a hum, eyes searching yours for confirmation. His thumb brushed over your lower lip. You nodded, breathless, lips swollen. "Yes, Itachi... And with that, his lips were back on yours again, and the world faded to black once more as you let go, completely, into his arms. "I'll take care of you, don't worry, you want me to, darling?" he asks.

"Please," you whimper as his teeth graze your neck before he strips the clothes off of your body. 

And now, your legs over his shoulders and your head thrown back against the plushy pillow beneath your head on the couch. There was also a smaller pillow propped underneath your hips, Itachi said that it would make it more comfy for you and it did. He always worried about your pleasure and comfort.

"I-Tachi," you whimper out as his nose bumps against your clit.

"Are you okay?" he asks, worried about how much your voice was whimpering at the small amount of contact with your most sensitive area.

You squirm under the hold Itachi's hand on your thighs, back subtly arching into his face, wanting to indulge further in his touch.

"Yeah," you say breathlessly.

"You'll be alright, my love," Itachi reassures, placing soft and fluttery kisses on your stomach.

You shiver underneath the simple gestures, awaiting when he puts his tongue and fingers to use.

"'M know, Itachi," you replied, your fingers interlacing with his long black hair which was now free from his hairtie. 

Itachi descends once more to your most sensitive area, your soaked cunt. "Tell me if it's too much."

"You never hurt me, 'tachi," you said while a shaky breath leaves your mouth.

A whimper leaves your mouth when he places a kiss on your clit and your thighs clench around his head. You attempt to arch away from the overwhelming sensation but Itachi's grip keeps you in place.

"L-Love," you moan out.

"I know, darling," Itachi reassures. "It's okay, I'm here, tell me if it's too much."

Once more, Itachi's nose brushes up against your delicate clit, and your grip on his hair tightened. A satisfied sigh seeps through him into your folds as a mewl from your full lips.

"Are you okay?" he asks before licking a long stripe up your folds and you moan, your back arching and your cunt pressing further into his face which he relished in.

You whimpered before answering, trying to gather your scattered thoughts, "Yeah, 'm am, Itachi."

He loves you so intensely it hurts, and your response makes his heart sing. His tongue climbs up from your wet hole to your clit while you let out a moan. Your thighs tighten around his head as a result of his constriction, and as you grind down on his face, a moan echoes through your clit. Your lips were filled with chants of his name, and he relished every moment of it.

"Itachi, f-feels s' good," you moan, tears welling in your lash line, he was making you feel so good.

"You're okay?" Itachi asks.

When you feel a thick finger push past your closing walls, you furiously nod your head, your eyes expand, and you cry with delight. It felt so fantastic that you never want it to finish, even though you thought you would break because he was so huge.

His finger pressed up against that soft spot inside your walls. Itachi was slow with his pace as he curled his fingers every time he entered your cunt, along with sucking and licking at your puffy, sensitive clit.

"You're being so good, you're doing so well," Itachi moans against you, refusing to rut his hips into the mattress, this was your pleasure, not his own.

A moan arouses from you and your hips grind themselves onto his face. He let you for once have some sort of control over the situation, and he decided that if you came quicker he'll let you do it more often. "That's it," he praised.

His motions become more rapid and needy as you cry his name through broken letters, and the one hold he held on your leg tightens. Your stomach coil tightened, and your fingers wrapped around his locks to stop him from moving and make him sigh deeper into your folds.

The only thing the groans did was push you over the edge, and when he placed his tongue firmly against your clit, a quiet scream from your lips. Your stomach coil unwound, soaking his face completely.

He slowly removed his fingers from your drenched pussy, your cum spilling out from your puffy folds. Before rising his head, he places a kiss on your clit and your mewl softly in overstimulation.

"Are you alright, love?" he asks worried, kissing away the pleasure-caused tears streaming down your cheeks and the side of your face. "Do you feel better."

You were so tired just after that one orgasm and Itachi seemed to notice and he lifted you from the couch so that you were able to rest on him, snuggling up against him on the couch now. "Thank you, Itachi."

"Anything for you."

Do not copy, steal, modify, etc. Relogs and like are appreciated.

m.list | naruto/boruto m.list | uchiha m.list

[ninibeingdelulu]

heyy can you write something about how would be the first kiss of Levi with one of his scout? i can’t really picture the scene. and can you write something about his first physical contact with her like their first time hugging in a detailed way cause i can’t really see him doing it, thank you so much

Physical contact with him ft. levi ackerman

a/n: im sorry it took so much time, hope you enjoy<3 i changed the story a little, but normally it’s the same.

How your relationship with Levi improves.

At first, Levi is strictly professional with you, treating you just like any other fresh scout recruit under his elite command. He's brusque, aloof and demands perfection in your training drills.

But you can't help being entranced by the captain's fluid, almost hypnotic skill in combat. The way he wields those dual blades is pure lethal elegance in motion.

You find yourself shamelessly staring more than once, only to be met with a withering glare from Levi's steel grey eyes.

Slowly though, he seems to begrudgingly respect your unwavering determination and rapid skill progression under his tutelage.

Levi's piercing gaze lingers fractionally whenever you execute a complicated maneuver flawlessly.

After one sparring bout where you finally managed to disarm him for a split second, the tiniest smirk played at the corner of Levi's lips amidst the sheen of sweat glistening on his chiseled features up close.

Your heart stopped at the brief spark of unmistakable approval flickering in those subdued eyes.

You realize in that crystalline moment of adrenaline just how intoxicatingly attractive Levi is to you.

Not just because of his impressive prowess, but his intensely focused determination and strength of will shining from the shadowed depths.

Before you can spiral further down that dangerous trail of thought, Levi's boot connects squarely with your chest, dropping you hard onto your back with a grunt. "Don't get cocky," is his only terse remark, though his gaze flicks away almost...shyly?

Things remain professionally tense between you two after that spark of mutual acknowledgment.

Until one day, you take a brutal hit while defending Levi's flank out in the field against a horde of Titans.

You're barely conscious, choking on your own blood after being flung against a tree trunk. Then Levi's steel cables are zipping overhead, and his boots slam into the earth directly before your fading vision.

You're vaguely aware of his familiar voice shouting for backup as he hoists you protectively against his broad chest, eyes darting with uncharacteristic panic now.

His trademark bravado has melted completely.

Due to your injuries, Levi spends painstaking days by your bedside while you recover in the infirmary wing.

All prior formalities have been abandoned - he won't leave your side, cradling your hand in his calloused fingers until your eyes finally flutter open.

The way his typically harsh gaze softens infinitesimally tells you everything you need to know - Levi doesn't fear losing subordinates, he fears losing you specifically.

Before either can overthink, he's tugging your face to his desperately and finally fitting your gasping mouths together like twin puzzle pieces.

His kiss is hard, needy and searing with all the unresolved passion Levi's spent weeks fighting internally. It buckles your knees anew as his warm breath mingles with your own in a ragged gasp.

But his iron grip around your waist keeps you anchored flush against the rock-solid planes of his body.

You're the only one privileged enough to peel back the hardened exterior and witness Levi's intensely guarded tenderness, though.

When it's just the two of you cuddled on his tiny cot, his mask slips away with each stroke of your fingers through his raven tresses, each heated caress and murmured reassurance exchanged reverently.

[xreaderwrites]

Grey Areas

Summary: Cheating Death is so much harder when she claws her way out of the dirt.

Tags: scheming, complex feelings, pining, Teen is Billy Maximoff, to be continued

Words: 1k+ | AO3

A/N: a story is a-brewing but the story must marinate…gestate even

A hand bursts from the ground and you shove Billy between yourself and Agatha. He doesn’t protest, his eyes stuck  on the woman clawing her way out of the dirt as he yells about reanimation.

It’s worse. Instead of the spell going horribly wrong it’s gone horribly right, with the best Green Witch they could have possibly gotten. Death herself.

You swallow harshly and pull Teen back with you (and he is Teen now. No other name shall be uttered with Death so close). He’s in such a grey area that both sides can be made. He was never technically alive, not in the way the people Death take are, so him coming back doesn’t break any rules and yet it is his soul that is here on this plane, something she very much deals with. 

Both sides can be made but you are much weaker than she is. You won’t stand a chance.

Agatha screaming and clawing for Death sends your stomach plummeting. It’s good that they won’t be teaming up against you together, your chances of success in that situation are so infinitesimally small, but now you’re fighting on three fronts.

This isn’t the first time you’ve regretted Teen finding your work but this is the first time you’ve hated yourself for it. To have him die so young during his second chance of life…Wanda will never forgive you. In this life or the next.

Agatha storms off and it isn’t long before Rio skips after her.

Teen calling your name makes you realise how harshly you’re clinging to him.

“Are you okay?” he asks worriedly.

Your gaze stays firmly locked on the two witches ahead. Rio sends you a knowing smile mid-twirl. 

It makes you sick. Instead of bringing Wanda back, you’ll be protecting the boy she lost her mind trying to save.

“I’m fine,” you give his shoulder a reassuring squeeze and, ignoring the looks the other three are giving you, you follow Rio up the Witches Road.

Jen and Alice start up behind you and what would’ve been a fun conversation about liking scary women is made easy to ignore with Teen beside you.

“Do you know her?” he asks cautiously. 

He knows how touchy you can be with your past. You have to push the guilt away to concentrate on the question. You’ve to be so careful with everything you say for so long one would think it would be easier by now.

“I know of her, yes,” you allow. “She’s extremely powerful. A good catch for the Road.��

“But?” Teen pushes.

“But…” how to put it, “Her connections to others can be weak, or at least slow to build. Not a quality you want when facing the trials.” Your eyes slide to Agatha, “But that isn’t exactly a new danger. We couldn’t trust Sharon to get us out of a bind, either.”

A frown creases Teen’s face.

“But she was so nice.”

You cast him a long look. Does he really not know she wasn’t a witch? It’s so hard to tell.

“She was incredibly weak, power-wise, and her knowledge was extremely limited. We couldn’t trust her to help us because she wouldn’t have been able to. It’s nothing against her.”

This seems to ease him as his body relaxes and his usual smile begins to poke through, dampened by seeing death so closely. 

It’s your turn to frown. You wish you had known him before the sigil. Then you’d be able to know how much of his naivety is real. He’s a sixteen year old witch and he broke his mother’s curse. That isn’t a small thing. He shouldn’t be this powerful and yet have so little knowledge of what the world is capable of.

You don’t even know what he’s looking for at the end of the Road.

Your frown deepens as you watch Rio shadow Agatha.

It’s no use telling Teen to keep his distance. He’s been glued to Agatha’s side and Rio seems intent on subtly doing the same. Not to mention being on the Road means distance from one another is deadly. This whole situation is frustrating to say the least. But what were you really expecting when traversing the Witches Road?

He gives you a look and you manage to nod your head without rolling your eyes. He scampers ahead to Agatha’s side.

Rio was a few step behind her but she allows a gap to grow as Teen passes her.

You sigh to yourself and catch up to Rio. Matching her pace, you allow the distance between you and Teen to grow before speaking. 

“Interested in a trade?” you ask her. 

Her sharp grin has the hair on your arms rising.

“Do you have anything interesting?”

No, that’s why you’re on the road. It’s too late to offer a life for a life and Wanda would never forgive you if you went to the lengths needed to bring her back whole. Lengths that have only ever been rumoured.

You ask the question anyway to get to the one you want to ask most.

“My life?”

“You know the rules.”

“Yes, but if something much more…powerful than myself attempted to bring her back, would you stop it?”

Her calculating gaze is more terrifying than her crazy grin.

“The Road gives you what you’re missing,” is her only response.

It’s not the straight answer you were hoping for but it’s also not a yes. Which means your plan isn’t completely fucked. 

“While I have you here,” you say before she flutters off back into Agatha’s orbit, “I would like to make it very clear that any delusions I had of revenge or…roadblocks regarding Agatha have been thoroughly discarded with your arrival.”

Rio flashes a smile that is pure threat. 

“Smart girl.”

It’s easy to ignore the effect she has on you when are currently so aware that the threat extends to Wanda too.

You also want to tell Death about Wanda not being a threat to Agatha but you can’t. It may be true now, but who knows what will happen to Teen between now and when you see her? Your best will mean nothing to the Road. Your life probably will too.

[rockingrobin69]

ruffians, and so on

“Oh,” Harry said, again, and then, “oh. It’s a—”

Tiny, fluffy thing in Malfoy’s arms. It hissed when Harry came closer to inspect, and Malfoy grinned like it was the cleverest creature in the world. He muttered a sorry that he evidently didn’t mean, stuffing his smiling face into the fluffy bundle.

“She’s quite possessive,” his voice came out muffled. Harry didn’t growl, but it was a near thing.

“Yeah? Well,” swallowing the silly rant about being possessive and teach it a thing or two, about how Malfoy was his first and only then this little—little—kitten’s. “She’s a cat,” he spat eventually.

“Very astute,” Malfoy laughed, that crackly sound that still made Harry’s chest go all, all, fizzy and warm like bad lemonade. “I can see why you never became an Auror after all.”

“Hmm?” already lost his concentration. The white little thing was climbing up Malfoy’s chest, wrapping itself around his neck and Harry, er, wanted, erm, far better control than what he currently—that was his spot, and she had to go. “She has to go,” he said, stupidly.

“What?”

Harry blinked. “I mean,” but he had no idea what he meant. “Shouldn’t you take her to a, dunno, vet or something?”

“Darling,” still laughing, but he sent a hand out for Harry to grab, only a little hysterically. “Come here.”

As if he were pulled by a spell, a string, already breathless and taking in tiny little pants of Malfoy’s appley scent. Malfoy brought Harry’s hand to his lips, gave it a kiss. Then, with a mischievous eyebrow, lowered it to the lump of fur clinging to him.

“See? She’s entirely sweet,” as Harry’s hand trembled, still too scared to—“Go on. It’s fine.”

With only half a growl, Harry nodded, closed his eyes. The little kitten was… soft, and strangely warm. Like this, Malfoy was very close too, and Harry could put his head on his shoulder and—oh, there she was again. Nose to nose, she really was quite… sweet.

“Hello,” Harry whispered. The kitten gave him a green-eyed stare.

“What do you think we should call her?” Malfoy’s voice was so gentle.

“I—I don’t know.” Felt like a big responsibility, and also too soft, and Harry pulled himself back up and tried for a step back, only to be taken by the hips. One of Malfoy’s hands found the back of his head.

His eyes were grey as always, and just as fond. “It’s all right,” he said. “I know you’re not exactly mister creativity here. As far as I can recall, you never even named your broom.”

“Didn’t know you were meant to,” Harry grumbled. “Besides, I don’t think Icarus was such a good name.”

“I was being ironic,” Malfoy rolled his eyes, pouted a bit in the way that always made Harry kiss him.

