#its nearly been a year since she died and its still just as raw and painful as ever | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

writteninlunarlight-years · 6 months ago

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Salutations! Might be a… oddly specific request? So feel free to throw it out if you don't like it! I've just had this idea floating in my brain for awhile and I think its cute.

So basically Lucifer (Hazbin Hotel) makes friends with someone who is also really grief stricken over their last relationship. (I was thinking that they would be a widow/widower but you can go whatever route you want) They both find solace in one another and feel like they understand eachothers pain. They both get really close and before he can realize whats happening, Lucifer is head over heels and it hits him like a freight train when he realizes it. He wants so desperately to hold this person to his chest, protect them, and build a future together that neither of them had thought possible before; but he is also terrified of scaring them off if he does anything. Both of them are wounded, and Lucifer isnt sure how deep or raw those wounds are. So Lucifer just ends up turning into a puddle of a man when they are around.

Like I said, Ive just had this rotting in my head for awhile and I am not nearly skilled enough to do anything with it, sooooo have fun with it if it peaks your interest! <3

Broken Hearts Still Beat Again

"I may not be your first love, kiss, or date..... but damn baby, I want to be your last everything." -Unknown

Tw: Angst, Hurt-Comfort, Failed relationships, fear of abandonment, learning to love again, taking risks, slight spiciness at the end

~Prior to the beginnings of the Extermination~

You can't remember how long it's been since it happened. Years, months, and days are far too long, honestly. All you could remember was his face, his sad, sad, lonesome face, and the grinning menace Adam beside him. Yes, that's right, Adam, the first Winner. You, too, were a Winner till all that time ago. How long?

Your husband, best friend, and closest confidant was also a Winner. You were Winners together. You two died in your sleep peacefully due to a shared illness. It was sweet, almost too romantic like St. Peter said when you two crossed the gates.

Then it happened; you don't know why Adam sank his teeth into you. Yes, you were an incredible fighter in the mortal world, teaching children how to fight for their safety and never to provoke. So when he came to you and invited you to the exorcist guild, well, you were happy to train young fighters to protect themselves. Your partner was even happier to watch you flourish in Heaven as much as you did in your mortal life.

Then you overheard Lute talking to an exorcist one day. You heard about the extermination of the poor souls, the damned being killed again and again. This news broke you. Who would remotely allow this? Who would stoop so low?

You called an impromptu meeting with Sara and Adam to inform them of this horrible act Lute was performing. The tyranny she was showing against the other angels to go down to Lucifer's territory and kill again.

Only things didn't go as planned, no see you did go to the meeting; you spoke your peace, and then they just smiled at you, eery creepy smiles, sent you on your way, and told you it would be handled. It was all quite odd; there was no demand for a trial, no need for proof of your words, nothing.

When you returned to your home where your husband was, it happened all too fast. Exorcists were grabbing you; Adam was telling your husband something; his face dropped, and he looked at you with hate. You were shouting, begging, pleading for anyone to listen to you. No one would, and you were flagged as a traitor right then and there.

You were taken to a ledge, and standing there, you looked into your husband's eyes, tears staining your face, your throat raw from screaming. You could feel the saliva strands between your parted lips as you whimpered and cried. You freed your arm from one of the exorcists and reached out to your husband; it was too late as he turned from you.

He spared one last look at you, turning back with tears in his eyes. You called out his name once again, and Sara spoke her orders of your treason against the balance of good and evil. Then, you were pushed off the ledge.

You began to fall from heaven, assuming a more permanent death would be treating you soon. You closed your eyes; you didn't want your last memories to be death or Adam or any of what just happened.

You thought of your lover when you two were young and carefree the day he told you he loved you. As you felt the rushing of wind and air surrounding you, this thought alone was your solace, and then it all went black.....

~~~~ Lucifer's Pov ~~~~

The day that Lilith left was a cold, cold day in hell. Well, not for everyone, but definitely me.

The woman I gave everything up for was gone in an instant. Without a word. Without a trace. My relationship with Charlie was far more strained and hindered now. I was nothing now. A kingdom all to my own and nothing of value now that the two women I loved the most were gone. What was I to do in this lone castle whither away?

I turned to the picture of Lilith and Charlie, and tears formed in my eyes. It all felt too surreal to much. She was gone, my family gone, my life gone, all gone gone gone. As I sat there and cried, fists beating into the floor below, my wails echoing through the halls of my now abandoned residence, I felt so empty.

That's when an imp came in, holding a letter from the angels above. It was time to sign our agreement on the executions. Maybe that's why Lilith left; I was so willing to save our family that I gave up on our dreams for hell.

I should have spoken to her and let her decide, but they threatened Charlie, so I had to act. I had to save my precious daughter, my pride and joy. That's also why I had to tell Charlie that her plan to 'save all sinners' needed to end. I remember it like yesterday, sitting at the table with them, breaking the news of the agreement I would sign soon. They looked so hurt, so betrayed.

I honestly was a failure.

I stood, heading to the bathroom to clean up before my meeting. Soon after my name is signed on the soul pact, the first and only angelic building will grace hell, and the clock will start counting down. I was prepared for my subjects to hate me, but my family, it was all too much.

There was nothing to lose now, though, so hell with it. I made my way to the opening portal to heaven. It's now or never. I will sign this and keep the ones I love safe, even if they never know.

I love you, Lilith, I love you, Charlie.

~~~~ Reader POV ~~~~

When you woke back up under a dark red sky, you figured you had to have fainted while falling to your death. Yet when you looked down at yourself, you were the same old you. The only notable difference was that your skin was no longer pure white. You had greyed out some, and your clothing was torn from your fall. Looking around, you saw a giant pentagram in the sky and a large white orb to the right. Was that heaven?

Standing on your legs again, your back was killing you. You began to walk anywhere; people here were very different from the Winners. Death, porn, canabalizim, all of it fully welcomed. This would take some getting used to.

As you crossed the threshold of the city, now standing in the middle, you heard a horrible noise. It sounded like a bell, but it was so loud. You turned to your left, where the noise was coming from, and there was a clock and some numbers; just above the numbers, it read 'days till execution.' that's when you realized it.

A building, the only building that looked like what you are familiar with in heaven. You were shocked it wasn't Lute causing tyranny. It was all of them, every single one of them, in charge.

You sank to your knees, realizing you would never be safe. You signed your sentence when you went to them with the information you learned. You were no longer a Winner...You were a Sinner, and your days were numbered.

You had something over everyone else; you knew how the angels fought and trained them daily. Using this knowledge to your advantage, you went through the town, trying to find anywhere you could start your new life.

~~~ FLASH FORWARD 7 YEARS ~~~

You were lucky when you ran into Charlie. She was a godsend if god was even real. The Princess of Hell had the same morals and values as you, which you respected. Vaggie was also a pleasant surprise; you could tell a soldier you taught a mile away.

She remembered you as well. She kept to herself till you three made it to a safe place, Charleis's soon-to-be hotel. Once Charlie was out of earshot and working on getting supplies to heal everyone, she confronted you.

Tears welled in her eyes when she asked what had happened. She was in shock when you explained how you ended up here. According to Vaggie, everyone was told that you died on a mission to hell.

The Sinners alerted Lucifer of your whereabouts, and he killed you; thus, in doing so, a protective force of angels was created. Fearmongering was the one thing Adam was damn good at.

It was broken to you by Vaggie that your partner had moved on with another. He was in love and happy with another woman, one Adam hand-picked for him. You were devastated again; years of promises, lost nights, and romantic meetings disappeared. He gave up everything because Adam told him to.

You two agreed that your past lives in Heaven would no longer be discussed that night.

Crying your eyes out long after Vaggie returned to her shared room with Charlie, did you swear off love by taking your wedding band off and locking it in a drawer.

It was no longer a hidden fact that Lucifer had signed the deal with the Angels, and it was far less hidden knowledge that the relationship between King and Princess was strained.

The rag-tag group of residents was growing by the day. Angel Dust was fun, and you could quickly tell from how he talked and looked he wanted a way out. Soon after Charlie's broadcast, Alastor and his group, Husk and Nifty, joined the hotel's crew. Though the Radio Demon was creepy, you knew something was eating him deep inside. Nifty was a riot to get talking to and always brought you exciting things she found while cleaning. Husk was a perfect bartender, and you knew he would keep your dirty secrets for you. He was the only one you confided your past in.

You supported Charlie wholeheartedly in her decision to overrule the exterminations. You were eager to help her prove that sinners could become winners. Look at you, for heaven's sake; if it could go one way, it had to go the other.

Sir Pentious was the last to join and was easy to talk to. He was awkward, but you loved his fabricated war stories and eggbois. Then, one day, he came along; you won't lie.

You were hesitant. I mean, he signed away Hell's right to life. You couldn't deny it, though; he was funny and ethereal. You swore off love, though, and you wouldn't let another break your heart again.

~~~~ Lucifer's POV ~~~~

When I got Charlie's call, I didn’t know what emotions to feel: sorrow, excitement, fear, jubilation. I was beyond myself, and as I finally answered the phone, all I could muster was, “Hey, Biiiiitch.”

Yeah, it was smooth of me to say that; however, it didn’t deter Charlie. She wanted me to come and visit her. I was over the moon; depression had nothing on me.

I looked at my hand as I was cleaning myself up and getting ready to go. Looking down and seeing that cursed band I once shared with the love of my life.

I found Lilith's ring left on her nightstand just days after her departure to who knows where. I couldn’t bring myself to take the ring off; it's all I had left of her; it reminds me to keep hoping she would forgive me; maybe I'll forgive myself.

As I made my way to Charlie's hotel, thoughts pressed into my mind about how I wanted this reunion to go. It never occurred to me how much Charlie may have changed. Was she still the same woman I knew before we fought?

Sighing as I approached the door, I realized it was now or never. Let's do this, baby. What's the worst that could happen? She hates me and leaves me forever like her mother did, and now I am forever alone? Hahahahah NO!

I entered the hotel door, and jeez, what is this place?

Putting a smile on my face, I approached Charlie and hugged her, introducing myself to her girlfriend. Woah, I like girls, too. See, we can bond. As I was making my rounds with Charlie, meeting everyone, I saw her….She was….gorgeous. I could tell from her looks that she wasn’t an everyday Sinner, and something was different about her.

After a brief and, might I say, victorious battle with this ‘Alastor’ fellow, I spent some time with my daughter, allowing her to show me around her hotel. As we stood atop the balcony, I made the first fatal error of the night. “So, CharChar, what is this all about?”

Charlie rolled her eyes at me and excitedly smiled, “It’s a hotel to cleanse and rehabilitate Sinners! I told you this, Dad!” The excitement on her face was genuinely adorable, but she couldn’t do it. I couldn’t allow this. The elder angels would just hurt her like they did me. They already threatened my family once; I can’t let them do this again.

I knew by the look on Charlie's face that my reaction wasn’t what she was expecting. As I went to speak to her, a loud explosion was heard downstairs.

We rushed down, and I saw an opportunity to prove to Charlie why we couldn’t follow this plan. As I ran forward to catch up with the others, I saw the mystery woman again. She was fighting alongside Alastor and his demons perfectly; she was beautiful and brilliant in battle, always expecting the next attack.

Once the sharks were dealt with and the young lady who seemed to know Alastor left, I turned back to Charlie and attempted to plead my case. “See Charlie, look, they are all the same; Sinners will never be redeemed; they will never go to heaven.”

“You don’t know that, Dad, please.” The look on Charlie's face broke me, but this had to be done. I couldn’t let her get hurt.

“What makes you so sure, Mr. King of Hell, that these people here can’t be redeemed?” This voice was new and soft.

I turned to the mystery girl. Her eyes were lit with a flame. I could see how much passion she had for my daughter's cause. As I went to speak back, Charlie interjected.

“Father, I only want to do this for you, for my people. Your dreams are what gave me this goal.” I was taken aback. I was Charlie's prime motivation; my stories and goals helped her become this remarkable woman.

“Your daughter is twice the ruler of you; she's willing to save her people; what are you willing to do?” The mystery woman had a point. I was a coward, too prideful of what I had to allow it to fall potentially. I looked at Charlie, and a moment formed between us.

“Alright, let’s get Heaven on the line then.” I knew it was time to face my fear to help the people I pleaded for all those years ago. I may not be able to stand my ground due to the contract, but damn can my daughter and her friends do it.

While Charlie started getting ready for her meeting, I was a nervous wreck. What if something happened to her? I knew the cruel hands that played in heaven and what could be done.

As I was pacing back and forth in the lobby, a figure stood before me, a drink in hand, and the other extended a glass to me. I looked up, and it was her; she was still just as beautiful as the first time I saw her. I gently took the glass and downed the concoction in it. “Thank you, uh, my name is Lucifer Morningstar, affamed fallen angel and father of Charlie.”

“I know; I was here when everything went down.” She looked at me blankly. Of course, she was here. Jesus, could I be any lamer?

She snorted at my facial expression and stuck her hand out for me. “My name is Y/N; nice meeting you, Mr. King of Hell; it’s a pleasure. By the way, I only said all that because I knew it would strike a nerve in you. I learned from my past anyone prideful hates when their authority is challenged.”

In her past, odd, there weren’t a lot of demons here who A would let someone challenge their authority and live, so she must be powerful, or B, she is speaking of her mortal life. However, something about both of those options did not seem quite right.

I nodded gently at her and sat at the bar. She soon tended to the others in the hotel, and I began to observe her. She acted like a mother, telling the others what to and not to do double-checking the other inhabitants of the hotel before they left the building.

Hell, she even talked to Alastor on some sort of equal ground. Something was different about her, so so different. I looked at my hand again while I took another swig of my refilled glass. Setting the glass down, I started to twirl the ring. Would Lilith have been this good to everyone? Would Lilith have even cared?

I sighed; if I wanted to help Charlie, I had to let go of the past. I took the ring off, dropped it in the liquor, and went to the front door. As I reached for the handle, I was stopped by a soft hand on my wrist.

Turning, I saw Y/N, “Hey, one second, mister, you forgot this.” She placed the ring down in the palm of my hand. “I have been scorned by love too. Don’t get me wrong, I also took off my band long ago. However, I can say that though their memory is tainted now, you should enjoy the memories of good when you can. Helps keep the bad thoughts away.” She smiled up at me so brightly I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Thank you, Y/N. I appreciate it. Do say you seem like a swell mother figure to all these people here. Why tie yourself to this place if you don’t want redemption? I remember what you said earlier, ‘All these people’, excluding yourself.” She stalled, hesitating about how she wanted to answer.

I just shook my head and smiled at her. I began to walk away back to my home. As I made my way back I heard Y/N shout, “COME BACK SOON LUCIFER!” For some reason, I really liked how my name sounded from her.

~~~~~ Reader POV ~~~~~

You were sat at the hotel by yourself, Angel, and the others all went to a club while Charlie and Vaggie went to Heaven. You had time to think about the most recent occurrence in your life: Lucifer.

It was a whirlwind that day meeting him. So many emotions overtook you: fear, anger, an odd sense of curiosity. You couldn’t lie. He was attractive, and the way he was protective of Charlie was adorable. You never got to have children; your ex-husband never wanted them.

You don’t know what possessed you to speak to Lucifer like you did, telling him he was a lowly king. You used the excuse that you had done it to others in your past, which was valid; you and Adam argued a lot. Deep down, you knew, though, that's not why you did it. You wanted to protect Charlie and her dream.

Sighing, you made your way around the building, ensuring the halls were clean and everything was orderly. You still weren't fond of all the allowed things here in hell, so going out with everyone was a once-in-a-blue moon.

It struck you as amusing when Lucifer commented on you being a mother figure because that is how everyone saw you. Hell, even Alastor commented one or two times that you reminded him of his angel of a mother. You just wanted the best for everyone; it wasn’t fair to die and then be killed again.

You heard the lobby door open once you were done doing your rounds. Odd, typically, everyone stayed out way late, and the girls weren't expected back till tomorrow.

As you descended the stairs, you saw none other but the man plaguing your mind: Lucifer. Smiling softly, you met him at the base of the stairs, giving him a short wave. He smiled at you and announced that he figured everyone would be gone today and was going to help out Charlie. You snorted at him and explained how you stayed back to help but were more than pleased to allow him to keep you company. He took refuge at the bar, and you soon joined him.

You two talked for hours about so many things, from his life as an angel to your old mortal life. You guys even talked about the differences between Heaven and Hell. Hopefully, you weren't giving your old station away to him, but a part of you didn’t care.

By the time you two got to the dreaded conversation about relationships, you were inebriated. You recounted your betrayal to Lucifer, holding nothing back. From your teenage years with your ex till the day he turned from you while Adam pushed you. Lucifer looked so heartbroken for you.

He gently pushed some hair out of your face when he said, “I am so sorry that happened to you, Y/N. I knew something was different about you, so you too fell from that dreaded cliff like I.” You nodded sadly.

Lucfier explained why he made his decisions and how Charlie's life was threatened if he didn’t end Lilith’s music and allow the Exorcist to come down. He told you something interesting about the clause of the agreement: No Hell Born Could Be Harmed In The Extermination Less The Binding Be Null And Void.

This was amusing to you; even after singing his people away for slaughter, he was still concerned the angels would trick him and harm his child. He was always thinking about those he loved. It was endearing.

How could someone leave such a handsome, kind, protective man? The thought even crossed your mind that Lucifer would have fallen with you if he had been your husband instead of letting Adam take the lead.

As these thoughts crossed your mind, you didn’t realize how close your two faces were getting. Before you knew it, your lips were touching Lucifers gently. Seconds passed, and his hands were buried in your hair, kissing you with a passion you never got from your ex.

As you two broke apart, the doors to the hotel opened again. Angel came running over to you, noticing your state of drunkenness. He apologized to Lucifer, stating you never really drank much and took you to your room.

You smiled softly as Lucifer said a quick ‘goodbye’ and ‘good night’ to you before drifting off to sleep. Your dreams that night were full of Lucifer, his beauty, charisma, and devotion eating you alive. You may have sworn off love, but for him to love you how he once loved Lilith would be beautiful.

