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halcyone-of-the-sea · 1 year ago

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Blood-Stained Wool Spun At Midnight (III)

AU MASTERLIST || FINAL CHAPTER

PAIRING: Werewolf!Ghost x F!Tailor!Reader (Set in Van Helsing Era/Aesthetic)

WORDCOUNT: 12.0k

WARNINGS: Blood, intense gore, body horror, horror, angst, mutilation, violence, wounds, blades, death, many religious imagery/references, nudity, protective!Simon, NSFW, soft/loving smut, fingering, mating press, implied virgin!reader due to time-period standards, pretty vanilla, etc.

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

Simon’s skin is bare to the moon, and he can taste your blood on his tongue.

Eyes wide, the man’s lips are loose; jaw slackened at the horror that lays below him as crimson drips down the swell of his Adam’s apple and between the dip of his chest. He can’t move, even as the chill sets into his spine, the hair over his arms and on the back of his neck standing on end.

All he can see is your body.

You don’t move, you don’t smile or send him that stern look of stubbornness—the snow falls to your head, it collects on the side of your face and limp corpse. Your torn clothes show the weeping wounds and jagged remains of flesh.

But none more so than one on your neck. The gaping tear made from his fangs.

Not me, Simon’s fingers twitch at his sides, your body in a pool of red. Not me.

It was him, though, wasn’t it?

He doesn’t remember what happened, cannot recall the memories in his brain—a demon, the Lord of this forest, and a prisoner all in one. You hadn’t killed it, no, there was no way to do that. Silver could only do so much.

But it had done something to you, to make your scent twist and rot. Your soul didn’t smell right.

“I…” Simon’s voice fails him.

His body is broken and bent, his entire side burning with pain, but none of that matters. Brown eyes quiver, and the man goes to lick his lips only to gag at the taste of copper, snapping his eyes away to pant quick breaths into the tree line.

Simon’s hand raises to hover above his stomach, shaking.

“I didn’t bloody do that,” he mutters, the evidence on his chest and stuck in his pores. The forest is silent. “I didn’t do that.” The man says it louder.

You stare forward numbly with a broken neck and a torn-out throat.

Foot twisting him around, he levels his back to you, hands coming up to his head as his jaw clenched so tight his molars scream at him. What had happened? What had gone on? Simon closes his eyes and hunches his shoulders forward.

“No,” he growls. “No, I didn’t fucking do that to you.”

The night continues to keep him in its black hold, the snow absorbs the blood and black liquid. He can smell the rot—the infection under your skin as it brands your corpse.

This forest was like a beacon to every monster in its vicinity. It called them here and made them lose themselves. Under the light of the moon and sun, whenever its branches told him to run and hunt as a beast, Simon Riley had no option but to obey. He would come here on a moment's notice when he felt the change coming over him, to his hut and his glade.

There were few times he could predict it, and no matter how much he wanted to stay with you, that just wasn’t how it worked.

Every monster that was called here was bait for that demon, and no monster had the ability to wield anything that could kill it. No silver. No holy water.

But a mortal could.

Every hunter entering these dark bounds had been hunting the wrong colossus and never had the chance to know it.

Simon bends slightly forward to hold his head tighter, grunting out whimpers as if trying to keep his brain from falling out.

“Fuck,” he breathes. Then louder than a scream and longer than the first, “Fuck!” The trees shiver.

Simon harshly pulls at his hair, feeling the strands snap before he slides his hands up and down his face; trying to push off the crimson yet he only succeeds in spreading it. He can’t hear your heart beating anymore, can’t hear the swell of your lungs. Nothing.

Hand lashing out, his knuckles connect with the hard bark of one of the tree’s trunks and he sends it back and forward three more times until his fingers crack and bend. When he’s done, the man doesn’t even notice the tears freezing on his cheeks as his breath puffs out in clouds.

Simon silently stifles a ragged inhale and sags forward, unable to turn back and look at you—he can’t bear it after everything he’s been through. Forehead tapping the rough bark, his pain-filled body flaring, the blond clenches his fists like an angry child.

He should have told you in the glade—in the safety of consecrated ground where holy men and women had been buried for time immemorial. He should have explained why it was only you that made him whole.

But Simon was a silent creature; a creature of silent glances and hidden softness that borders on a fear of abandonment. He would never tell you until you happened to figure it out yourself or if it became undeniable.

Oh, you should have stayed away.

His knees threaten to give out, so he lets them go until he can move his body to the side and lean against his tree. Barely breathing, he cares not about the cold. As he did when he was a child, all those years ago yet still shrouded in pain and hate, he loses any and all expression from his face—brown eyes dark as they stare at nothing.

There had been a moment that he’d come back to himself as the Ghost. A brief moment.

Simon wants to hang for the memory he now holds.

Your eyes, blood-burst, looking into his own as his fangs rend your flesh in two. The feeling of your neck snapping under his jaws. Tongue lolling in blood and licking its muzzle; whiskers dripping.

This time Simon gags, but he also hurls up his guts, too.

Bending his aching spine, his forearm keeps him up, bare thighs tensing and nerves quivering as his abdomen bunches. Simon pants staring blankly at the bile in the snow, saliva pooling in his mouth. He still can’t look at you.

With little left for him, the man curls up in the snow and resigns himself to freezing to death, arms loose around his waist and injuries screaming at him.

He’d killed you—is death not the only option left for him as well?

Simon lays there until his eyelids grow heavy, only thinking of you and how you had been. Your kindness, your wit. He enjoyed your loudness, and there was no one to perfectly challenge him but you.

From the first time he’d seen your form, it had only ever been you. He was yours, utterly; wholly. He should have told you to stay away.

“M’sorry, Love” he whispers into the ground, shivering violently, lips blue. His head is turned away as the trees hold their breath. “All my bastard fault—should’ve been me. It…fuckin’ hell,” Simon breathes, clenching his jaw. “Should’ve been me.”

He mutters his self-hatred until he falls silent and his chest rattles. Until the forest listens.

Until it answers.

Simon’s eyes snap open to the sound of a world cracking in two and finds your body gone.

—

This place isn’t real.

You sit in a mirror vision of your shop, but nothing is correct. Looking into the corners, shadows slip away with quiet laughter, and the door rings but no one walks through. It’s…repetitive. It never stops, but you can’t seem to leave.

You think it’s been days, weeks, even. Always it feels like there’s something watching you, and the window of your shop shows nothing but black night outside and flickering lamps.

It doesn’t feel right to speak.

If you speak, whatever is standing out in the street will know you’re here.

You shake as you watch it now, silent and swallowing down saliva. Its eyes have been ripped out, and the chains along its wrists drag so loudly you can hear them even through stone and wood; they make you flinch and shiver. For whatever reason, the phantom of the man cannot find you, though he has been looking.

He even knocks on the door.

It was a clanging, dead, thing. With a slam of a gnarled wrist and a raspy cry of your name on his slit tongue. You don’t want to ask how it knows your title, so you only hold your hands to your mouth to stifle your sobs. But for all of this, you still contained self-awareness.

You’re in Hell, or some strange, twisted version of the middle point. Purgatory.

But why? Why here of all places—your soul had been branded, you heard that curse and felt the blackened nectar in your flesh. Had known what Simon had…

You blink quickly, looking away from the twisted man and taking down a shaky inhale.

Whatever this place was, you and this shade were the only ones here. The only once-human ones, anyways. You didn’t exactly want to go out and meet him.

“Please!” It bangs on the door again and your head snaps up in panic, hand whipping to your mouth to hide the sharp gasp. If you ever got out of here, you never wanted to see your home again. This version ruined it. “Please, let me in. I can’t see—it took out my eyes! Please, please I need my eyes.”

Your eyelids close tightly, your heart clenched and beating fast.

All of this terror lets you think about Simon. And so you do, and try to not blame him for what he did even if you know in your heart it’s not his fault.

You remember the first time you met him, and you think that’s perhaps one of the best memories you hold.

“If you expect me to fix this, you’ll need to hand over half of your soul and a blessing from God himself,” you frown at the remains of a pair of tweed pants, blinking with your mouth agape. “I’d ask what happened, but I think that would put me on a list of some kind, Sir.”

Simon stares.

“How much?” You sigh and shake your head.

“Really, there’s very little I can do here short of just offering you a new pair.” Placing the scraps on the table and lightly pushing them forward, the man moves his large hand out to take them from you.

Your fingers touch, and you blink as a slight spark makes you flinch. Simon as well, you remember, had snapped his hand back to him, his eyes slightly widening and his throat holding down a breath.

“Woah,” you mutter, touching your head as you suddenly go lightheaded. “S-sorry about that, I don’t know what—”

“Both.” Simon slides the fabric back to you.

Your senses come back in a slow sweep and you clear your throat. “...Both?”

“Fix the pants and sell me another, yeah?” A quirked brow, but something else swims in that dark gaze, something that fights with itself. “I’ll pay. Money’s no problem.”

“Oh,” you blink, taken aback. The both of you stare at each other.

You’re struck by the thought that this man’s eyes are far more deep than anything you’ve looked into before.

“Of course, if that’s what you want.” He grunts, tipping his head and looking to the side for a moment. He wears that strange covering, too. The one that sits on his nose.

“Good.” Simon backs up a step before pausing. “You have a name, then, Tailor?”

You tilt your head and cross your arms, eyes narrowing carefully. “Just as you do.”

That silk fabric twitches, gaze sparking.

“Simon Riley.” Your smile slowly pulls at your muscles, and for the first time throughout the day, you truly mean it.

You don’t know how time works here, but you also can’t really understand that you’re dead. Of course, the thought of an afterlife crossed your mind in your living hours, but you’d never thought you’d go to one so soon.

But every time you blink, you don’t think you’re meant to be here.

So, again, why? The question was mulled over incessantly after every memory of Simon, and you start to believe he’s the catalyst.

What were you missing?

The man himself had hinted at it, talking about how your scent to him was opium—like a drug. It kept him…him even when a monster.

“Please!” You’ve discovered that all of the windows are bolted and the front door is locked, but it never becomes daytime here. A perpetual night and a pleading soul guarding you. In the long hours where you sneak from one empty room to another, so similar to real life that it makes you sick, you wonder if this place is an exact replica of the city you called home.

If some of the other houses are not so vacant after all; the inhabitants hiding like you are. Purgatory sounds about right.

Chains drag and there are garbling sobs and you stare at the door without the key to open it.

The thing was blind—if you could sneak past it…your eyes looked out the window to Simon’s home across the street. There was a pull to all things that included him. A sanctity. Despite how your life had ended, how you’ll surely still think about it and sob out of pain, you can’t blame him for it.

He didn’t have control.

You begin to think of a plan to break out without making any noise as you close your eyes tightly, hands clenching at your sides.

“Back again, Mr. Riley?” Your bell rings and you glance at the intimidating figure walking through. He takes a deep breath when he enters, nodding in greeting before lumbering to the counter.

“Any trouble?” He had a habit of asking this when he’d been gone on a longer trip of his, always back disheveled and with bags under his bloodshot eyes. As if he gets back and the first thing he wants to do is come see you.

The thought didn’t bother you.

You laugh, “I’m happy to report the only thing that happened was that a pigeon ran into the window.”