“Well, you’re not naming the cat.” Sticking his tongue out, only a little melted.

“Because I’m sure you’ll find something very original.”

“Hey, Hedwig was a good name!”

“I was referring,” Malfoy tilted his head the tiniest bit closer, “to a certain teenage organisation you led. Never mind. If you want to name the cat, I’ll entrust this very important mission to you. Provided I receive my fair payment.”

Grinning, helpless, “Yeah? What’s that, exactly?”

“I believe a kiss is in order?”

Oh, Harry’s been dying for one for far too long to object. Leaning in that infinitesimal amount of space separating them, taking that deep, sweet breath, his lips already touching Malfoy’s when—

“OW!” Malfoy tore back, eyes huge and incredulous. “What in Merlin’s fuck, little cat? Why the claws?”

His frustration allowed Harry’s belly to calm, allowed him to actually laugh. “You said it yourself,” with a cheeky pinch of Malfoy’s nose. “She’s a possessive little bugger.”

“Very poor form,” Malfoy wasn’t paying attention to him, eyes only for the kitten now, and his voice infuriatingly gentling. Harry, with a huff, found himself still smiling.

“I guess I can understand. I wouldn’t let anyone else kiss you if I were hanging on your neck.”

“Yes, my point exactly. I’d expect such crass behaviour from him, but we are Malfoys, young lady! I’d appreciate it if you showed proper decorum to the high standard expected of you.” With a blink, looking at the ball of fluff currently yawning in his hands, “Or—well, or not. I suppose you can do as you wish, damn you.” Looking up at Harry: “Potter, I think I might spoil our cat rotten.”

Harry wasn’t jealous. “Yeah,” he managed, stiffly, “yeah, I reckon you will.”

“Don’t give me that look. As though I don’t have every intention of spoiling you rotten too.”

“Oh,” Harry said. His mouth was twitching.

“Oh,” Malfoy mocked, “oh, he says, like I hadn’t made it perfectly clear. Truly, I am surrounded by a troop of ridiculous ruffians and—yes, you included, little cat. Don’t think I forgot. And just because you have the most adorable little beans does not mean—what’s the point. It absolutely does mean it.” Turning back to Harry, “Well? Are you coming?”

“Hmm? Coming where?”

“To get dinner? Harry? You did hear me, right? You weren’t just staring at the cat the whole time.”

Flushing, “Of course not.”

“Right,” Malfoy’s eyebrow quirked.

“Right.”

The cat made a tiny sound, not a meow. It’ll get the hang of it soon.

(For flufftober day 28. Find the soft AO3 collection here).

[yeyinde]

SEA, SWALLOW ME | Simon Riley x GN!Reader

No one wrenches you open, leaving you raw and exposed, like Simon. A wound that never heals. A sickness that never dissipates. You carry the weight of him between your ribs and thundering heart. A place of safekeeping, protecting this precious knot that gnarls inside of you from everything else out there that might want to hurt it. It thrums now, dizzy with the feeling of him so close to you.

》 WARNINGS: 18+ – MATURE, SMUT | GN!Reader: no use of pronouns, gendered language or anatomy; very soft smut; light breath play/choking but. It serves a narrative purpose.

》 WORD COUNT: 9,4k (of pure, unadulterated nonsense)

》 NOTES: UM. This was meant to subvert standard D/s | Predator/Prey dynamics for Ghost but became a mess of nonsensical metaphors instead.

As far as missions went, this was slated to be amongst the easiest assigned out to your group—a standard hostage rescue of a foreign diplomat. 

It's a sequence you've played out many times over in basic training. The steps, drills, are already ingrained in your memory with minor changes to suit the situation unfolding in a place you'd never been before, and probably will never see again. Rudimentary. Boring, almost. 

The chance of injury was minimal. The probability of death is even infinitesimal. 

And yet—

He pulls you into an alcove in the safe house you've been holed up in for the last twelve hours, alternating between bouts of sleep, and pouring over each minute detail of your roles. 

Price's voice cracked an hour ago. 

It was Gaz who called it with a soft chuff. "Guess that means we're good to go, eh, cap?"

"Off with you, then," he groused, reaching for a bottle of water. "We'll head out in an hour. Be ready." 

You meant to sneak away to the gym and exercise some of the anticipation pooling inside your veins—a physical outlet to exert the antsy feeling that made your fingers tap a soundless beat against your shaking thigh; a post-mission ritual to saturate your brain in those feel-good chemicals caused by the rush of adrenaline. 

But you were stopped by a hand on your wrist. One that snaked through the tenebrous of the storage closet that housed the guns, weapons, and ammunition, all spread out on the walls with a bench in the middle. 

Simon leans back against it, guns spread out on the surface behind him. The hand not curled around your wrist is pressed flat, bare, to the granite top, only inches away from the collection of knives he meticulously tends to before each assignment. 

His sleeves are rolled up to his forearm, ink coloured in a hazy smear of yellow from the lamp spilling across the table in the corner. Your eyes are drawn there first—the shadows cast over the thick veins running along his forearms, hidden beneath the charcoal. 

The other flexes around your wrist, rough skin scorching when it presses against yours. Seeing the bulk of his palm swallowing the entirety of your wrist and half of your hand has your mouth running dry.

There's something about him, about the fold of his massive frame condensing itself into a nook much too small for him to fit, that feeds into a part of your head that aches to fly. To scale mountains, to reach the summit. To be the first person to stand on top of the highest peak, and gaze down at the world shaded in blues, greens, and greys below. 

Staring at Simon fills you with summit fever. 

"Did I scare you?" 

It's hard to rip your gaze away from him with so much of his flesh bared to you. He's usually dressed by now in his jacket and vest. Always prepared for the next slaughter. This—

This is new. Unusual. 

You huff, rolling your eyes toward the domed ceiling, and struggle to stave off the influx of anxiety that gnarls inside of you. A break in the routine. It unsettles you. "Hardly." 

He makes a low, starchy noise in his throat, muffled partially by the balaclava covering his mouth. "That so?"

He runs his thumb over your pulse, drawing your attention to the rapid thud of your heartbeat under his finger. It's a slow, meticulous circle, and his eyes dance with derision when you scoff, a touch embarrassed, and curl your fingers into a fist as if that would somehow stop the thundering in your chest. 

"Whatever," you murmur, defensive. "I drank an espresso. It's just a natural, bodily reaction—"

His hand twitches again, fingers lifting from your skin as he slowly peels away from you. The chill against your flesh makes you shiver, already missing the intensity of his heat. 

"If you say so," he volleys, settling his hand back on the table, palm cupping the thick ledge, fingers tucked under the surface. The motion makes his muscles quiver. 

Goosebumps prickle along your flesh. Your throat runs dry. 

"Got somethin' for you."

It's standard, benign—the words are flat considering the weight behind them, the potency. They're all he'll allow in this brief window of privacy when everyone else is busying themselves with their pre-mission rituals. 

Price leans against the wall in the corner of the room, fingers curled into the straps of his tac-vest. His chin is dipped low, eyes fixed on the table a metre away where the files lay open, floorplans exposed. Despite the evenness of his brow, and the squared set of his shoulders, you can see the weight of everything circling in stormy blue. 

The success of this will be shared amongst everyone, but the loss will be solely his own. 

On the opposite side of the room, Soap picks over every centimetre of your weapons and tactical gear. Scouring every iota in an effort to make sure nothing will fail anyone. 

Gaz, as the youngest, shoulders it all, and pours over the blueprints, committing each exit and entrance point to memory. He won't be caught unawares if a route is compromised. He'll get everyone out to safety. 

By stark contrast, Ghost does nothing. 

He doesn't look over the documents, but he doesn't need to. The blood vessels streaking through jaundiced white speak of a sleepless night staring at the photos of the men you're supposed to hunt down. The people you're supposed to rescue. 

Before he slips on his gloves, you catch ink stains on his thumb and inside his forefinger. The thick scent of gunpowder and oil clings to him. His weapon is sleek: gunmetal grey and cleaned. Meticulous. His attention to detail is unyielding. 

He did everything he was supposed to do last night when he didn't come and sneak into your room.

But he never does. Not before a mission. 

You sometimes wonder if he likes to torture himself with the if only or the what if that lingers whenever you split apart, left to your devices and wholly dependent on yourself for survival. He keeps his distance. Doesn't want, nor need, the distraction.

Some might think it cruel that he avoids you like you're already caught in the clutch of the Reaper; skin shading a sickly grey as your blood rots from within. But you know him. You know Simon. 

And when he hands you your gun, you can feel that it's already been loaded, and tended to. There's a fine sheen of oil glued to the tight folds of metal from where his meticulous cleaning couldn't reach. 

Your tac-vest is packed with everything he deems necessary for your own survival (and even a few things he doesn't but you do). 

He hands you a knife, too—one you know is from his personal collection. It fits into the palm of your hand like it was made for you, and you wonder—with a small smile blooming across your cheeks—how long he took looking over them before picking this one. A perfect fit. 

"Thank you," you murmur, low and soft. No one is paying attention to you at all—there is no time to do so when you can feel the seconds ticking down. "I'll do my best not to get your pretty knife dirty." 

He snorts. "Defeats the purpose, doesn't it? And it ain't mine." 

"My knife, then." 

You glance down at the smooth curve of the blade, sharpened to a deadly point, and twist it in your hand to stare at the handle. It's black. Two stems jut out from the hilt, extended a bit longer than the blade. It's triangular and pitched in the centre before tapering off to a sharp point. It's the length of your forearm. Longer than the tactical knives issued by the weapons branch in the SAS. Bound in leather. The stitches look much too similar to the ones he threaded through your gaping skin in Jakarta. 

"Fairbairn-Sykes," you say, glancing up at him. "Thought they stopped using these?"

He rolls one massive shoulder. A man with his girth shrugging insouciantly is a strange sight. You almost expect to hear the distant roar of an avalanche. 

"Much better'in the cheap ones they give you."

"Oh, yeah? Kinda hard to hide, though—"

"If you don't want it—" 

Simon reaches for it, but you pull it close to your chest, grinning. 

"You can't take my knife away." 

He huffs, lowering his hand back to the table. His eyes are piercing. Heavy. "Then stop complainin' about it."

A fly buzzes by your ear. A bead of sweat drips down the nape of your neck. Something about the look in his dark, shadowed eyes sets your teeth on edge. 

It wells on your tongue, then—soft words not meant to be uttered in a room saturated in contracted death—and the astringent flood strips your enamel until your teeth ache with the urge to let them out, or swallow them down. You wonder what he would say if you let them free. If they slipped from your tongue and filled the room with the stench of your poisonous wants, ones left to rot inside your chest, your throat. 

The burn of them blisters your esophagus, leaving behind open wounds leaking infection into your bloodstream, into the vessels that run to your lungs, your heart. 

The tremendous weight of them makes your knees quiver, struggling to stay afloat in the thick atmosphere that sits, oppressive and unignorable, between you. 

It's all one-sided, of course—a hunger felt only by you. He doesn't acknowledge the gossamer of tension that bleeds into the room, wrapping tight around your neck like a phantom noose. To Simon, nothing is amiss; nothing is wrong—

And it isn't, you think. This spooling knot inside of you, wound tight into a ball, isn't wrong. It isn't bad to feel this way, but it's terrifying. 

Being with Simon is a bit like climbing a mountain. 

But there is scaling one in a harness, secured safe and sound with ropes and pitons, and then there is this: 

A free solo up the side of a chossy. 

The chalk on the tips of your fingers clumps together under the stickiness of your damp palm. One slip, and you'll be a wreck at the bottom before you can even try to hold on. 

Jagged rock at the bottom gnashes its teeth together in anticipation, eagerly waiting its chance to grind your flesh into pulp, and offer your spilled blood to Thanatos. 

Melodramatic, maybe, but something about Ghost brings out a sense of morbid sentimentality from within you. The feeling is a harsh juxtaposition to who the man really is. 

A mythological being who lingers in the foreground like a psychopomp, but gives you whittled knives from his personal collection, carefully whet to a fine point, and cracks stupid jokes in a deadpan manner as if the world around you wasn't raining bullets and reeking of gun cotton. 

Your gaze wavers, falls. There are a lot of things you are meant to say now, and many more that are forbidden. None of them brim through the humus that sticks to your throat. Disturbed dirt in a lonely graveyard. 

A flurry of motion snags your attention. In the corner of the room, you catch sight of the fly sitting on top of an intricate web. It runs its hands together, waiting. Mischievous. A morsel of food is still tangled in white lace. It feasts without worry, unaware of its impending demise as its feet glue to the threads woven below, shaped like the cracked skulls in a catacomb. 

As the fly feeds, the spider cocks its head up from a darkened crevasse, a multitude of eyes gleaming in the flushed light hanging overhead. 

It waits. 

Poor thing. 

"Thanks," you say again, wrenching your eyes away from the opening maw of the ossuarium in the corner. The sight unnerves you. 

It's not meant to be any more sincere than the first utterance of your gratitude, but you say it—if only to fill the stifling silence, and wonder if that carefully curated mask would shatter into pieces, revealing the bare-faced man (human: flesh, bone; vulnerable) beneath, if you uttered the words pulsing against your vocal cords like a pizzicato. 

He levels you with a flat look as if he, too, hears the whine of c minor screaming in your chest. 

"Hilt is new. Try not to get it dirty." 

You fight a shiver. Force yourself to give some facsimile of a smile in response.

"Wouldn't dream of it, Lt."

(A liar.)

You tuck the pretty knife in a tawny leather sheath into your pocket. 

"I'll take good care of it." 

(A thief.)

Behind smeared grey, charcoal black, his eyes narrow. Pensive. Considering. Something rears, lurks. Hidden in shadows. Cut into brimstone. It's the same shade of death that only surfaces when he's on the battlefield—no longer Simon, but—

"See that you don't." 

A ghost. 

(Just warmer than most.)

Your eyes stray back to the corner of the room where the black spider prowls closer to the hapless fly struggling to be free. 

Yeah, you think, a touch dazed. Your fingers tighten around the leather-bound hilt of the blade. Me, too. 

You dirty his knife. 

The chance for an injury is minor, but never zero. You find this out when someone grabs you from behind, knife pressed to your jugular. There is no fear, no terror. 

Just—

Embarrassment. Stupid. You know better than to leave your six unchecked. 

It ends with a paper-thin cut to your skin, and your knife buried in flesh. 

The hilt is bloodied. Authentic leather stained red. Grotesque. Garish. You can't tear your eyes away from the droplets that stain the handle. 

Plastic, usually. You know this because you looked it up. Polymer-covered wood. 

The leather was handmade. Sewn with thick, black thread. Glued to the stripped wood. 

Wrapped up pretty just for you. 

(Just for you.)

And you ruined it like you promised you wouldn't. 