~~~~~ TIME SKIP ~~~~~

Months had passed since your night with Lucifer, and a whole war between you at the hotel and the angels broke out. Everyone learned of your past in Heaven from Adam before he perished.

You felt free, no longer chained to the past that harmed you. Now you had something more to look forward to. Though you and Lucifer never spoke of that night again, you held the memory close. He loved Lilith a lot, and especially Charlie; for all you knew, when he kissed you that night, he was just imagining Lilith once more. It hurts to think that, but you must be true to yourself.

After Adam's carnage, it was awkward for you and Lucifer. You two avoided eye contact and only spoke when you had to. However, as time passed and you both pretended the night alone never happened, things changed.

You and Lucifer did become fast friends, though. Having shared a fall from heaven, deep heart break, and even more so a hotel together it was hard not too. It was hard ever to see you two separated from one another. Laughing, joking, talking, and even debating over effective ways to pull in more Sinners.

You two became more affectionate as well, his hand on the small of your back, him guiding you by his arm, or even you adjusting his cravat and making him his favorite teas. To onlookers, it seemed like you two were married.

It was so compelling that you two were married that even Charlie told you she would be fine if you loved her dad.

Love…That's such a strong word. Is that what you felt? You can’t lie. You fantasize about it. You were scared, though. What if he let you down like your ex did? Can you handle being a mom to Charlie, not just a figure, a real mom taking the spot Lilith left? That was a worry, too; what about Lilith if she returned? Would he go back to her?

Would you be left so suddenly again?

While your mind raced, you mindlessly swept the corner of your room, thinking deeply about this debacle. When suddenly, your door bursts open.

~~~~~ Lucifer’s POV ~~~~~

I was ecstatic after my night with Y/N. She was excellent, calm, cunning, and articulate. She also knew my pain of the angels turning on you. The kiss meant so much to me. I was finally feeling things I hadn’t felt before Lilith left.

Lilith….was I ready to move on? Could I move on?

When I closed my eyes that night, I saw both old memories of Lilith and the times we had, but also new visions of Y/N and all we could be. She was terrific; if only I could get to know her more and see how she felt. She also stated she swore off love, too.

Would I be included?

When the day came for the extermination, I couldn’t bear to turn on the news; I didn’t want to see Charlie's dreams get crushed. I sat and waited, staring at the clock. As soon as the chaos broke out, I was up and pacing.

It wasn’t just Charlie; I was worried about Y/N being there too. Yes, she was a fighter and trained those Angels, but what if the worst happened? What if you died protecting Charlie?

That's one thing he loved: how motherly you were for his daughter. Not that Lilith never was, but it was clear to him that no matter how hard life got, you would stand by those you loved side.

Why couldn’t Lilith have done that for them?

That was when I felt the tug, a complex, sudden pull. Half of the signed agreement shriveled; that only meant one thing.

I ran as fast as I could to the hotel; once I saw the carnage, I flew to protect Charlie. It was Adam, the man who turned the heavens against me, who turned heaven against you. Years of pent-up rage and a new passion for protecting Y/N overtook me as Charlie and I took down the angels.

Once the battle felt calm, everyone began looking for you and Alastor. Honestly, I could care less about the Radio Demon. He gave me bad vibes, but you were missing. You went in to save Vaggie from Lute; however, no one saw you anywhere when the building collapsed.

Shouting, digging through rubble, I heard Charlie yell out that she had found you. Sighing now that I knew you were alive and only minorly injured, we cleaned up.

With a bit of magic and a whap bam boom, we had a new Hazbin Hotel, oh and Alastor returned. I wanted to discuss your past with you about a potential us, but I couldn’t. You looked so happy now that the chains of your past were broken.

The next couple of months were odd, for sure. I couldn't stand to look Y/N in the eyes, and though I yearned for her, I couldn't bear the weight of rejection again.

I tried, though, to show her how much I wanted her in subtle ways. What was a once-stolen night became a close friendship. I could tell her anything and everything. She was like a breath of fresh air; she never denied any of the ideas Charlie or I had, instead helping make them better. With her and I’s past with heaven, we knew how to overcome the obstacles they would throw.

Before I knew it, I craved her touch and comfort, and she gave it to me. Small lingering touches of hands, hugs that lasted too long, small gifts and favors never asked for. I was falling and falling hard. She was everything I could want. I loved Y/N.

Oh god, I loved Y/N. I was a wreck seeking counsel from the only other person who knew me best, Charlie. She was so happy, begging me to confess and tell Y/N how I felt. Could I, though? Would she accept me? Could she take the new title of Queen of Hell?

As I lay in bed pondering the conversation Charlie and I had, thinking of the new memories I had made with Y/N, I was stuck. Confess and have a happy new life, or confess, and she leaves me, too. You weren't one to go, though I knew that. What if, though, you weren't ready?

I closed my eyes and let my mind wander; I saw Y/N in a beautiful dress at our wedding, Y/N giving me another child, and Y/N fighting alongside Charlie and me. That’s it; I can’t hold back any longer.

I dressed myself in my robe and marched my way to your door. I began to knock, but I heard nothing in the room. Sighing because I knew Y/N had to be in here, I busted the door open, and there you were, staring off into space so cutely.

Shit.

~~~~~ Readers POV ~~~~~

The noise startled you from your thoughts. There before you stood Lucifer in his robes. Smirking, You turned away from the man and laughed gently into your hand. “What are you doing here, goober? It's the middle of the night, and you are very underdressed.”

No questions were answered, though, as Lucifer approached you; he stood there staring you in the eyes. You didn’t know what this look meant, but it was intense. Had you offended him?

As you went to speak again, Lucifer placed one of his hands on your cheek, cupping your face. You looked at his hand and back up at him; you were breathing too fast. As you two looked at one another, no words were uttered; slowly, Lucifer placed his other hand on your waist.

You laid claim to his chest with your hands gently splayed there. Something in his eyes begged you to be closer and not push him away. How could you? He was holding you in a way that you had only dreamed of.

Lucfier moved closer to your face, your lips mere inches apart when he spoke, “Y/N, I love you. No, that doesn’t even begin to describe my feelings. I am fascinated, lust-filled, and desire you and you alone. I want forever to be with you, a time I only thought possible with one person who never intended to fill that role. A forever purely our own with our family. A future dedicated to following dreams and passion. Following our love. Will you stay with me, Y/N? Please stay with me.”

You were speechless, your mouth slightly agape, and you didn’t know how to process such emotions. You were overwhelmed and so excited. You knew if you took any longer to confirm or deny him he would leave and never speak of this, just like the kiss before.

You did the only thing you thought you could at that moment. You wrapped your arms around his neck and closed the gap. Kissing Lucifer this time felt just as good, if not better, than the last. Your hands tied in his hair, holding him close. His hands are keeping you in place, his kiss fierce and dominating. Before you knew it, he had his hands just under the cusp of your ass, prompting you to jump. As you did, you never broke the kiss.

Lucifer leads you to the nearest wall, kissing your lips and neck. This was everything you dreamed of, everything you wanted. Each kiss was a contract that you two would never hurt the other as your partners did.

You felt alive, like electricity was coursing through your veins. Every kiss made a new pattern in your heart, soon beating in time with Lucifers. The heated kisses died down and turned into soft, light ones. Placing your feet back on the ground, you hugged Lucifer close, his head buried in your neck and yours in his.

You smiled a large smile before whispering, “I will always stay by your side, Lucifer. You and Charlie are my reason, my purpose now.” You could feel his smile next to your ear without ever having to open his mouth.

You were so happy.

You two heard a shutter sound as you pulled away, and a bright flash erupted behind Lucifer. As you turned to the door, everyone stood there: Charlie was happy and clapping, Vaggie was giving a thumbs up, Alastor was holding the camera, Nifty was making gagging sounds, and Angel was smirking. You laughed wholeheartedly; who knew a broken heart would beat again?

My good friend @willowaudreykeyes helped me with the editing a bit! I appreciate the effort and time they put into assisting me. Even though we live halfway across the world from one another, you have my back!

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dangerliesbeforeyou · 3 months ago

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ok so ive been rewatching psychoville and saw on the wikipedia that there were a bunch of websites made for the series (they were all written by reece and steve btw) which i've been looking through cos they are genuinely SO fucking funny & also just amazingly creative lol!

anyway i know people in the fandom probs already know about this (since the show came out literally 15 years ago pfft) but i thought i'd share some of my fav bits (but honestly would just recommend just checking them out if you haven't i have been crying with laughter for literally hours lol)

i will say that a lot of the media (videos, games, etc) no longer work on the archived sites rip but i'm sure people have uploaded some of the stuff (vids especially) to yt or other places lol

so a) i love that we get some background stuff on jelly and 2) 'captain CRACKERS' bernie clifton's dressing room reference question mark ??????? (ofc bcdr was AFTER this but i know love the idea that mr jelly trained under len pfft)

what that red raw stump do though 👀 (sorry pfffft)

mr jolly's website wasn't that interesting soz tho i did like him comparing being a doctor to being a clown lol

the comment about fag bears did make me wheeze i'm afraid lol i also loved the blurry photos of lomax's commodities lol (kinda reminded me of the bit in tlog w/ that terrible old photographer guy lol)

when i tell you i DIED with laughter at the 'now known as hull' bit like u just know reece wrote that bit pfft

not really a funny thing but this poem written by david honestly kinda breaks my heart lol... i think it also a lot of additional context to david's guilt when he thought he'd killed his father(faver) because perhaps he felt guilty about NOT feeling guilty you get me? like, it felt to me that when maureen told david it was SHE who killed her husband, it didn't feel like he was mad at her for doing it, but more that she kept the fact from him. it's about... the mutual oedipus-coded obsession with one another that couldn't even be destroyed in death and in this essay i will....

ghoul_lass23 is just like me but about tumblr lol fr

nothing feels more cursed than the phrases 'the river minge has burst its banks', 'crying creamy tears' and 'fleshy rapunzel' (which i've just noticed they misspelt lol... don't think that was intentional lol?) so if i had to read this so do you <3

the way that i kinda wish this actually existed tho pfft... also, it does kinda remind me of that video where jenny nicholson talked about that insane reality show 'opposite worlds' lol

'cross between seven and glee' is honestly sending me pfft

also on this part there was a script from stinkfinger (which is a show mentioned on the show) which sounded suspiciously like a reference to tlc lol

the less said about swastknickers the better

(will say i did nearly piss myself laughing at the nazi section of the hoity toity website lol which wasn't a sentence i thought i'd type today lol)

i just love these kinds of jokes pfft

also the whole biography sections of each of the pantomime cast are fab lol tho i AM kinda pissed they made debbie from yeovil and yet didn't give her a west country accent lol!!! (i guess they thought it'd be a bit much w/ joy being bristolian but i'm still mad about it lol)

also i know people have probably already pointed this out but i do find it funny that brian in the in9 episode last night of the proms is a closeted gay guy who likes watching drag was probably a reference to brian in this show that was a drag queen like... is anything these guys do NOT a reference??? u know those gaylor fans who obsessively look for clues in her songs about her apparent secret sexuality? all i'm saying is that i think they'd really like the extended reece shearsmith & steve pemberton universe pfft

all three of these made me cry with laughter lol

ohh this is interesting lol so obviously they suspected that some people might be all 'um why didn't the sprinklers go off during the fire at ravenhill? plot hole much!' so they wrote this into one of the websites so they could be like SEE! WE'RE ONE STEP AHEAD OF YOU DUMBASSES lol

both the jeremy kyle reference (remember when that was a thing? yikes... my mum used to watch his show CONSTANTLY...) and nurse kenshington's thoughts on david and maureen are interesting lol.. also there's a reference to the serial killer top trumps in this bit lol! (do people still play top trumps?? man i LOVED top trumps lol...)

the entire sunnyvale care home section is so fucking funny (both the website AND in the show lol mrs wren/mrs ladybird face is unironically probably my favourite character on the entire show) these were just some of my fav gags lol...

ok but why is this the SECOND reference to a guy punching a child who was apparently looking at his dick lol!??!! did this happen to one of you ??!!?!? reece did you punch a child ??!???!?!??

&&&& that's it lol

there were a few websites i didn't spend long on or generally weren't that interesting (coughmidgetgemscough) but honestly? i was really captivated with just how funny and well put together all these sites were! you can tell they had a lot of fun making it and i'm sure fans at the time LOVED being able to have this semi-interactive element of the show lol

there was just something so wonderfully late 00's about these websites lol i genuinely don't think i've laughed this much at anything in literal months and all of this is just solidifies that psychoville is a criminally under-appreciated masterpiece lol

#psychoville #reece shearsmith #steve pemberton #there are too many characters mentioned here to list lol #honestly more people need to watch this show it's just great lol #anyway i hope that some of y'all have a laugh reading some of these even if ur not familiar with the show lol!

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blizzardrush · 5 months ago

Text

Down Time

Dragunov Week Day 2: Hobbies

No content warnings for this one, but there is some (emotional) hurt/comfort involved.

Read here or on AO3.

Thank you, and enjoy! @dragunovweek1

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7

- - -

Dragunov isn't sure how the report meandered onto his desk. Someone else should have handled it. What it describes is so easy to deal with, janitorial staff could do it. But no. Since the problem is on base, there is a chance, albeit a small one, that the matter in question could be anomalous in nature. If so, it does require attention from someone better experienced.

Still looks just like a baby owl to him.

A dead tree on grounds gave up more than the ghost when it finally toppled over in the night. The owlet comes up to Dragunov's ankle from its sad place on the permafrost. It doesn't seem to have proper feathers, covered instead in vaguely fungoid down. It peers up at Sergei with inky eyes, bobs its head, and clicks its beak once.

Yeah, this is just a baby owl.

Dragunov tucks his hands into the pockets of his coat. This does not concern him or the base in the slightest. He turns to walk back to his heated office. Siberian weather can determine the owlet's fate. Already the wind is picking up in preparation for a snowstorm. It nips his face and lifts his hair.

And with it comes a memory.

The house in the countryside. Mother and Father would rent it every few years in the summer when savings were plentiful. It's a nice enough house, and Sergei would trade his single bedroom apartment for it any day, but as a child he would spend most of his time there in the neighboring woods.

He'd been young. Three, perhaps, maybe four. He'd idolized his sister at that age, followed her every step like a shadow. She was his greatest source of inspiration and entertainment. She could do no wrong.

It was during one summer trip she'd found the dead woodpecker.

Neither she or Sergei had enough understanding of death to grasp why the woodpecker wasn't clambering up trees and banging its beak into the bark like so many of the others that called the forest home. The difference was obvious, though, and that made it intriguing. Now was their chance to take a close look at a creature that was normally as elusive, quick, and mysterious as a fairy.

She'd picked it up, turned it over. Dragunov doesn't remember any horror or disgust. It must've been recently deceased. She'd spread its limp wings, jiggled its stick legs. He had watched with youthful awareness that observation was of the utmost importance.

Satisfied, or maybe bored, his sister threw the woodpecker into the air. It dropped back to earth like a stone.

And that violation of the paradigm that flying things fly was the funniest sight of Dragunov's short life. He remembered howling with laughter as his sister did it again and again, supplying sound effects of a crashing airplane, until he nearly wet his pants, tears pouring down his cheeks.