Brown eyes glance over his shoulder to blink at the impression of feathers on the front glass.

“Poor Bastard,” he huffs, amusement in his accented tone as he slips his hands into his pockets. “Get any feathers out of it? New pillow if you’re lucky.” He tilts his chin. “If you know how to pluck a bloody corpse, that is.”

“You’re incredibly strange, Mr. Riley,” you laugh, nodding your head at him. “I’ve never heard a man state such things.”

“I wrong?” Simon grunts, but you hear his slight smile in his tone.

You only roll your eyes. “I highly doubt a pigeon would give you enough feathers for a pillow.”

“Well, you’re just not fuckin’ trying hard enough then, yeah?”

“Are you here for a reason, Sir?” You can’t stop smiling, holding back your loud laugh as happiness is plainly stated on your face. “Or are you just here to speak to me about the feather-quantity of the local birds?”

Simon’s eyes are crinkled slightly, and you try very hard to imagine him beaming just as you do, though you know it’s slim.

You want to make him smile; you want to be the reason he does. And you don’t even know why.

Your very soul leaps when you see him from across the street, it tightens and calls out like a reaching hand desperate to grasp into another counterpart. You’d never felt like this about a man before, much less one you barely knew anything about on a personal level.

You liked Simon Riley.

“I was thinking ‘bout a new undershirt. Black.” A hand moves up and a pile of money is placed on your counter. “Anything’ll be good, just need a new one.”

“Of course,” you easily slip into business, not bothering to look at the sum. “Special occasion?” You pause before fake laughing. “A lady to impress, perhaps?”

Your heart sinks more than it should; nearly hurting. Did Mr. Riley have a courtship?

He blinks at you carefully, long lashes caressing his scarred cheeks. You swore his lips under the silk twitched.

“No,” is all he says, blunt and casual, thighs shifting.

You stare, hands touching themselves on the counter as heat burns your cheeks.

“Okay,” you mutter, embarrassed, though you don’t know why. “That should be no trouble at all. I’ll just need your measurements.”

Simon nods once, staring at your hands before he takes off his jacket and places it on the wood. You grabbed your long measuring tape and slipped to the front, asking lightly for him to hold out his arms.

Heart hammering, he does so; great torso flexing and face blank.

You begin with the chest, sliding your hands along his clothed body to flatten out the tape until you can see the mark it rested at. It would be false to say you didn’t lose your breath slightly, being so close and able to freely feel the swell of his muscle. Under your fingers, his pulse was like a hammer, and he was so large you actually had to give him a hug to connect the other side around him.

“S-sorry,” but Simon’s eyes are entirely blown, body tense and slightly shivering as your hands feel him.

“Don’t be,” he breathes, and you feel the push of his lungs to his ribcage; molten heat.

Your lips tingle, and heat seeps into your stomach as you shift your thighs to quell it.

Simon grunts, and his head turns down incredibly fast.

You blink. “Mr. Riley?”

“Nothin’,” his lips flinch, and his brown eyes, more like black now, dart to your lips. “M’fine. Keep going.”

You do so, oblivious to the coil in the man’s gut that mirrors yours, flaring with every gentle poke and prod.

It was when you’d almost given up that there seemed to be something else on your side in this god-forsaken place. You found your knife.

It was in the same drawer where your tape measure should be, just sitting there where all else was absent. You stare and slowly reach for it, sliding your fingers over the hilt and the glint of the blade before picking it up.

But you’d checked this drawer a million times over, what had—

There’s the sound of a fluttering of wings outside of your shop, and you’re unimpressed with yourself at how your mind immediately goes to a helpful pigeon spirit. You hold a hand to your lips to stop yourself from laughing, despite it all.

A spark alights in your heart.

“Thank you,” you whisper to nothing, turning the blade over in your hands and smiling.

Walking slowly, you avoid every creak in the wood—unlooping your belt for the small prong that would come in handy. Placing the blade into the slit of the lock, you insert the prong above it, twisting and waiting to hear a series of clicks; putting your ear next to the wood.

The dragging of chains is far off, the loud wailing distant.

Now or never.

You hold your breath and listen to the sounds of the lock, sweating and grimacing. It’s so very silent outside—you’re so used to the clanging of metal and the clop of hooves that it scares you more than the monster. Like you’re standing out in a field but there’s no wind, no air even. Unnatural nothingness.

So hard at focusing, when the click of the door lets you know it’s open, you don’t notice the heavy breathing on the other side. Standing and taking out your knife, you silently celebrate plucking your belt away just as the handle jiggles.

Only you’re not touching the handle.

Blood leaving your face, you can only skitter to the side as the hinges squeal like a dying animal, the barrier slowly opening as your back flattens against the wall. At first, nothing happened.

The door is open and you stare wide-eyed as no sound enters your ears. Lamp-light seeps in, creating a long glow along the floors.

A ragged breath makes you want to shrivel up, and then the wailing starts.

“Please, please, where are my eyes?” Too close.

You flinch wildly as chains are dragged into the room, the scent of dead wood sticking to your nostrils. Up close, the man’s skin is dripping water—seaweed over his shoulders and hanging off his restraints.

He walks inside and the gaping wounds of his eyes make you nearly gag. “Where did you take them? I want them back, please, let me borrow yours until I find mine again.”

He drags his heavy silver chains far into the shop, stumbling and groaning through sobs. Those things seem to have no end to them, and he bumps and walks into the back room right as you slip outside.

Immediately, you rush out into the street, crossing the cobble and hopping the long metal ahead of you as you re-loop your belt with one hand and grip your knife tightly. Getting to Simon’s house, you grasp the handle of the door and pull.

It jerks with a bang of metal.

Locked.

“Shi…” you trail your curse and bite your lip. Silently, you take a step back to quickly think as the warden still calls hopelessly from your shadowed shop. Where else would you go? The inner city? The town?

Your eyelids blink.

The forest. That had to be it—there had to be answers there, right?

You were beginning to grow more fearful that you would be stuck here forever, in between life and death. A branded soul and yet, you weren’t in Hell. Or, at least, you imagined Hell far more hot than this.

Turning, you slip down the steps and speed walk down the road, not running for fear that your shoes would make too much noise. That was also strange—all of your clothes were mended here, stitched back together as if never cut; wounds healed and nonexistent. You weren’t one to complain.

“Where are you going?” The Warden is on the steps, and he falls down them in a shattering of bone and a slurp of wet skin. “Please, give me my eyes! I can hear you running away—I can smell your souls! Let me have what little is still free! Let me see!”

Souls?

You start sprinting as the great wail of chains lets you know you’re being pursued.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Your lips expel, skirts swish, and muscles tense all at once. Like a race, the man’s panting breath is almost felt on your neck, bare feet far faster than he should be. “I don’t have your eyes—I’m sorry, but you’ve really got the wrong person! T-try down the block?!”

You call loudly behind you in hopes that it will get him to give up on you, legs pumping harder as he screams with rage and you curse yourself with every breath. He’s gaining on you, somehow, this blind beast is gaining on you.

There was no way you were making it to the forest.

In a split-second decision, your shoes skid over the street, and, steeling yourself with what little sanity you have left, you turn with your knife at the ready.

Hell, you’d already died once.

But you’d never forget the image of this beast running towards you with a wailing mouth and dragging chains, the things so heavy they wrench back his arms. You falter for a moment, but shake your head and raise the knife in one hand, gritting your teeth despite your unimaginable fear.

Bravery was far too hard at this moment, but there was no more running. You take down a shaky breath and will your arm to stop vibrating with its sweaty palm.

“My eyes!” It screams. “Give me your eyes!”

Seven feet, five, four, three—

A familiar rageful roar takes over, and a black shadow covers the street lamp light from above as if a storm of vengeance. You watch as the gargantuan body flies over you and wastes little time for pleasantries.

The Ghost slams its body into the Warden, and they go down in a flurry of feral snarls and wails. You watch, frozen still with shock, as black claws can be heard tearing through flesh and rending meat, a slick slapping of pig slop as black blood spills to the streets.

In the utter absence of all else, you listen with a quivering body, the fear extending down to your spine. Not of the other thing on its back, wailing and sobbing about its eyes even as its gut is invaded by a large muzzle and ivory fangs, but of that muzzle-owner itself.

You didn’t realize how much of a shock it would be to see Simon again. Like this.

Your eyes stare blankly at how an arm is ripped from its socket, shredded from a shoulder, and tossed to the sidewalk with a rabid jerk; the body of the Warden lifted as the Ghost rises to his back paws and grips tightly. Hands on the lower half, mouth on the top, your jailer is torn in two with nothing more than a tear and a sound of vertebrae popping.

Black splatters over your cheeks, but you make no move to swipe it away.

Simon drops the body to the ground, and it twitches—it speaks as it bounces. Brown eyes dig into its mangled face, ears erect.

“My eyes…M-my…eye—” A large paw pad is pressed into its head, and pressure is leveled. Brought down like an anvil.

The Ghost crushes a skull under his foot and the resounding pop is enough to make you snap out of your frozen terror. He turns to you seconds later, mouth stopping its snarling and going silent all at once.

The beast blinks slowly, ear twitching once.

Averting your gaze, you completely give up in light of this new arrival and clench your eyes shut. Your neck hurts—burns—like it’s being ripped open over and over again, snapping, and the light getting sucked away.

Great feet take lumbering steps forward; you take one back.

“I…I don’t,” you shudder and shake, hand holding your knife. Your mind can’t comprehend him being here—in this void with you, leaping in a great bound to tackle the monster to the ground. No, no, this was another phantom. He was going to kill you again.

Wasn’t his fault. Wasn’t his fault.

You back up some more until there’s a soft huff. It’s tiny, small as if coming from a lap dog that Mrs. Ida would own. Your eyes are firmly shut, yet he tries again.

A wet nose is leveled to your forehead, pressing in and tapping you lightly. A chuffing noise echoed in the back of his throat, gruff and low as he breathed you in. You hide a whimper as that nose dips to your neck, imagining the ways he’s going to sink his teeth in and how your bones will—

The Ghost sags into you, and with a flick of his ears, the large head begins to rub into your flesh as he grunts. Your eyes snap open as his gargantuan hands circle your waist, anchoring you to his chest as he leans back on his haunches; small noises bouncing from his breast as he curls his head behind yours. You’re lifted gently as you squeak, hands snapping to dig through fur and, like logs, your feet dangle from under you.

You don’t speak as Simon begins running out of the city, down the black outskirts. Into the midnight shadows the two of you disappear in the direction of the mirrored forest, your body in his grip and the side of his head never failing to lean into yours. You can feel his eyes roving, darting down and around, before always coming back to you regardless of the things he smells here.

Like a candle in the dark, he had already scoured the bounds of this purgatory for you—waiting for that small flicker of something to grasp onto that would let him find your light. And it hadn’t been your scent or the way you’d yelled. It had been the very call of your soul, or, at least, souls.

Because that was what it was.

The reason you were here instead of Hell was because that corruption had only marked your soul. Not realizing that half of it didn’t belong to you.

Simon knew little about how it worked, but sometimes people are only born with a fraction of their soul as theirs—the other pieces snapping into place when a match is met but still not held as theirs. Your other half, the reason you stayed here, was because Simon’s soul had held you up like a rope to an anchor.