(A liar. A thief.)

It makes you wince, and the burn in your chest hurts more than the sting in your neck. You thought you heard death and his fiddle this morning, but who knew his boney, rotted fingers would wrap around your wrists like it was the hilt of a conductor's baton. 

Simon doesn't say anything, but there's a weight in his silence. A soundless ticking in the background as he watches, placid, as you make your way to him. 

Nails bite into your palm until they're sticky with the blood that pools between your fingers. It's meant to be grounding. Replacing one hurt with another, but the biggest injury is the one to your pride, your ego. It's burned, blistered, and not even the swell of something you feel roiling through you at the sight of Simon, steady and sturdy—faultless despite the roaring that seems to echo around, the scream of the tide trying to pull you under—is able to quell the sting of humiliation. 

Your hands are stained just like them. Scars mattered across soft tissue, and despite the way they spill over your flesh like Orion, you still feel the pull of torn flesh beneath your armour. 

This—

This was an accident. Unfortunate. Unforgiving. It lingers between aching teeth, and tastes of raw wire. 

You won't let the shame dip its talons into your pride despite the bruise forming on the side of your veneer. 

Your chin lifts: defiant, almost. As if waiting for him to say something. 

Anger, you think, is easier to wield than culpability. 

There are a number of derisive, droll words he can pin you with, and your mind runs through the possibilities, the ones you heard barked out over the comms. Things like: rookie mistakes. Shoulda checked your six. How'd this happen? Thought you were better than this. Another scar to add to your collection, then? Better stop before you end up lookin' like me.

It surprises you, then, when he says none of them. 

"Alright?"

His hand lifts, and a weight settles against your jaw, lifting your chin. It's barely a cat scratch, and doesn't even need stitches, but it stings something fierce when he stretches the skin around it. Pulling, tugging. You clench your teeth, swallowing back a wince. 

He catches it, anyway. 

Stupid. 

You wait for the rest. For the or what? that traditionally follows a simple alright, but nothing comes. 

His hand drifts, palm cups the side of your neck, and—

It's indescribable. A rush, maybe. A raw, pulsing wound throbbing inside your throat where his heavy, rough hand sits. A plinth. You can't lower your chin with it in the way. Stuck, you think, and then—

You shiver. It's instinctual. The curve of your neck is vulnerable; a sacred place. Animals protect their jugular, their soft bellies, from attack, and something primal in you tenses up. Waiting for the strike. For the snapping of jowls into your soft skin. 

None come. Stupid. Of course—

"Jus'a little scratch."

His hand leaves almost quickly as it appeared, and you drift aimlessly, unconsciously, after it. 

Snapped out of your strange reverie when Price calls out your name. Paperwork, probably. You've been hurt, and as a response—or a sneaky punishment—you have a mountain of forms to fill out, t's to cross, i's to dot. 

The weight of Ghost's gaze on you is almost as heavy as the heft of his hand, and you linger for a moment in that strange, phantom noose, wondering what it would feel like if he held on just a little bit—

"Go on, then," his chin jerks toward Price. "Get cleaned up." 

Something shifts inside of you. The open of a proverbial floodgate. 

It's instant:

The weight of his palm, the press of his fingers—you feel them against your skin, a phantom whisper. A breath. 

There's something almost comforting about the danger of exposure, you think. About bearing your neck to the biggest predator around. 

It's not an act of submission. You'd never submit to Ghost, much less anyone else, but—

There's a sense of vulnerability there. Trust. 

(It's that unseen edge of danger: a spark of life in a world that's always shades of muted grey, and draped in the folds of calamity. Death sits only a hair's breadth away no matter where you go. So close, you can feel the ghastly chill on your skin; always cold. Always freezing. You can set fire to your flesh, but your teeth still chatter.

For the first time in years, the skin on your neck burns with feverish heat.)

(The warmth fades. You chase it, pressing your fingers flat to your pulse, but still feel the icy drift of the waiting Sheol against your skin.

Cold to the touch once more.)

His fingers ghost along the skin of your wrist, skimming over your pulse. It’s soft. Gentle. A light brush that has no other meaning or purpose except to gain your attention— 

—and oh, doesn’t it just. 

Simon doesn’t let it linger. He pulls his hand away when your chin jerks toward him, and slides them into the pockets of his trousers. Hidden away. Out of reach. 

Your wrist burns. 

"Could've just said hello." 

His eyes are heavy under the hood of his sweatshirt and lined with the grease paint he couldn't scour off. Maybe he never even tried to. Glacier blue framed in ashen blonde. His eyes remind you of the sandstone cliffs that line the Corfu shore. Stark white. Deep blue. 

They're weighed down with something—exhaustion, maybe. The last you'd heard of him, he was chasing after leads that might link you to Shepherd with Gaz (who sent a dry text in the early morning, between the keds and the dad jokes, I don't know how anyone could be scared of this Manc; and: does the man ever sleep, or is he fuelled on Tenzing and spite alone?). And now—

“C’mere.” He murmurs, eyes heavy and lidded, sparking with something sharp, acrid. Humour, you think, heart stuttering in your chest. 

The word is uttered just as softly as the touch against your flesh, and the sound—the phantom memory of the featherlight brush—burns with the heat in his gaze, the warmth that seeps through the gloves, and into your skin. Bone deep. You can feel the burn of him congealing in your cartilage. 

"Finally gonna do me in?" 

It earns you a dry scoff, the barest hint of an eye roll. "If I wanted to, you wouldn't see me coming." 

"You could have just said no, never," you mock, stifling down a grin. "Or—I wouldn't even think about hurting you—"

The rest of the words are cut off when he steps closer. Liquid agility: he moves quickly for a man cut from Everest, sifting through the shadows with no more than a soft thud of his heel clipping the linoleum. Ghost looms before you in a blink, head tilted down to gaze at you. 

His hand lifts, knuckle grazing the swell of your cheek. It's softer than he has any right to be. A warm brush across cold skin. The Agulhas current colliding into the Somali. It ripples across your surface and rattles the rotting bones below. The empty husk of you trembles. 

"No," he murmurs, words distant and warbled under the roaring in your ear. You watch a flicker of something tremble across his face. A frisson shuddering too fast for your sluggish, mortal eyes to discern. 

You can't find the remnants of that ugly, gnarled thing that sometimes stares back at you when he's unaware. A beast hiding in a forgotten bivouac, creeping through the desolate ruins of a travesty that reek of upturned humus. A ghost disinterred from its slumber. 

But when you stare at him, bare-faced and uncertain, you see a darkening edge in the cuts of blue: deep canyons and crevasse that warm when your reflection swims in the glossy curve, wide eyes and parted lips filling the tenebrous, the shadows. 

The things, disentombed, are at rest. Clouded over by the shocked face that swims in endless pools of blue. 

"Never." 

"Oh," you murmur, honeyed sweet and viciously coy. "How sweet of you."

(It takes you a moment to realise he's mocking you.

Your heart still thunders like the words were true.)

Simon cleans the hilt of the knife for you, bare fingers scouring away the blood that stains the leather. He lets you watch as he works, content to lean against the wall in silence as he dabs a cloth in a petri dish filled with cleaning solution, and gently scours the stain from the hide. 

The motions are gentle, and familiarity bleeds into each swipe. This isn't the first time he scrubbed away the rotting blood of a dead man, and some part of you aches, stupid, knowing that it won't be the last. 

A testament to the age-old woes of an occupational hazard. 

Watching him work, silent and unbothered by your intrusion ("of all the bloody gits, you're somehow the least annoying. For now;"), fills you with a strange sense of comfort. Of longing. 

(Domesticity makes your teeth ache and your cheeks burn.)

His knuckles are bruised. He won't tell you how it happened. Doesn't say much outside of, it's done, already, so no sense in worryin' about it. 

You suppose he's right. No sense in dwelling over what you can't change. But the sight of his hands—bruised, cracked and bloodied—makes your mouth dry, and your heart race. 

There's something about his hands that captivate you.  

You can't stop staring at them. The memory of what his molten flesh felt like against your icy skin sears into you. The weight of his palm on your neck. Steady, solid. 

Something predatory had risen from within you, and cocked its head to the side, allowing him an ounce more of your flesh for him to take. To touch. 

A bear will seek the warmest cave to slumber after gorging itself on flesh and bone. A moth will kill itself just to touch an open flame. 

There's something alluring about heat. Flames. Fire. 

(Ghost smells of cedar embers: pyrolysis.

You're cold enough to want to burn the tips of your fingers in the open flame. To immerse yourself in the fire that'll char your flesh, and blacken your bones. Hollowed marrow, now filled with charcoal and brimstone.)

Your knuckles twitch. You curl your fingers into fists by your side. 

"Done," he says, sitting back in the chair, and shaking you from your reverie. 

He turns to you, the knife perched in his upturned palm. The leather is dark, wet, but the blood is gone. 

On the table, the water in the Petri dish is diluted pink. 

You let yourself linger when you reach for the proffered knife, knuckles grazing the rough flesh of warm, bare palm. Greedily catching tendrils of heat on the tips of your fingers. 

"Thanks."

His eyes brim with something you can't name. "Try to keep it clean, or you'll ruin the leather."

You want to say, no one told you to make it pretty for me in the first place, but you don't. You think, instead, of summit fever, of scaling walls. The view from the top of a mountain must be worth the risk, the danger. To see the curve of the earth, and pure blue of the horizon yawning for you. As close to god as a mortal can climb with their bare hands.

It hits you like a punch to the gut. The rock crumbling. The chossy wobbling. Your feet giving away, fingers scraping against the granite as you fall to the rocks below. 

He waits, eyes narrowing in that same shade of pensive contemplation as before. 

You're lingering too much. Touching him too openly. Greedily. You wonder why he lets you when you pull away, shamefaced and meek. 

(How much of it, you wonder, is an act and how much of it is real. Subconscious submission. Meek and unassuming. It rears inside of you, a skittish animal. But you're not scared. Not of him. Never.

A sick joke. Mortal folly. Something inside of you wants to know you're alive, and so—

Roll over and he'll think you're prey.)

You manage a shaky smile, mind racing to the same tremulous crescendo as the arrhythmic drum of your heart.

You don't meet his gaze. Can't when there's a deluge of something—ugly and awful—roaring through you at the sight of his hands, and the scars that cover them. Some, you note, deep enough to knick bone. False starts. Your teeth ache at the sight. Stomach knotting. Churning. 

Something vicious gnarls through the rotten entombment of your living heart. 

Gaze lowered. Neck bared. 

Hook, line—

"Got it, Lt." 

He fractures his fingers in Medellín after chasing a man through the barrios. They're cracked on the concrete when he jumps from the roof and catches it on a metal rod sticking out from the ashlar. 

Those same ones that tilted your jaw back, bones creaking under the strain of his grip.

Ghost doesn't flinch, of course—you don't even know they're broken until he asks for gauze and a splint at the safe house you're holed up in. You just see him swing that same hand out, catching the man by the throat when he tries to slip past. Steady. Solid. An expert killing machine, numbed to the pain, the carnage. 

Simon holds him tight to the wall by his jugular, barking out coarse questions, demanding answers. His voice carries (who are you working for? Where are the others? Gimme a reason not to snap your neck right now—), and you watch it all unfold from your perch on the rafters beside the alcove. 

Watching his six—supposed to be, anyway—but you can't stop staring at the way he dwarfs the other man. The curve of his fingers, long and thick, around his throat. It fits like a scarf. A neck brace. 

Simon's so—

Massive. Undeniably so. And seeing it like this is mesmerising. Hypnotic, almost. 

Whatever the man says is swallowed by the roaring in your ears; the rush of the wind whistling through the houses below. 

He gasps something out, eyes wide, and whatever it is, it makes Simon nod. 

Right, then. Target acquired. 

The moment his jaw snaps shut, information unveiled, he barely has a chance to beg before Simon's hand twitches. 

You hear the sharp snap from your perch above him, and barely have a moment to collect yourself before the man goes limp. Simon pulls away from him, a half step back, and without his support, he falls to the ground with a soft thud. 

His hand falls to his side when the man falls, and it's then, in the fading ochre streaking through the concrete, you notice the drops of red staining his gloves. They catch in the light—a Rorschach of brutality and death—and you can't stop staring at them. At his hands. 

A small thing, really. It's hardly anything noteworthy considering the litres of blood that saturate any of you on a particularly gruesome day, and yet something about the red smears on the back of his hands, staining the worn, faded white metacarpals catches your attention. Eyes glued to the way he shakes his big hand, as if throwing off the sting of split bones. 

(Even with splintered fingers, he was still able to snap a grown man's neck. The thought shouldn't be as enticing as it is.)

Later that night, you sit on your knees between his broad thighs, and gingerly take his bruised hand into yours. The contrast is laughable—his palm alone swallows the entirety of yours up. A cantaloupe to a satsuma. The mental image makes a smile crack on the corner of your mouth, a little twitch. 

He catches it. Always, always—

The hand that isn't several shades of indigo and burgundy lifts, settling on the curve of your jaw. Long, thick fingers splay out, stretching from the slope of your bone just below your ear, down to your chin. The entire expanse of your face cupped in his palm. 

Simon is a big man. Massive. 

(You sometimes forget that he's a direct descendant of Everest.)

Something inside of you gnarls, and tightens. There's always that thread of unease whenever he's juxtaposed to mortal men, to yourself; a lingering remnant, an atavistic fear for the beings that are bigger, broader than yourself. The primal instinct to run from the things that look like they could snap your bones into pieces with just their bare hands. 

It's a small thing, considering, and always washed away by the surge of desire that pools in the space it once occupied. 

He's big. 

(You've always had a fondness for heights.)

"Does it hurt?" 

If it does, he'll never admit to it; but you murmur the words, anyway—if only to feel the power in his hands when you move your jaw under his palm; the gentle resistance that meets you when you lower your chin, and hit the warmth of his skin.

"No," he says, and you fight back a smirk. "Are you finished yet?" 

His question pulls your attention back to his swelling hand, skin already turning glossy from the tumescence of inflammation. Irritated. Pulpy. The knuckles are split in the valleys; a deep divot of plum red. 

He has pretty hands, you think. 

Peached-tinged ivory dusted in a fine layer of coarse, flaxen hair, and broken into streams of scars and welts in a mosaic on his rough skin. Thick veins in ballpoint blue run from his knuckles to his forearms; all intersecting rivers that cross and meld into a confluence near the bend of his elbow. 

It's layered with fading charcoal ink pushed beneath his dermis. 

The slide of his palm is rough with a patchwork of scars that cut through his life line. Jagged little marks from the sharp end of a knife. Pockmarks from cigarettes. 

You like the way they feel on your skin. The weight behind them, the heat. The way they bend, and contort. Curling around the butt of a cigarette as he snipes game plans back and forth with Soap. Then the hilt of a rifle when he steadies it on concrete; playing God with gunmetal. 