Their oblivious cheer reached back to the house. Mother came out to investigate. Less than pleased, she hauled them both into the kitchen to scrub their hands raw.

A frigid gust brings Dragunov back to the present. Looking down, the owlet is still there.

The woodpecker's death had been a source of amusement, macabre as it was. If the owlet dies, nothing comes of it. Best case scenario, some scavenger eats the corpse. Worst case, janitors do deal with it and throw it in the trash. The idea suddenly makes Sergei's stomach churn.

That settles it. It isn't often he gets to save lives.

Picking the owlet up is easier than expected. Dragunov shields its head from the wind as he walks toward shelter.

- - -

The owlet survives. The owlet thrives.

She grows on a diet of captured rats. The larder is always full once (at Dragunov's command) the traps are switched from glue to spine-snappers.

She is formally inducted as the first nonhuman among the ranks and given the title of Pest Abatement Specialist. Her routine patrols reduce bird strike incidents to zero.

She is named Olga, after the saint who tied burning sulfur to sparrows' feet and rent divine fire to the homes of her enemies.

She roosts in Dragunov's office, his apartment, and his heart.

- - -

Yakushima was a complete disaster.

Broken with jet lag, the ominous encrypted message from his boss fresh in his mind -- we will discuss your performance later -- Sergei barely recognizes unlocking the door and letting himself in. Home may as well be the surface of the moon. Charted, but devoid of air and warmth. His head is on the chopping block, waiting for the blade to fall.

Then as he enters the kitchen: woo, woo-woo, hwoo-oo-oooo. An ocarina tremolo. Olga.

Shit. The last few days had been such concentrated hell that he'd forgotten she was here. She must be hungry. He crosses the kitchen, opens the door to her parrot cage, and offers her his arm for perching. It won't be the first time she's clawed him as he trial-and-errored his way through animal husbandry.

Yet she doesn't. She steps onto him, and yes, her talons pinch even through his sleeve, but her grip is merely for balance. She nips at the fur of his coat. Preening it.

And Dragunov finds himself on the brink of tears.

He bites his lip hard, squeezes burning eyes shut, wills the pain to replace -- what? Not sorrow. Not exhaustion.

Gratitude.

Olga loves him. Has loved him for years, and for more to come. He could fail every mission, become the laughing stock of his unit, and lose his job entirely. She loves him. Nothing on earth could change that.

Sergei strokes her back, presses his lips against the crown of her head. Her feathers soak the words that fall.

Thank you. Thank you.

#dragunovweek #t: ballistics & birdsong #sergei dragunov

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lwde-haven · 1 year ago

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Dungeon of Sult: Ruby and the Giant. After Ruby staggers away from the Nerdblin, she desperately attempts to salvage some of her pride and worth as a heroine. She was a huntress, a defender of people everywhere! When the Giant bars her path, she charges forward with a valiant cry!

This lasts roughly as long as it takes the Giant to contemptuously swing his hips and slap her full in the face with his cock. The heft of it, even only half hard, is enough to bring her to her knees. Her Aura should be protecting her, but instead she can feel every sadistic blow as the Giant repeatedly swings his fat cock into her face and splatters her with his precum.

His pheromones were already bad enough just like that, but when he finally shoves Ruby face first into his nuts she has to endure the raw force of his addictive scent without the slightest gasp of oxygen to dilute it.

In the end, Ruby is forced to confront the question of whether or not the pretty silver eyes that marked her out as having a special destiny would look even prettier with a face that was constantly smeared with ballsweat and giant cum.

(the person who submitted the other Sult Ruby asks has other ideas to progress the story, we can say this is a "What if" Bad end scenario since this is from someone different) It finally dawned on Ruby just how utterly humiliated she had been in this adventure. Perhaps it's the lustful magic of the dungeon, the unending barrage of pleasure that's been attacking her, or Ruby is just a natural-born slut, but Ruby was tired of it all. When Ruby saw the giant, along with its offending, massive cock. Being nearly twice her size despite being flaccid. It reminded her of everything wrong in this dungeon. Something snapped in her, and she charged the Giant, who actually hadn't done anything. In response, the giant lazily span a little, the tip of his cock smacking Ruby straight in the face. The blow was weak, but the Giant was so big it was enough for Ruby to see stars, and a lot of pre-cum. Ruby was brought down, and forced to inhale his pre due to how smeared her face was. The pheromones hit her HARD, and the slutty girl couldn't help but lick her covered lips thirstily. Ruby moaned at the taste and smell, but she quickly tried to snap back to reality, slapping her face to break out of it. The giant did something a little similar, gently slapping her face with his massive prick every time she tried to defy him. Ruby was a cum drunk mess from this incredible smell, her will very close to shatter. "T-think t-this is enough to s-stop me?" Ruby asked the giant, stuttering as if she were wasted. "This is." The giant said for the first time, before using his pinkie to shove Ruby's head into his massive balls. They were nearly three times the size of her head, and Ruby drowned in their musk. "Mph! Mhpph! MMPPH!" But Ruby's muffled complaints quickly died down, being replaced by whorish moans and slurping noises. "Mmh~ *slurp* Mhhhpppp...~" The young Rose smooched his balls lovingly, licking away in worship. Hearts in her silver eyes that were still masked by the giant ballsack. Sensing her submission, the giant released Ruby's head from his crotch. The huntress pulled away only to take a quick breath before diving right back in. Now, completely addicted to giant balls and cocks. Ruby didn't speak, only kissing and licking, but her body language could only mean one thing. 'I am yours'. The Giant had defeated Ruby's mind and spirit, the end of her journey drew near. ~ ~ ~ Despite the passing years, Ruby's body grew unchanged by time, a 'blessing' of the dungeon of Sult giving her absolute immortality. Ruby didn't need to eat or drink to survive either, but she always had her fill. Her owner made sure of it. Most of her time was spent, sitting on the base of the wandering giant's monster cock. Hugging around its length and grinding her pussy against it, worshiping it at all times. Tending and polishing his balls only when he rested, and drinking his pre-cum and sperm as if it were nectar of the gods. Sometimes masturbating or putting on a little show when her master grew bored, and wanted something a little special. This was Ruby's life now, a glorified penis decoration and cleaner for all eternity. And she loved every single second of it.

#lwde #not sfw #rr

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therogueheart · 2 years ago

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What about Billy being spit out of one of the ever-widening cracks in Hawkins as the final victim was taken, alive but so so weak from being stuck in the Upside Down since he “died”, Vecna’s power fluctuating and Billy getting thrown out of the place. Spending time recovering in the hospital when he’s found, gradually being able to go see Max, sticking by her side even when the nurses disapprove no, he should be resting etc etc. Kind of redeeming himself in the party’s eyes by how staunchly he’d start protecting her. Also being able to work with El to try and get Max back, having some good memories to tap into

There's something so viscerally soft about the idea of Billy offering up his mind to El again to help Max. Soft and desperately heartbreaking.

Because I know everyone loves a good big brother Billy storyline but actually; Max is a huge source of conflict and trauma for Billy, and I think at least for the significant formative years of Billy's healing, he'd harbor some resentment towards Max.

Not the kind he did before; violent and volatile, but the way you resent the thorn that pricks you when you pick a rose. Look after your sister, Billy, still rings around his head in Neil Hargrove's voice.

And he hates that. It makes his hands shake and his teeth grind and its something stuck firmly between terror and rage but mostly he's just tired. So fucking tired.

But even so he gets caught sneaking into her room wheezing and limping so often that eventually they transfer them both to a larger room, one where their beds can fit side by side, where Billy doesn't have to nearly hack up a lung just to make sure she's still alive.

He talks to her, sometimes. Reads out snippets of the books that Steve brings him. Tells her how to change a tire and check the oil level in a car. (And tries desperately not to think of his Camaro as he does, throat tight, twisting his shaking fingers in his white hospital blanket.)

Tells her about Neil. His mother. Its the first time he's ever actually told anyone and he cries, wet and ugly and spiralling him into a coughing fit the nurse has to sedate him out of.

When the nurses come to check on Max Billy watches them from where he's slumped in his own bed, scowling as the nurse changes out the IV line, kitten-weak but hissing all the same.

"Hey! You wanna stick 'er a little less like she's a Christmas ham?" he gripes as they take blood samples. "Jesus fucking—brush from the bottom, or you break the hairs!" as they brush out Max's lank, greasy hair. "Oi, Meat-Mitts. She's not a fucking tire, you don't gotta roll her like that!" when they shift Max around to change out her gown.

He doesn't particularly warm up to El—beaten to last place only by Mike—because as grateful as he is to her for breaking the Flayer's control, she's got an open fucking window into his head and he hates that. It makes him feel peeled back and raw, exposed and bloody with no way to protect himself.

Doesn't warm up to her, but still awkwardly volunteers himself to be a helping hand in her revival. Because Billy knows he's not part of her happy memories, but he's always been on the outside looking in. Has a first-hand perspective on a few of them.

Like when she was the flower girl at Neil and Susan's wedding; little and chubby and beaming as she skipped down between the pews, tossing dried petals by the handful.

(He'd been stood off to the side, behind his Dad, starched collar and tight suit hiding the bruises of Neil's drunken rampage the night before.)

Perhaps the only good memory he is actively part of is teaching her to skateboard. She'd begged and begged for a board for her birthday, and she was Neil's little princess so of course she'd gotten one. And of course Billy had to be the one to surrender his weekends to teaching her, jogging alongside the board with her gripping his arm tightly, wobbling along and trying to find her balance.

She'd bought him a Twinkie with her allowance as a thank you, the night after she'd successfully made it down the street without his help or falling off.

The very notion of having Eleven inside his head again, digging around for memories, witnessing it all over... It makes him want to crawl right out of his skin and out the room's window, but he does, because Billy's not really a man of words when it comes to this shut but actions he can do, and maybe this makes them square.

Sorry I was a shitty person, sorry I took it out on you, but look, I'm violating myself to bring you back. Even-Stevens, right?

The first thing he says to her when she's coherent again is; "You look like shit." Her first words straight back are; "Fuck you."

And, yeah. He's not really ready to get over it yet. He's not going to be winning any brother of the year awards anytime soon, but.

They're gonna be just fine.

#stranger things #st #rogue talks #rogue fanfic #billy hargrove #max mayfield #fanfic #fanfiction #billy hargrove & max mayfield #stranger things fanfiction

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writing-on-the-wahl · 3 years ago

Text

Writing Snippet #19: The Voicemail

It was the dog at her side who warned her of his approach.

Normally she was much more in tune with her surroundings. It was the whole reason she’d come to the park in the early morning hours, to soak in the peaceful stillness, hear the birds chirping, and feel the morning sun on her face.

But her thoughts raced within even as she sat on the familiar park bench, her eyes closed as the rays of the morning sun danced across her skin. It was colder this year than it had been on that day.

But today she was alone.

Except for whoever had decided to join her on this particular fall morning.

She acknowledged her dog’s signal but didn’t open her eyes. Leaves crunched on the path, footsteps coming closer until they were nearly past her.

She stiffened as the air went silent.

“Cecelia?”

The familiar rich voice sent a stab of pain through her chest—an injury she’d thought healed long ago.

Why would he be here, today of all days? He’d made his choice, so he had no need to come relive the memories. She clenched her hands together in her lap.

“Hello, Hero.” She was surprised and relieved at how neutral her voice sounded.

She heard a shaky inhale. “Cece…” Her heart tripped at the nickname that was singularly his.

Leaves rustled and she tensed. Her dog let out a small growl, warning him against coming any closer.

Good boy, Bingo.

Hero had noticed her discomfort as well. “You don’t want to see me.”

There had been a time that was all she wanted.

She tipped her head back even further, focusing on the sun seeping into her skin rather than the raw grief clawing its way to the surface.

“I called you.” He hadn’t answered.

“Yes, I know.”

“I left you a voicemail.” A part of her harbored the hope he’d never gotten it, that it hadn’t been his choice to abandon her.

“I know.” His voice was strangled, pained.

The tiny hope withered and died.

Then her head was in her hands, fingers digging into her hair as the old pain resurfaced with the memories of that night. “You didn’t come find me.” The words slipped out before she could stop them.

He took in a shuddering breath. “No. I didn’t.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks, and she pressed her face more firmly into her hands.

No. He hadn’t come. And she’d been left alone. In the darkest moment of her life.

“Cece.” He was crouched down in front of her now.

She wondered why her loyal companion hadn’t bitten his face off yet.

“I’m sorry. When I came home and saw the papers strewn across the floor, the table half set…”

She bit back a sob. She’d wanted to surprise him with dinner. Not for anything special. Just because. It had been the anniversary of the day they’d met. A date she was sure he’d forgotten. She’d gone over while he was still working at the fire station. Begged a key off the landlord. She’d been in the middle of setting the table when...

“I honestly didn’t think you’d want me to come.”

She’d left that voicemail begging him to come.

“Because you couldn’t love me like that?” The words overflowed with bitterness. He’d said he’d always love her. No matter what.

“Of course I loved you! Enough to let you—”

“I swear, if you say ‘let me go’…” she growled the words through her hands, filled them with all the pain and heartbreak and anger living inside her stitched-together heart.

A twig snapped as he stood and took a few steps back. He was probably running his hands through his hair, like he always did when he was agitated. He’d often put off getting it trimmed, and the soft waves were constantly falling in his eyes. She wished she could peak up through her hands and see the adorable way he’d push the waves back, only to have them immediately fall back into place.

“I know I don’t deserve anything from you, but even after all this time, can you really not bear to even look at me?”

She let out a hiss and pressed a hand against her chest to stifle the pain those words brought. Bear to look at him? She let out a sharp laugh, bitter and without humor. He’d gotten her voicemail. He knew. How dare he ask that of her.

Cecelia raised her head and opened her eyes.

Not that it made a difference in the blackness that was now her world.

She heard him inhale sharply. She fought the instinct to close her ruined eyes. She’d never seen them of course, but the nurses had told her of the unsettling milky sheen now coating her once-blue eyes.

Wood creaked as he settled beside her on the bench.“What happened?” His voice was so achingly tender.

The memories of what had happened were like acid, making her eyes burn just like they had that night. The masked intruder in the hallway. The brilliant flash of light. The intense pain in her eyes that sent her to her knees.

She’d told him in the voicemail. Not everything, but most of it.

When she didn’t answer, he shifted close, interrupting her thoughts. “Cece, how long have you been blind?”

A shiver prickled along the back of her neck. Something was wrong. The way he was reacting…

“Two years ago today.” The day of their anniversary. The day she’d hoped he’d ask her to be his for the rest of their lives.

The silence that followed made her desperately wish she could see his face. His voice was excruciatingly calm when he finally asked, “The day you left was the day you went blind?”

“I-I called you.” Her words were barely audible. She heard his sharp intake of breath, but forced herself to continue. “You didn’t answer. I was scared and alone and in so much pain… I didn’t know what else to do. So I left you that voicemail.” The admission cost her more than she cared to admit.

“The voicemail—”

“I waited all night for you to call. For you to come. But you didn’t.” Her voice broke at the end, and she stood and stepped away from the bench, not wanting Hero to see the tears escaping the corners of her eyes.

Bingo pressed up against her side, and the feel of his soft fur beneath her fingers gave her the strength to say the words she’d held inside for almost three years.

“You left me,” she whispered to the wind. “You promised you’d always love me, and when I needed you most you weren’t there.”

“Cecelia.” He was standing behind her now, close enough she could feel the brush of his clothes against her back. “I didn’t listen to the voicemail.”

The words sank in, and relief washed over her, but was quickly followed by confusion and pain.

If not her blindness, then why? What had she done to have pushed him away? To make him never want to speak to her again?

“Why not?” She could hardly breathe as she waited for the answer she wasn’t sure she was ready to hear.

“I didn’t listen to the voicemail,” he repeated slowly. His voice was closer now. She heard him take a steadying breath. “Because I thought you left me.”

“Why would I leave you?” He’d been her entire world.

“The file was on the floor.”

“File?” Her nose crinkled up in confusion. “What file?”

“The file—I’d left it at home. Didn’t realize until… when I came home and the papers were spread across the floor…” His hands ghosted over her arms for the briefest moment before abruptly pulling away. Her traitorous heart leapt and then fell at the almost touch.

“I know I should have told you sooner who I was—what I was… but I was so afraid. So afraid I’d lose you. And when I saw the plates on the table, I knew you’d been there. I thought you’d seen—”

Cecelia closed her eyes. Tried to remember that night. The intruder had held papers in his hands… had that been the file Hero was talking about? She remembered being surprised someone would think a firefighter would have information worth stealing.

“I didn’t read any files.”