That spark in the tailor’s shop; the longing and the insatiable pull to be near you—marked as two pieces of a puzzle sitting right next to each other, the image leaking from one to the other.

A Fated Pair.

The Ghost breaks through the treeline and you curl into him as he covers you with his arms, eyes watching the black trees and the void of space above him. There were no stars here—no moon. You can’t see anything, but he can.

Simon rushes your intertwined souls back to the place he had dragged himself through; a great fissure in the earth that had opened and swallowed your body who knows how long ago. Weeks, months—years, even. It didn’t matter, none of it mattered.

His instincts brought him through, and his guilt had kept him going; this all-consuming and deathly guilt. He’d never forgive himself, but he can’t leave you here.

Simon finds the fissure as great screams begin to wail out from the city, echoing off the trees and over the air. A scream and a plea. Hundreds, thousands.

He doesn’t bother to stay, because you’re in his arms and his nose breathes in your scent. You grip onto him tightly, shaking with a fear-bathed quiver to your lips, and those large arms hold you ever closer; a large grunt and a rub of his chin.

Simon stands on the very edge of a void, and he jumps.

—

You wake to the large dog curled around you, softly breathing and using his body to shield you from the gentle snowfall. So warm does his blood run, that you don’t even feel the cold on you, only the brush of silk and the hard press of his hands.

Simon’s breath ruffles your hair, his spine shaped in such a way that not a sliver of you is visible to the world beyond your head in his neck, resting on the swell of his softness like a pillow. As if he was a swan, keeping you in a bed of feathers.

Your eyes flutter open, and you take air down to bathe in the scent of earth.

The Ghost shifts, grunting and not letting up on his grip.

You’re in the very same place you died, yet there’s no evidence of that—the blood is gone, the broken trees are surrounded by young ones, and the snow is deeper than it had been before. But your clothes are…

You shift, and the beast lets you go easily, though his eyes don’t leave your face. He stays on the ground as you sit up, looking down at yourself.

While the forest may have moved on, you, it seems, have not.

Your clothes are back to the state they’d been in before—torn and ripped open, long gouging marks and stains that would never come out. You tense at the sight, swallowing saliva down as if wine with a grimace. Like a magnetic link, your eyes slowly turn up to meet Simon’s.

He waits. He watches. That muzzle of his closed and his breath slow. If you told him to get away, there would be no doubt that he would—he would disappear and never come back to you, a memory that fades into a dream and then farther on.

Your fingers twitch as his large claw lifts, a finger pointed and slowly coming up to your face. You try not to balk away as it draws near to your nose, where a tiny snowflake rests. The blackened sickle pauses, Simon’s chest expands, and then he slightly brushes it away with little more than a twitch of his finger.

The knife is only a foot away, sitting bright and glinting in the morning light. You look to the sky to distract from your burning cheeks; your internal war.

Light. Real and glowing above you from a globe set into the heavens.

Gazing at it with wide eyes, your sockets fill with stinging tears, blinking until they slip down your cheeks and you put a hand over your mouth as a small sob wafts out. You bend your spine forward and cry, gasping.

Simon keeps himself away, unknowing if he should reach out or if he would only make it worse. His great body is tight with agony, souls raging with pain. Everything in this form was more instinctual, more in tune, he wanted to comfort you—to make it alright again, but even as a human, when had he ever been good at that?

The Ghost watched, body wound up but still deathly still; ears pointing straight. His hands twitch.

You sob until your lungs hurt and your head feels light, not knowing how to process this in the slightest. When you’re done you numbly stare at the ground below you, trying to rid your mind of death, demons, and wool.

A human hand on the top of your head makes you startle.

Snapping your red eyes up, you meet tight orbs of brown, a face twisted with remorse and a deep inner hatred.

“I…” Simon’s lips utter out, his voice low and pale skin in the snow. “M’sorry, Sweet Girl. I can never fuckin’ give you an apology that matters, eh? But I need to say it—I need you to know.” You stare and feel his fingers caress your scalp. He looks away, breath small. “It’s all my bloody fault, yeah? So don’t you dare think for a second that anythin’ comes back to you.”

The hand threatens to leave you, to slip back down and return to his side, but with a small noise of alarm—one that had Simon’s eyes widened in concern—your body darts forward.

Connecting with him, you make him grunt as his biceps press into your side, shocked as his first reaction is to make sure you don’t fall.

“Get me out of here,” you plead. “Please, Simon, get me out of here.”

There’s no hesitation as he lifts you upward, a bridal hold like the same he had used to lift you above the thorns and mutters into your hair as he quickly walks into the trees.

“C’mere, I’ve got you. Don’t cry, c’mon now, you’re back. You’re back.” The knife is left far in the past, and there it will stay—far away from the two of you. “Breathe, then.”

You bury your head into his neck, breathing hard and shaking not from the cold but from memories; things you shouldn’t know.

“M’sorry,” Simon says again, voice cracking. “Christ, I’ll never say it enough.”

If you hated him he understood—would welcome that Hell in its own right. Of all the things he’d done, this was the worst sin he could have ever committed. He’d spend the rest of his life thanking whatever power was out there that had broken the earth for him; had led him to you. His tailor.

You sob through a panicked chuckle. “Y-you already have, you brute.”

Simon rubs his face into your hair, holding your quivering souls together and opening his mouth in a shaking exhale as his eyes flutter.

“Breathe,” is all he says, repeating everything like a record and an order as you hone on the stiff tone—getting you to focus.

You follow the pulse in his neck, lips pressing into his flesh as your head tilts.

You’re both back at Simon’s hut as you still try to calm yourself, the man’s face turned into yours and his forehead pressing into your scalp. There’s so little for you to grasp onto besides him—how he feels, the dig of his fingers, and the sound of his breath.

He sets you on the bed and he pauses, kneeling down slowly as his hands come to gently clutch your cheeks.

“Can you look at me, Love?” Simon asks you, voice gruff in its low tone. You shiver, sniffling, before your eyes stutter over his features and land on those burial mound browns. He releases a tiny puff of breath—a flicker of his lip.

“Atta girl, jus’ like that, then.” The man blinks slowly, tilting. Simon looks you over with a heavy expression, one that shows the pain and the weight he carries. “Need to get these off, okay?”

A finger lightly travels to your neck, tapping the remnants of your shirtwaist as a few more tears slip out when you blink, shakily nodding. Simon’s lips tighten.

“Want to do it yourself,” he breathes, “or is it alright if I touch you, Sweetheart?” Your hands are too unstable to do it yourself, he knows that just as well as you do.

So, in a small broken whisper, you simply utter out, “Please.”

Simon nods once and the topic is settled; he knows.

The man’s fingers deftly undo the buttons, one after the other as the light from outside seeps into the small square of a home. He doesn’t comment—doesn’t make a sound—just does what he can to help you and get you sorted out; Simon could hear the rapid set of your heart, feel your pulse like a rampaging storm.

When you’re down to nothing but your flesh, the man grabs the covers from behind you and wraps you in them, his eyes not once flickering downward until you’re entirely swamped by fabric. A hand on your waist squeezes.

By now the brush of his skin atop yours had sucked you in as if lighting had struck with every pass or small press. The glide of his scars and calluses grounded you here.

There were very few beings that would hunt for you through life and death and fewer that stayed that course. Thumbs once more brush away the water on the swell of your face.

“Sleep,” he utters, even if there’s light outside.

You gaze at him, at his stubble and his pale complexion; the wind rustles outside. What would he do? Guard the door most likely, perhaps even think of how to get into town and grab new clothes for the both of you, food, and necessities. Simon’s mind was fighting itself, just as it always had but now there was the largest stain on his consciousness that he could ever remember having.

He was worried if he handled you, you might break under him. You…you already had. Avoidance, even if it killed him inside, was the best course of action.

Your mouth is filled with wool, tongue heavy, but in your heart and whatever feeling you have burning in your chest, you know you can’t let him move away from you. Simon being this close made it…easier. Even if a piece of you was still hesitant about black fur and sharp teeth. He had said it himself, hadn’t he?

Simon wasn’t the Ghost, but at the same time how could they ever be apart from one another?

Yet, your lips are already moving just as he’s about to stand up.

“Stay?” Simon’s lungs take in a silent breath, a moment of long silence as he tries to understand why you would want to be around him at all. His hands twitch, your eyes catching the way his Adam’s apple bobs with a slow swallow. “Please, Simon,” you breathe. “I don’t…I can’t be alone again.”

He grunts and is already lifting you.

Simon shifts your body back and lays you nearest to the wall, shuffling his body until he can lie with his spine facing you; his face to the door as he stays unblinking.

“Nothing's going to happen to you,” he says, and you turn so you can lightly rest your head into the span of his shoulder blades. Simon’s jaw clenches. “It’s safe here. We’ll figure it out when you’ve got your energy back.”

You want him to explain, but perhaps right now sleep was the best option. For all intents and purposes—you can’t even remember when you last had true sleep. So you stay there, skin to skin, and breath to breath as the sun still shines outside; the wind travels slowly.

As you slip off, Simon has to restrain himself from turning around and pressing you into him—leveling his head above yours and breathing you in like how he wishes he could. But no. Too much.

He’d explain it all when you were better.

So he settles on the fact that all he can do is watch the door with a far-off expression, his body sagging back into you as your heat meets his.

—

You slept for three days, and in that time, Simon had only left once. On day two he went into town where he’d snuck like a thief—and there truly was no better analogy. Wearing only a blanket once more, the man breaks into your closed Tailor’s shop; boards on the windows and a sign out front to set it for sale. Inside, everything was as it had been left. Dust and layers of stale air, but there was never a better place to be for Simon.

It was where he met you, after all.

He takes everything he’s able to carry. A large trunk of clothes, personal belongings, and anything that looks of great importance; clothing himself in a simple undershirt and pants along the way. With that, he goes to his own home and grabs all manner of money. Come morning, people would believe it was a robbery, and that was perfectly fine with him.

Mostly everything belonged to you, anyway. They could have his sparsely furnished home and its cracking foundations. It mattered not. But he knew you needed your work—your passion.

As he grunts and lifts the trunk, a knicker echoes out behind him. Blinking, dark eyes look behind to find a meeting pair—a long horse’s neck leaning out of a stall. They stare at each other before Simon huffs a chuckle and turns to the shadows.

When you finally did open your eyes again, deep in the third night, everything was different.

You blink at the bright roar of the fireplace, the flickering of the candles that push back any darkness—curtains on the windows to hide the blackness of midnight. There are your belongings on the cleaned table; the foot of the bed and, there, on the desk. Measuring tape, fabric scissors, and yards of materials are stacked in the spotless corners.

There’s no doubt that the broken window is fixed for the moment as well.

New sheets sit on the end of the bed, waiting for you to get up before he can fit them. Jaw loose, you glance all around as the fabric pools at your waist, bare body glistening in the light as your head moves like a bird back and forth slowly. Dare you say it, the place felt…homely. Warm. Small, yes, but the definition of comfort rarely mattered when speaking on size.

There’s a shuffling sound outside the door and you realize you’re alone.