The way they curl into loose fists by his sides when he's displeased, tense and ready for the impending alternation. 

How soft they are, then, when he slides the back of his hand against yours. Touches the small of your back, fingers curving around your waist when he pulls you close. 

The way he sometimes holds your face between his palms. 

You cover them up with the starchy gauze before lifting your chin to catch his gaze once again. 

His eyes are stagnant seas. 

You might think it's tranquillity that keeps the midnight blue surface from succumbing to the pull of the moon, and the tides; but that would be a fallacy. A death sentence. 

There's nothing calm in those depths. Below the thin film sits an endless abyss torn up by currents that carry the same inescapable grasp as the churning hydrology of a waterfall. It'll snatch you the moment you plunge into the blue, ripped through the water until it suctions you into a crevasse. 

But—

You hold his gaze as you lift your chin up, notching it higher until his hand slides down your jaw, palm now resting on the side of your neck. 

—You've never been afraid of drowning. 

"That's good," you murmur, tilting your head to the side until your neck is cupped in the palm of his hand. Algae blooms in those unfathomable depths when your pulse thuds against his thumb. "'Cause I was kinda thinking it would be nice to get your hands around my neck one of these days."

His hand twitches against your pulse. 

The usual caustic, derisive barbs and brackish quips are bereft from his hidden lips. You might mistake him as unbothered. Uninterested. But you've always been good at scraping off the veneer people tend to wrap themselves in, burrowing under their dermis, and the flash in those murky eyes—widened slightly at your words until it's a pretty polynya: icy white around a puddle of midnight blue—gives him away. 

His thumb slides down the column of your neck until it's pressed tight to the little jut of your jugular poking through thin, delicate skin. Ashen lashes flutter when you swallow against the soft press of his fingers; eyes flickering down, liquifying, as he takes in the way your muscles tense in his hand. 

He could close the entirety of his palm around the convex curve of your throat, and—if he really wanted to—his thumb and middle finger might meet in the back, nestled just above your spine. 

There's a heat simmering in your veins, stroked by the flex of his fingers as he mulls over what you're asking him for. The smooth, almost pensive way he brushes his thumb over your neck; an unconscious action, you think, with the way his lids dip, cresting over liquid black. 

His silence doesn't last long. Whatever conclusions he draws in that brief lull are tucked away, hidden from view, when he shifts in the old wicker chair.  

He leans forward a little—enough, you note, to hide the growing bulge in his slacks—and lifts his heavy gaze back to yours. 

"That so, pet?" 

It's rare you ever find Simon speechless, but you've known him long enough to know how to catch him off-guard. 

You swallow when his fingers thread through the loose hair along the curve of your ear, scratching his short nails along the skin of your skull. His thumb presses against the spot below your eye, lower lashes spilling over the tip of his finger when you blink up at him, eyes lidded with the weight of your want. Despite the languid, almost kittenish, way you tilt your chin until it's plinthed into his warm palm, your eyes are razors. Sharpened on the whetstone of your conviction. 

"Yes," you breathe. Your tongue runs across your bottom lip, as if chasing the words from lingering in the seam of your teeth. "That's so, Lt."

His fingers twitch at your words, eyes narrowing into those same contemplative slits as before. Then slowly, deliberately, he drags his hand down to rest once more over your jugular.

—sinker. 

Your nails dig into the hard flesh of his bicep until the skin breaks: crescent moons pool beneath the tips of your fingers. Red, raw. 

It makes him suck in a slow breath, the sound heavy in your ear. 

"Keep that up," he rasps, a livewire pressing into your naked chest. "And I'll have to do somethin' about it, pet." 

It's not an empty threat. You know Simon enough by now to know he never says anything he doesn't mean. But you still toss your head back, laughter slipping from your blood-red lips. High, you think, on the thrill of him. 

"Yeah? Promises, promises, Lt—"

A flash in liquid black. Napalm embers. 

One hand lifts, leaving the back of your knee. You know what's coming. Asked him for it, even, but it still takes you by surprise when his massive hand slips between your chin and neck, fingers curling until he has a perfect grip of your throat in his palm. Your head is forced back, pulse beats against his thumb; a frightened bird struggling in the grip of a predator. 

He isn't squeezing—not yet—but the hold he has on you is firm. 

You meet his stare, quivering in his arms. 

"Lay back." 

A slight pressure. You gasp. He feels the inhale under his hand, the thick swallow you take when he begins to push you down slowly. It makes him groan again when you lock up around his cock, tight and throbbing like the pulse under his fingers. 

"That's it." He holds you against the pillow. You don't test his grip, but you know it's ironclad. You're shackled to the bed. At his mercy.  

Tears burn your eyes. It's not fear, panic. The moisture leaking into the crease of your eyelids is involuntary. You want to tell him this, to let him know you want this, want his hand on your vulnerable neck.

You gasp quietly, the air barely slipping past the curl of his fingers—naked, warm, rough—on your skin. 

"Simon—"

"Relax," his voice is liquid sin; velvet draped over a kindling fire. The crackle floods you until you're panting, breathless. "C'mon…you can take it." 

Your fingers unfurl from his biceps, tips soothing along the irritated flesh, ghosting over scars—bullets, fire, knives, cigarettes: his flesh is a mosaic of history you're barred to ever uncover—but the way his muscles coil under the softness of your hands makes your chest lurch. 

You trail them down until you reach the thick forearm bent over your sweat-slicked chest, nails catching on the throbbing veins until you hear the rasp of his breath under the mask. 

Your palm is tiny, almost fragile, in comparison to his wrist. Wrapping your fingers around the thick of him is like holding onto the end of a bat. Your hands can only cup the width; a perfect crescent. 

It's that—the immense power, the strength of him, buzzing under his storied skin that makes your belly burn with the fever of your want. He's so—

Massive. 

Strong.

You can feel it, now. Fingers brush over the veins on the back of his hand, a seal around your throat, and you know that he's holding back. Has to. He could snap your neck with an ease that should terrify you. You've watched these same hands throw knives into men's throats. Watched them wrap around their necks, crushing the bones until the struggling ceased with a gut-wrenching snap, and they fell, limp, to the floor. 

His eyes flutter when you swallow, when your small, delicate throat works under his clutch. 

He has the capacity to ruin: 

Simon—Ghost—can break your neck without a flinch. 

And yet—

You meet his eyes, lips trembling, and then you slowly tip your head back. 

Submission. You give yourself to him wholly. 

(A toil—

come closer, pretty thing.)

Simon's breath stutters in his chest, his hand tenses. Eyes widened. The whites are stained with tendrils of red. 

His next breath is a snarl that bludgeons into your core. He leans down, cock jarring something inside of you that has the cosmos burning into your retinas. 

When he speaks, his words are raw. Scoured with sandpaper. It's almost animalistic when he growls your name, adds:

"So good for me, pet."

He matches the praise with a sharp jerk of his hips, sinking in deep until you can feel him throbbing in your sternum. 

When you clench, spasming around him, his fingers flex. 

It starts slow. 

He readjusts his grip until you're a perfect fit in the palm of his hand. A little bird begging for respite in the claw of a hungry lion. 

Ghost has never been a man of mercy. 

(And you'd long learned to stop trying to barter with a hurricane.)

There is no rhythm to the way he fucks you. An interrogation expert, skilled in torture, he keeps you on the edge the whole time. Left to do nothing but cling to him, and take it. All of it. Whatever he wants to give you. 

You suck in a breath, but it is stopped when his hand squeezes. Tighter, now. The air in your lungs is compressed, forced out until they're empty. 

His pulse beats against your throat. His heat is an inferno, a fever; he presses into you until you're panting, head soporific and gummy under the intense blaze of his body. Hard, firm: there is no give when you notch your knees to his ribs, pressing your caps into his flesh. He's unmovable. Unshakeable. 

Liquid pleasure spumes from that unfathomably deep place he batters into with his cock, and the tips of his fingers as he burrows both into your flesh. 

It's too much—

His hand drops from your knee, resting on the pillow beside your head. It brings him closer—now, almost chest to chest—and smothers the air from your lungs completely. His eyes, however, steal the last wisp of your breath away. 

Standing on the edge of a singularity, gazing into the event horizon. Black holes ready to swallow you whole. 

Bereft of oxygen, you begin to crumble in his hold. 

"That's it," he rasps, fingers tightening. "Fuck—you're so tight—gonna strangle me, pet—"

Your breath is clinched by the palm of his hand. Futile gasps, hiccups, spill from your lips as he shifts inside of you, bracing his knees on the bed, and driving forward until you see stars. Until you claw at his wrist, back arching like a bow. 

The cosmos tastes of gunfire. Smoke. The heavy scent clogs your throat until you're choking on the embers that seep from his skin.

"I'm not done with you, pet." His timbre pitches, low and sultry; a rough graze. A scraped knee. "I could do this for days."

It makes you whimper. Makes you thrash. He means it, too. Always. Always. He'll hold you down until you're drowning in it. 

Your head swims. Hypoxia bleeds into your eyes. 

"Simon…" you whimper when his hips slot into yours. "Simon. I'm—"

The words are swallowed down when he ruts into you again, driven mad by the clutch of your body, and the vulnerable way you look at him. His head drops, moussed hair tickling your nose. 

"Fuck, pet—," it's chiselled out of him. A warning, perhaps. Don't. Don't say any more. Don't—

His voice is polar when it drifts over you. The chill alone freezes the words in your throat. 

"You like this, don't you?" Detached. Distant. He can't let himself feel the quiver in your voice, the ache in your throat. If he lets himself have this, even a meagre amount of it—

You don't think he'll be able to let go. 

The words are tucked back into the pocket carved out in your ribs just for them. They'll sit until he's ready, until the storm in his Rorschach eyes dissipates—if, of course, it ever does. You'll wait for however long that might be, even if it lasts a lifetime. 

(closer, now—)

Your fingers spray wide over his skin, soothing and gentle—calm pets over a ruffled plumage—until you feel the tension bleed from his coiled muscles; softening back into the pliancy you've come to expect from him. 

He'll run if you're not careful. Flee. Disentangle himself from the weaved knots spooling between the fibrils of your bodies, atoms merging and moulding together in a joined entity. Severe himself even if it means losing limbs. 

You think of old dogs, strays. The ones that weave through the villages with matted fur, and battle scars; the wizened, grizzled muzzles from a short lifetime on the run. Wild, feral. Touches that don't cause hurt are bewilderingly foreign—the idea of a hand that doesn't maim, doesn't break is as unfamiliar to them as living inside of a home. 

The only way to gain their trust is patience. Perseverance. 

And so, you pull back. Let him breathe. 

"I love it, Simon."

The breathy utterance falling from your lips makes him twitch deep inside of you, a groan spilling out of the cage of his chest when he feels the vibrations of his given name against his naked palm. 

"Fuckin' hell, pet—," you might call it a snarl, a growl; a mangled curse in your likeness dipped in the palpable ache of his pleasure. 

He says nothing more. A man of little words and heavy actions, he shows you what he won't say, what he can't. 

His cock hits something deep inside that makes you see white; a nebula of bliss pooling deep inside of you until you're spasming over the absurd thickness of him. 

Ghost holds it for a moment, and it's that—the midnight hour pooling in black, covered in grease paint, and clothed under a thick balaclava—that, the subtle way he takes, takes, that makes you all too aware of who is fucking you right now. 

You're not fucking Simon. It's Ghost. Deadly. Dangerous. His eyes gleam in the light; dark and empty. Black holes pulling you in. 

He drags you to the edge until your eyes cross—hazy and unfocused, slipping into that blurred realm of semi-consciousness—and it's when you begin to slip down that precipice, head numbed and full of him, he pulls back. 

His cock bludgeons into you, seated deep, and when the head kisses the deepest part of you, grinding sharp, and intense, his grip on your neck eases. 

Air floods your lungs so quickly it hurts.

His name rushes out of you on the deep exhale, a wrecked, aching plea. It sounds like a hymn when you breathe it out, and the reverence of it makes him shudder. Makes his hand clench, and his cock throb. 

You feel it all. The deep twitch inside of you. The spasm of his knuckles. The way the air clicks in his throat, catching in his larynx. A thick swallow. Another spasm. You take it all. Everything. 

No one wrenches you open, leaving you raw and exposed, like Simon. A wound that never heals. A sickness that never dissipates. You carry the weight of him between your ribs and thundering heart. A place of safekeeping, protecting this precious knot that gnarls inside of you from everything else out there that might want to hurt it. It thrums now, dizzy with the feeling of him so close to you. 

His hand lifts from your thigh, reaching down to snag both of your wrists in the wide expanse of his palm. He drags them up, arched high above your head on the pillow stained with your sweat. The brassbound grip of his hold, locking you tight in the cup of his hand when he presses them into the pillow steals the last vestiges of air from your lungs. 

The hold on your neck eases. His long, thick fingers brush over the smooth column of your throat. You suck in a deep breath, letting it fill the vacancy of your lungs, and take the rich, dewy scent of him in until it clots to the fibrils inside. 

Filled, you think, to the brim with him.

He smells of chemise, tonyon, and dried hawthorn. Wet chaparral after a wildfire scorched the thicket to cinder and ash. 

With him perched above you, now drenched in the fullness of him—his smell, his touch, the way he sounds when he fits deep inside of you—you find the once unutterable words again. 

They've been buoying up and down for months now, maybe even years. Always left to rot in their esophageal prison, but as your airways open up, as this moment of utter vulnerability and underlying trust brims inside of you, hotter than the bliss burning through your core, they slip out, tangled up in the way you breathe his name. 

The orison rings with the palpable weight of your wants, oiled in the gossamer of your pleasure. It lingers in the scant space between you. 

Simon shudders as it tickles against his skin. A featherlight whisper over naked flesh stained with the brine of sex. 

You gaze up at him, burning the sight of him arched above you like the fruition of your yearning carved in flesh and bone, and a part of you selfishly hopes the barbed hooks of those words you're barred from saying sink into his pale flesh. Piercing deep enough to sink into his bloodstream. 

Infectious. Incurable. 

It's dark, and awful, and full of that ugly longing that makes your teeth ache to mark him up for the world to see, to know, that he's been conquered, claimed. Stupid. Silly. Infantile. You can't own a person, can't chain them to you through ichor and offerings, and yet—

Ghost groans when your teeth find purchase in the meat of his shoulder, a rough noise that rattles through your empty bones, and fills the barren space where humanity once beat. 

—You spill his blood on the altar. A sacrificial offering. Yours to keep. 

"Fuck," he rasps, the word sticking to the side of his raw throat. "Tryin'a give me a new scar, pet? Don't got enough already?"