“What?”

“By the time I got to the hospital…” Her voice gave out, and she couldn’t continue as the horror and the panic that she’d felt when the doctor gave his diagnosis hit her again.

“I thought you didn't want to come.” The admission tore out of the still-ragged part of her heart, and she distantly registered a pained noise coming from Hero, but she couldn’t stop the next words.

The ones that had beaten themselves into her mind and heart since she’d laid awake all night long on a stiff hospital bed, waiting for him to come. Praying he would come before her vision was completely gone, so she could see his face one last time. The words that had been the only explanation she’d been able to find for why the man who’d had a ring hidden in the back of the silverware drawer had abandoned her to face a darkening world alone.

“I thought you didn’t love me anymore because I was blind.”

Hero went completely still at her words. “Oh. Oh, darling, is that what you’ve thought all this time?”

She tilted her head down, wanting to hide from the warm gaze she could feel following every tear.

Leaves crunched beneath his feet as he slid closer.

“I have no right, at all, to ask. But please, please love, let me hold you.”

Anything she did now would only lead to more pain. So what if he hadn’t known about her blindness before? He knew now. And once the reality set in, once he saw the limitations of her disability, he wouldn’t stay. And she wouldn’t recover from the loss. Not this time.

But right now, all she wanted was to feel his arms around her again.

She gave the tiniest of nods.

With excruciating slowness, his hands rested against her face. His thumbs gently wiping away her tears before his hands slid down her shoulders and pulled her into the familiar circle of his arms.

Her arms came around him as she sobbed into his chest.

She was dimly aware of him leading her back to the bench, of him pulling her down beside him, but all she cared about was the hand running gently over her hair, the arm pulling her snug against him, and the way she still fit perfectly in his arms.

The moment ended too soon.

She felt his arms loosen, and though he didn’t pull away, she knew he wanted to.

“So you don’t know what was in the file.” His hand slid across her hair one more time before falling away.

“No.” What could possibly make her not love him? The worst thing she could imagine was if he’d cheated on her… and there was no way he’d done that.

“I kept it a secret for so long. I always knew one day you’d figure it out and I was terrified you’d leave me. And then when I came home to those damning papers strewn across the floor and my worst fears had come true. I thought your voicemail was goodbye, and I didn't listen to it because… well, I knew, I knew, love, that if I heard your voice one last time, I wouldn’t be able to keep myself from going after you. And if you wanted to leave, who was I to stop you?”

The words both healed and hurt, soothed and shattered the jagged pieces of her heart.

Cecelia leaned into Hero, unable to bear the distance he’d put between them any longer. His arms automatically came around her, but they were stiff, waiting.

So she asked.

“What was in the file?” What secret was so terrible you thought I would stop loving you?

His chin rested on the top of her head and his arm’s tightened around her, as though he was afraid she would pull away. She should. Every moment spent in his embrace would only make his inevitable departure more painful.

“Proof.” His voice was resigned as his arms dropped, taking away her choice. “Proof that I was—that I am Villain.”

✨ a huge thank you to @im-a-wonderling for helping me make this as tragic as possible bc she is the Queen of Beautiful Tragedy and thank you @shieldmaiden-of-gondor for letting me shatter your heart as a trial run- you’re both amazing ✨

Master Taglist:

@im-a-wonderling @shieldmaiden-of-gondor @watercolorfreckles @distance-does-not-matter @onestopheroxvillain @lolafaiy @chaoticgoodandi @1becky1 @tobeornottobeateacher @himynameisorla @superherosweet @brekker-by-brekkerr @crazytwentythrees @great-day-today @sunflower1000 @ill-eat-you-if-you-cross-me @selectivegeekwithstandards @chibicelloking @trantolette @sapphiques @jinpanman @genesissane @wish1bone1 @amongtheonedaisy @distractedlydistracted @kitsunesakii @glitterythief @jinx1365 @cherrychewingbrat @in-patient-princess

Trying out a general taglist- Lmk if you want to be added or removed :)

#tragic misunderstanding #no fluff just angst #I hope this makes you cry #@im-a-wonderling is the #queen of beautiful tragedy #the voicemail #hero x villain #hero #villain #heroes and villains #heroes x villains #snippet #my writing #write #writeblr #hero x civilian #villain x civillain #plot twist

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stjunebug · 3 years ago

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athena; protectress of the weavers

The very first time Yelena braids Kate’s hair, she can taste the loss of Natalia behind her teeth.

Salt and summer sweat, dandelions caught on a June-swept breeze. She sees the rippling blue, ocean waves out before them, hears her sister on the sand beside her, voice feathery soft with sleep.

“We can hide out on an island,” Natasha had sounded careful then, wanting Yelena to go on the run with her without meaning to scare her off. She’d approached her little sister in the way she might’ve a wounded wolf, easy to anger, easy to push away. “If you’re up for it? I would — I would love to have you with me.” Her voice is so raw, so real and so raw that Yelena can hear the wavering hesitation in her throat, can hear the way she wants to hold her and never let go.

“Sure,” is all she can say, eyes glistening with something that she hasn’t felt in years. Something that blooms in her sternum, soft and alive again; love for her sister she thought had died out a long time ago, “alright.”

Yelena’s fingers are deft, braiding so tight and so neat one might have thought it was actually she to combat Arachne in the arts so many centuries ago, she the patron protector of the weavers. Kate winces, makes an impatient noise deep in her throat at the widow when she is being particularly rough, though Yelena takes it not into account. Smooths the stubborn baby hairs that escape even her tyrant rule with a gentle hand, when she is done, in apology.

“Do you remember how Vasilia would braid our hair? In the Red Room?”

Yelena nodded, though the memory was faint, slipping through her fingers the harder she tried to dig for it. She remembered an older girl, wiping her tears away and kissing her temple, her voice caring and heartbroken. They’d kept all of the girls in one room the first week; it had been small and too hot, like an oven Yelena thought she would die in. They’d separated her from Natalia and Yelena hadn’t stopped her wailing since, broken sobs leaving her throat raw. She would seize up when any of the others approached her, tried to calm her down, save for Vasilia.

There was something so tender and motherly about the older girl that she couldn’t help giving in, couldn’t help collapsing into her arms and sleeping for the first time in days. She’d woken up to her hair bundled close to her scalp, loosely woven in a way that her mother used to braid, before she’d betrayed her. Before she’d let her be taken. Vasilia had still been petting her hair down, her bangs (that she’d cut for herself to mimic Natasha’s) refusing to cooperate with her craftsmanship. Though the memory is vague, the clearest thing she can remember is Vasilia’s warm smile, full toothed, eyes crinkled. “Oh sestra,” her smile somehow widened further then, nearly bursting at the seams, “did you sleep well?”

When Kate declares it to be her turn, grabbing at Yelena’s hands and wrestling for control, Yelena can’t help the grin on her own face. She could easily overpower the archer, could pin her down and finish combing and braiding through the thicket of her hair, but she entertains her anyway. Indulges her and horseplays along, becomes a mess of entangled limbs and playful tussling. Like a knot trying to undo itself, tightening in the process. At some point, Yelena finds herself beneath Kate, the latter straddling her, huffing through a sheen of sweat, triumph written all over her face.

For a moment, Yelena is struck speechless. The grass tickles her cheeks, scratchy against her saline skin, and she watches. Watches despite the fact that Kate is barely eclipsing the sun, despite the fact that the golden bright behind her head peaks out just enough in its righteous glory to blind her some. Watches the untied braids loosen and fall down in dark ocean waves, past her collar bone, past her chest, watches the locks brush up against her nose. Watches the way her grin splits her cheeks like fruit to be shared, watches the clouds drift in the sky behind her like a halo, like some angelic manifestation of her purity; watches the earth scramble around her in awe.

She stares for a second too long, her face flushes and she forces her gaze away when Kate tilts her head to the side in confusion. “What?” She asks, voice still playful, the adrenaline of their playfight still evident in the way she breathes, “Is there something on my face?”

No, Yelena wants to say, but the words catch in her throat, you’re so beautiful — God, no. Instead, she whispers, in all earnest, “Yeah, let me get it,” and flicks Kate’s nose hard.

Instead, the peace is broken, they fool around for the rest of the afternoon, nowhere to be, nowhere to save, and Yelena can’t help but think this is her home.

#yelena #kate #kate x yelena #kate bishop #hawekeye #yelena belova #black widow #natasha romanoff #natasha #lesbians #women #parallels with greek mythology #women <3

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runtedfiction · 3 years ago

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nicer

day 1: facade @zelinkweek2021

ao3

* * *

Years later, when Link faces the castle’s crumbling walls, he thinks about the Princess.

* * *

The day King Rhoam announces this year’s Harvest Festival is also the day his subjects know they're doomed. Officially, it’s supposed to be a normal holiday. Unofficially, the language in the announcement—“the last celebration before the fight against Calamity Ganon”, “the last time the palace will be open to Castletown until the fight is over”—convinces everyone that they’re partying in the face of the apocalypse.

“They have no faith in me,” Zelda says, putting down her pen. “Ganon is brewing deep beneath the castle. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows I can’t stop it. This is their last chance to let loose before all hell breaks loose.”

Impa frowns and hands her the final page of raw Guardian data to clean. “You're too hard on yourself. You still have time.”

“I just have Mount Lanayru next week.” She focuses on the Silent Princess above her desk. It's wilting. “Do you think I’ll be wise enough? Maybe Hylia will smite me right then and there for being an idiot.”

“Princess!”

“I know, I know.”

* * *

They wrap up that afternoon’s study, an incredibly useful session in quantifying the powers of the Guardians, to get ready for the ball.

Zelda’s dress is her signature blue, but a bit more fluid and feminine than the one she normally wears. Made for dancing and a summer night.

“Collarbones,” Impa notes, and Zelda laughs. “A little off the shoulder as well! And the subtle constellation pattern in the tulle--how stunning!”

“Don’t act as if you didn’t design it.”

“Guilty.”

Impa’s dress, an even deeper blue, is similarly gorgeous. It’s long sleeved, form fitting, and silky.

“Impa, I just want to say—” Zelda pauses, looking at their reflections in the mirror. When will they ever look this nice again? “Thank you for being my friend.”

Impa' smiles. “Of course. And Princess—if I may.”

“Yes?”

“With all your talk of the world ending, of doom coming.” Her voice gets small. “Do you think it would be worth telling him?”

Zelda stiffens. She thinks of him somewhere in the castle, dressed in his best uniform, walking to find her.

She lies. “No.”

Three quiet, efficient raps sound against her door. Zelda’s heart lurches.

* * *

In the hot, overcrowded ballroom, she can’t stop wondering if he thinks she looks pretty.

There are important people here she needs to talk to: researchers from the Royal Ancient Tech Lab, religious leaders, captains of industry, and so on. She finds her father and tries to reach some common ground on the one night they aren’t preparing for Evil Incarnate. (She fails.) She should find the court poet and give him the dance he’s been writing about for the past month.

But all she wants is for Link to look at her.

He’s indeed in his best uniform. His gloves and boots are blindingly white; his collar sits high and stiff against his neck. He’s uncommonly handsome, and the uniform emphasizes it. When someone pulls him in to dance (technically he should be keeping watch, but that someone really insists), she hates the jealousy that blooms in her chest and takes the hand of the poet. When she twirls, when she makes conversation, when she curtsies--she tries to see it all from Link’s perspective, if he can even find her in the crowd.

“Princess, are you feeling alright?”

“Oh.”

The poet looks at her in the way that a puppy looks at its master. The neediness satisfies and repulses her.

“Yes,” she says, smiling quickly. “Thank you for asking. How are you?”

“Wonderful. I was sitting in the courtyard the other day and...”

It’s easy to tune him out and appear to be interested with the right amount of “mhmm” and “oh?” and eye contact. But every time he twirls her around, she tries to spot the top of a Royal Guard cap in the crowd.

She knows she’s being stupid. Even in the incredibly unlikely scenario where Link’s interested, what could they do? Given that her powers aren’t working, there’s only a sixty percent chance they’ll get through the Calamity. She thinks back to what Impa said earlier. Something about letting him know in the face of impending doom.

(Maybe it doesn’t make sense to do something that would possibly be useless, a tiny voice in the back of her head says. But on the flip side, it’s also possible that nothing will matter soon, so why not tell him?)

She scowls and lets the poet dip her far too low for common courtesy.

* * *

Link is definitely lost in the crowd now. The next song requires that they rotate between multiple partners, and she can’t spot him anywhere. There’s no way that he’d be looking at her anyway, because why would he? He’s the chosen one, kind and strong and handsome and blessed. She’s the failed reincarnation, mean and headstrong and cursed.

If (when) the world ends, it’ll be on her.

Zelda admits to herself, swaying in the arms of someone else who doesn’t matter, that because the world has an uncomfortably high probability of ending, it follows that maybe, possibly, probably it makes sense for her to say something.

A sense of urgency unfurls in the pit of her stomach. Where is he?

* * *

She tries to find him. She doesn’t know what she’d do--ask for a dance? Strike up a conversation? Maybe it's the heat getting to her, but it worries her that she's lost him. She walks the length of the ballroom and comes up with nothing.

There’s no way she could summon him, but…

She grabs a glass of water and walks out the ballroom to the nearest balcony.

Except in this very specific circumstance, it’s infuriating how easy it is for him to find her. Even when she doesn't want to be found, even when she’s actively running away (and nearly dying in the process), there he is. The knowledge that he’s almost always aware of her presence burns.

“Hello,” she says after a respectable amount of time.

He steps out behind her. Unfortunately, the moonlight’s softness makes him look angelic. “Hi.”

Zelda very rarely has no plan. She’s the one always bossing him around, deciding where they’ll go next and how they’ll get there and what they’ll do. She’s at a loss for words right now.

“Ah--hm.” A cooling night breeze passes by. “Are you--are you enjoying the festival?”

“Yes?” He looks confused. And hot, her unhelpful brain adds. Very hot. “Are you?”

“Yes. It’s quite warm inside, but I enjoy the music and the dancing.”

“The band is nice.”

She agrees and scrambles to find another conversation topic. Damn it. Still no plan. Think, think.

“Uh--” he starts the same time she asks, “Are you ready for Mount Lanayru next week?”

He nods, and she hates how she made the conversation about work. But he looks more confident now--talking about work is easier than trying to have whatever kind of conversation she had in mind. “Yeah. I read about the region and it seems relatively safe. We might see Naydra too.”

“That would be incredible,” she says. “I’d love to capture it on the Slate.”

He nods again. A silence passes (a horribly awkward one that eats at her) before she asks: “What were you going to say before I interrupted you?”

“Oh yes.” Link clears his throat, and the fact that he looks a bit nervous sends her heart pounding. Can he tell what her subconscious is trying to do? “I’ve been meaning to ask (oh God, oh God, what has he been meaning to ask)--are you avoiding me?”

She blinks. “What?”

He won’t make eye contact with her. Triforce of courage, my ass. “Are you avoiding me?”

“No?” She’s stunned. Avoiding? All she’s been doing for the past week is pining!

“But, I feel like.” He pauses to look at her briefly. Again, his nerves kick off her own. “Ever since we got back from the desert, you haven’t really talked to me.”

She needs to think. A week ago, what happened?

They were at the Kara Kara Bazaar, and she nearly died because she intentionally (stupidly) lost him. She relives the feeling of it now--the panic that came with facing certain death when she realized it wasn’t Link following her, but the Yiga, then the shock when he appeared out of thin air wielding the sword. His back, so strong and sure. His concern as he helped her get up afterwards.

How once she could process what happened, something kicked in her chest, and everything was so obvious so suddenly.

Then getting back from the desert, what did she do? She wrote a diary entry, spent a sleepless night deciding she had feelings for him that she didn’t want to name, and tried as hard as possible to conceal them. The pining was unbearable, and--oh. Looking at him made her face burn, so she turned away. She never knew what to say around him, so she chose to say nothing at all.

Perhaps she approached her yearning by offsetting it with its opposite.

They really haven’t spoken. Zelda shakes her head, and mentally kicks herself. How can someone like you back if you don’t even talk to them? “I promise, I’m not trying to avoid you.”

He furrows his brow a little. Cute. Unfair. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Ok. If you do--if you ever need more space, let me know.” He smiles a little. “I do have to follow you, but I can do it farther away or something.”

She smiles back. Please always follow me. “Thanks. No need.”

“Alright,” he says. He glances at her arms.“Do you want to go back inside? It’s a bit cold. You’re getting goosebumps.”

She didn’t even notice. An idea is forming in her mind, bright and hot and something that needs to rush out right now or she’s going to overthink it to death.

“Going back inside sounds good. When we do, would you--would you like to dance with me?”