Face stuck at the door, your sudden tension is somewhat lessened by the small grunts and puffs of a large nose and heavy, clawed, feet. Somewhat.

An open maw bites down on your throat with a tearing of flesh before your neck fully snaps.

Your hand lightly comes up to your throat, pressing very loosely as the sounds continue, spiking your cautious curiosity. You know you shouldn’t be holding this against him, but, you had…died. You had felt your neck snap and your blood coat his fangs.

Somehow, Simon had brought you back from that, but he had been the one to do it in the first place.

No, you think, feet very carefully sitting on the floor. No, not Simon. The Ghost.

Yet again—aren't those the same? It was a constant question.

Your lips are thin as the dagger in your heart digs ever deeper, but it is your dagger, and it is also your heart, too. Yours. Standing, you cover yourself with the thin sheet, hearing it drag behind you as your body takes you to the door with quiet and even steps.

So much the two of you have gone through—it seemed hard to comprehend it in this world of black fire and battling beasts; hell and purgatory. He’d tracked you down…how? As your hand meets the handle, slowly walking feet coming closer from beyond it, you tighten your hold on the fabric near your neck and breathe slowly.

You first see crimson, and then the beady brown eyes of a large dog and a stained muzzle. Breath tight, you stare at the dead bodies of two sheep in the Ghost’s maw, limp bodies hanging from the legs out of puffed cheeks. The both of you halt your courses.

Simon’s eyes slash down your nearly-naked form, and he drops the animals to the ground before his head darts to the side; snow splattered with blood and the imprint of large woolen bodies. He snorts and takes a single step back, seemingly hunching down lower as he sniffs the air in distraction.

His feet pivot, one clawed foot moving away.

“Simon,” you say, breath puffing over the cold air. He waits, head only slightly tilting your way; eyes pointing down. You don’t know why you speak, why you call to him like this.

The silence settles as you struggle to articulate, mouth opening and closing like it was a choice between speech or the metaphorical blade to your throat. You close your mouth and look to the side, the lids of your eyes tightly shut.

Without another word, you’re setting your feet in the drowned snow and walking up to him, fingers shaking before your hand extends from the elbow. It rests above the side of his muzzle, hovering with a tiny quiver as you fight with your own fear.

You can feel Simon’s eyes on you now, watching. Always watching. Forever watching. Eyes like hard earth; like the dirt under your nails.

Simon’s throat grumbles, and before you can make a decision, he helps make one for you.

He softly moves his great lumbering head down and to the side—slotting it under your hand as you gasp, feeling the strands of fur under your grip. Immediately, your eyes snap to meet his, seeing long lashes holding snowflakes. The Ghost’s so large that he has to bend low in order to give you a comfortable resting point for your hand; sitting in between his sharp ears.

You swallow down your nervousness as the seconds draw on, your heart rate slowing until you can properly move closer and feel the waves of fur beneath your fingertips. Playing with them, you card your digits in gentle strokes, hearing the low purr that rattles your bones as a great weight is leveled into your torso.

A tiny giggle emanates from your chest, and the beast responds by only pushing himself deeper into your stomach.

“Easy,” you mutter, eyes light as a smile forms on your lips.

The chill seeps in gradually as you both stand there, a werewolf and a barely-clothed tailor. Before long you’re shivering even as you feel content next to Simon and to steal some of his furnace-like heat.

You pull back and the wolf momentarily tilts to find you, only to open his eyes when he can’t feel your sturdy body. He blinks, before slowly standing back up to his full height.

The light from the hut seeps out to cover you, and you take comfort in that—if the door shuts on its own, you’d be left in a darkness you know you’ll fear for many, many years. With its illumination, you speak freely.

“I don’t know how you did it, Simon,” his right ear twitches. “But…but I want you to know that I don’t blame you for what happened. I should, I know I should, but for the life of me, whenever you’re near I can’t think straight. Please, when you’re back to,” you huff a tiny laugh, “whenever you’re back to walking in a man’s skin, explain it to me. Explain why I can’t think of anyone else but you.”

Avoiding the sheep, you step back into the hut and close the door as those dead eyes follow loyally, the wolf not breathing beyond a thin line of condensation wafting into the air.

You only make it five steps back to bed before the wooden barrier is opened loudly, hitting off the back wall and shutting closed on its own. Turning back quickly, startled, you’re met with a fast panting chest and a human hand that swipes blood away from his lips. Bare skin is close to yours, and your eyes widen at the instantaneous blown feeling of your pupils.

Simon’s face is above yours.

“Because you own half of my fuckin’ soul,” he breathes into your scalp, accent rich and heavy with implication. “Just as I own half of yours.”

Literal or a metaphor, you care not.

You both stay there, hearts pumping and skin tingling as the air increases in temperature—the sheet around you held in a tight fist suddenly seems almost suffocating. Your arms itch to drop it. Drop it now and let him see you; let him feel you like no other has. Where did these thoughts come from? Or…had they always been there?

The man hasn’t moved, and you know he won’t do anything unless you ask it of him, but you can smell the sweat on his skin, the scent of blood and musk. Quick death and dragging claw.

If he was fire, it would be a blessing to be burned.

“Simon,” you say, voice tight. He grunts like a damn dog, hands at his sides twitching as his bare chest shines. So many scars. You want to trace them, to feel them writhe. “You’re no good for me.”

“I know,” he growls.

You press your lips to his and breathe him down as the sheet falls from your shoulders, all-encompassing hands finding the swell of your hips and sliding behind them; gripping tightly. Your own dig at his waist, finding the bulk of his abs and the deep tapper of his v-line before you gasp at his hand kneading the flesh of your arse.

At the motion, Simon takes the opportunity to smirk before letting his tongue slip into your mouth. You release a small noise from the back of your throat, and he groans—one hand coming up to grip the base of your skull and maneuvering your head farther upward. He pulls back and presses into you, your face growing hot as he finds your neck and starts leaving deep open-mouthed kisses as his chest vibrates.

Lips swollen and sensitive, you whimper as he bites down at every other interval; arms around his waist and nails running up and down his spine. Simon shivers, hips lightly bucking as you press on the small of his back.

“Fuckin’ hell, Love,” he nuzzles under your ear, pupils wide and blackened, feral-like. “The things you do to me, yeah? Drivin’ me up a damn wall whenever I caught a whiff of what I did to you.”

Your stomach is rolling in tight knots of desire, lungs heaving as his hands squeeze and travel. At your core, you can already feel the slippery effect on your folds—a stain of sin that leaks out with nothing to hold it hostage inside of you. Face tightening as Simon groans long, he leaves hickey after hickey, as if unable to not mark your neck and under-ear.

The feeling of teeth there doesn’t even startle you, no, not now.

You ache with need, legs threatening to close in on themselves before Simon loops a hand in your inner thigh and keeps them open. The world around you blurs as your body tingles with a yearning that almost hurts.

“C’mon now, Sweetheart,” his lips come back to yours and you let him ravish you with long, deep kisses as his hand moves up. You balk forward and shiver as you feel the deep press of his growing lust for you against your stomach. “Don’t wanna know how long I’ve been dreamin’ about this.”

Your eyes flutter, and you gasp out through the joining of your hungry mouths, “Show me, Simon. Show it to me.”

His teeth bite slowly into your bottom lip, easing you into this game of wolf and sheep as his half-closed eyes open and dig into you. Simon’s fingers flex but don’t move, the other still at the base of your neck; your own have been leaving crescent-shaped marks on his back for a while, absentmindedly pulsing along with the heated blood in your veins.

There are still the remnants of sheep’s blood on his cheek—slashed up the side of his face and over his deep-set eyebrow, but you find you don’t care at all.

With how his fingers tap so close yet so far to that sensitive bundle and the dripping mess of your insides, nothing matters.

“My Girl wants that?” Simon hums, and as easily as if he were picking up a shirt from your shop, he lets his thick fingers push you open as you suck in a quick breath and sag into him. Into his neck you sigh, hitched airways making it seem tight. Instinctually you open your legs wider, whining at the press of calluses and scars in your clutch and sliding up your sensitive walls.

Simon stops and waits mid-way past his first knuckle with two fingers, groaning as you tighten and flex around him at the foreign sensation. His thumb at the back of your head moves up and down, his own thighs hard with eagerness and a stain in his abdomen from the lack of attention—but he cares little about his own leaking head, content only when able to give you pleasure in the purest form.

Your stomach as well as his are wet from his weeping tip, the chill of it making you both shiver and try to mash your bodies ever closer as the sheet below you two is tangled at your feet. The fireplace crackles.

“Simon,” you keen, and he answers with a bite of your shoulder before rubbing his head into your neck. Like opium, he’d said. If only he could tell you your scent now was convincing enough to make him lay on a bed of burning coals if only he could smell it for three more seconds.

Arousal. Lust. Animalistic desperation that Simon’s eager to bring you to the brink of—face sick with pleasure and eyes blown with numb satisfaction. Open and bare to him.

“Attagirl, that’s it,” he slides his digits deeper as your hips buck, making him grit his teeth to hold back a grunt as his dick is jostled. “So wet for me, fuckin’ perfect. Let me help, yeah?”

“Fuck, Simon,” he buries his fingers at the base, wasting no time in crooking them back toward him and pulling his wrist down. You moan loudly, stretching and being played like an instrument. Simon’s fingers repeat the motion until you’re a mess of rutting thighs and shaky legs.

The man takes down every moan and whimper—every sigh and jerk with a growing sense of pride. His dick is begging for friction, and the little bit he gets is from your stomach rubbing against it with every slippery sound of his fingers entering and exiting your core.

Simon’s mouth is open with a tight pant for breath, mirroring yours before the pad of his palm rubs against your bundle. You arch into him, whining and pleading instantly with a burning face, half convinced something had overtaken your body to make you act in such a way.

The man moves his fingers faster, making sure to maneuver his limb in such a way as to get your clit harder and harder with every pass, leaving you limp in his arms. Simon anchors you to him with a hand on the back of your shoulder blades, grip hard and knuckles white.

As your face screws up and a fire burns in your core, nails leave long scratches down the back of his torso as if he was a wooden trunk to tie a horse to—a rock in a storm.

“Simon,” you sigh out, head stuck under his chin. “S-so good, keep going.”

He opens his mouth as he rubs his chin on the top of your scalp, mixing your scents together potently.

“Look at me,” Simon utters, in his desperation to bring you to the edge, his accent is as deep as you’d ever heard it. “Look at me, Love. Wanna see your eyes watchin’ me as you fall apart. I’ll make it good, promise.”

“K…” You gasp as everything keeps building up and up, teeth clenching together and legs fighting to close around his hand—Simon bullies you open through the overstimulation; the flood of your senses. “Know you will!”

“So good to me, Sweetheart,” he grumbles, taking you by the side of your cheek and leaning back slightly so he can still let you rest on him but also watch.

Your eyes flutter with every rapid intrusion from Simon’s digits, tight and textured walls giving in to him as he pushes and prods, searching for something as his brows crease and his abdomen bunches. The man’s biceps flex and strain, feet wide open and lips parted as he locks onto your gaze.

“Fuck, what a bloody sight to see. Yeah, you enjoying that, then?” He mutters, and only when he pushes those teasing words out does he find a point inside of you that leaves your mouth opening and your toes curling; that he truly loses his breath.