Despite the weight of the words, they're uttered with a caveat that's almost indiscernible had you not the wherewithal to know him as intimately as you do. Equivalency bleeds in the vowels. 

It comes as no great surprise, then, when he huffs in your ear, dips his chin, and then sinks his teeth into your pulse point, just above the place where his thumb rests. 

(Matching offerings. A tangled web.)

The sharp sting condenses into a blistering pleasure: a damnable bliss. It's the victory of your acquisition, the satisfaction of your merger. Your release bludgeons into you—a mix of euphoria and pain—and the world around you wobbles, narrows. There's a pinpoint where only the hazy shadow of ashen hair fills your periphery. The dark silhouette of a man you itch to pry open and burrow inside. 

A muted noise spills from the back of your throat. His name, maybe (Simon, Simon, Simon), but it's swallowed by his wet groan—blood-drenched and bitter. 

Maybe it's the bitter tang of you on his tongue, or the dribble of red on the corners of your mouth, caught when he flickers his gaze up to your own, catching the smear of his blood staining your lips, but he shudders above you. Rumbling like an earthquake. The clash of plates grinding together. It splits you down the middle, and shakes the chill from your bones until you're a molten mess of liquified limbs: polymer bones, bubbling blood. 

You melt into the mattress below with a hymn of his name—a blasphemous orison that has no place amongst the debauchery of sex-soaked sheets, and blood-stained teeth, but fits like a second skin when it brushes past your lips. 

Simon follows. He says your name—a rough and gritty howl in the back of his throat—and then he's burying himself so deep inside of you that something breaks apart, gives, and the consuming hole, the vacuum he wrought, is filled with him. Him, him. A void. A cenote. 

A gaping chasm of rot, need. Unquenchable.

"Fuck—" he snarls like a beast, the words crushing your ribcage, and leaking brimstone in your empty marrow. "Feels so fuckin' good, pet—"

There's something alluringly victorious about catching the biggest predator in the pen. A man made of death now bowing at the knees with just a flash of vulnerability; the slightest tilt of your delicate neck. 

A string coils around your finger, pulling taut when you tug. 

Bones ache when you move. Muscles scream when you swallow. Still, you lean forward, and syphon the heat from his skin, the blood from his veins. 

Your spoils to keep, wrapped up prettily inside a diaphanous web. 

Your nails rake across his flesh when you pull him close, curling around him in a spooled knot. When you grin, you feel the thick film of blood on your teeth. Vicious, victorious. "We match now, Simon." 

He might run.

But you've always been good at running: a long-distance sprinter in perpetual motion.

(You'll catch up, no matter where he goes.)

And when he breathes your name through the wet fabric of his mask, trembling with his release, you know that some things are worth chasing after. 

"You, uh… got anything to tell me?"

Gaz can't keep his eyes from straying to the moulted bruise on your neck—a startling smear of charcoal, flaxen, and indigo, broken in a perfect crescent of teeth—and each glance feels like a physical touch to your sensitive, inflamed skin.

It's childish. Immature. 

(You wear it proudly, flaunting your win to the world.)

"Not really," you shrug, body buzzing with heat. It simmers in your veins now. Syphoned warmth that spools in your bloodstream, leaks from your marrow. "Just tamed a stray over the weekend. You know how it is."

There's a strange cut in melted brown. A look you're much too familiar with. One might mistake it as condemnation, scorn, but you know Gaz. The quirk of his lips gives him away. 

"A stray, huh?" He intones contemplatively, timbre breezy, light, as he was mentioning the weather in Birmingham. Light drizzle, should clear up in the aft'. "Don't come aggin' to me when this backfires on you, yeah? Some never learn to stop biting." 

Gaz pointedly looks out toward the table where Ghost and Price pour over another set of documents—shoulders drawn tight as they toss ideas and plans back and forth—before turning back to you. 

"But I guess you know all about that already."

The barb in his tone—equal parts admonishing, and scathingly facetious—prickles against your skin. You offer a small smile, a languid shrug, and let your gaze drift, dragged back to Ghost. 

His hands are wrapped in white, his mask pulled over his neck, hiding your mark from the world. Another scar on top of a storied history of others, but far kinder than anything else he'd ever received. 

It prickles in your gums when you see him, and makes heat fill your chest when his eyes list to you, to Gaz, as if he can feel your stare, even when you're tucked away in a hidden crevasse, watching, waiting.

He won't come closer. Not when everyone else is around, but you catch the hunger in his gaze when you tilt your chin, exposing the soft, vulnerable curve of your neck, baring the bruise for him to see. It's rough, abrading. His eyes scrape over the varicoloured smear with a rapacious greediness that burrows under your skin. 

"I'm learning," you murmur, words muted, heavy with something that tastes like triumph when it slips out. "Baby steps, right?"

Ghost turns away first, tearing his gaze from the bruise on your neck, muscles tensing as he ducks his head, and forces his attention back to Price. 

In the corner of the room, a spider reaps the spoils of its fruit: a webbed sarcophagus around an exhausted fly that has long since given up on the struggle to get free. 

It opens its maw, fangs glinting in the jaundiced light.

Vicious, victorious: it feasts. 

(You drag your tongue over your warm lips, and feel the stirrings of hunger gnarl inside you once more.)

[saintlethanavir]

New fic? NEW FIC! Cullavellan fans/Cullen romancers rejoice, I am here with a new blorbo to kiss the big blonde man! Note: MC uses any and all pronouns/titles!

Rating: M Pairing: Cullen Rutherford/Lavellan General Warnings: Depictions of Violence, Eventual NSFW content, Depictions and Descriptions of Mental Illness, Addiction, PTSD, Blood Magic, References to Self Harm Chapter Warnings: Horror, Body Horror, Blood Magic, and Moderate Gore Chapter Summary: Abaddon Lavellan, First to the Clan, has been dispatched to the Conclave at Haven in the cold mountains near the border of Orlais and Ferelden. On the night before the talks are supposed to take place Abaddon encounters a ritual that will drastically change the course of their life forever.

It was much too cold this late at night, but it had to be done. With a slow puff of breath, the elf raises up from their crouched position in the snow – ears twitching every few moments. A  Dalish mage might not be dragged away by Templars – seeing as the Circles were defunct for now – but they would certainly take offence to a slight amount of blood being spilled on a magic circle. The pulse in their hand comes quick and painful as they pull taut a rag around the laceration sliced through their palm. Had to be done, they repeat to themself, shaking out their fingers and glancing around their meagre camp. Just the previous day they had come upon their rations rifled through and their furs dragged halfway out of the previously secured tent flap. Shemlen will do anything when they suspect danger – ironic that if caught, Abaddon would be accused of exactly what they suspect the humans thought they were doing. Blood magic. Not that this was going to topple empires. It would stop nosy little brats from stealing from them however. 

Right as their fingers graze the leather edge of their tent, Abaddon’s ears perk up at the faint noise of a shout – somewhere far off in the darkness. Curiosity pricks at their thoughts and they begin to wonder if a fight has broken out finally between the conclave attendees when an arc of sickly green light practically explodes from a doorway. The doorway to the Temple of Sacred Ashes. There’s another muffled shout following the magical energy and several people begin to poke their heads from their tents, craning their necks towards the sound. For a long beat everything is silent, not even the softly falling snow can be heard, as if the entire world is holding its breath. Perhaps this is a collective nightmare, considering the high concentration of magic here. A dwarf close by shakes out his greying beard and looks over at the slight elf blearily, his small blue eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. 

“What’s goin’ on?” 

“I don’t think anyone knows,” Abaddon responds softly, unable to pull their gaze from the emerald sheen colouring the dwarfs' shadow. Something deep within the magic sings to them. It reaches out infinitesimal claws and hooks into their flesh – they are unable to, or do not wish to, pull away. The crunch of snow is drowned out by the lullaby filling their mind and consuming their thoughts, as they alone walk towards the green light. It’s familiar yet a tune they can’t quite put their finger on. Whatever it is, it’s much too sweet and enticing to let go of. No one moves a muscle, helpless while they watch Abaddon make their way towards the Temple doorway and become bathed in that horrid light. 

CONTINUE READING

[purplealmonds]

Unearthing more of the Karakasa's terrifying powers ☂️🌊💀

In this above scene, Kusu himself says that this withered corpse is a mononoke's doing. What are the implications of this?

Potential spoilers and plot predictions below the cut!

Based on the corpse's outfit and fingernail color, I am fairly sure that Mugiya, the short Yahei-coded senior maid, is gonna be the first real casualty of the Karakasa.

Or at the very least, someone who's very close to her will die, given the color coordination. But the identity of this corpse is not the point of this analysis!

The point is - this is a manifestation of the Karakasa's power. It is ritualistically fed things that are important to the ooku's women, until they are hollowed husks of their former selves:

But even after this, these women still one more "precious" thing they have yet to feed to the waters: their beauty and desirability. These are also the only aspects of the women that Tenshi values.

When the Karakasa was finished with its first unfortunate victim, all that was left of her was a withered corpse. Ugly. Undesirable. Stripped of these aspects, a women would be utterly useless in the eyes of the ooku.

If the Karakasa was birthed from the women's grudges, perhaps its actions is a form of retaliation against the ooku. These women are upset that they have to abandon vital parts of themselves for the sake of one man, Tenshi, who might notice them. Given the vast majority of them are lowly maids, the chances of that happening are infinitesimally low.

In the latest trailer, the ooku is hosting a big festival, one that even commoners are allowed to participate in.

If I were to hazard a guess, it is a ceremony in which Tenshi chooses a woman to bed with to conceive his heir.

The women in the grey ponchos are Tenshi's favored candidates. Save for Fuki, who's a commoner, they all likely came from aristocratic backgrounds. With Fuki in the midst, perhaps there was hope amongst the maids that a person of their lowly status had a chance to be noticed. Heck, even the newest maid, Asa is (very briefly) spotted wearing that poncho!

But then Fuki was chosen and that hope was irreparably shattered.

The catalyst, perhaps, is their collective realizations that all their sacrifices were all for nothing. They wallow in their despair while the masses celebrate.

But soon, that despair turns into rage. So the first casualties of the Karakasa's wrath are one of the enforcers of this pointless ritual:

Indeed, Awashima, Utayama's subordinate, is implied to be the Karakasa's next victim:

Next up on the hit list is Utayama, whose downfall being plotted by both human and now supernatural entities alike. Did you notice that despite her otherwise youthful appearance, her hands are almost as withered as the corpse's?

After these authority figures are deposed, what can the Karakasa do with this boiling anger? As the manifestation of these women's jealous grudges, it becomes greedy. It wants more.

It turns to the women, destroying the parts of themselves that Tenshi finds valuable - a twisted act of rebellion to "free" the women from the ooku's grasp.

Then, ever hungry for more, it turns to innocent bystanders. If the women of the ooku have to lose everything they hold dear, so does everybody else who idly let this happen.

In summary, in addition to manifesting as a terrifying force of nature, the Karakasa wishes to consume the life force - the thing that is universally precious - out of everyone.

[anteroom-of-death]

Yayo

Synopsis: Gideon Shepherd wastes a life or two over a girl.

A/N: thanks to @lex144 for inspiring me to not give up. Will be a 2 parter/prequel. Dark fic time. Sorry for no publishing of all .... burn out. Listen to the unreleased version of Lana del Rey while reading.

How many times must he repeat the same life, the same lie, over and over again? How many times could he go through the exact same suffering and the exact same thwarting of evils in this world?

Gideon, in his sixties, again, having a cup of tea in an inconspicuous tea shop, mused. He’d just stopped a plane crash he had stopped dozens, if not hundreds of times. He was losing count. Losing control.

He knew it was only a matter of time before he was locked back up, dressed in red with those detectives again. Bargaining with the girl, Lucy. Trying to make her understand her son and him. Each time it seemed a tad more futile.

He tied the bag’s string around his finger like he’d done with that red one in that room. Repetitive and simple as always. Perhaps even a nervous tic.

He’d always die, just before total lucidity. It was annoying. And it just added more into his already over-crammed skull. He felt bursting at the seams. Almost like he had multiple brains.

Preposterous!

He admitted that in this particular cycle he’d been a little more neglectful of his needs. More rash. Less calculated…It was getting worse each time. More world-saving. Less keeping himself intact to save it.

He had to change all of this. Maybe take a breather. He’d still stick to his schedule from thousand lives past. This time, it would be difficult, just infinitesimal.

He even had been to this little tea shop every single time. Exactly the same day, the same time. He had observed people casually. Not much to do with anything…

Everyone was safe by his calculations.

The slouched-over nervous girl was going to accidentally water board herself with her drink in a few seconds.

On cue, her little iced coffee spilled. She sighed, seemingly looked up, as if beckoning a favor from God. She grabbed a napkin and went to wipe herself and the ground up.

In an echo of so many times previously, “Nothing comes easy, does it?” She muttered and slouched into her knees. She started to scrub a particular big stain in the making on her floral skirt with her spit.

It was probably incoherent to anyone who didn’t hear it or know to hear it time and time again.

She eventually pulled herself off the ground, her hip cracked. The slit in the side rode up, accidentally flashing the grey panties she wore…

Suddenly he felt like focusing in on her.

Maybe next cycle he’d offer to help her.

For now he got up and offered her his napkin. A small smile spread on his face.

“I have a spare coat in my boot…you can cover it up, keep it.” He offered another shiny object.

He didn’t know what exactly started coming over him. It was carnal, primal. Effervescent even. She obviously suffered from some self-confidence issues. Despite her bold outfit choices. Her large earrings clanked against her necklaces. Skittish. Unsure.

It made him incredibly hard.

He hadn’t allowed himself any pleasure, just the continuous pursuit of justice. In his own way. The only way that was dramaturgically correct he felt. He had to be the one to make it happen. The cops were as much as complicit as sometimes perpetrators.

“Go to the toilets and freshen up, yeah?” He instructed her plainly. The pit of the toll of all his dark deeds starting fray him like the trim of her denim jacket that seemed slightly too small.

He forced himself out to the car and popped the boot. He grabbed the aforementioned coat.

He walked back into the shop just she exited the loo.

She sniffled and saw the coat. It was black, utilitarian. Nothing special.

“Thanks.” The smile was weak, she still was obviously reeling from her previous remark of nothing coming easy. However, it was genuine. She was thankful and seemed placated by the action.

“I’ll…get another coffee.” She remarked as she tied the thing around her waist.

He couldn’t help but notice it hung sensually around her hips. Accented the torso and her tits in a weird way. How would it be to bite them? Mar them with his teeth?

“Why don’t you join me?” He offered.

“I can’t.” She frowned, a line developing in her still somewhat-young forehead that didn’t go away when her face relaxed moments earlier. It was fully etched in.

How lovely was it that such a nervous wreck had somehow made it this far in life? To see such a line. Pity it was there in the first place.