The question leaves so quickly that she’s not too sure if he understood it. She holds her breath; she might throw up.

“Sure,” he says, and the disappointment that she expected to punch her gut doesn’t come; a flood of something wonderful washes over her instead. Sure is yes, her mind sings. “How about I find you before the last song? I’ve been doing a bad job of keeping watch.”

“Sure,” she echoes. Hopefully her excitement isn’t too obvious when she turns back and nearly runs into the ballroom.

* * *

When the band announces the last song of the night, Zelda lets go of the poet and steps back immediately.

“My Princess,” he says, and the normal repulsion she would feel turns into joy when she spots a navy blue cap making its way through the crowd. “I would be honored to have your final dance, if you would have me.”

“Another time,” she says, already turning to pick up her skirt and mosey her way through the last group of people separating her from a flash of sandy blonde hair. “Thank you though!”

She doesn’t wait for the poet’s response because the crowd is gone and Link is right in front of her, handsome and smiling slightly. Her heart is at a million miles a minute when she drops her skirt and steps forward to place her hand in his.

This isn’t like her. He must think she’s acting so strange. Either that, or it’s obvious just from looking at her what she’s thinking. It’s a frenzied array of thoughts, ranging from the obvious (handsome, handsome, smells so good?, handsome, kind eyes) and the embarrassing (The smallest, least repressed part of me has dreamed about this all week.)

The music starts and swells and she’s still dreaming. His hand on her back is firm. Thanks to the design of the dress, she can feel his glove pressing into her. She wonders if he can feel the heat of her skin.

“How are you doing?” he asks when they fall into a rhythm, and she smiles too fast, idiot, calm down.

“Great, how are you?”

“Good,” he says, and they spin. He smiles back. “Good to know you’re not avoiding me.”

“Of course not.” Stupid, you avoided him!

He dips her a perfectly appropriate amount.

She feels brave. It’s the adrenaline getting to her, because the rational part of her can’t stop (giddily) telling her that she’s dumb when she asks, “Why would you think that I'd avoid you?”

“Hm.” He looks away to consider the question. The tips of his eyelashes catch the chandelier light. “I thought that maybe last week was a bit too much.”

She thinks about how warm his hand was when he helped her get up after saving her life. “It wasn’t.”

“It’s ok if it was.”

“No, no, you’re too kind.”

Link clears his throat. “So you’re not avoiding me because I kept trying to follow you through the bazaar when you clearly didn’t want me to?”

She laughs. “No, it’s also incredibly stupid that I tried to lose you. Besides, what would’ve happened if you hadn’t?”

Link clears his throat.

She chooses to change the subject by asking an easy “What did you make for dinner tonight?” in an attempt to soak up the final minutes she has in his arms. He starts talking about mushroom risotto, and she can’t stop smiling.

* * *

At the end of the night, when he escorts her to her room, it’s late enough that silence is acceptable.

She’s decided that she needs to do something, but she doesn’t know what. A hug would be different, but too strange. I like you is simple, but too plain. Thinking about you makes my heart soft is embarrassing. I know I’ve been an incorrigible bitch but now my walls are down and I like you is too honest.

She turns around when they reach her doors.

“Tonight was fun,” she says.

He smiles. Zelda knows romance books don’t lie when her heart jumps at the sight of it. “It was.”

This is the moment. She takes a deep breath as quietly as she can. She has that nauseous feeling again. If nothing matters, tell him. Everyone knows the apocalypse is coming.

“Hey, listen,” he says right when she opens her mouth. He pauses to look at her. If she thought he looked nervous earlier when he asked her if she was avoiding him, it’s nothing compared to now. He does a visible gulp, and—

“I think I have feelings for you.”

She blinks. What?

“And I understand if you don’t feel the same way,” he continues, tense and fast, looking right at her, “especially in light of everything going on right now. But I just had to put that out there.”

What?!

She closes her eyes--what is happening right now--and when she opens them he’s still there. This isn’t a dream.

Holy fuck. “Really?”

He nods. “Really.”

“Huh,” she says. He beat her to it. “Huh.”

“Huh?”

She laughs. He beat her to it, and now all she has to do is the easiest thing in the world.

“I think I have feelings for you too,” she says. It’s so dark now she can’t see the blue of his eyes, but she can imagine it easily.

He’s surprised. “Really?”

“Really. In fact, I was meaning to tell you just now.”

“Really?”

She laughs. “Really.”

She smiles and takes his hand. He stiffens at first, then relaxes as she threads her fingers through his.

“Oh, actually, here, let me—” He lets go. Disappointment hits her briefly before she sees that he’s taking off his glove. Some of his scars are alabaster in the moonlight. He has so many.

(She wants to kiss all of them.)

His hand is warm and rough and lovely when he slips it back into hers.

“This feels nicer,” he says, and his voice is almost shy.

There are a million things she wants to say--what are we going to do if I end the world, what are we going to do if you save the world, how long have you known for, Hylia is going to smite both of us for being fools--but she settles on squeezing his hand instead. He squeezes back.

“Yes,” she agrees. Very gently, she cups his cheek with her other hand and leans in. He’s closed his eyes already. “Much nicer.”

#zelink week 2021 #zelink #zelink fanfiction

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hains-mae · 4 years ago

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A Second Chance

(Jason x Reader)

Rating: T

Ages: You’re both 20+

Summary: It wouldn’t take a mind reader to visibly see how broken you were. “You never really stop loving.” The alien princess says to you one especially lonely evening. It had been a month since the tragedy. “You just learn to live without them.”

Notes: I couldn’t stop thinking of Jason Todd’s death and how painful it must be for the people who cared about him. This is a little drabble on the reader (who is you, or anyone you want them to be) and their perspective of Jason’s death. Angst with a happy ending.

And just like that, Jason Todd disappeared from your life. No one read to you that night, no tale of adventure and romance translated into fine print classics. No Prince Charming to slay the dragon who captured the Princess. No pirates who sailed the 7 seas in search for lost treasure. No tale of two star crossed lovers fighting fate to be together.

All that was left was emptiness... in your room, your heart, and an ache in your very soul. It felt like a piece of you was missing.

“You never really stop loving.” The alien princess said to you on one especially lonely evening. It had been a month since the tragedy.

You let out a shaky breath as you try to still your hands to keep the mug of hot tea from spilling.

“You just learn to live without them.” Her voice was quiet. Almost like the wind that blew through your hair.

You didn’t answer.

You didn’t have to.

You understood what she meant. There was no way you could fill that void. It was too deep, too unique, the chasm that Jason Todd left inside you. Nothing you did or thought of truly worked. He had carved himself into your life too intimately. The piece you were looking for was too specific — and very much gone.

The sooner you’d accept that, the sooner you could start to move on.

It would be years after that excruciating experience that you two would meet again. Although, at first you wouldn’t recognize him. But he would instantly recognize you. The way you tied your hair, the way your eyes lit up, the way you talked, and smiled — it never changed, since the day he met you so long ago.

He couldn’t really stay away from you. Little by little he’d make himself known, but he would constantly remind himself that he shouldn’t ruin your life any more than he already had.

You first met him as Red Hood. It was unintentional, him falling into your apartment that fateful night, bleeding out onto your carpet. He should’ve expected that you wouldn’t let him leave without patching him up. That one night became two, and then three, and then four — before he was aware of it, he was slipping into your home nearly every night to seek your (medical) assistance and comfort.

He’d continue the charade of pretending he wasn’t Jason, until one night his heart aches too much to deny it any longer.

It was his death anniversary, and he found you silently crying under a blanket fort you made in your living room. He broke all over again for a whole different reason when he saw your figure huddled tightly in the corner.

“We used to do this every night, when he’d read to me.” You told him. “I just wish I told him how much he meant to me before he left.”

Red Hood would hug you, then, and try to comfort you as best as he can, by making your favorite cup of tea.

Earl Gray, two teaspoons of raw honey, and a dash of warm almond milk.

“Tea is never complete without the biscuit.” He told you behind his red domino mask, before proceeding to slide a small plate of ginger bread cookies in the shape of a simple flower.

“He knew.” His voice sounded as fragile as glass. “He knew how much you cared.”

You froze in your spot at the counter where he had placed the tea and cookies. Too many thoughts running around your brain all at the same time to form a cohesive sentence.

He was alive.

He was here.

All this time.

Different emotions flickered behind your eyes.

When did he come back?

How?

Why didn’t he tell you?

“I didn’t want to hurt you any more than I already did!” He defended. “When I saw you again all I wanted to do was to run back to you but you had a life, you built a life all on your own and you seemed so content. I’m not the same person I was back then, I’m not exactly a hero, and what I do... what I do could put you in harms way.” He was rambling now.

You shook your head as new tears threatened to fall.

“I thought maybe I could change. Get better? I don’t know, all this was so messed up but I couldn’t stop it. I needed to do what I had to.” He continue on. “I didn’t know if you would take me back like this. Broken...”

The tears were back in full force now, and Jason opened his mouth again to say something but you didn’t want to hear it.

Any excuse he was going to give you, any reason he came up with to keep you at arms length died in his throat when you crashed your lips against his.

You needed to know he was truly standing in front of you this time, and not just a figment of your many imaginations. Your fingers found its way at the base of his neck and brushed his hair before you tangled it in his locks to bring him closer. His own hands, much bigger than yours, were placed on your back and waist. God, how long had he wanted this? To be able to hold you like this. To taste you like this?

The kiss ended far too quickly for his liking — but that was okay. After the heat would settle down, you’d tell him how much you missed him, and remind him over and over that no matter what had become of him, by the end of the day he was still Jason. That’s all that really mattered, and that’s all you really needed.

Finally, you’d be able to feel again. The hole in both your souls start to fill. It’s you, and it’s him. Same people, different time. No longer a little girl who dreams of fairy tales, and no longer a boy who had lost his way.

Now you’re both a little older. A little wiser. Both your pasts and experiences have shaped the adults you’ve become, and maybe now fate wouldn’t be so cruel.

Maybe fate could give you two a second chance.

#my fanfiction #fanfiction #jason todd x reader #Jason Todd #red hood #dc #dc comics #Batman #x reader #batboys #batboys x reader

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herenortherenearnorfar · 3 years ago

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This Tornado Tolerates And Respects You

A little story about Gothmog and orcs that I’ll probably put on other sites later. But for now, a tumblr exclusive! CW for the terrible reproductive politics of evil (implied reproductive coercion, forced childbearing, light eugenics), orc awfulness, disdain for incarnates, radiation poisoning, chemical weapons, Fingon’s fate, mentions of cannibalism, malnourishment, ear cropping, and all of the above with the implied harm to children.

Orcs, Lord Melkor’s special pet project, a blasphemy first and a strategic asset second, didn’t make the best troops. They could swarm over a target in a useful mass of bodies but they lacked skill and drive. For the Captain of Angband’s own force of fire and shadow, spirits sprung free from the tyranny of the Valar, orcs were a sea of troublesome bodies, cluttering up the field of battle. More flesh to whip through, barbed wire quick, more lungs to choke with lime gas. An annoyance, not an ally.

He didn’t have very high expectations of them as a source of soldiers and there were very few individual orcs who he respected. Gorfaunt was one of those rare exceptions.

They’d fought on the same battlefield under the taunting stars, in those blissful days before the heavens changed, and he’d been impressed by the orc commanders ability to marshal troops. Very few in that division ended up trampled beneath Balrog feet. Even the retreat was prompt, almost orderly, without sacrificing that wild spirit which was one of the orcs’ few redeeming qualities.

When it came time to capture the stripling-king of the elves he’d requested Gorfaunt’s orcs in particular. Once again they’d proven their mettle and the commander had become of of the Captain’s favorites. If orcs had to be stationed next to their betters it was preferable that it be Gorfaunt’s orcs, who knew how to comport themselves and could fight near Balrogs without dying in droves.

Now with the latest glorious battle (and another successful collaboration, the Captain still glowed at the memory of the Noldor’s latest king cracking open to spill his red insides over his silver banner) behind them and Lord Melkor demanding Nargothrond and Gondolin, they met once a month to strategize, share intelligence, and complain about everyone else. To an outsider they might have passed as friends. There was less formality between the two of them than another high general of the iron fortress might have demanded, they sat at the same table and spoke freely.

(The Lieutenant still asked commanders to bow before him; that was why even his own troops called him Sauron behind his back. Gothmog was a superior appellation, less insulting, more fearful, but he still didn’t hasten to encourage its use.)

Despite their surface level amicability and the handful of tried-and-true inside jokes—mostly having to do with how enemies had died— they could bat at each other, they knew very little about each other’s lives. Meat and smoke only mixed when making a brisket, trying to relate two such different ways of being seemed impossible.

But when he saw Gorfaunt waddling into their monthly kvetch with a belly round and swollen like a tick’s, the Captain felt driven to say something. He was the marshal of Angband, he couldn’t let his king’s forces go to seed.

“Are you ill? Cursed?”

Gorfaunt managed to pull out a chair, made for a Balrog three times the size of an orc, and hoist themselves into it with rangy arms. “No? Just five months with a baby kicking around in my insides. The little bugger’s finally starting to show itself.”

That took a second to decipher. “You’re having a baby?”

Of course the Captain knew the basics of how incarnates made more of themselves. It was a topic of great fascination in the old days, when Yavanna was first figuring the system out, and of course the Lieutenant would prattle on about warg breeding to anyone who’d listen. They had sex— another thing that did not come naturally to beings of spirits, though some Maiar had made astounding progress in the field, for pleasure was pleasure and even Nienna’s acolytes sought catharsis and comfort—then there was lots of squishy biology on a level invisible to the incarnates themselves, then a little parasite was somehow blessed with Erú’s fire, to be nurtured until it could nurture itself.

He also knew that orcs, like elves and dwarves, had little distinction between men and womenfolk. Useful when it meant you could channel your entire adult population to battle. Startling when you realized that a key ally had been quietly pregnant for months without you, a greater being able to perceive stalactites growing and the scales on insect wings, noticing.

In truth he’d been doing a lot less noticing of late. His senses were dulling. Perhaps it was the light of the cursed gems, which painted everything in blinding, indistinguishable holiness. Or he was just losing his touch.

If he focused now he could see it. It was easiest to sense on the plane of wraiths. There was Gorfaunt, a guttering candle; wheezing, weak. All orcs had that fire, however dim. No one had managed to fully extinguish it though it had been much suppressed. Tucked against her, nearly imperceptible, was a little spark. Not much yet but given tinder and carefully fanned it could grow. “You’re having a baby,” he marveled.

Gorfaunt’s face was… orcs were hard to read at the best of times, bubbling over with noisy pain and anger that obscured their true emotions, prone to skin diseases and horrendous eye infections that muddled their expressions. She didn’t wear her gas mask around him anymore, though most were quick to cover up around any Maia of Morgoth. It helped little, her face was still opaque as the mountain itself. “Yep, Captain.”

“Good?” You congratulated an ally on a new weapon, a new bond, a promotion. Which one was an infant classified as? What was the correct form?

“Hopefully it’ll be over and the little goblin will be in the caves with the old’uns by the time we find either of the cities.” Gorfaunt provided, only barely contextualizing his felicitations. She was chewing on the inside on her cheek; sometimes she would gnaw until she spat black blood. “Terrible time for it. Terrible time. But the high ups are worried about reinforcements down the line, I suppose.”

Orcs came from orcs. It was a fact so simple it barely bore considering. Another department handled it. The new ones just showed up, springy and long limbed, faces still soft and unmarred. “Goblins” he’d heard older orcs call those fresh pale creatures. Barely even monsters, more like stunted, crepuscular versions of the elves and dwarves they fought.

“How much longer?” They had a few good leads on Nargothrond, a promising word about Túrin Turambar. The Captain could not sack that city himself, the honor had already been promised to the sulfurous worm. Apparently they wanted to test the mettle of these dragons. But Gothmog could assign a few good orc commanders to supervise, make sure the worm was not overstepping his bounds.

Dark blood trickled out of the corner of Gorfaunt’s mouth. “Five months, I’m told. Could be more, could be less. Then I have to wait until the thing is independent enough to leave alone, that’s another few months.” She was probably counting months as the orcs had started to, by the moon. Wretched traitor, Tilion, who’d laughed with them at the idea of running away then turned his face when the time came to flee for freedom. They hated it as much as everyone else but in their hatred they were aware of its cycles. They rejoiced when it went dark.

“You’ll still be able to manage your underlings?” Orcs, and freed Maiar, were fractious. They did not respect a leader who lacked the strength to force them to obey. It could be exhausting. And Gorfaunt was already so round. The Captain did not wish to lose her support over one orcling.