Holding your head forward, Simon’s jaw slackens as your face contorted with pain-like expressions of confused pleasure, sweat glistening your forehead and your lips swollen—neck nothing more than raised skin from all of the man’s biting.

You strangle down such an instinctive and leg-shaking moan that Simon nearly forgets that he’s not even truly inside of you yet; balls tightening with building excitement and his length begging to be squeezed, used for nothing but that same expression on your face.

“Christ,” he breathes, teeth grinding and feeling you fight to keep his fingers in. Slick drips down his wrist, tapping the floor in a clear stain that could bring him to his knees.

You can’t even speak, spine curling with such raw electric sparks. If Simon isn’t careful, your legs will entirely fail you.

“Sim-” Your voice is high, mixed with panic as you let him hit that same point again and again like a hunter. “Simon!” You chant, fighting to meet his eyes as your vision blurs.

Everything was too hot, the scrape of his calluses on your flesh like a knife raking through your insides with pleasurable stabs.

“Jus’ like that, Love,” he breathes, not blinking. “C’mon know you feel it. Squeezin’ my fingers just right. Look at that pretty little face.”

You’re building and building, standing on the precipice of a large chasm. There’s nothing to stop you from going over the edge—and you don’t want anything too.

Your body tenses gradually, knees wobbling and your abdomen pulling into itself. A sharp claw seems to play with the string of your impending release, fiddling with it and taking it into its fingertip; rubbing it back and forth in a slow game.

Your breath comes out in short gasps, moans getting higher and more cut, Simon’s eyes are transfixed, panting like a dog, and, in an instant right before you break, moves his fingers at a break-neck pace.

Your sharp cry is caught on his lips, sucking it down as your orgasm floods his hand, leaving it a sticky mess that he continues finger-fuck you through with firm strokes. He’s whispering praises on your lips, keeping you up as his hand snaps to your waist when your legs buckle. Your walls move like a noose, letting the man fantasize how it would feel to have you speared open in his lap as you writhe and take him down in the low light.

All of these thoughts, this sight, make him harder by the second.

Simon keeps moving his fingers, drawing your explosive release out until you plead quietly for him to stop from overstimulation. The sensation makes your abused clit cause your spine to arch with every touch of his wet palm. He obliged, the sound of slick slapping halting, but his fingers didn’t leave your spasming cunt as your limp head fell to his shoulder.

Your chest heaves, aftershocks leaving your mind blank to all else but the press of skin and sweat. The air reeks of sex and hot breath.

Simon’s head clacks yours, fingers flexing as you whimper and dig your hands into his sides. He chuckles and slowly pulls out, taking long strings of cum with him as they string his fingers together and dribble to the floor from your slit. He holds you up, uncomfortably shifting his feet when your body jostles his raging erection—making him hold back a tight gasp.

“Good?” The man asks, gruff and casually. Your open mouth lays a firm kiss on his burning flesh as he side-eyes you waiting for a response.

“Yeah,” your voice is far off. Simon chuckles lowly.

In an easy sweep of his arms, you’re picked up and carried to the bed; set down to the plushness that’s down one sheet. You lay on your back, gazing up at the man as he stares down at you in turn.

Neither of you speaks until Simon has to rip his eyes away, clearing his throat. Your eyes travel down before widening at the violent red of the man’s length—the thing twitching and dripping pre-cum down to the base in an obvious plea for stimulation. Yet Simon makes no move to do anything.

“You should get some more rest—”

“Let me help,” you whisper, eyes widely innocent as they meet the browns that snap your way, those orbs slightly widening. “I own half your soul…right?”

Simon watches you, jaw loose.

“It looks painful,” you ease out, pointedly moving your gaze downward with unabashed boldness.

“Is,” he utters. If he was being honest, he was worried that he had been coming on too strong—that this part of the night might be going a bit far. You were a lady, after all, and he respected you as such. He needed confirmation.

“Then let me help, Simon.” Your eyes blink at him, hand coming up to trace the bulk of his thigh muscles. His breath goes shallow, self-control fraying fast. Just a little more. You lick your lips. “I want to feel you take me like no one else has. I want you to stay in this bed with me until the fire goes out and the light outside peels through the curtains. Can you do that for me?”

Your wet core pulses again, wanting—waiting for something more. Something only Simon could give you.

The man’s chest rattles. “Yes,” he relays, words low.

After a moment of eye contact, the man places his knee on the bed, shifting so that he has himself in between your legs; hands coming up beside your head. Your lungs are heavy, fingers coming up to rub over his blood-stained cheek as his nose brushes yours. Simon’s stubble itches you, but you still sigh constantly as he kisses you once more.

This was slower than the previous—less desperate though you don’t know how as you could feel the strain of his length prodding like a hot iron in your inner thigh. It made you slightly nervous, the size and the action itself, but you didn’t doubt who you wanted to be the one above you.

Simon kisses the side of your lips, nipping at the skin as he grunts out, “You sure?”

Brown eyes never waver as they stare you down. Any ounce of hesitation would be found immediately and the action would be over; Simon paraded around as a cold and heartless beast, but never had there been a man more considerate of your own safety. He didn’t want to hurt you.

You drag your fingers through his hair and he shudders, one grip sliding to your legs as the drag of barely-there claws makes your breath hitch. Your lips mutter, quietly, “Yes.”

“Gotta make me believe it, Sweetheart,” Simon kisses over all of the marks he left, slowly dragging the warm press of his mouth and side-eyeing you.

You glare down at him and feel his smirk on your skin, how he hooks his hand under your knee and lightly lifts the limb. Your muscles flex at the sudden spread of your legs, your hand in his hair grasping tighter. Simon sighs low as your body shifts, shivering at the slick heat he restrains himself from rutting against.

Face burning at your bare excitement, the man’s eyes glaze over.

“I’m sure, Simon.”

“Don’t wanna make you feel like you have to—”

“Simon,” you interrupt his comment, and the blond huffs, the air sliding over your heated skin.

“Tell me if it hurts and I’ll stop.” You smile softly and drag his face back to yours, kissing him deeply. “Let me try…” Simon mutters on your lips, and soon both of his hands are pushing up your knees as you widely blink at the openness of your core before your legs are folded up.

You whine at the stretch, the embarrassment of having your dripping folds on full display. This was foreign to you.

Simon hums, looking down and groaning. He taps his forehead to yours as you breathe deeply, letting him take control.

“Okay?” He asks, and your heart skips a beat.

“Are you going to keep stalling,” you breathe, looking into his gaze teasingly. “Or are you going to show me how you can’t function without me beside you?”

There’s a stretch as he lines himself up, hips moving back and abdomen sliding over yours—your lungs stutter as his eyes glint at you; lips flicking in a smirk.

“You going to keep me here?” You breathe, voice breathy as Simon’s length begins to steadily press forward, your face twists as you take him down, lines forming on your forehead. “Make me,” his hands keep your legs up beside you, open as they tighten. His lids narrow in concentration at the tight vice of your walls, having to slowly bully his way into you inch by inch. “Make me tailor your clothes a-and spin your wool?”

The sounds from your joining bodies are vulgar. A slide and a coating of flesh with natural assistance as Simon’s jaw clenches, not able to help the jump of his pelvis as you moan and arch your back as he moves even farther into your clutch.

You both writhe as he bottoms out, bodies shaking at the intensity of the moment and the sparks under your flesh.

“Ah,” Simon strangles a whine, eyes tight shut as yours follow. Quick kisses are placed on your lips. “Don’t tempt me, yeah?”

The great stretch of your insides leaves you sighing, tiny waves of pain pushed back by pleasurable pulsing and the scrape of veins. His head lays in the hold of your womb, slick leaking out from the ring of your core.

“We,” your hips jerk, and Simon’s hands on your knees tighten until you know there’ll be bruises come morning. “We’re beyond temptation.”

Simon chuckles—his eyes dark and glimmering in the firelight. “Smart girl.”

He lets you adjust there for a moment, even if his dick is pleading with him to move and drive your back into the mattress; to see your face crease in rapture. But that wasn’t what his head wanted, no, he wanted this done right.

When you look at him and your thighs stop shaking, he carefully grinds himself into you, letting your bundle of nerves meet the wirehair of his happy trail and give himself the slightest feeling of relief. You bite your lip, one hand on Simon’s cheek and the other still in his hair.

The angle of your legs makes you feel him that much deeper, even as he simply grinds himself inside of you and doesn’t move much beyond that.

“Feels good, y’know that?” Simon mutters as your mouth takes down a slow breath, eyes stuck on each other as the man fully begins to remove himself and softly flinch his length back into you; exiting just enough before letting him re-enter. “Tight; warm.” He shudders, gritting his teeth. “C-can smell you like this—how much you want it. Always have.”

You whine at the words, tightening around him as he begins gently fucking you in earnest, the slap of skin and tight walls joining the crackle of wood. The scents on the air are a perfect mix of addictive pheromones—so potent even you can smell it as you try to meet every dig of his hips.

Simon’s face goes to your neck, nuzzling into it as his eyes go tight.

“Fucking hell,” he breathes out a groan into your ear, mouth open.

The heat returns easily to you, the burning in your gut. Simon’s pelvis hits you, stimulating your clit every time in the perfect way, as if he’d glanced at your body once and immediately memorized what made you tick. His sweat drips and pools with your own, slick leaking out to the mattress and making you feel dirty in the best way as your cut-off sighs hit the ceiling. It's hot in here; nearly too hot to focus on the slide of skin and dig of your nails into his hair. It’s telling how fast you seem to hit that peak again, at the constant scrape of his veins and the push of your walls as if trying to force him in.

Your back arches into him, and Simon cants his hips faster, biting on your chin and pulling at your lips as his eyes watch with eagerness. His abdomen bunches at the sheer pleasure he feels making you feel like this, chest heaving and large build all but swallowing you below him.

“Simon,” you breathe, kissing him on his lips eagerly, growing desperate.

“Let me take care of you,” the man grunts hard, getting harder to focus, “trust me?”

“Yes,” you say immediately, clenching your jaw as he brushes a spot so deep inside of you that your eyes go blurry for a moment. Your lips move without your brain understanding the slurred words. “Yes, I trust you. I…I…oh, fuck.”

He sighs and bites a whimper down as your walls flex, gripping him tighter and tighter.

“Knew I’d find you,” Simon pushes your legs harder into the mattress, form slightly shaking. You moan high into his mouth, eyes fluttering and knot growing tighter. “Knew I’d make it right, eh? Death can’t keep you away from me, not now. I’ll find you.”

You gasp, itching cord snapping and release spilling out around the plug of his dick as he continues on as you jerk and rut out of order; eyebrows pulled in. It isn’t long after that Simon follows you, shoving his lips on yours as his mouth parts with a tight cry. Inside of you the spill of his seed fills your womb and he fucks through it, hands releasing your legs to rub up and down your sides.

Your core floods as he stays there, resting and stationary above you, his weight heavy but not crushing. The both of you stare at one another and breathe down the heated air; all of the scents and the desire there—the unspoken bond that extends life and death.

Simon grunts and forces out, breathless, staring through blown pupils.

“I’ll always find you.”