Such a contradiction…

She got her new coffee.

He still felt incredibly urged to take her and hide her away. Stop her from herself and her own nervous nature.

The proverbial butterfly was stepped on, who knew what was in store now…

Next cycle, he remarked to himself as he got into his car and drove off. He had to complete this. Make the Lucy woman understand. Die, come back. Same shot, different day…

His cock still remained at attention. The depraved thoughts still rung in his thoughts.

×××××

Here he was, back at the tea shop. She was walking in. Here was his chance!

He’d fantasized about this chance for decades now. Ever since the first rush of teenage hormones rushed into his body. Again.

She walked in, her tote bag swinging.

Only one chance. He could blow it, hypothetically. But this opportunity was literally once in a lifetime. No matter how many he’d been allowed. (Or cursed with depending on current emotions and outlook…)

He knew the pitfalls of approaching a woman and making oneself known. It came off predatory. Not that he wasn’t predating her, in more than one sense of rationale, or definition. Was there any good, wholesome way to approach her and her grey panties? He’d killed enough rapists to merit knowing what they liked.

And yet, here he was entering his era of perversion.

He firmly believed he had to liberate her from herself. Somehow.

Never one for true romance, even in the first time he seemingly entered the cycle, he lingered unsure.

He got up and made a show of asking for extra napkins.

One word, one small line would disrupt this. She’d not spill her drink, and he’d garner an actual chance with her.

“Those are some lovely necklaces.” He tried for a bit off a soft entrance.

She touched the tangled mass of gold on her neck, “Oh! Thanks!” Her left hand went to fiddle with some of the pendants on a few of them. The free thumb rested on one of those comically-large hoops.

She placed her order and went down to fight for her life to find her pocketbook.

“No worries,” Gideon assured, “I’ve got it.” The fiver, easily produced from his jacket pocket.

“Oh?” She flashed a befuddled, nervous half-grin at him. “What do I owe you?”

“Nothing.”

She shook her head. “Thanks so much!”

He felt moved to go back to his seat. He didn’t know exactly what to do to go from here.

Something told him to just toss her in the boot and drive off. Or perhaps, to lure in promising safe travels to wherever she was headed.

The darkness rubbed off so easily.

The toll of a billion lifetimes.

He remembered some parable of a little bird and a rock. Something about a boy saying something about it being ‘One hell of a bird…’

He sucked on the options. They all weighed heavy on his heart and his conscience.

He ultimately chose the less devious of them all.

Just asking.

He saw her go to pick up her drink. Would she spill it? He half-wished to see. See of the actions interrupted the truth of time. Such a small gesture maybe would provide her a sense of calm? Could it? Would it?

He started to rise yet again from his seat, and she spilled it anyways.

A flash of grey panties, a mutter again about nothing being easy for her, her spine twisting into a serpentine knot. Her lovely skirt and top stained.

He offered her a clutch of napkins. Then repeated last life’s offers.

“Are you my guardian angel? Or something?” She asked. “First paying for my latte, now this?”

Fate must have been sick to give her him if she thought he was an angel. Even in a semi-facetious manner. Sure, he was on the side of angels, in a sense. However he was far from celestial. Mortal, frequently.

He went out, produce the jacket. Came back. She tied it.

He offered to pay for her replacement- “On caveat you join me, an old man for a bit of a chat on a slow day.” He went for the genteel route.

She involuntarily shook herself, her eyes blinking rapidly.

She looked at her phone’s clock.

“Sure. Why not? Only five minutes, yeah?”

She sat at his table and they chatted. Her name was (y/n), she was (insert your age, reader) and she was between jobs. The drink went much easier down now that she was sat. Gravity and natural klutziness weren’t fighting her here.

The way she placed her elbows on the table further accentuated her heaving chest. Despite her current state, she seemed to breathe a little harder than Gideon suspected someone should.

Maybe her baseline anxiety messed around with her rhythms.

Gideon gave her the most basic and innocent of responses. Just enough information to tantalize. Keep it light, keep it friendly, he chided himself over and over again…

She glanced over at her phone and saw the time…she excused herself and left. Thanking him for everything.

She even brushed both of his cheeks with a small, friendly, definitely foreign kiss on each.

The door bashed her on her way out and she tripped on her way over the bus stop across the street. She put in her headphones and leaned against the pole marking it.

He felt them burn in response. His cock stayed as hard as rosewood.

He regretted not getting her number.

Or he could follow her discreetly. Put in what he learned from men worse than him by a thousand-fold into practice. Keep her somewhere safe, where she couldn’t be harmed by anyone, let alone herself.

Yes, that would be fine. He would just be looking after her best interests? Correct?

Correct.

He waited a moment and trailed his way to his car.

The bus pulled up, she went in. He turned his car on. A simple game of cat and mouse. If the cat were ever so interested in the mouse’s uninterrupted survival…

Or perhaps, did he not want her to meet a darker end at anyone else’s hand but his? His thoughts kept delving deeper. Were these dark, frankly barbarous images his fantasies regarding this (Y/N)? Or just fears?

He did notice from their brief conversation that she did have some scar tissue around her wrists. So even if he did very into these mental images, it would probably be for her betterment. They were obviously self-inflicted.

He felt himself grow more and more irrational. There was something burning in his chest. An itch that maybe he’d scratch just this life. Then the next, go about, offer her the basic kindness of the jacket and go.

If he was doomed to repeat every sinful day of every sinful life, what was one slip up? He’d done so well before.

He was trying so hard.

Yes, why not?

[meetinginsamarra]

mayprompts2024, #26 manipulation

Chapters 1+2 here on AO3

+++++

White Pony Tattoo - Part Six (manipulation)

Sherlock fetched a tissue paper and wiped the spilt tea off the coffee table. Since it was low, Sherlock had to bend down a lot and John caught a glimpse of Sherlock’s inked chest under the tight grey dress-shirt.

Is he doing this intentionally or was that just coincidence? John wondered.

The black lines were going down far and also covered Sherlock’s pectorals. John really would have liked to see more, trying to figure out what kind of tattoo it was but the moment passed quickly and Sherlock had already sat down in the chair opposite John’s.

Smiling nicely, Sherlock quipped. “Nearly choked, have you? Just like I said, I’m dangerously attractive.”

John huffed. “You’re also dangerously seductive and not even subtle about it, you know?”

“Thanks, I know I’m hot. People tell me all the time.”

“You’re not humble either.”

“Why should I when I know it’s true and I’m right?” Sherlock raised a questioning eye brow.

John huffed again. Counting on his fingers, he summed up. “Okay, so you don’t deal in apologies or intuition. You don’t do humbleness or boring designs and you’re convinced that your opinion is the only valid one. Anything else I should know?”

John looked straight into Sherlock’s eyes. Something electric sparked in the space between them when Sherlock stared right back into John’s.

“I’m not shagging clients until their tattoo is healed and our business relationship has come to an end.”

John coughed, then shook his head in exasperation. “You are a menace.”

“Nothing new,” Sherlock grinned, “also, you like it.”

“Yeah, apparently, I do.” John broke eye contact and felt the loss of Sherlock’s attention immedeately like tiny stabs to his heart. Suddenly, doubt filled the wounds like toxic glue.

Is he actually interested in me or is this flirting just a game? Am I only another conquest on his list of successfully seduced people, manipulating me to behave like a star-struck idiot and laughing about it? Is he a cat toying with the mouse? I’m not someone’s mouse. Not to Mary or him or anybody else ever again.

“What about you?” John’s voice came out harsh and accusatory. “Seducing and shagging a lot of ex-clients then? Lots of one-night stands, boxes to tick on the list?”

“No. Not at all.”

There was an infinitesimal twitch of Sherlock’s mouth. He tilted his head, furrrowed his brows and quizzically watched the expression on John’s face. “Tell me, John, what did your ex-wife do to make you so suspicious?”

John snorted. “She let me think she loved me back. But she only wanted to keep me as a back-up in case her affair didn’t work out. She had moved on but lied to me for months about it.”

“Who was it? The postman or the milkman?”

“Neither.” Despite John’s gloomy mood, he had to chuckle at this ridiculous assumption.

“Yoga teacher, tax accountant, bed shop assistant?”

“Are you trying to cheer me up?”

“Yes, and considering the wonky smile on your face it’s already working.”

“It was our dentist.”

Sherlock spluttered. “Well, that’s truely embarrassing.”

They looked at each other and the toxic waste in John’s heart fully drained when he chimed into Sherlock’s infectious laughter.

++++++

tagging some people @totallysilvergirl @peageetibbs @lisbeth-kk  @raina-at @calaisreno

[hoboblaidd]

@avrorean

Regret is something I know well. Take care not to cling to it, to hold it so close that it poisons your soul. When the time comes for your regrets, remember me.

Upon waking from a millennia of slumber, the Dread Wolf hunts for an old friend.

When at last he found the strength to rise, Solas went not to the ruins of Arlathan in the north, but south to the Brecilian Forest. He chased a ghost, but he had felt her as he slept, and upon waking, her presence in this broken world was undeniable and as strong as before he'd rebelled against the gods. Mythal lived. And he would find her.

The forest had a deep memory, and it was untouched by the deafening nothing that permeated the rest of this world. His damned Veil felt so much thinner here than in its oppressive chokehold over the roads it took to get there. The forest did not repel him when he passed its borders, but its paths yawned before him in an ever evolving maze. Were he not so weak, he would shift into the Wolf and make the forest bend beneath his feet. But instead, he wandered into the dark canopy and followed the feeling of her presence.

He met a spirit inhabiting a grand oak who bid him welcome. It did not know where Mythal was, though it stated it had felt her presence some nine years ago in a Dalish camp not far south. He thanked the spirit and followed the winding paths to a long abandoned clearing. His lip curled at the few overgrown statues that remained, idols of Sylaise and Ghilan'nain and Andruil. He made his little camp near the crude carving of the Dread Wolf. It meant nothing to him but a point of focus. The Dalish clan had passed it in and out of their camp. He placed his wards and laid his head near its base, and used the totem to find them.

In dreams, he came upon the remnants of Lanaya's clan. They were no longer physically here, but they recoiled at the sight of him in their dreams. They prayed to the false gods and set ethereal hounds on him. 

“They know you,” said Wisdom once he fled the hounds.

“They know nothing,” said Solas, and retreated deeper into their minds, burrowing past their consciousness into their memories. 

A hedge witch, human, who felt more than looked like the Mythal he had known. But even this memory of her was cloaked in a spell that obscured her entirely, hiding her even from those who would wander the Fade. Shrewd. 

“It is her,” said Solas hopefully.

“A shade of her,” Wisdom allowed.

So he looked to her companions for some clue to find Mythal. The smallest was in front, the apparent leader of the ragtag troupe. Young. Terribly young, even as mortals went in comparison to him. She had an earnest face, and though lines were drawn below her tired eyes, they still shone with the wonder of youth.

But now Solas recoiled. Her blood was poison, as was the taller half elf at her side. Corrupted by Blight. He had not been awake long, and had engaged few in conversations during his dogged beeline towards the feeling of Mythal. He had seen the Blight scars in Ferelden, but he hadn't seen it in a person since he'd held back the sky. The infinitesimal change in their eyes, the hue of their skin, the smell of a slow, creeping death within the blood.

He thought he heard an all too familiar laugh.

It shocked him awake in a cold sweat of fear. After all this time, Ghilan’nain’s reach remained indomitable. That fear chased all thought of returning to slumber. Could she hear him, even now, trapped for millennia? Could she still feel him?

He sought out the Grand Oak once more. It knew little of the goings on of mortals, but told him the tale of the spirit of the Forest and the Grey Wardens who had brokered a respectful peace between spirit and elf. Solas begged for anything else it might know so he could chase the memory in dreams. It had none. 

He left the Forest for the nearest sign of what passed for civilization in Ferelden. It was a roadside inn, nothing special, and they called him knife ear but passed him a two day old bowl of 'stew.' He ignored it all, and spun a believable reason for them to discuss the Fifth Blight. They focused on their 'heroic' war stories, and Solas nodded along respectfully while his fist clenched into his robes beneath the table. At last, the conversation turned from the haunted Brecilian Forest to the tragedy at the Circle tower on Lake Calenhad. "What was her name?" he insisted at last, the veneer of the humble elf slipping slightly with his frustration.

"Who, the Hero of Ferelden?"

"Yes," he said, his jaw clenching.

"Dunno."

Another legend that subsumed an identity. "And her companions?"

"One of them was the bastard son of the arl of Redcliffe."

"The king, not the arl."

Redcliffe, then. It would do.

The journey from the western edge of the Forest to Redcliffe village was a long one. Signs of the Blight persisted along its path, as did the fights between mages and templars that scattered the Hinterlands. He watched them from the shadows in distaste. He felt the dispelling of magic the Templars relied on, and watched mages crumble. They were unorganized, angry, and more than a few turned to blood magic in desperation. Each skirmish was a messy affair that fizzled out as quickly as they began.

The thatched roofs and wooden domiciles around the docks of Redcliffe Village looked largely new. Save for the Chantry, there were few surviving stone buildings. Another effect of the Blight, he assumed. At least they had rebuilt. He found in its center an old storyteller, humored and ignored in her ravings by the village's inhabitants. He went to her first, and she spun a tale of the Fifth Blight that seemed more true than not, albeit embellished and flowery. "Alistair," she confirmed the name of the bastard son. Proclaiming that he could have been king. 

He did not rent a room at the local inn. He instead sat on the far edge of the docks, allowing himself to fall into an uneasy sleep. From the Fade poured darkspawn and the screams of the villagers. In the thick of a desperate battle, the vestige of Mythal's face remained obscure. The bastard Alistair slashed with a sword and shield, effective despite his lackluster armor.  A mabari war hound bayed as it released a hurlock from its maw, and a proud Qunari warrior cleaved with a greatsword. Magic hummed beyond them, and he followed its trail to the child he'd seen in the Forest. This must be the so-called 'Hero of Ferelden', then. A mage, which he approved of dispassionately. But still as poisoned as Alistair. 

“They need not have chosen this battle,” said Wisdom.

“Why did they?” asked Solas, though he knew before Wisdom gently pushed.

“For the same reason you chose yours.”

“Futile, then,” he said, bitterness lacing his words.

“Not to the people who lived. Not to the people saved.”

The dream changed. No more where they in the muddy chaos of Redcliffe village but within the simple stone walls of the castle itself. A child’s shrill voice rang with laughter as a demon puppeting it.

Mythal’s echo was there, her face still obscured as if in a fog. 

“A glamour?” Solas mused.

“A safeguard,” Wisdom corrected.

Fear seeped off every stone and in the faces of each paralyzed human. The demon’s grip was too strong. But the little mage stood firm, her hand outstretched. The memory pulled as Fade cast Fade, and the little human met the demon in its own domain. 