“I think so. So far… in old days you’d den up somewhere for a year, avoid everyone prowling for blood, but I don’t want to fight my way up the ranks again. I’ve got an ax and I’m using it.” Despite that she sounded tired.

Long heartbeats stretched between them, that exquisite embarrassment of two coworkers suddenly forced to talk about private affairs.

“This is your first,” the Captain didn’t reach the tone of a question with that one.

“Yes. The recruiters were getting growly so I grabbed a fellow. I’ve been avoiding it for too long.”

“You don’t want a child.” Again, not quite a question. He was feeling it out as he goes along. This is the longest conversation about orc reproduction he’s ever paid attention to, for the Lieutenants diatribes we’re always dull.

It was no matter to him, except that this was the only orc commander he could tolerate working with and she was chewing through her own cheek in discomfort.

“They take something from you,” Gorfaunt admitted. “Dame and sire both, but worse for the dame since she has to carry the clot. You go… stretchy. Bleached like old bone. I’ve seen soldiers and after twenty children they’re not good for anything but shoving onto a line of pikes. Raw meat for the wargs.”

That didn’t make sense to him, but he was never a scholar of flesh or spirit. He knew how a skull split and how a soul fled, how this matter-sprung life withered, how it died. That was all that counted. He also knew how to value a resource.

“There won’t be any after this,” he said firmly. “Not if you don’t want them.” If need be he’d escalate to Lord Melkor, frame it as sapping strength from their command structure and propose making officers off limits from breeding programmes.

“As you command, Captain,” she said with a bowed head, but she looked gratifyingly relieved, and their conversation could finally move on to the latest stories of occupied territories and the search for the hidden cities.

The next few months Gorfaunt somehow managed to get bigger and bigger, until she was no longer able to swing herself into a chair and had to take their meeting standing. Her leather armor no longer fit and with just a thin layer of rags over her distended stomach it was easy to see the squirming creature inside.

Ferocious little animal. It would go so still and then kick out again, as if it could burst free of its creator by force of will alone. The kernel of its mind was forming too, a hazy bubble of sensation and half formed emotion. He could see what had the Lieutenant fascinated. It wasn’t his field but it was morbidly interesting, seeing the shape of something new and moldable come together right in front of you.

But he had not been made a sculptor or a craftsman. He’d been born a wild thing, a tornado, a volcano, every disaster meant to fell cities, and though he had not known the words yet he’d sensed in his core, seen in glimpses in the song, that he was a creature of war. Like many other wild things—Ossë, the simpering coward tied up in Uinen’s tresses, excluded— he’d found his way to Melkor in the end. Oh, he’d idled for a time with Vána, heard Námo’s dolorous call, but it was Melkor who he came back to and Melkor who he picked in the end.

Melkor taught him so many more ways to be. The smoke, the blood, the screaming not in sorrow but in anger. He taught the others who came to him as well. In the Captain’s little squad alone there was one who learned the slaver’s whip and the threat of fire, one who learned the ooze of pus and malodorous air, one who came to appreciate the ravenings of rabid beasts. From the dragons in the treasure-caves to the cat in the kitchen to the vampires in the highest towers, they were all Melkor’s creations.

Gorfaunt, born and raised here in the shadow of his ancient power, was even more Melkor’s than most. This was how the Captain rationalized his continuing fondness for her as she weakened, his interest in her spawn. Works of the same maker might gravitate together. They could see parts of themselves in each other, the way he could once see himself in other Ëalar born of the same bit of song.

When Gorfaunt came in four months after their revelatory meeting with a sagging belly and a bundle nestled against her chest he was excited to finally see what had been made.

It took a bit of coaxing to get her to show him the baby but no orc would outright refuse an order from anyone stronger than them, they knew better than that. The newborn was dutifully unwrapped and presented, though Gorfaunt’s expression suggested that she considered this all a silly waste of time.

It was a rumpled wet creature; mostly skin and bones, with a cranium as big as its rounded torso. Small too, barely bigger than Gorfaunt’s hand, and Gorfaunt was smaller than all elves and many humans; based on overheard complaints failure to grow was an ongoing issue with their kind. When it was unswaddled sticklike limbs flailed out and began batting at the air ineffectually. Despite this wriggling its face remained in a sleepy scowl. It wasn’t until Gothmog moved one cherry-hot finger closer to it that it opened its hazy grey eyes and tried to focus on him. Even then the dismayed frown stayed put.

An unscarred orc was always an interesting sight; for it revealed the scale of their reworking. How much orcishness was self-replicating, as the Lieutenant liked to claim, and how much had to be beaten in? This one had a droopy brow bone and already peeling corpse-grey skin but it did not look much like an orc besides that. It even had hair, which most orcs lacked (aside from a few lank patches). The fine red down covered its whole body, thickest on the head and face and arms.

“It’s supposed to fall out,” Gorfaunt said, “Everyone says it’ll fall out soon. Even the prisoners lose their hair after a while, especially in the deep mines.”

That was probably because of the miasma of decay that emanated from the ores of Angband. Not macro-decay, of skin and bone (that came later) but the infitesimal decay. Every piece of metal— every piece of existence, when you got down to it— was made of little stars. There was a gaseous center of energy and little orbiting specks around that, spinning in probabilistic loops. Like stars some were bigger and some were smaller and some were ready to collapse. Ilmarë loved to speak of supernovas. The yellow and blue metals below the mountain were full of little stars collapsing, reforming, giving off energy in great sums as they did so.

The Captain had noted the negative effects of this energetic output on incarnates some time ago. Elves sickened and humans just died— Lord Melkor had moved the man he hoped would give him the location of Gondolin far from those mines for a reason. A few of the spirits with natures inclined towards metal, salt, and industry had already incorporated the burning energy into their signatures. The Lieutenant doubtless had some wicked little experiment running with it. It was a part of life here, that background hum of a trillion crumbling particles, and the Captain never thought of the effect on orcs, though they were exposed from birth.

Now that he focused he could see the little crumbs of decay glancing off the baby.

Hmm.

It would probably be fine.

It was already rubbing its eyes and going back to sleep, one hand curled next to a crumpled, not-yet-cropped ear.

“Are you recovered?” he asked Gorfaunt.

“I’m fit enough to fight,” she said shortly, defensively, as if afraid he’d snatch her command from her. “I’ll be better soon when this thing is gone.”

The Captain’s huge palm hovered over her infant. He knew better than to touch; his ability to change forms was not what it once was, he could not stop being a bipedal avalanche, to strong, too close, too dangerous. Even just containing the noxious gases— the pustulent yellow and choking green— simmering inside this war shaped body was difficult. If he kept a few feet distance the chaotic heat of his skin faded into the air and the baby wriggled contentedly in the ambient glow, like a little lizard.

“And how long will that be?”

Gorfaunt’s hand twitched. Another few months, till it can manage worm meal and listen to the grands.”

It seemed impossible that anything could be big enough to leave alone in such a short time; but incarnation was not the Captain’s specialty. “And that’s the accepted practice?”

“A little young, but safe now that the master put a stop to the baby eating problem.”

“I wouldn’t want it to be a concern,” the Captain said very seriously, even though his fingers curled slightly around the baby’s limp body. “We can make modifications if the child must stay longer.”

Gorfaunt glanced down at her sprawled offspring. “I don’t— I don’t want this to last any longer. I’d rather have my life go back to normal.”

That, at least, he could understand. It has been a rather troubling experience overall. Revelations are not always useful and though he’s gained some knowledge it’s not very practical stuff.

“One more question, commander, then I’ll drop the matter. What is it named??”

That nascent mind bubble had sharpened with time and experience but was still comprised mostly of sensation. He could not even grasp at a basic sense of self. The child’s mother should know what if calls itself, if anyone did.

(He wanted to remember the name, for forty years from now, when he needed more good orcs. All those rants about the fundamentals of inheritance left him with some ideas about how incarnates develop traits. Another Gorfaunt would be a helpful tool to have on hand.)

The question left Gorfaunt unimpressed. “It doesn’t name itself anything yet, it hasn’t got the common sense. And no one’s given it a name because it hasn’t done anything interesting.”

“It has an interesting look” the Captain pointed out, “Tell them to call it Red Cap,” he slipped into the elf tongue, which had better color words than the one the Lieutenant devised, and in the process accidentally named the child after a former king of the Noldor. “Or something like that.”

Gorfaunt apparently had a better memory for politics than he gave her credit for, or perhaps just a distaste for the elf cant, because she quickly translated it back into Angband’s crackly tongue . “Rotbint.”

“Yes.” A Balrog, even the chief of Balrogs, could not give much to something so soft and incarnadine. A name, incorporeal, existing in the plane the Captain knew best, was the only thing he could offer. “Now, to business?”

Gorfaunt wrapped the little creature away— it woke halfway through the rolling to stare at them once more— then tucked it against her chest.

The Captain was sad to see it go, though he couldn’t say why.

He remembered that he had come to this physical world for a reason once. He had wanted to see all there was to see, to feel and taste everything, chew chunks of Arda up and spit it out new. Disasters hungered as much as anyone. Yet all he’d had lately was war fare; blood-soaked mud and rage-tinged fear.

Deprived of fresh experiences, he clung to the potential, the novelty, of new life.

Perhaps Gondolin would see him out of his funk, he thought. It couldn’t hide forever.

“We’ll find it, Captain,” Gorfaunt assured him stubbornly. “And we’ll tear it down brick by brick, raze their gardens, fill their streets with blood.”

Even with a baby trying to gum her collarbone her firm tone allowed no questions.

Orcs were, as a rule, bothersome, unruly, walking corpses. Fractious, ugly, difficult, bothersome, recklessly stupid. The Maiar serving under the Captain were sometimes stereotyped as simpleminded brutes but at least they were able to perceive the world around them, even if few bothered to use that perception. In comparison orcs were stumbling around in the dark. They were inefficient as well, you needed three of them to take down any decent enemy. But when they were well made they were well made. Those were the ones that made it all worth it.

It had to be worth it. This was freedom, after all.

#the silmarillion #gothmog #orcs #silmarillion fanfiction #angband #fanfic #Sauron gets some mentions

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whump-town · 3 years ago

Text

In With The New, Out With The Old

Hotch packing Jack up for college

None of it feels real.

For two years after he and Haley divorced he lived in an apartment of boxes. It was some sort of punishment he created for himself while also creating a dissonance he could be lost in -- that he didn’t need to unpack just in case. He had his suits in the closet, his work would not take the fall for his personal life’s failings. The coffee maker sat on the counter, one of the only appliances hooked into a light socket. The necessities followed -- two mugs for coffee, a glass tumbler for the whiskey sitting on the counter, and one plate for when he ordered take-out he couldn’t just eat out of the box.

It had taken him months to buy a mattress, he was perfectly miserable sleeping on the couch. He had only taken Jack to the apartment once, needing to switch into more park-appropriate clothing. Between them, he and Haley agreed that the best thing for Jack was consistency so he would spend all day with Hotch but he would always go home to Haley. He knew this could be used against him in court, Haley could take Jack from his so easily it terrified him but he also knew he’d let her. He was more powerful, he had more strings to pull and more people on his side but the thought of getting on the stand and having his friends call her a bad mother made him feel even worse. So he knew that if it came down to it, he would let Haley have Jack rather put either of them that sort of grueling case.

This was a shared thought between them. Both are aware of the other’s power over the other. Neither will act on their own.

He had only bought a mattress because of New York. Limping home he’d sunk down into his old faithful couch only to wake up the next morning with achingly stiff sutures in his leg and his face stuck to a throw pillow, the blood drying like glue. He had to call Emily and Derek that afternoon. Unable to drive himself with his concussion and consequential blurred vision Emily had come over to pick him up, never said a word about what he’d been sleeping on in the months before. Neither did Derek when Hotch got too dizzy coming up the stairs, the stitches in his leg bleeding through his jeans and so pale Emily had to hold him upright to get him to the bench in the lobby. He was left there, listening to Derek and Emily bicker their way into forcing the mattress into the apartment through the pounding sound of blood rushing in his ears.

That was years ago and yet they’ve created its mirror image once again in his living room.

All of Jack’s belongings in boxes spread out in every room of the house. Packing up to leave.

“Art?” Emily mumbles disapprovingly. She’s knelt down in front of Jack’s bookshelf, dismantling the organized shelves to pack them into boxes. It’s a different method than the one that Hotch uses. Jack has them categorized by author and general theme and as Emily takes down all the books she’s gotten him about cults and psychology and crime she can’t help but feel a little cheated. Jack knows all about crime. He’s had Macdonald’s Triad memorized since he was five -- could give that method of thought its critical analysis as not a precursor to antisocial or serial killer behavior but more as a demonstration of a child’s poor coping skills or as the indicator of a dysfunctional home environment. He’s a well of information about cults, knows the “B.I.T.E.” system.

And he’s throwing all that away because Hotch took him to too many museums as a child?

Jack doesn’t say anything when he hears her grumble about art again, he’s had this conversation so many times. He knows she’s not really mad and she’s not even that irked but she needs to do something with the feelings she has about him leaving and this is just the best way she’s come up with. Better than crying -- which she’s also done far too much of.

“I think art is a great idea, kid.” Derek teases his hair as he passes, sweaty and hot from dragging Jack’s belongings around the place.

Hotch works slowly where he’s been assigned. They all work around him. He’s more freelance than the others. His job is to do what he can and leave the rest for someone else. Today his physical capabilities are not in the way. Derek does all the heavy lifting that Hotch knows is supposed to be assigned to him, it’s his duty as the father of the freshman moving away. He finds himself in the living room, one of Haley’s old photo albums on his lap. Thumbing pictures he can remember going with Haley to print. Pictures he can remember being in. Ones that he took.

He’s crying again.

Emily comes out with a box of books on her hip, having figured out the perfect ratio of books to box to prevent them from falling out the bottom. She sees Hotch wiping his face with a tissue, hiding away but unable to fully pull away right now. The hurt raw. The fear is too much.

The second that Hotch got the chance he left home and never came back. Over the years he returned to his hometown only when he had to -- when Haley’s parents couldn’t be convinced to come to see them. It didn’t matter how down bad he was, Hotch did it on his own. When his mother died when he was thirty he’d talked to her only once since moving out. Then it had only been for the benefit of Sean, who he had driven all the back to Virginia to collect and drove to college.

He fears Jack will do the same and it terrifies him in so many ways.

His own death will come quickly, he knows he’s only made it this long because he’s not alone. Without Jack, there’s no reason to keep going on, not with the way his body aches from years of abuse and neglect. More than that, he knows what growing up that fast did to him. As a child, the things that happen to you are out of your control. Children are sponges, not yet able to take control and mold themselves. So their reactions to abuse and neglect and even just trivial everyday things are but a reaction they are taught to form or never corrected on. But Hotch never corrected his behaviors as a young adult. He couldn’t bring himself to trust anyone, not at twenty, or thirty, and still at forty.

He spent his twentieth birthday on the side of the highway in a broken down car freezing his ass off with negative twenty-three cents in his bank account. No one to call because he couldn’t bring himself to believe anyone would come -- but Haley would have, or Jessica, or the sociology professor who gave him his number for emergencies or “just anything you can think of, just in case you need me”.

He doesn’t wish anything like that on Jack.

The cycle of self-destruction and fear and loathing.

But Jack knows how to form healthy relationships with people. He’s more worried about Hotch.

The car ride is nearly silent.

Jack cranks his window down and lays his head on the seal, lets the wind blow his hair back from his skin, and closes his eyes. There’s no air conditioning but it’s not that bad. The air has cooled off, the thunderstorms taking over the area sucking the humidity from the air as the wind picks up. It’ll get bad again in a day or so but today is nice and Jack wants to enjoy it. To sit contently with his dad and just try to soak it in before he’s thrown into the world of college.

Emily had promised him several times she’d make sure that Hotch didn’t turn himself into a hermit. Jack has grown up watching those two spar off so he knows she’s perfectly capable of getting Hotch out of the house. More than that, Jack knows he’s just going to miss his dad.

“Please--” Jack’s in the middle of trying to reorganize his stuff when he sees Hotch come in with one of the big boxes, one of the heavy ones. “Dad!” Jack takes it from him, not listening to Hotch’s complaint about being able to carry a few boxes. That he won’t break that easily. “Please, just leave the heavy stuff to Emily and Derek. Help me put my clothes away? Please?”

He nearly cries again folding Jack’s t-shirts away. Once upon a time, Jack’s shirts were about the size of his hand. Tiny delicate little things about the size of rags. Now he’s wearing the same size as Hotch, a grown man standing there racing to beat Emily to the heavy stuff because he doesn’t want her lifting it all either.