In the morning there’s a pile of wool sitting in a cloth sack against the wall, and the sound of chopping wood outside. The curtains are drawn to the bright rays of the morning sun as they meet your softly smiling face, visage half-covered by the newly fitted sheets.

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short-honey-badger · 1 year ago

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Phantom Pain Part 6

Dine and Dash

Back in the groove baby! Little longer than usual so I hope you guys enjoy it!

Masterlist

@writingmysanity @kenkenmaaa @foggyturtleknightangel

Shanks is panicking and for a good reason. He wanted to do something nice for you, and show you a good time while still on the island. You deserved nice things and after the day at the beach, Shanks felt even closer to you, and the connection between the two of you showed. The bond glowed like a beacon in the night. Where you went, Shanks was not far behind.

"Stop pacing. You're making me dizzy," Benn groused from where he sat with his feet propped up on an upturned barrel. He and Yasopp have been watching their Captain walk a hole into the floor for longer than anyone would care to admit.

The redhead huffs and plops into his usual seat, frown twisting his handsome features as he sneers at his so-called friends, "If neither of you have any good ideas, then the door is there," he gestures vaguely in the direction of his door. Benn and Yasopp snicker at him instead, and Shanks rolls his eyes at them.

"Take _ out on a date. Somewhere nice and private. That's what worked for me with Bachina," The sniper supplies after he finally finishes laughing at his dramatic Captain. He almost feels sorry for you.

Shanks considers the idea. He could wine and dine you, take you wherever you wanted to go, and then sweep you off your feet and maybe finally get to touch you beyond a teasing squeeze every once in a while. Shanks aches for you, and he tries to hide the worst of it from you. The Yonko would never want to make you feel rushed.

He imagined the two of you back at that spot on the beach, sand stuck on your face as you grinned up at him. They were still on this island for a couple of more days before they had to move on again. Shanks had time to do this.

He grins at his friends, "Thanks guys, what would I do without you?" he quips and stands. The pirate needed to find something a little nicer than his loose pants and open shirt if he wanted to impress you.

Benn snorts at his Captain's retreating back and then knocks back his bottle of rum. Yassop agrees with a look. The redhead would be lost without them.

~~~~~

You could tell that your soulmate was up to something. Shanks was shit at hiding when he was trying to keep a secret from you, or try and be a mischievous little ass. Earlier, you had heard him stalk past your room, sounding like a man on a mission. Now you could hear his familiar footsteps again, his usual joy mixed with an unusual nervousness that had you curious.

There is a knock on your door and then Shanks' voice, "Hey, Baby. Can I come in?"

"It's open, Shanks," you assure him and the redhead steps inside and closes the door behind him. You feel your face light up at the sight of the usual scruffy pirate, "Wh-What are you wearing?" You ask and curse silently when your voice cracks.

Shanks grins at you, all smug and you roll your eyes at him, "Do you like it? Benn helped me pick it out," he does a turn for you and latches on to the admiration he can feel coming from you.

The Yonko is dressed in a pair of dark slacks that accent his long, muscular legs. His shirt is a dark emerald green in his usual style, though Shanks has tucked it inside his pants and strapped a belt on as well. His usual cloak and a dark pair of dress shoes complete the outfit, and you feel a curl of heat bloom in your lower stomach. The feeling is foreign and causes you to shift from where you sit crisscross apple sauce on your bed.

You swallow thickly and nod slowly, "I do. Why the change?" You ask him and shift to the side when Shanks plops down beside you. He leans in for a kiss and you indulge the pirate with a quick one, but Shanks has your jaw cradled in his left hand and the kiss easily turns into more than one. That heat builds and you are left a blushing mess when your soul mate finally decides that you've had enough.

"Let me take you out. We've only got a few days left on the island before we need to leave," he begins and tucks a wayward strand of hair away from your face. Shanks watches you and examines the connection you share with him and feels nothing but anticipation, "We'll go wherever you want to eat, but then I've got a surprise for you."

You find yourself laughing, "Well, I can't really say no when you've already set everything up, huh?" You tease him and are rewarded with the sight of Shanks blushing. It's an endearing sight, one that you would definitely like to see more often.

You shift off the bed and begin to sort through your clothes. Shanks had changed for you, so you needed to find something to match the aesthetic of his outfit. With clothes in hand, you step behind your changing screen and begin to strip off the loose-fitting clothes you usually wear. You can feel Shanks watching you, eyes following your every move through the thin fabric of the screen.

The pirate can just barely see the way your body curves gracefully behind the screen and he discreetly shifts to the side to try and get a better peek at his beautiful soul mate. He can see your bare legs now and his arousal pools hot when he catches a glimpse of the curve of your ass. Shanks won't lie and say that he didn't want more, but he didn't know how far you would be willing to go.

He wants to be able to touch you when he wants, to hold you close in his lap and worship every nook and cranny your body has to offer. Shanks wants to taste you and devour you until the only thing you can comprehend is him. He wanted to be your everything.

Behind the screen, you slow to a stop. You can feel his desire through the connection and the intense feelings have you flushing to the tips of your toes. It still confounds you whenever you feel him, and you wonder what the Yonko sees in such a plain soul mate. You weren't anything special, and it made you feel a little guilty when you felt his want for you. Shanks was so patient with you, and you gave him so little in return.

"Sweetheart? You okay back there?" Shanks asks and you hear him get up from the bed. He stands on the other side of the changing screen and you feel concerned replacing any kind of desire that Shanks had let slip.

You clear your throat, "I'm fine, I'll be done in just a second," you assure him and quickly begin to dress again and then step out with a shy smile once you've finished. You stuff down your guilt and reach out to take his hand, bringing it up to press your lips to his scared knuckles, "I'm ready."

Shanks shivers at the delicate touch and flips his hand so that he can repeat the action himself. However, he lingers there and proceeds to kiss the tip of each finger, eyes half-lidded as he stares down at you. You pull away carefully, and reluctantly, but Shanks has planned a whole evening for the two of you, and it is time to go.

~~~~

Shanks lets you choose where to eat, so the two of you end up at a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant that has a nice selection of sushi and saki. The two of you eat to your heart's content until both of you are nearly bursting at the seams. However, when it comes time to pay, Shanks is giving you a look. A look that you have learned that meant trouble.

"Come on, let's go," He urges and You look at him with wide eyes that make Shanks start to snicker, "Come on, love. Live a little," the redhead is already standing and taking you with him since he has yet to let go of your hand. He begins to walk out of the building, keeping his steps steady and casual as he leads you to the exit. You nervously look behind you, not believing that no one has noticed that you and Shanks did not pay.

And it is at that moment that your waiter decides to return. You squeeze Shanks' hand, "Shanks, I think they know," You hiss at him, but the sudden shouting from the angry waiter only has the redhead grinning and tugging you out of the restaurant faster.

"Who cares, We'll never see them again," Shanks tells you and his answer has you blinking. Shit. Your soul mate was right, who cares if Shanks hadn't paid? He was a Yonko, who was going to boss him around?

A grin splits your face and you pick up the pace to the point that you and Shanks are defiantly making a scene trying to escape the furious staff member. The two of you run through the building, dodging other patrons and staff as they try to give chase. Shanks suddenly sweeps you off your feet, stopping for only half a second to scoop you up in his arm and dart through the busy restaurant.

The two of you end up in an alleyway a fairway down the busy streets of the high-born town that resides further inland on the island. While smaller than most cities or countries inside the Grande Line, it was no less pompous and greedy. It felt riveting to laugh as Shanks ran through the streets until he stopped. He didn't set you down, instead pressing you up against the wall and sealing his mouth over yours with a groan.

You kiss him back, lips moving against his and face scratching against his facial hair. His hand tightens on your thigh and he presses into you, grunting when he feels that wonderful heat between your legs. Your hands tangle in his hair, pulling his face down as you open your mouth for him, and Shanks eagerly slides his tongue in. He can still taste the warm saki from earlier, and your nails feel amazing as they scrape across his scalp.

It isn't long before the redhead grows hard, and Shanks isn't thinking when he ruts up into your heat, seeing that pleasurable friction. You whine into his mouth, eyes shooting open as you look at the man in front of you. You can't help the pulse of anxiety that tears through your chest when your soulmate grinds up again. You try to shove it down, focusing instead on the way he kisses you. You like it when he kisses you, and you suddenly want to know how it would feel to have him, the one made for you, touching the most intimate parts of your body.

But as hard as you try, that anxious feeling doesn't fucking go away. It pulses like a ticking time bomb in the back of your mind, and you can feel the moment that Shanks feels it. He stops on a dime, grip turning gentle and then he pulls away from you, looking down at you with kind understanding eyes that make you feel terrible for feeling this way.

"Seastar," Shanks murmurs quietly and the way his voice feels like the comfiest blanket in the world has you bursting into tears. The mix of saki and mix of emotions has you pressing your face into his shoulder and crying like a baby, "Hey, no. You gotta look at me, Baby. You've got to tell me what's going on in that head of yours."

As Shanks listens to you cry, he curses the fact that he lost his arm for the first time. He'll never regret saving Luffy, but he would give anything to be able to hold you with two hands. Instead, he improvises like he always does and tucks his face as close to yours as he can and nudges you up until you scoff at him and rise. He grins at the teary, frustrated look you give him.

You sniff harshly and wipe your face as you gather your thoughts on how to tell Shanks. You can hardly explain the mess yourself, but you would try, "I guess," You swallow and start over, looking him in the eyes despite your discomfort, "I've never done anything like this. I know it sounds dumb, and cliche, but I just. I wanted to wait for my soul mate. For you to be the one I experience everything with," Your cheeks flush in embarrassment now that you've admitted to your soul mate just how inexperienced and boring you are.

For years you watched as the people around you found their soulmates, be it in your hometown or in a bar on another random island your log pose led you to. The longer you waited, the more you came to resent the idea of it. But even then, you couldn't bring yourself to break and give yourself to someone else. Now, you tried to not think about that, and how long you waited for Shanks to find you.

Shanks breaks through those dark thoughts when he dips in to press his lips against yours. He takes his time, stealing your breath away with ease and leaving you grasping for air, "How about this," Shanks tells you and knocks his nose against yours as he stares. Shanks needs you to know that he is taking everything you say seriously, "Let's get back to the ship, and we can talk more about this with some privacy?"

You don't have to consider it long. You were definitely ready to get back to the Red Force and into your comfy clothes. You feel tired suddenly, drained from the excitement earlier, and then crying, "Yeah, okay," You agree and then gently pat his shoulders, "But I want to walk back."

Shanks simply nods and sets you down, holding you steady just in case your legs have fallen asleep. You wipe your face one last time and then give Shanks a wobbly smile. You felt much better now as if a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. You still feel a little apprehensive about whatever happens next, but you reassure yourself that Shanks has never once pushed you for more. Your soulmate is kind, and you grin to yourself because you are damn lucky to have him.

#fanfic #reader insert #one piece #red haired shanks #shanks #shanks x reader #shanks x y/n #shanks x you #fluff #one piece live action #phantom pain

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mysticmyths · 14 days ago

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Please note that this has been edited from my previous posts and it’s been several months at least since I last wrote so in rusty!