“She is afraid,” said Fear.

“She persists,” said Valor.

“She is not who I seek,” said Solas.

“She may be,” said Wisdom, and the girl triumphed. She stood for a moment alone in the Fade, the expression on her face far from glorious as the ring of unseen spirits encircled her.

“She slips, poisoned, mourning, breaking. Harrowed,” said Compassion.

The girl looked up. She did not see them, but Solas saw her. She was so young.

Solas woke with the dawn, and caught a dwarven bookseller as he opened his shop along the lake’s edge. “Where is the Circle?” Solas asked.

“Of magi?” the dwarf scoffed. “Other side of the Lake, but no use going there now with the mages all over the countryside. Best steer clear.”

It was not so far a journey following the path around Lake Calenhad. He took the road at times, and others he trudged through the mud for a more direct route. The lake was, at least, peaceful, save for the old wooden wrecks still dotting its beaches. There were fewer open skirmishes between mages and templars along this route, but they’d instead been replaced with bandits stalking the edges of the road. Solas may have been much weaker than the past, but he had the advantage of underestimation. A lone elf in ragged clothes, wandering an unfamiliar road through the dead of night? The bandits did not expect even this neutered discharge of his magic. They posed little problem.

It was sunset by the time he reached the tower. The dock at Kinloch Hold was deserted. The windows of the small tavern were boarded shut. It was as good a spot as any to make camp. But before he rested, he stood on the shores and looked out at the imposing tower jutting from the lake. Jagged rocks flanked its spiral sides, blotting out the brilliant orange sunset. A long bridge had crumbled away, restricting access to boats. How anyone could look at this and see anything other than a prison he did not know.

The Veil felt like it had been ruptured and clumsily mended here. There were as many demons as there were gentler spirits congregating around the abandoned husk. 

Solas forced the boarded door of the tavern open and laid out his bedroll. There were too many memories intertwined here to easily parse through. In one, Mythal’s masked echo fought through a horde of demons and blood mages with the bastard and Hero of Ferelden, cutting a path to the tower’s heart. He tried to focus on the witch, but the little Hero had paused in a doorway.

“She is…crying,” said Solas.

Wisdom said nothing.

As before, Fade pulled on Fade, and in one corner of his vision the little Hero slumped to the floor before a demon of sloth. In the other, she followed spirits through a maze of memory. The sloth demon was felled, and the party rose shakily to their feet.

Purpose found him then, and guided him to another memory. A restored Circle not yet marred by the demonic chokehold, where the young Hero stood before a stern Templar and her mentor alone, facing the punishment of another’s crime. Her face was pale and her robes looked too large for her. 

An elder Grey Warden, the blight fully steeped in his blood, intervened.

“He brings poison,” said Vengeance.

“He brings deliverance,” said Hope.

“The two are not so dissimilar,” said Solas. Words were exchanged, but Solas drew on the Fade to wake.

Before he could, Wisdom took his hand, and together they followed the elder Warden and the little mage out to docks. The sun rose a delicate pink over the lake, the tower’s shadow receding the further the Warden and his charge went from the confines of the Circle. 

The young Hero crouched before a blue wildflower with a look of pure wonderment on her face. Her small fingers glided over the fragile bloom, and where Solas expected her to pluck it from the ground, she simply leaned in close to smell it.

“Fresh, free, clear and uncluttered,” said Compassion.

The older Grey Warden said something, his voice lost in the swirl of the Fade’s recollection. But the young girl turned with excitement toward a robin on an adjoining tree.

“Unmarred and unfiltered, they sing to her and she listens,” said Compassion.

“Such things are fleeting,” said Solas.

“Yet no less worth enjoying,” said Wisdom.

“This memory is not wisdom,” said Solas. “It is frailty.”

“No,” said Wisdom, “it is curiosity.”

The girl laughed as the robin fluttered away and a fox stretched awake with the breaking of dawn.

“This is pointless,” Solas insisted, the grey of his regret choking the beauty that he refused to see. “Where do they go?”

“To her, the journey is just as important.”

“It is not to me.”

“Patience, Wolf,” pleads Wisdom. “Allow her this dream.”

The girl held a branch of fern in her hands, running her fingers along the seedlings as she tucked a fallen flower into her hair. She smiled.

“We must press on to Ostagar,” said the elder Warden, exasperated. Impatient.

Ostagar. “Is it far?” Solas asked in time with the girl who asked the elder the same.

He didn’t wait for Wisdom’s answer. Solas pulled its location from the elder Warden’s memory, and the dream dissipated around the girl as she cast one last look at the rising sun. “She needs this,” said Wisdom.

“I don’t.” And Pride returned to the waking world.

Ostagar was too great a journey to walk without wasting an inordinate amount of time. Solas watched caravans pass on the road around Lake Calenhad and stepped to the side of the road when at last a promising one drove toward him.

An elf driving a cart, haggard and bare-faced as Solas himself. The elf blanched at Solas’ request for a ride to Ostagar, but the elf agreed to take him as far as the Hinterlands. 

“You don’t want to be going to Ostagar,” said the elf as Solas sat beside her on the cart. Her cargo was a meagre assortment of vegetables from a humble farm, well past the date of their freshness. 

“Don’t I?” Solas said distractedly. 

“Them woods are haunted, friend,” said the elf. “The Blight’s never left.”

“If that were true, I suspect we’d be long dead.”

“You Dalish or something?”

Solas scoffed. “No. Why do you ask?”

“You talk funny.”

“I’m just tired,” said Solas, and that appeased the elf.

They rode the better part of the day, the elf looking around at every rustle of branch. The shems didn’t like elven merchants, she explained. Or any elves in particular. “Better with two of us than alone,” she said.

“I suppose,” said Solas.

The elf was from Denerim, and her anxiety filled the silence Solas craved. She talked of the mages and templars, the Blight, and everything else that came to her mind as she tried to fill the nervous silence.

“The Blight ended in Denerim, did it not?” asked Solas.

The elf shuddered. “Terrible day,” she said. “I was in the alienage. Didn’t think I’d see another sunrise. Thank the Maker for the Wardens.”

Solas took the opportunity to look to the tree line to hide the roll of his eyes. “You saw them?”

“The Wardens?” the elf sighed wistfully. “I did. She was wonderful, even for a mage.”

“She?”

“The Hero of Ferelden. They didn’t have to come and help us, but they did.”

“Did she have companions with her? Another mage, perhaps?”

“Aye,” said the elf. “But - ”

“What was her name?” Solas insisted. If he could get the witch’s name, it might make it easier to break the masking spell she’d used.

“Amell,” said the elf. “I’ll never forget it. Her armor was dented and ill-fitting. There were just the three of them, the Wardens.”

“Not the Wardens - the witch.”

“Oh,” the elf frowned. “I don’t know. I didn’t much notice her, not with the Hero of - ”

Solas sighed. The rest of the journey passed with the elf’s romanticized tales of the Hero encircling darkspawn with the very force of nature that the alienage itself rarely saw.

When they finally paused for the night, Solas inscribed a rune ward in the elf’s cart, and slipped away while she slept. It would keep her safe, and that was payment enough in his mind.

He did not sleep that night, not when he knew that Wisdom’s chastisement waited on the other side of the Fade for him. He walked through the Hinterlands beneath the constellation of Silentir looming above him. He rested at sun up for a moment, looking out at last over the darkness at the edge of the Hinterlands. The haunted forest of the Korcari Wilds.

Solas felt the shift in the air the moment he passed through its borders. It was old, familiar magic. His heart stirred at last. It was the unmistakable imprint of Mythal. He was getting close.

At first, the scars of the decade old battle were few, but the closer he got to the ruins, the more debris littered the ground. By the time he reached the open field of battle, he had to step around rusted blades, broken shields, and the bones of the long dead. Ostagar loomed above him, and he picked his way up into its gutted halls. A great battle such as this would see many spirits, and even for him, it would take time to sort through the disparate memories. 

He dreamt at Ostagar for three nights.

aOn the first night, he waded through the memory of battle to the night before. The elder Warden stood above the corpse of a warrior, his blade darkened with crimson. The young girl from the Circle, from Redcliffe, and from the Brecilian Forest stood with a goblet too large in her shaking hands. Poison swirled within it, and her eyes were wide as she realized that her only two options were death.

“She would rather have watched the sunrise,” said Wisdom.

“It would have ended the same,” said Solas.

On the second night, he saw the memories of the terrible struggle. On one flank he saw an old warrior in simple but well-cared for armor. His eyes were sunken, his black hair matted to his sweaty brow. The veteran commander looked at the carnage, looked at the terrified faces of his soldiers, and called a retreat, all while a great signal fire burned atop a tower behind him.

“He abandoned them to die,” said Despair.

“He left to save them,” said Compassion.

“He knew the battle was lost,” said Wisdom. “He would not lose more.”

“And yet he did, in the end,” said Solas.

“You would have done it better, Wolf?” Wisdom pressed.

“I would not have done it at all,” said Solas.

“As you say,” said Wisdom, catching his lie, and they watched the elder Warden struck down in a sea of black and red. A blighted ogre tore Ferelden’s king to pieces. The screams of the dying and the corrupted rang out from the splintered cement. 

On the third night, he followed the two young Wardens into the tower. Purpose ran with them, guiding them up the spire. Hope kindled the flame as they lit the brazier. Despair encircled them as the charge never came.

And then, at last, Solas saw her. Not the hexed shadow he'd been following, but her. The great beast plucked the unconscious Wardens from the top of a flaming tower. She seemed to see him as a grin split her draconic face, and his heart leapt. She had been here. “She lives.”

Solas forced himself awake and to his feet. He followed the echoes of memory deep into the Korcari Wilds. She felt close enough to touch, and no amount of wisdom could slow his run.

What hope he’d felt died in his chest when he reached the dilapidated hut at the Wilds’ heart. It had long been abandoned. The earth near its simple door had been scorched from battle.

“They killed her,” he choked.

“She does not die so easily.” It was not the voice of Wisdom that answered. He had not realized he’d fallen asleep.

“Show me,” he pled.

But the scene did not change. Not immediately. Words of memory swirled around him, and in them, Solas recognized her voice.

So much about you is uncertain, and yet I believe. 

Figures danced as shadows shimmered into the Fade. They were faceless and incorporeal. All but one. She stood not a foot in front of him, alone as she had been at the Circle, in the Fade, and in the forest. The little mage stared at him with wide eyes, fear hitching her every breath and resolve steeling her every heartbeat. The others didn’t matter. Not the bastard, not even the witch. Their shades fell away until it was only the Hero, Solas, and the unmistakable presence of Mythal.

“Who is she?” he asked at last.

“The one who stopped a Blight.” It was not Wisdom who spoke to him. He was no more alone than this Hero had been when she stood before this hut.

“She survived?”

“She did. As did I.”

The Hero continued to stare at him, and he did not turn from her to face Mythal. Ghilan’nain’s poison was fresh in her veins - but then the scene shifted. The same hut, the same pair of them facing each other. But the Hero was older, her armor finer, the corruption more pronounced. Yet her eyes were no less afraid, and her heart was no less resolute.

“Who is she?” he asked again.

“Hope, compassion, destiny. Love. Or just a girl.”

The dream began to collapse around him until, for a moment, there was nothing but air between the little lost mage and the Dread Wolf. 

The presence behind him began to fade. “Where are you?” he asked it.

“Oh, you know me,” chuckled his very old friend, cryptic as ever. “Around.”

[sviidoll]

carnival ⸺ lando norris

warning : messy makeout

in the heart of monaco— the glitz and glamour of formula 1 races often overflow into the night, an extravagant after-party unfolded. the air hummed with excitement as the elite crowd flooded into the exclusive club, pulsating with vibrant lights and the rhythmic beats.

among the guests was kaia walker, an alluring woman with striking features who moved with effortless grace. her eyes, sparkling with intrigue, scanned the room until they landed on a familiar face: lando norris, the mclaren driver, who exuded charisma as he mingled with his fellow racers and famous celebrities.

kaia’s steps were deliberate as she made her way through the crowd, her gaze never wavering from lando’s causing their eyes to meet, and a subtle smile appearing on her lips as she approached him.

"hey there," she greeted him, her voice smooth and alluring over the music.

the brunette turned to face her, his expression lighting up with recognition. "well, hello. fancy seeing you here," he replied, his english charm evident in his voice.

she chuckled softly, the sound carrying over the lively atmosphere. "couldn’t resist the allure of monaco’s nightlife," she quipped, her tone playful.

soon, their conversation began to flow effortlessly, each word accompanied by laughter and shared glances that hinted at an undeniable chemistry. kaia found herself in a trance with lando, brown eyes locked on his grey ones that seemed to change based on the recent pictures of him on the internet.

eventually, the pulsating energy of the club which beckoned the pair to the dance floor, where they began to move in perfect synchrony to the infectious rhythm of the music. both bodies pressed together as kaia danced closely into him, arms up while one of lando’s gripped on her waist, a smile plastered on his face as he watched her.

kaia found herself opening her eyes open to gaze into his, a deep desire flooding her system as she leaned close into him until their lips collided with one another.

a groan emitting from lando as they deepened the kiss, lando’s solid hands found their place on her waist, fingers brushing the soft fabric of her dress while kaia’s heart raced in her chest as she responded to his touch, her delicate fingers threading through the tousled strands of his hair. 

her body fitting perfectly against his, with his arms enveloped her in a protective embrace, drawing her closer as if he never wanted to let go. the warmth of his touch seeped into her skin, igniting a fire that blazed within her.

fingertips grazing the nape of his neck, then gently threaded through the strands of his hair, gripping them as if to anchor herself in the heady moment.

lando’s hands tightened their hold on her waist, drawing her infinitesimally closer.

kaia’s lips, soft and slightly parted, moved in tandem until lando’s tongue, daring, traced the seam of her lips before seeking entrance, a silent request that she granted with a soft, involuntary sigh. their tongues meeting in a dance.

once the kiss finally broke, kaia’s lips, rosy and slightly swollen, as lando gazed down at her.

his hands slowly moving from her waist to her thighs, and he tightened his grip on one subconsciously causing her to gasp softly, grabbing onto his arm.

“let’s take this somewhere.. private..” she murmured to him, starting to lead him out the nightclub as lando couldn’t but grin widely.

“lead the way, beautiful.” he simply stated to her, happy to be dragged away and to somewhere private where he can worship her properly.

author note : trying to get back into writing again, enjoy this . . . !

mention . . . @louvrepool , @l0starl , @luvvtrent , @yukinss

[fictionalsimp09]

space – @dorlenemicroficprompts – 440 words 

The thing about outer space is that no one knows how big it is exactly. No one knows for sure if there is life beyond Earth. No one knows just how infinitesimally small they are in comparison of the universe. Nothing matters other than enjoying the one life they have and living it to the fullest. And that is exactly what Dorcas intends to do as she approaches the blonde Gryffindor beater after practice. 