“Well,” Derek announces, setting the minifridge down, “that’s the last of it.”

Emily offers Hotch her hand and he takes it, grunting as he moves his body back upright.

“Well,” he declares, looking around the room. “We’ll leave you to it. Let you get everything sorted out how you like.” Hotch smiles and Emily and Derek step in to take their hugs, imparting half-wise ideas and a no-questions-asked ride home from anywhere.

“I love you,” Hotch says, he’s quick because he knows he can’t keep his composure if he stays here for too much longer. “I’ll send you care packages, you’ll just have to text me if you think of something I don’t send.”

Jack nods, pretending to make himself busy putting away the rest of his clothes. Trying to downplay his own feelings.

“Ok.”

Hotch nods and they leave, he doesn’t want to make a scene. They’ve hugged and Jack needs to unpack. He’s done. He’s only two doors away when he hears Jack’s door gets thrown open.

“Dad!” Hotch turns and stumbles, an armful of the little boy who was once the size of his forearm. He squeezes Jack tight, laughing through his tears when Jack holds on. “I love you too.”

Hotch holds him for a solid minute, just balanced there with his hand on the back of Jack’s head. “Alright,” he whispers. He sniffles a little, smiling as he cups Jack’s cheek wiping away a tear with his thumb. “I’m just a phone call away, okay? Any time of the night, you know where I am. You’ll be fine. You’re going to make mistakes and you’re going to fail tests and cry over boys and drink too much but you’ll be okay. And-- And if you’re not…”

Jack nods, smiling as he says, “I’ll call Emily.”

Hotch smirks, “well.. After a certain hour, yeah I suppose you’ll have to but yeah. Just call, okay?”

“I’ll call.”

Hotch nods and he has to force himself to let go and walk away. To let Jack do this.

They’re halfway down the hall, far enough away now that Jack won’t see or hear when Hotch starts to cry. He forces himself to keep going. Not to look back. Emily takes his hand, squeezes his fingers and he looks over at her tears in his eyes, and tries to smile.

Emily drives his truck home, she plans on feeding him chocolate and ice cream, and wine this afternoon to improve his mood. He gets a text and he smirks, he actually laughs.

“Let me know when you get home, old man. Tell Emily not to keep you out too late.”

#criminal minds #aaron hotchner #jack hotchner #emily prentiss #derek morgan #criminal minds fanfiction

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thee-morrigan · 3 years ago

Text

good grief

characters/pairing: ricardo ortega x allegra peretti (nb!sidestep, she/they), plus a brief appearance by Chen rating: T (language) wc: ~1.4k notes: still on my soft!chargestep bullshit, y’all, this time with None Sidestep, Left Grief (aka snippets from step and ortega post-heartbreak) warnings: nothing atypical of canon - e.g., the angst/death-mentions/mild dissociation one would expect. [also on ao3]

Darkness. So much darkness. More than the first time? Or had she just forgotten how it felt?

Perhaps that was the problem: she was never meant to feel.

Later — much later, after a myriad of lifetimes — she would think back to this second, darkest captivity and wonder if it had been all those eons in that darkness that taught her how to leave herself, her own battered wreck of a body, and go into another’s. Not literally, of course; at least, not at first. Not until she’d left the dark behind, that void as silent and lightless as space. As a tomb.

(As herself?)

No, not as herself; she had spent too much of her life learning how deep and dark a void she could tunnel into herself, the hinterlands of her own mind capable of holding her far more securely than any grave. She knew this better than most.

After all, she hadn’t managed to stay dead yet.

No matter how much she might wish she were. Or how often.

No, the most Allegra could hope for was the kind of living death she’d carved out for herself, dark earth scraped out with her bare hands, cracked earth a shadow of the cracks that ravaged her raw and aching fingers, even as she kept tunneling down, down, down.

“It’s been three months,” Wei had said, no censure in his voice: only the grave concern, bone-weary and brusque, of a man unused to sharing his feelings, or having them shared with him in return.

Or maybe just the fatigue that seems to settle its full weight on those who survive and endure as long as he has. As long as they both have.

When so many others around them have not.

Three months. Too long to spend at the bottom of a bottle, according to Chen.

Has it been three months?

No way. That’s— too long? Not nearly long enough?

Has it even been three weeks?

(Has it only been three lifetimes?)

What the fuck did Chen know, anyway.

And what the fuck did Ortega himself know, either, when it came down to it?

She was dead. He knew that.

Sidestep — Allegra — Legs was dead.

Just like Anathema.

Just like his career, after he lost it on that prick of a reporter.

(He’d lost it well before that day.)

Not that he wanted it, anymore.

Not that he deserved it.

What he deserved was to have died alongside them, instead of them, to have been there for the one quick-turn pivot Legs couldn’t manage on her own, to have saved the one person who’d saved his ass time and again, the one time she’d been unable to save her own.

She’d thrown herself into absurd, unnecessary danger on his behalf (on the city’s behalf, he tried to tell himself sometimes, in service of the greater good, the obvious untruth ash on his tongue against the taste of the truth: it was, he knew, for him that she did — had done most of the truly dangerous shit she’d pulled alongside him). Taken absurd risks just as he did, keeping him from falling victim to his own reckless abandon.

Fragments of memories played in his mind, shards as solid and sharp as pieces of a broken mirror, reflecting a supercut reel of the past too-few years. He didn’t bother trying to block out the thoughts, let them wash over him, saltwater on open wounds.

He may have survived that day, but there were other ways to die.

It was so much easier to leave the second time.

Not logistically — they’d strengthened their defenses against people (notpeople) like her in the years since her first escape. Cottoned on to her sly tricks, senses sharpened to detect her subtle probing, the antithesis of the full-frontal offensive tack most of the scientists seemed to prefer.

But that was all right. She could find their blind spots again. Hadn’t she been designed to excel at lying in wait? Hadn’t they made her to be an adder, sleek and quiet and coiled tight in the weeds, waiting for the right opening to strike?

No, logistically it was harder to escape the second time.

Just perhaps not as impossible as they’d expected.

Hubris was such a reliable blind spot.

But the leaving — the real leaving, the kind that begins to unfold the exact second you make the decision that you don’t want to (can’t) be there anymore — was so, so much easier the second time. Because that decision had been made long before she even set broken foot once more on that unholiest ground, that land whose fields were sown with (un)human suffering, watered with blood and unshed tears.

The first time had been, to Allegra’s eternal shame, so much harder. That first time had required a lifetime of unlearned behaviors, ingrained expectations and conditioned responses. Much, much later, it occurred to her that making the decision to go (run RUN don’t look back keep moving) had, ironically, cost her the one piece of humanity the Farm didn’t want them to lose.

Want. Social desirability. A sense of attachment manufactured through volatility, the inherently social, inherently human desire to please, to perform, and to be rewarded for it. A broken, terrible loyalty that had been bred and brutalized into them from the moment they were decanted. A vestigial familial impulse, that wanting, and so utterly human.

They might have called them dogs, but what they were really was lab rats. Cages empty except for one button, one button that provided both pain and sustenance at random intervals. Forever pressing it in search of that reward, conditioned compulsion driving them to keep trying, keep pressing through the pain responses because maybe this time, pushpushpush, comes the reward.

The only reward she wanted that second time was the one thing they wouldn’t let her have: to be left alone to finish dying.

So she had to take the next best thing and get the hell out.

Coiled and still in the weeds, lying in wait, as still as she’d been on the city streets all those months-years-lifetimes ago.

As still as the death promised in those adder’s eyes:

watching

waiting

calculating.

Unnoticed and overlooked, after a time. Allegra would not acknowledge how long a time. Could not consider quantifying the waiting. She waited, would wait, until she did not need to any longer. Until that moment of distraction, that blind spot, appeared, when the scientists displayed their own utterly human weakness and forgot she was a threat.

She waited, tunneling down, down, down into that darkness, curling herself sleek and taut as a bowstring, as a viper, in that cracked, blighted earth.

Watched and listened.

Listened.

Watched.

Listened—

“-Oh good grief,” an irritated mumble, the soft tick of something small and hard, a plastic pen cap or a button or perhaps an oblong blue tablet, clicking against the concrete of the lab floor as it hit, little plink no louder than the drip of a faucet. Softer, even, than the unspoken, continued litany of curses, grown now a bit less work-friendly as they continued in the confines of the lab tech’s own head.

A frustrated exhale sounded, the backing track to the pop of an ankle.

Someone bending down, easing stiff joints back up.

She had never understood that phrase.

Good grief.

Maybe because she wasn’t supposed to know how grief felt?

(oh but she did, oh but god she did)

She wasn’t sure there was any such thing.

Good grief.

Maybe she’d look it up, find a library or something, once she was clear of Nevada.

She could ask the lab tech

(field mouse)

she supposed, might have a minute to spare her curiosity, though she doubted they would have any idea.

Doubted it was knowledge considered critical to the mission of the institute, this unimportant trivium.

She’d find out later, then. Might even make a point to sate her curiosity in this matter— you never knew which bits of unimportant information could bloom into critical details, if you watched for them.

Waited.

Listened.

Nudged them into place, touch gentle as a light breeze, shaft of sunlight warming your cheek.

(When had she last felt sun on her face, or outside air? Soon, she would feel both so very soon.)

Allegra stopped waiting, uncoiled, and struck.

#in retrospect i cannot believe i didn't make that the whole summary on ao3. rly missed my shot there.#also congrats to me for finishing this wip instead of immediately diving into the wren-centric piece i started noodling on this week #anyway. them #fhr #oc: allegra peretti #katie writes things

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monstersandmaw · 5 years ago

Text

Male ice dragon x cursed female reader (nsfw)

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

This is a one-off special story that I wanted to write as a huge huge thank you to a very generous person who supported me on Patreon and also on ko-fi. I don't normally do this, and although this is not a commission, I did chat with them about what they would like, and I've wanted to write an ice dragon for a long time, so that worked for both of us! Thank you, 'The Silent Pariah'! Hope you enjoy it! It's been on Patreon for a week, and went down really well, so it’s time to share it here!

Content: reader is cursed to turn into a more monstrous form at night, and is locked away in a tower, guarded by an ice dragon. There's a bit of a misunderstanding, some angst, a bit of fluff, and some smut. Words: 5124

Dusk drifted down around the stones of the castle, bringing with it that daily, familiar crawling under your skin. Night was a time for monsters and shadows, for creatures less than human, and for hiding away, but you welcomed it with open arms as you had for years.

Your bones started to grow warm, your nerves ringing and prickling, and you knew it wouldn’t be long now.

Turning your back on the courtyard of the deserted castle, you left the balcony and made your way inside through the beautiful, hand carved doorway and into the bedchamber beyond. Sliding your dress off your shoulders, you stepped out of your clothes and felt the change sweeping up inside you, rising like a flood of unbridled power and raw joy. Laughing, you bowed forwards like a supplicant at a shrine, and when you straightened no more than a few minutes later, breathing hard and sweating, the creature that blinked its reptilian eyes back at you from the mirror on the far wall was not the nobleman’s daughter with the blood of kings flowing through her veins.

Blueish black, scaled skin covered your cheeks, the delicate scales leading your gaze towards pointed ears, just barely visible through the thick hair that fell around your now inhuman face. Blinking slowly as your gold, crackle-glazed eyes readjusted, you rolled your shoulders and flexed your taloned hands. With skin the colour of shadows at midnight, and a spine-studded whip of a tail, you slid on a simple linen tunic and turned for the spiral staircase.

Outside, through the walls of the castle, you could hear the enormous wing beats of the only other soul who lived in this vast castle, each flex of his wing strong as a storm wind as he came back to his roost at sunset.

“There you are,” came a deep, sonorous rumbling voice as you stepped out into the evening air, still revelling in the change.

Looking like a thousand shards of moonlight, the dragon adorned the crumbling curtain wall of the castle, delicately perching there with the grace of an ornamental bird.

“Irien,” you smiled. “Good day?”

Polite as ever, he inclined his head, slowly blinking sapphire blue eyes and smiling softly to reveal a maw full of deadly teeth. The dragon stretched out one of his elegant, muscular forelegs and climbed down from the wall, over the old stable block, and into the courtyard like a cat slinking down a flight of steps. His ivory talons barely made a whisper on the slate roofs of the tumble-down old buildings, and with his silky-white wings tucked neatly against his scaled back, he flowed like quicksilver.

“Mmm, yes,” he purred, lowering his head almost to the ground in greeting and closing his eyes again as you ran your hands over the glass-hard scales of his face. Each one was the size of your palm there, but as they slid further down his glacially pale body, they grew large as your whole hand, some even bigger than that. “So warm,” he laughed, nuzzling your fingers playfully and breathing his icy breath against your fingers.

“I’m not that warm. It’s not my fault you’re basically an icicle,” you snorted and he laughed, drawing his neck up like a swan.

Suddenly he scowled and turned serious, his whole body tensing.

“Company?” you asked.

You’d been through this charade together before, and something always sank a little in your chest when you thought about what the arrival of a knight and his little posse might mean. Would they have some magic with them this time that negated the ageless magic of the dragon? Some spear sharp enough to pierce his scales? Some trick he’d never heard of? Perhaps a ballista borrowed from the dragon hunters of the south? Would this be the day that your curse would be broken and you’d have to leave the relative freedom of your castle for the gilded cage of marriage?

Irien looked back at you, his eyes hard and stern as he watched your internal struggle play out in a series of scowls across your face. “Same as usual?” he asked.

“Drive them away,” you snarled. “I have no interest in breaking this curse so I can go and live like a brood mare until I produce the requisite number of appropriately-gendered offspring, thank you.”

With a savage snarl, he beat his wings, once, twice, and launched himself into the air. His ensuing war-scream could have split the night sky in two and it made your ears ring and your vision blur.

Irien was relatively young for a dragon but he was still nearly a hundred years old, and there wasn’t a trick or strategy he hadn’t yet encountered from some upstart young knight, hoping to win fame and fortune at the end of a lance. Oh, and the chance to break your curse. Somehow that always seemed to be an afterthought with these men.

“No one ever bothers to ask if I even want ‘rescuing’,” you muttered bitterly as you watched Irien sail away like a galleon on the unseen currents of air.

He circled the central tower of the old elven castle once to get a measure of how many there were, before spiralling down in a whirling corkscrew, breath blazing shards of ice down on the unfortunate troop somewhere beyond your view below. It wasn’t that you didn’t feel sorry for the way they died - at least it was quick - but you couldn’t help the sour sting of spite that lanced through you whenever Irien announced that there was another lot at the abandoned castle’s gates. Your parents still hadn’t given up on ridding the family of the stain of your curse.

Irien was back within five minutes, landing gracefully beside you, breathing hard from the exertion of flying and drawing on his reserves to create the ice-laced breath inside him.

“Were there many this time?”

He shook his head. “Only six in total.”

“Banners?”

“Grey and yellow field with a black raven.”

You turned away in disgust. “Those were Halvard’s men,” you said. “My father’s closest adviser.” Lifting your shadowy palm, you curled your fingers and inspected the black claws before turning your hand over and watching the way the moonlight glinted on the leathery scales on the back of your hand.

Monstrous. Vile. Cursed.

Lock her away!

True love’s kiss! The only way to break it!

Dragonskeep is the only place for her now. She cannot be seen.

The shame of our family…

Irien’s soft, concerned rumble behind you drew you back from your ragged collection of memories and you turned with a half smile. “I pity you sometimes, you know?” you sighed.

“Me?” he asked with a soft chuckle, falling into step beside you as you wandered off, vaguely thinking of heading towards the rambling rose gardens at the back of the castle. “Why would you pity me? You’re the one locked in here with a dragon who keeps eating the men who come to rescue you.”

“True. I used to think you were no better than them,” you admitted. “Those first few years after they dumped me here…”

Since then, you thought he’d rather come to think of you as part of the castle furniture, or even just another thing in his hoard to guard and protect. It was better than nothing, you supposed, and you had the books in the old elven library for company, and the vegetable garden at the back that you’d been restoring since you were sixteen, and a rather impressive number of stone sculptures ranging from the ‘uniquely abstract’ to something halfway decent. The masons who had abandoned the stone workshops in the gardens of the castle had left their tools behind, like children’s toys abandoned.

He scowled, clearly a little affronted, and shuffled his wings like a chilly bird. “Why? Have I ever given you reason to think badly of me?”

You stopped and raised an eyebrow at him. “You accepted their gold and gems easily enough when they showed up on your doorstep with a newly-cursed thirteen year old and struck whatever bargain it was with you to keep me here,” you pointed out. It felt so long ago now, but you’d never forget the first time you’d seen him. You’d burst into tears and begged your parents not to abandon you here.