🧚 I’m summoning all my medieval fantasy lovers who enjoy throwing headcanons around, plotting together, enthusiasm that is mutual, creating Pinterest boards and playlists. I really want to meet a writing partner who has the same passion for what we write, I want to completely immerse ourselves into the world we create and freak out over the couple we create. I only feel comfortable writing with non binary and women. It makes me uncomfortable to write with a cis man. I myself am a woman, in case you’re curious. I’m now 23 so I ask that my writing partners be 18+!

I’m looking for somebody who will want to stay up til late because we’re too excited to sleep, I want a friend as well as a writing partner. I’m mainly looking for mxf pairings right now, I’m fine with playing whichever gender. Truly doesn’t matter to me. I only ask please don’t just use me for male muses and expect me to constantly write against overly submissive and docile female muses. I really want characters with substance and fire and passion within their souls. I want to see personality. I want someone to world build with, plot together and create Pinterest boards and playlists, find memes and quotes to share to inspire. It really helps immerse us both and connect to each other as writers and to our world!

I’d really like for our plot to include enemies to lovers and kingdoms at war, and other suggestions I have are ;, sunshine x grumpy, fated soul mates, morally grey characters, spicy female characters, villain gets the girl, obsessive love, touch her and die, dark male characters, villains with a purpose to be truly sinister, found family, side characters, gods, vampires, witches, fae / elves and more, banter between our oc’s, plot twists, dark kingdoms, magic, royalty, and there are so many I’m missing but I can’t think of right now. I’d really love to write as or write against a female muse who has depth to her and isn’t overly submissive. I want complexed characters. I want spice.

I’m a sucker for one human muse (even if temporarily) and the other a fantasy creature. Though it isnt required! It’s optional. I love the angst and all of that to go with it. I don’t have a particular storyline that I’m set on but I do know I want kingdoms at war, enemies to lovers and potential mates if you like Idea. I adore soulmate plots.

I am an advanced writer ranging from adv lit to novella. Anything else bores me I’m sorry! I’d prefer for our story to have spice in it, I feel like it adds so much to the story. I write solely on discord.

For face claims I prefer realistic, be that as real life people, realistic art or AI’s. The option is open!

If you’re interested in getting to know me better and discussing a possible roleplay, interact and I’ll message you! But please, I ask you only interact if you’re willing to give the same kind of energy back. I’m a very excitable person and to receive none of the enthusiasm back in return, will likely cause me to grow disinterested. I just want to make friends and make a beautiful story! As for pairings, I would like for it to be a wlm pairing. I’m contented to play either a male or female muse! Most of my characters are the villain / morally grey type, so please be accepting of that. It’s what I feel most comfortable with.

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gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan · 3 months ago

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As Cold as Death

Author's note: Nanael in Soul Mate Sad AU. @sleepyfan-blog and I talked about this, and they are find with it.

Summary: Nanael arrives to the scene in this AU.

Warnings: Mentions of torture. A Chaos Warband has their hands on A Loyalist. LMK if I need to add anything.

Tagged: @barn-anon, @bleedingichorhearts, @c-u-c-koo-4-40k, @egrets-not-regrets, @kit-williams

Tagged: @sleepyfan-blog, @ms--lobotomy , @thevoidscreams, @i-am-a-dragon34, @gra93fruit-blog

Tagged: @felinisnoctis, @undeaddream

Nanael had been on Ancient Terra for a few weeks, trying to escape the Black Legion Chaos Warband (who would be considered Feral and Non-Treaty compliant, not that he knows that, yet).

When he feels a soul deep agony that has him falling to the ground and screaming, writhing in agony, as his time counter flickers and twists strangely.

The noise he makes attract the attention of the war band- several members and most of them are annoyed. One of the Dark Apostles of the group..

After he stops screaming writhing and is just sweating and reeling from the strange agony he's in poke at him and mutter in a strange language that has his head hurt.

'What was that?' Nanael wonders as he's roughly dragged by two of the larger members of the Chaos war band back into his damned cage that he'd just managed to escape as they toss him in.

"Someone was messing with the Little Lamenters Soul Bond," The Dark Apostle Elona Hidemauler informs the War Lord of the band, which Nanael just manages to hear, straining his ears as he keeps his eyes closed.

"Interesting," The War Lord Maraddeel Trarth says, his voice sounding more amused, yet bored than anything.

"We need to wait a bit- too much, fun with the little birdy, could have his soul flying back to his Father too soon," The Dark Apothecary Toradreel says.

"Aww... but he screams so pretty when his feathers are plucked," Verzos says with a wicked smile on his chaos mutated face. "He escaped his cage again, he needs to be punished."

"The Start of the Severing of his Soul Bond will have him too weak to move much for days, if we are lucky, weeks," Skaevadror points out, the Chaos Psyker, "It was a Nurglite that was starting to Sever the bond, but did so in a way that none of the backlash would end up on the one they were Severing with... Likely a Deal."

'I don't know my soul mate,' Nanael thinks, the sting of pain, of rejection has him closing his eyes and keeps his tears inside. Showing weakness is a bad idea, especially to this lot. 'and they would make a Deal with Chaos, for... something that the cost is their Soul Bond.'

Which is both deeply concerning and hurts. He needs to escape this Warband, to find Loyalists and warn them that there is a Chaos Warband that needs to be handled.

He shifts a little, he's so hungry, so thirsty. The bastards haven't given him anything to eat or drink, not like he'd trust them to give him something safe to eat.

Fuck, he's not sure if it's safe for him to drink of their blood- not with how heavily Chaos mutated and warped they are. One of the bastards, Urvox, had caught him trying to escape and had broken one of his wings, which was still badly hurt and hung limply at his side.

He will Endure, he will escape them. Hopefully he'll get his revenge on these assholes, after he regains his strength. One of the other Black Legionaries comes over to his cage, and he opens one of his eyes and glares at them silently.

Urvox, one of the younger Black Legionaries sneers down at the loyalist and uses a large metal bat to bang on it, "Loyalist scum! What are you plotting?"

"To escape- your deaths if I can manage it," Nanael snarls back, and his rewarded with a spiked mace to the legs as he snarls and swears at them.

Trying not to cry out in pain, while another one of the Warband Horandast crouches next to his cage, a smirk on his face, "If you gave in, it'd be easier on you, Scout."

"Never!" Nanael hisses out, "I won't fall to Chaos!"

"Hah, they all say that," Maraddeel says coming over, an arrogant stride to his gait. "And, yet- well. Fall, you Imperials do. Or die."

"I'd rathe die!" Nanael says honestly. "So kill me, and be done with it!"

"Nah," Maraddeel, "not yet, you have use, feathered bastard."

"As what?" Nanael snaps, trying to get him to talk.

"Oh, for a little of this, a little of that," The Chaos Marine says with a smirk.

Some of the Chaos Word Bearers would be ever so delighted to get their hands on a Winged Son of Sanguinius- the properties of their blood, and what they represent to their Chapters, both first found and the successor chapters, made them Potent Sacrifices to the dark gods.

Nanael needs to find a way to escape these Chaos bastards clutches- he has to. If he can manage to grab his armor and weapons on his way out, that would be ideal, but if he can only grab his own self, then that would be something. The loss of his armor and weapons would sting, and bring him shame for the losses of such valuable things.

Nanael waits, and bides his time, pretending, well showing more of just how wounded he was. How it affected him, also the fact that his soul mate had made a Deal that had affected their bond to him.

Black Legionaries could be very arrogant, and one night- he took his chance, while all of the bastards were drunk on stolen Mjod to escape his cage, grab his armor. Unable to get at his weapon, or any weapon as he runs as silently, and as swiftly as he could manage.

He checks his armor for traps, disables and disarms them. Fuck. He's so hungry. So tired. So thirsty. He puts on his armor and grunts at the weight of it. But as he puts on his helmet and continues to run, his hearts leap and he ruthlessly squashes down his feelings of hope and positive emotions.

A badly battered Nanael finds some civilization- there are structures- and a lot of baseline humans- although he sees some Astartes of various chapters in and nearby the base.

Woozily he moves from shadow to shadow, as best as he can in brightly colored armor. He hears the 'bong, bong, bong' of a church bell, and his steps go towards it.

He stares up in awe at a beautiful mosaic of his Lord Father, The Primarch Sanguinis rendered in beautiful metal and colored glass. He reverently, gently touches the stained glass and sways.

He leans against the wall of the church and curls up a mess of tangled, broken, blood limbs and feathers at the feet of his Primarchs painted window.

#warhammer 40k #warhammer #adeptus astartes #space marine husbandry #oc: Nanael #Count Down Timer Of Sorrow AU #Soul mate AU #oc Elona hidemauler #oc: Maraddeel Trarth #oc: Skaevadror Ken #oc: Horandast Trarth #oc: Verzos #oc: Toradreel #oc: Uvrox #Black Legion #Chaos War Band #dehumanization

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c-e-d-dreamer · 1 year ago

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Barbarian Bat: Part One

A/N: It's everyone's favorite day of @nessianweek aka AU Day! And I'm taking everyone to Not-Hoth for it ;) That's right. It's the Ice Planet Barbarians and ACOTAR crossover that literally nobody asked for. Unfortunately, I didn't finish it all in time for Nessian Week, but hopefully, everyone enjoys this first part :) Also, I jokingly named this document Barbarian Bat in my files because I thought it was funny, but then I realized I accidentally matched the actual names of the series in a way (aka Barbarian Lover, Barbarian Mate, Barbarian Mine etc. etc.) so I decided to keep it.

Read on AO3 // Next Part

Nesta just barely swallows down a sigh, curling her knees tight against her chest. She watches across the cave at the way Feyre is curled up beside Rhysand, watches the way he has an arm so casually slung behind her back like it’s the most natural thing in the world, watches the way he leans down to say something quietly and makes Feyre laugh. It’s so comfortable, so easy, Feyre stepping so seamlessly into the role of the Chief’s mate as if the Mother herself predestined it. As if everything that happened, that they went through, is nothing more than a distant memory that led to this moment, this happiness.

Feyre turns her head, tilting her chin up so that she can kiss Rhysand, and Nesta has to look away. Her gaze flits instead around the rest of the cave, to the other human women and sa-khui sat around and in the hot spring that takes up most of the space at the center of the cave. Everyone is chatting or smiling, and Nesta presses her knees that little bit tighter against her chest, digs her nails in that little harder into her arms. She just doesn’t understand how everyone can be so normal. How everyone can act like this whole thing is normal.

“Hello, Nes.”

Nesta snaps her head to the right, finding Cassian standing there, his dark, curly hair falling around his face for once, around the horns twisting up and back. He folds his long legs to settle into the seat beside her, offering her one of his easy smiles that tugs the left side of his lips up higher than the right, that shows off his fanged canines.

“What do you want?” Nesta asks, hoping her cool, clipped tone will scare him off the way the rest of the sa-khui have steered clear of her. Unsurprisingly, Cassian’s grin only seems to grow, his glowing eyes almost seeming to glint.

“I brought you some meat,” Cassian explains, holding out his hands and showing off the food in question. “I have burned it the way you humans like.”

Nesta rolls her eyes and turns away from him. “I’m not hungry.”