“Mckinnon!” she shouts as she runs to catch up to her. The pair of them stop outside the changing room as the rest of the players file in, their chatter fading into silence. 

Marlene furrows her brows, a hint of annoyance in her voice as she asks, “What do you want, Meadowes?” 

Dorcas tries not to be hurt by how much she seems to hate her; she’s just reciprocating the energy Dorcas gave when they were first forced to work together in Potions. She thought Marlene was just another loud, annoying Gryffindor who hates Slytherins with a passion. Turns out she was so rude to her because she didn’t know how to deal with the fact that she had a crush on her. It only took several months and an intervention from Regulus and Pandora for her to finally realise this. 

Now, as Dorcas stands before Marlene, she seems to have lost the ability to form words. She takes a deep breath, thinks about how she’s just a speck in the vast universe and that potential embarrassment and ridicule doesn’t matter in the long run, especially when there is a, albeit small, possibility that this could make her happy. “You look beautiful.” 

Marlene snorts. “I’m all gross and sweaty. What do you really want?” 

“You look beautiful,” she repeats. And she truly does. Her cheeks are flushed and her hair is sticking to her forehead. Dorcas thinks Marlene will be beautiful no matter what. She wonders what she’ll look like when she’s grey and wrinkly. “I like you.” 

“I didn’t take you for a prankster.” 

“This isn’t a prank,” Dorcas sighs. “Though I understand why you’d think that. I just- when we started talking, I was so nervous and I had all these feelings and it came as a shock to me, so I was mean, and I’m sorry for that, but this really isn’t a prank.” 

Dorcas lets out a breath when she finishes talking, and her heart shatters as Marlene starts backing away from her. “Hogsmeade, this weekend,” Marlene says before leaving her alone on the pitch, confused about the entire thing, but beaming like an idiot. She’s going on a date with Marlene! 

[more-than-tender-curiosity]

While we’re here. Here’s a canon hair/eye color chart. With evidence.

Nick: Blonde/Blue/Green the evidence is very marginal and I usually disregard it, but it does say: “This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod..." 'Nordic' was eventually coopted by the Nazis as a companion word to their Aryan bullshit, and in 1924 (when this part was likely written) there were even some measures to separate 'dark whites' (Italians, Jewish people, etc) from 'lighter' white people. All bullshit, but all this to say the implication at the time of writing would have meant light hair and light eyes. Also. Fitz had blonde hair and blue eyes and we know about this fucker and his self-insertion. Like I said I usually ignore this but it is kind of funny because I have never once seen a representation of nick with anything other than brown or black hair Jay: Blonde(?)/Blue This comes from the Princeton holograph. since fitz decided to deprive us in the final product. For his hair: "...his bright suit and hair..." (pg 139). jay's suit is caramel colored in this scene so the closest I can imagine is that his suit and hair are of a similar color, like perhaps a reddish blonde at most but certainly blonde at the very least, if the description lends to anything. Fitz wrote as follows in regards to Jay's eyes: "...at a table with a handsome blue-eyed man..." (pg 103); "...the blue-eyed man looked at me..." (pg 103); (he also calls them handsome eyes on page 105.......); "dark blue eyes opening out into lashes of shining jet" (pg 105); "...with such a wild look in his blue eyes..." (pg 115); "...his eyes, damp and shining like blue oil..." (pg 131); "...damp and shining like blue oil..." (again) (pg 137); and i think that's enough thank you scott Daisy: Dark(?)/?? There's two bits of evidence, mainly, for Daisy's dark hair. I'm assuming it's dark brown but that's just me. First is the whole 'Nordic' bullshit thing, where Tom is hesitant to include Daisy in the 'Nordic Race' or whatever, which would imply that she has darker hair. Also, Fitz directly confirms this with the line "...and once he kissed her dark shining hair." HOWEVER. Daisy does say that Pammy has her hair, and Pammy's hair is 'yellowy'. This is even weirder considering Tom is remarked as having 'straw hair', as in blonde. So. Maybe we CAN'T rely on the alcoholic for consistency. Daisy's eye color is not remarked on, just that they're bright. So maybe light. but who knows. One other note is that Ginevra King, the woman Daisy is based off of, had dark brown hair and eyes. Jordan: Blonde/Grey This one is easy, thank god. As for her hair, it's written "...autumn-leaf yellow of her hair..."; and again "...her hair the colour of an autumn leaf..." girl get a toner. and also the forementioned Nordic bullshit argument. Jordan was included with Tom and Nick. Her eyes: "Her grey sun-strained eyes..."; "Her grey, sun-strained eyes..." (again) Again, the direct inspiration for Jordan is Edith Cummings who had, shocker shocker, blonde hair and grey eyes if a period-appropriate painted color portrait is to be believed. Tom: Blonde/?? For his hair he's described as a "sturdy, straw-haired man of thirty". the argument could be made that that is more in regards to the texture but knowing fitz it probably means that tom is also. blonde. you'll start to notice a pattern. As for his eyes, all that's really mentioned is that they are shining and arrogant. no color Tom is based off a few people so I won't rely on any of them for hints or clues. George: Blonde/Blue

This one is pretty cut and dry. "He was a blond, spiritless man, anaemic, and faintly handsome...hope sprang into his light blue eyes." Myrtle: ??/?? If you can find written evidence for myrtle having red hair I'd love to see it because I've been searching for a while now and I can't find it in any draft. It's a movie thing, I guess, like switching jordan's and daisy's hair colors around in lazy deference to eurocentric beauty standards and a pitiful attempt at acknowledging fitz's penchant for color-based symbolism <3 The only clue for Myrtle having red hair is that her sister does. SO maybe she does, too. Her eyes are a mystery. Klipspringer is also blonde and balding, too. God's least favorite creature I guess. so it's safe to say that fitz just loved making everyone blonde. like, everyone. and considering that he himself said that all of his characters were just him, that makes an unfortunate amount of sense.

[shredsandpatches]

and mostly I wanted to post some ficbits. This bit carries on from the one here but is going behind the cut for hypothetical gore and actual smut. It's from the sexy demonic possession fic and also contains some bloodplay, whatever the demon equivalent of internalized homophobia is, and Mephistopheles being his aggressively emo self (this is Marloweverse where he's aggressively emo).

"I don't remember ordering you," he says.

"No," Mephistopheles says, touching a fingertip to the hollow between Faustus' collarbones, where the scattered drops of blood have begun to congeal; now he traces a path downward, eliciting a thin stream of red blood that bubbles up from soft white flesh to cling to the sparse, greying hair that lies across Faustus' chest and dwindles into a fine line that bisects the pale expanse of his belly. Faustus, otherwise spare of physique, is somewhat well-padded about the middle, and yet Mephistopheles can feel his abdominal muscles tense as his own sharp-edged fingernail plows its shallow furrow across the skin, an infinitesimal foretaste of the world to come. He presses a little harder as his path curves around Faustus' navel, and as more blood wells up he imagines how it would feel to slit open the skin properly, to cut through fat and muscle and peel back the peritoneum to rummage around in the hot, pulsating entrails. Faustus might even let him do it: he is deeply compelled by pain, more curious about the inner workings of his body than those of his soul and intoxicated by his ability to endure injuries that would be fatal in ordinary mortals.

Now, though, he merely groans softly as Mephistopheles withdraws his hand, just as he reaches the place where fragile skin gives place to coarse hair, and brushes the bloody tip of his finger across Faustus' lips, which part eagerly for him—for the taste of his own blood. Mephistopheles' mouth twists into a smirk as he pulls his hand away again, bending in to kiss the blood from Faustus' lips, pausing to bite at his throat before moving downward to lap at the drops of blood that trickle down his chest. Faustus' hands make their way into Mephistopheles' hair and clutch tightly as Mephistopheles' teeth graze the soft curve of his belly, pausing to nick the skin as he kisses his way downward. He can feel Faustus, tense and breathless, trembling beneath him as he licks up the blood he's drawn forth, savoring its earthy, metallic tang, savoring the choked gasps and hoarse moans that escape Faustus' throat. He is already fully hard again by the time Mephistopheles bends to take his cock in his mouth, and the cry it tears out of him as Mephistopheles swallows him to the hilt is a far more pleasing sound than his irritating questions.

Faustus comes quickly, spilling his seed into Mephistopheles' throat, salty and metallic and human as blood. Mephistopheles draws in a breath he doesn't need and raises himself up enough to rest his head on Faustus' belly, listening to his breathing gradually even out; his fingers tangle themselves idly in Mephistopheles' hair, but he has abandoned his line of questioning in favor of a comfortable, sated silence. Mephistopheles is spared from admitting the simple, awful truth: he puts up with sharing his master's bed not out of subservience, not to more fully ensnare his soul, but because he simply enjoys it. It is shameful, pathetic, perverted: to have lived in torment for millennia, deprived of true intimacy, and then to find it with a human, a fragile scrap of flesh, a clod of soil driven by electrical impulses. What does Faustus expect him to say? That he loves him? It is as impossible as it is disgusting—and yet, were Mephistopheles pressed to put a word to his feelings—

He runs a finger over Faustus' bare skin and imagines peeling it from his wretched mortal body. He wishes, as he has done countless times, that he could sleep.

[ariadne-mouse]

The Anachronist please! 😯

Hi there! :)

The Anachronist is an oldie but a goodie, a WIP that I started in 2021 and wrote a tidy 13k centered on that oh-so captivating feature of Aeor: stasis bubbles. However my momentum fizzled out as I got pulled into other projects. I'm including it in this meme because my motivation to finish it has been given a boost by the current Aeor arc! Nothing like seeing the source concept again to get the wheels turning.

Here's an excerpt under the cut:

“Hello, my friend,” Essek greeted quietly as he approached, smiling at the familiar joke. “How is your day?”

Inside the sphere, the Aeorian mage did not reply.  He never did, of course, but once Essek had begun talking to him many months ago, he’d found it difficult to stop.

“I almost made it past the temple yesterday,” Essek reported, floating cross-legged above the cracked stones of the street, leaning his cheek tiredly on his hand. “I’ve been hoping to find another arcane canon to protect the outpost.  But those ice basilisks are very frustrating.  And there are three of them now, and I am low on healing potions.  As a calculated risk, it did not… what is the Common phrase?  Pen out.”

He paused, imagining what the mage might answer.  It was a harmless game, if an undignified one.  It didn't matter: no one was here to see it.  No one was here to see Shadowhand Essek Thelyss, secret traitor to the Dynasty, having a pretend conversation with a relic preserved in arcane amber.

“Yes, I thought it best to stay back, as well.  But now that I am here, I don’t suppose you will finally tell me where you are running off to, or what you are casting?” 

Silence.

Essek sighed. “I thought not.  You do enjoy your mysteries.”

Idly, Essek mimicked the somatic shape of the wizard’s hands, as he had many times before.  What could this gesture correspond to?  What shapes and movements came before or after?  The wizard’s mouth was slightly open - the beginning of a verbal component?  What was he saying?

His current guess was still something in the realm of transmutation, but he didn’t know what.  There was too little information, and Essek was not a transmutation specialist.  

Stirred to movement by his thoughts, Essek got up and took a slow turn around the dome.  He trailed his hand across its glassy surface and left iridescent swirls of energy in his wake, like eddies in a stream. Looking down, he noted once again the stark transition between the dark grey ruin outside the dome and the smooth, painted street within it.  On the inside there were even some small flowers peeking through gaps in the stone, their leaves an exotic green, their white and yellow button faces a cheerful, childish imitation of the sun that would have been overhead.  

Essek hypothesized that the reason the spheres in this sector glowed so brightly was due to Aeorian sunlight captured within - its energy reflecting off the street, the people, any objects or plants - and trapped in that infinitesimal instant, forever.  They reminded Essek of decorative trinkets that were popular in the Dynasty: daylight flowers preserved in a blob of resin or glass. Ranging from the size of a plum to a melon depending on the wealth of the owner, they were illuminated from within by an enchantment, a symbol of the Luxon giving life to the earth.

This frozen Aeorian mage was like Essek’s very own preserved flower.  Not for religious vanity, but a symbol of learning, and innovation, and the collaboration that must have been flourishing in a city run by magic users.   A symbol of a world Essek would never be able to have.

Not the warmongering - there was plenty about Aeor he would not want to replicate - but a society of thinkers and creators and experimenters, unshackled from austerity and tradition?  To sit across from this man and talk openly of sacrilege?  Of progress?

“Well, I suppose sacrilege didn’t work out so well for you either, considering what happened here,” Essek concedes aloud. “But I can imagine your heyday, no?  The few books I have recovered speak of so much learning, so many projects - you can’t blame me for being wishful.  The last collaboration I tried… did not go so well for me, as you know.”  He bared his teeth in a bitter laugh.

The Aeorian mage listened to his words in silence and absolute stillness, just like he had all of Essek’s confessions.  Theft of the beacons, betrayal of his people, lying to the small band of adventurers who eventually became his friends… all of it, spoken into the dusty silence of the Praesidis ward, to ears that could not hear him. 

The perfect audience.

[talictries]

lando criminal AU fic idea

“We’re not gonna’ get caught,” are Max’s convincing words and Lando has a completely dogshit feeling about this. 

“Dude,” he scuffs his sneakers against the payment. “If we do, I’m fucked.”

Button’s gonna kill him. Well, only if he gets to him before Ricciardo or Alonso do.

“Well, you won’t get fucked,” Max shoves his hands into his hoodie - no doubt where his screwdriver and pocket knife are - accent sharp - emphasis on the ‘t’s. “Because we will not get caught.”

Max’s view on things is so black and white. Lando swims in grey. Speaking of grey, that’ll be the only colour he sees on all four walls if he ends up in the can.

Really, the likelihood of getting done is infinitesimally small. How many times have he and Max been out on the town? Hundreds since they got into this industry at sixteen - two teens tryna’ make a living. Max has never been caught once.

And as for himself… well, he doesn’t really like to think about it.

Especially not now - seeing as they’re side by side scouring the streets in the dead of night. 

Carjacking is something he’s good at. Nimble fingers, precise movements, the knowledge of cars and engines and everything he and Max studied together as children in the back of Nana’s daycare wishing they would be Formula One drivers.

Fate didn’t take them there in the end - no matter how much their small minds dream. Instead, it has taken them to a McLaren.

“You good?” Max’s voice is gruff.

“Yeah,” Lando bites his lip - seals his fate. “Let’s just make this quick.”

And in thirty seconds they’re out of London’s bitter cold, and seated as passenger and driver. Max turns the heating on. Lando presses gloved fingers to the vents and feels his skin and muscles there for the first time in three days.