Irien had the good grace to look embarrassed at that, turning his snowy head away and grunting awkwardly. “I… Well, I did, yes. But when I asked why they wanted me to take a girl under my protection ‘until such time as her true love can break the curse’, I have to say I was frankly appalled.”

Something ugly twisted inside you at his words. Perhaps it was the recent reminder of the world’s disgust at your ‘condition’, and their determination to change you back, but hot outrage boiled up inside you at his words. “Appalled? So you do think the way they do?”

“What?”

“This!” you blurted, halting and angling your face so that the moonlight glinted on the scales there and on the jaw full of fangs. You stared him down with blazing, inhuman, yellow eyes. “You do think this is disgusting, just the way they do?”

“I thought you didn’t care,” he replied haughtily. “I thought you didn’t care about the curse at all.”

“I don’t!” you practically shrieked. “But I do care about -” you cut off suddenly, feeling as though the ground were rocking beneath you. All these years, he’d just been tolerating your company because of the regular shipments of diamonds and cut gemstones that your parents added to his vault of hoarded wealth in an attempt to keep all but the most determined suitors at bay.

“Care about what?” Irien asked in a softer voice.

“What would you know?” you hissed, turning away and marching towards the tower where he couldn’t enter without bringing the whole lot down around him. “You’re made of ice anyway.”

You left Irien standing in the courtyard and marched up the stairs back to your chambers. You heard Irien lingering in the courtyard, but eventually he took wing and left the castle for his preferred roost on the cliff just above it. It was a long time before you got to sleep that night.

When dawn came the next day, you didn't bother getting out of bed til late in the day, and you clung to the shadows of the library instead of going out to tend to the garden. It was a warm day, and the plants would need a water, but you just couldn’t face meeting Irien now. For all the time that you’d been here, you’d always assumed that he’d seen past the effects of the curse.

It had taken you almost a year not to be afraid of him, but as the months had ticked by after that, and he’d shown you the castle grounds and how to take care of the abandoned elven fortress; how to feed yourself and even how to read ancient elven so that you could access the rest of the books in the library; you’d come to think of him as more of a guardian than a guard. Had he just been humouring the cursed little girl all these years, despite the fact that you were a woman grown now?

Late in the afternoon, just as you started to feel restless again with the gradual sinking of the sun, a faint tapping reached your ears, coming from the far end of the library. The room stretched the full length of one of the newer wings of the castle complex, with light flooding in on either side through huge windows, and at the far end it terminated in a wide balustraded balcony where former scholars would no doubt have gone to get some air during their studies.

You poked your head out from behind the bookshelf where you’d been studying best way to rid a certain garden herb of aphids, and squinted along the clear aisle between the rows of shelves. There, at the balcony at the far end, you could just glimpse Irien, gently tapping a claw on the glass. He was far too large to fit his body onto the terrace, but he could perch elegantly on the rim like a butterfly on a teacup.

Grinding your teeth, you fleetingly considered simply ignoring him, but in the end you straightened and dumped the book on the floorboards. Grim-faced, you marched up the length of the room and opened the leaded-glass door at the far end, coming to a halt in the centre of the balcony with crossed arms.

“I think,” Irien carefully began the moment you were outside, “That we may have had a misunderstanding yesterday.”

Your scowl deepened.

“Hear me out?” he asked, clearly well aware of your tendency to bolt at the first sign of discord.

Reluctantly, you nodded. As far as you knew, he’d never lied to you before.

Out here in the fading sunshine, with the low light flashing in prismatic ripples along those pearlescent scales, he looked… Frankly, he looked like a dream, and something ached inside you the longer you gazed at him. The graceful lines of his lithe, powerful body, the delicate, leathery membrane of his white wings, his ivory claws, the crystal spikes that adorned his head like a crown and continued down his lissom neck to his shoulders, only to start up again at the root of his tail and end in a fractured cluster of crystals around the tip of his tail; everything about him spoke of elder magic and of something ancient, something lost and forgotten from another age, despite his relative youth. He was intoxicating.

With a great inhale as if for courage, he began by apologising. “I’m sorry that what I said came out so wrongly yesterday,” he said. “I didn’t mean that you are appalling in any way. What has always appalled me, however, is the fact that your parents were prepared to abandon their own child to the dubious care of a dragon, and lock her away in an old elven stronghold for something that wasn’t her fault or doing in the first place.”

“Oh.” Well… when he put it that way…

“Oh,” he laughed. “I thought you might know me a little better than that after so much time together…” he added, tone bordering on huffy and petulant.

Even you had to admit that it was true. “Yeah,” you hedged. “I… I thought I did too. Maybe that was why I was so shocked. I’m sorry too… I was still in a strange mood after the soldiers came and I let it get in the way and took what you said the wrong way.”

Irien smiled gently and rumbled a slow, almost juddering exhale that you’d always found strangely attractive. In fact, you nearly missed what he said because your attention was focused on the sound. “I promise that what I said to you all those years ago still stands… the time I found you crying on the roof of the keep.”

Your lips gave a feeble twitch at that. He’d had to fly you down because you’d been too scared to climb. “And what is that?” you demanded though you recalled it perfectly well. Your eyes glittered as the mood shifted palpably between you, both tangibly relieved to be sliding back into your familiar repartee and banter, almost as if you’d not fallen out at all.

Catching the look in your eye, he gave another half-laugh. “That if you like the way you are, then it seems pretty futile to me to try to change you against your will. And personally,” he added, lowering his head a little and turning a tad bashful, “I think you’re beautiful whether the sun is up or down.”

The churning in your stomach that had been gnawing away at you since the previous evening suddenly stilled, and you smiled. “Really? I mean… it doesn’t bother you at all?”

Irien rolled his lovely blue eyes. “Not in the slightest. If anything, your ‘cursed’ form is… well…” He bustled and flustered a little with his wings, turning his gaze away.

That was a surprise. “Is what, Irien?”

“You’re stronger and faster like that; your eyes work better in the dark, and your hands seem to borrow a bit of inspiration from my kind,” he said, holding up one ivory-clawed hand so that the sunlight danced off his own talons for a moment. “And you have a tail…” he croaked.

“Sounds like you’re trying to tell me you’ve got a crush on my cursed self,” you snorted in disbelief, taking a few steps over to the balcony and resting your forearms on it. When he didn’t answer immediately, you shot him a sidelong look. “Irien?”

“I… have tried to tell myself that we are victims of circumstance… That… what I have come to feel for you is only to be expected when two souls are locked away in close quarters with each other for so long, but…” He paused and shrugged as he returned your look askance and exhaled. “Alas, I remain unconvinced.”

“Wait, is that your way of saying you do have a crush on me after all?”

He scoffed, frustrated with himself, and snapped, “When you put it in those terms, it sounds somewhat… cheap and insincere.”

His fingers flexed on the stonework, talons grinding small indents into it and sending a tiny trickle of finely-ground dust to the tiled floor of the balcony. Reaching one hand out you placed it over the leathery scales on his hand - really his foreleg - and squeezed. It was like squeezing stone, but he clearly felt the impact because he jolted a little in surprise and slid a foot down the wall from his perch. His wings flapped instinctively to keep himself in place and you almost laughed.

“So your feelings for me aren’t cheap and insincere then?”

“No,” he growled, and then with a little more grace he sighed. “No, not at all. I can’t stop thinking about you. Whenever I see someone with their troops tramping up to the gate, it’s not my hoard I think to protect.” He turned his head and blinked quietly at you. “It’s you.”

Something caught in your throat at that and tears prickled your eyes. “Irien…”

“Mmm?” he rumbled.

“Will you fly me somewhere?”

“Anywhere. Where would you like me to take you?”

Your eyes drifted over the rambling castle grounds, bathed in the golden light of early evening. Of course, now that you knew he truly cared for you, perhaps you could persuade him to fly you anywhere in the world, although it wasn’t particularly safe for his kind out there. People built cruel ballistae with bolts as thick as tree trunks to fell dragons from the sky like downed swans, but in these parts, he assured you he was safe enough.

When you didn’t answer him immediately, he rumbled your name and lowered his white muzzle to the balustrade, resting it there and watching like a patient hound while you decided. You placed your fingers on his nose and felt the chilly, frosty breath wash over them. The sheer steadiness of his presence was almost overwhelming, like he had his own gravity and was drawing you in and holding you there. You found both of your hands going to his face and suddenly you were leaning over him and sobbing.

“Hey,” he murmured, bringing one wingtip carefully to touch your shoulder. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

You sniffed but the surging emotions refused to let you talk. It was too much. After a lifetime knowing you’d been abandoned here for who and what you were, to have the unwavering acceptance of the only being in the world who had shown you true respect and kindness… it left you spinning.

His pale hand closed around your waist and he pushed off the tower with you delicately in his grasp. You’d done this before, though not often, and the thrilling swoop in your stomach chased most of your tears away, leaving room for little else but wonder in your heart as the world spread out beneath you like a patchwork quilt.

Irien didn’t tell you where he was headed, and you found you didn’t care where he took you. He climbed higher into the hazy, lavender sky above, and soared over the castle wall and out into the pastures beyond where deer grazed and occasionally the massive mountain sheep would come down to enjoy respite in the warmer valley in the winter. Out beyond the open, untamed fields, a huge, glittering lake sparkled, and he seemed to be making for it as he glided along on unseen thermals.

The sun had just begun to kiss the mountain tops to the west, gilding a line of fire along their silhouettes, when he landed on the quartz pebbles of the lake shore, their colour almost the same as his own white scales. He set you down on the grassy bank just above the beach and stepped back.

“Better?” he asked and you nodded.

“Yeah, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he replied, bringing his head back and nuzzling your stomach affectionately, blue eyes rolling closed.

As your hands traced the contours of his massive head, he sank his body down to lie on the pebbles and curled his tail around his legs like a cat. The rumbling of his breathing soon deepened until you had to giggle. “Are you purring? Do dragons purr?”

“Only when we’re - oh - really… ahh…” he faltered as your fingertips skirted around the base of one of his crystalline horns which was, apparently, extremely sensitive.

“Really what, Irien…”

“Ah…” he gasped as you repeated the gesture. “Oh… gods that’s good…” he blurted.

You kept doing it until he rolled onto one side, breathing quickening as a tangible shiver passed along his spine. “I didn’t know you were so sensitive,” you murmured, leaning down to plant a kiss on his smooth cheek.

Half-twitch and half-spasm, his right foreleg raked a huge channel through the pebbles as he groaned long and low, claws flexed.

“Should I stop?” you teased.

“Up to you,” he rasped. “But…”

“But what…?”

He seemed to be having difficulty stringing a sentence together, which was amusing. The fact that he was so affected by your touch was definitely doing things to you as well, and as you felt the sun going down, you realised you were going to shift soon.

“But what, Irien?”

His jaws opened and he began to pant, little crystals of ice forming along his canines and over the pebbles of the beach where his head lay pillowed. His belly was pale as moonlight, the iridescent sheen only beginning on the larger scales of his sides and back, and as you gazed down the length of his body, you saw that the small slit in the sheath on his lower abdomen, almost between his legs, had begun to glisten with a pearlescent fluid. It looked swollen too, and as you caressed that sensitive spot on his head again, you watched as the very tip of his cock began to emerge from the sheath.

“You want me to keep going?” you asked, feeling your own skin heating up, partly from the impending change and partly because the sight of him getting so worked up was affecting you too.

“I didn’t… bring you here for… this,” he panted. “But I won’t stop you if you want to.”

“Do you want it though?” you asked, stepping back as your bones began to creak and shift. “Shit, sorry I’m… I’m shifting…” you gasped, reeling backwards and landing hard on the ground behind you. “I thought I had a few more minutes…”

It didn’t take long, and when you looked up, he was watching you with his steady, sapphire gaze. “Alright?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you change.”

With your new ‘monstrous’ eyes, you had an even better view of him. Where your human sight saw gentle rainbows shimmering on his scales, now you saw refracted light glittering and shattering off his spines, and the sheer depth of colour in his eyes was phenomenal. “How about another kind of ‘first’?” you asked, voice huskier now, and you began to slide the simple shirt up over your head.

The heat of his gaze made you preen a little as you revealed your dark blue, scaled body to him. His jaw parted again, mouth hanging open softly, and his tongue was visible too behind that row of enormous teeth. He was tasting your arousal on the air, you realised, like a predator.

“Gods, that’s hot,” you hissed and he tilted his head, catlike. “I want you, Irien. Is… Is that wrong?”

He shook his head. “If it’s what you feel, then it’s not wrong. I want you too, though I fear I might break you.”

“We’ll have to get creative,” you grinned, feeling your tail lashing behind you playfully.

“Look at you,” he snarled, rearing up a little like a cat about to pounce; a cat made of glass and porcelain.

His cock was not yet fully unsheathed, but you could see it - dark blue at the base, the colour of the heart of the lake behind him, with paler ridges that looked extremely inviting, and fading to pure white at the tip. It twitched and drooled under your gaze and he grunted softly. He was huge. The only way you could think to give him any kind of pleasure would be either to ride him and grind yourself along his length as best you could, or to loop your legs around it and let him fuck the space between them, and honestly, both had their appeal.

A huge drop of pre-come slid from the tip and landed on the pebbles below as his cock twitched again. He was breathing hard now, nostrils flared, and he stared openly as you stepped out of the last of your clothes, moving towards him while he stayed perfectly still. It was as if he thought you’d evaporate if he shifted so much as a muscle.

He whispered your name and you placed your finger on his lips in passing as you stalked along the length of his body. With the slightest pressure of your hands you asked him to tip over onto his side again, and he did without question.

The huge dragon folded his wings carefully behind him and then rolled onto his back as you directed him with little more than a quick touch here or there. His cock began to slide fully free of the slick sheath, and you jutted your chin upwards at his belly. He understood your request and brought his hand to the ground, palm up, for you to step into, and he raised you up onto his stomach. His hand fell back immediately to the beach beneath, limp and weak. You straddled his cock and he gave a huge, low frequency groan that made the water ripple and dance. His tail lashed violently, sending a spray of pebbles up into the air and splashing down into the water.

Slowly, teasingly, you rocked your hips over the tip of his cock and watched him leaking beneath you and all over his stomach. The claws of his hands scrabbled in the stones beneath him and his wings, stretched out on either side like a butterfly on display, flexed to their widest span. His head jerked backwards and he opened his maw wide.

“You like that?” you asked and he nodded, mute with pleasure as you picked up a steady rhythm.

“Oh gods that’s so good,” he grunted after a while, voice sounding wrecked. He bucked his hips upwards and nearly dislodged you, but you grabbed the scales of his belly and ground down harder against him, gripping with your thighs. “I’m not going… to last long,” he panted. “I’m… oh gods… oh…” and he chanted your name over and over as you worked him harder and harder.

You managed to catch a ridge of his cock against your clit and ground yourself into it before bringing your finger carefully there to help you along. When he realised what you were doing, he took one look at you pleasuring yourself and using his cock to help, gave a short whimper, before his whole body tensed up.

He came all over himself, ropes of hot release searing against your clit in a rush as his body clenched and convulsed, mouth open in a silent scream of pleasure, and you found yourself coming a heartbeat later. Your fingers gripped his cock, prolonging and intensifying his orgasm as you came in waves atop his cock.

Eventually he slumped back, head knocking against the pebbles behind him, and he lay there, twitching and spent, apparently dazed and reeling from the force of his orgasm. Your legs were slick and shaky too, but as you moved off him, he managed to raise his hand to help you down.

“I’m going to have to bathe in the lake to clean off,” you grunted, looking down at yourself. “Look at me.”

“I am,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”

Feeling a little unsteady still, you turned away from him and said, “Come and join me when you’ve recovered a bit…”

“Mmm,” he said, making no move at all as you strode into the lake. He was clearly enjoying the view, and it was a long time before he rolled himself over and heaved his body up to join you. When he did, he nuzzled you and let you lounge on his foreleg, half in and out of the water. He brought his tongue to your thighs and carefully laved it up and over your body, honing in on your clit which was still aching and sensitive.

Your legs parted instinctively for him and as he raked his teeth appreciatively over your stomach, bringing you up to his maw so that he could taste you better, you let yourself fall limp in his hands. It wasn’t long before he had you shuddering and moaning against his tongue, gasping his name.

He made you come twice more after that, the last time on the grassy bank above the lake shore, and as he curled around you protectively to let you recover, you rested your head against his side and sighed. “I don’t ever want to leave here,” you murmured. “Can it always be like this?”

“I’ll try,” he smiled, laying his head down beside you. “I’ll try.”

—

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#exophilia #ice dragon #dragon x reader #male dragon x female reader #male monster #female reader

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