Cassian is silent for a moment, and when Nesta chances a glance back toward him, he’s frowning in confusion. “You must be. You have not eaten at all today.”

“What? Are you watching me?”

“Yes.”

Nesta scoffs at that. If there’s one thing these aliens are terrible at, it’s reading a room. She decides not to deem him with a response, hoping that with her extended silence, he’ll finally take a hint and leave her alone. Instead, she focuses on the steam that curls off the hot spring, watching as it floats and dances through the air before vanishing.

“Are you sick? Should I ask Madja to speak with your khui?” Cassian continues when Nesta doesn’t answer. He reaches a hand up toward her face, but Nesta is quick to smack it away before his fingers can make contact against her skin.

“Don’t touch me.”

Cassian shifts so he’s kneeling in front of Nesta. It blocks her view of everyone else in the cave, but it shields her from any prying gazes too. It’s their own bubble, their own cocoon cast by the wide set of his shoulders. His face is pinched with concern, eyes watching her face in that unnerving way of his. Something in that stare has always had Nesta swearing that he could see through her in a way no one ever has, swearing that he could somehow see all the way down to her soul. From the moment Nesta met Cassian back on the crashed ship, that stare had her hackles raising, had her building her defensive walls that little bit thicker, that little bit taller.

“Are you well, Nes?” Cassian asks, his voice quiet and just for her.

Nesta almost wants to laugh at the question, at the absurdity of the notion of her ever being alright. How could anyone be alright after being kidnapped by aliens right from the safety of their bed? She's not sure she'll ever forget the feeling of waking up in a literal cage on that ship. She'll never forget the sight of both her sisters huddled together, both still in their night things and Elain silently crying. She'll never forget the fear that gripped her when Feyre, stubborn and determined as ever, decided to brave the snow of the unknown planet around them. She was sure that she'd never see her youngest sister again, watching her climb out of the safety of what remained of the cargo hold of the spaceship.

She sees it all every time she closes her eyes. She feels the cold metal biting into her skin through the thin material of her sleep shorts. She hears the hum of the engines as they flew through space, hears the clicks of those weird basketball head aliens. She feels that roiling fear twisting in her gut, tastes the tang of failure at the back of her tongue when she realized it wasn't just her but her sisters too that were going to suffer, that she couldn't save them.

Even now, even in this cave supposedly surrounded by aliens who say they only want to help, who swear they'll protect Elain and Feyre, Nesta can't shake that feeling. It still makes her pulse jump. Still makes her stomach twist and turn. Still has bile crawling up the back of her throat. Still makes her chest feel tight enough that it takes active effort to breathe in and out.

So, Nesta lets out a derisive snort, keeping her tone cold and cruel. “Are you fucking with me? I was thrown onto an alien planet covered in snow, and I have this stupid blue alien that never shuts up, that can’t take a hint and leave me alone, and you want to know if I’m well?”

Cassian continues to frown at her, and Nesta wonders if she’s finally hit the mark to drive him away, if she’s finally crossed the line. Wonders if he’ll give up on her now, grow tired of the effort and decide to cut his losses and walk away. She hates the way her heart gives a squeeze at the prospect, quickly squashing that feeling back down.

Rather than hear what Cassian might have to say, Nesta pushes up to her feet and walks away, pointedly ignoring the way she can feel Cassian’s stare prickling along her spine the whole way. She heads for the bathroom, ready to unwind for the evening and take refuge away from any more annoying aliens with piercing stares and concerned words in her personal cave, but when Nesta pulls down her pants, a small, quiet ping draws her attention.

She bends forward, squinting down at the ground in confusion, when she sees the culprit of the sound. Her blood runs cold, a ringing taking up home in her ears and her chest starting to heave with panicked breaths. Her fingers tremble as she reaches down and picks it up.

It’s an IUD.

It’s her IUD, the one thing that’s been keeping her from resonating with anyone.

“Fuck,” Nesta mutters to herself, her heart starting to thunder between her ribs.

Nesta tries to take a deep, calming breath in, but the air stutters in her lungs, catching on the lump pressing in around her throat. She curls her palm around the tiny device, her grip tight enough that her fingers bite into her skin, but just that small shock of pain is somehow grounding. She can’t let the panic get to her. She merely needs to come up with a plan, with her next steps.

The next breath that Nesta takes in is much more steady, and with a decided nod, she steps back out into the intricate cave system. Thankfully, there’s no one around and she’s able to slip back to her personal cave without running into anyone. She quickly slides the privacy screen into place, stepping over to the side of the cave where her furs are laid out. She grabs a pack and starts to stuff her spare leathers inside, tying a pair of snow-shoes to the straps before she stashes it in the corner out of sight.

And then she waits.

Nesta climbs beneath her furs and rolls over so her back is to the cave entrance. She keeps her focus on the wall instead, on keeping her breathing slow to give the illusion that she’s asleep. She’s not sure how much time passes before she hears light, lilting laughter just outside the cave, hears the deep rumble of a response. The privacy screen slides aside and Gwyn steps inside, quiet rustling coming from the other side of the cave as she slips beneath her own furs.

Despite the quiet that settles through their cave, Nesta can still hear the sounds of others in the main cave, but soon that dies down too. And then, just to be safe, she begins to count. She counts all the way up to a thousand before she finally sits up and pushes her furs down her legs. Keeping her movements slow, careful, she rolls her furs up, pausing periodically and glancing back toward Gwyn’s sleeping form. When her furs are gathered, she grabs her pack again, adding the furs and sliding the straps over her shoulders.

She pulls the privacy screen away from the cave entrance inch by slow inch, each scrape along the stone floor too loud in the silent cave and causing her to whip her head back around to check on Gwyn. When there’s finally enough space, she sticks her head out to check everything really is clear. The area around their cave is all empty; although it’s not all quiet. Nesta can hear one of the other women having an exciting end to her evening, and she rolls her eyes. At least, she can use it to her advantage, fully stepping out of the cave and carefully sliding the privacy screen back in place behind her.

She keeps to the walls, to the shadows, as she moves toward the main cave. Her steps are light but quick, and soon, the entrance is in sight. Freedom is in sight. Nesta spies two aliens on guard and standing between her and said freedom, Balthazar and some other name she can’t remember, but they seem to be invested in some sort of game that involves dice carved from bone.

It’s now or never clearly.

Holding her breath and keeping her eyes on the two aliens the whole time, Nesta makes a break for the cave entrance. It’s only when she steps outside that she finally releases the breath in relief, but she doesn’t waste any more time. She grabs her snowshoes and straps them onto her boots, readjusting her pack against her back and marching through the snow. Her steps are slow moving with the way her feet still sink in with every step, but her determination is stronger. She squints up at the sky, at the two moons glowing amongst the inky blacks and purples and tries to remember the way. They had passed a thick forest of trees, or what counts as trees on this godsforsaken planet, and there was—

“Nes!”

Nesta’s whole body freezes up at the sound of that nickname, at the sound of that familiar voice. She decides that she’ll just ignore him. Maybe, he’ll just assume that she’s going for an evening stroll, that she’s just getting some fresh air, and he’ll leave her alone. Of course, she should have known better when it comes to Cassian. Should have known that with his long legs, it would take him only a few strides to catch up with her.

“Nes, what are you doing?” Cassian’s grin falls away as he takes in her pack. “Where are you going?”

“I’m fine,” Nesta snaps, continuing to trudge forward through the snow. “Just leave me alone.”

“You should not be out here at night. It is dangerous.”

“I said I’m fine. I’m just going to the spaceship, the Elder’s Cave, whatever the fuck you call it.”

“Come back inside. We can go in the morning.”

“No,” Nesta argues. She can feel panic beginning to well up in her chest, digging in its claws and clogging her throat. “You don’t understand. I have to…”

Nesta’s words trail off as a strange sort of vibrating starts to take up home between her ribs, sending warmth ricocheting through Nesta’s veins all the way down to her toes. The hum even reaches her ears, seeming to grow faster, louder with each passing second. It’s somehow unsettling and leaves her feeling comforted at the same time, and Nesta is about to ask Cassian if he hears it too when she notices the way his eyes widen. The way he presses a hand to his chest, that odd humming seeming to echo from him too, a response to her own.

Realization of what’s happening hits Nesta like a bucket of ice water, that warm feeling vanishing quickly into icy dread. She swears that she’s going to be sick, her stomach twisting and roiling as she and Cassian continue to resonate with one another. This can’t be happening. She refuses to let this happen.

“No no no,” Nesta mutters, already shaking her head and backing away from him. Her snowshoe gets stuck with the movement and sends her stumbling backwards. Cassian’s hands reach out to her, but almost on instinct, Nesta’s entire body flinches. “Don’t touch me.”

Cassian’s expression looks pained, but slowly he reaches a single hand palm up toward her. “I just wish to help you up.”

Nesta can feel heat start to creep up her neck, but she swallows it back down. She settles her hand in Cassian’s, allowing him to pull her up and back onto her feet. As soon as she’s steady, he drops her hand and takes a pointed step back, giving her space, and Nesta hates the way her heart squeezes and swells at the gesture. Words twist and clog in the back of her throat, pressing and desperate for release, but she swallows them down and wraps her arms around herself.

“Are you going to make me go back inside now?” Nesta asks instead, staring Cassian down, daring him. “Lock me away in your cave?”

“No,” Cassian tells her, and Nesta’s shoulders slump in relief. “But only if you tell me why you wish to go to the Elder Cave so urgently.”

Nesta considers lying to him, considers making up some easy excuse, but she has a strong suspicion that Cassian would see straight through it. “There’s a… device that I have from earth. It’s what kept me from resonating, from having a mate, until now. It’s fallen out, and I need to go to the spaceship because it has a machine that can… put it back in basically.”

“And that’s what you want? To have it put back and to stop resonating.”

“Well, I certainly don’t want to be resonating right now.”

Cassian is quiet for a moment, and Nesta can do nothing but watch as a muscle in his jaw ticks beneath the moonlight. He turns his face away from her, gaze searching across the snow banks, and when he finally looks back at her, there’s something different about his expression, something colder, more closed off. Since the moment that Nesta has met him, there’s always been a warmth to Cassian, an easy openness that’s been a bit terrifying, especially when it’s directed at her, but now, it’s as if his own walls have risen and slid into place.

“Then I will escort you to the Elder Cave,” Cassian finally says. “I just need to grab a pack.”

Cassian turns and starts to move back toward the cave entrance, but Nesta steps forward and reaches out instinctively. “Wait! Will…” She takes a moment to swallow hard. “Will they know? That we resonated? They can't know, Cassian.”

“Almost the entire tribe is already asleep,” Cassian explains, not bothering to turn and look at her, his shoulders tense. “And if you stay out here and wait for me, then our khuis should be silent for now.”

“Okay…”

“Just stay here and wait for me.” Cassian finally turns to look at her again, a flicker of desperation dancing across his face. “Please.”

When Nesta doesn’t say anything else, when she doesn’t move, Cassian jogs the rest of the way to the entrance of the cave, and Nesta watches as he vanishes inside. A breeze blows past her, a shiver skittering its way up her spine, and she wraps her arms tighter around herself to fight off the chill. She glances out toward the expanse of snow around her, the light of the two moons bouncing off the crystalized flakes and leaving everything with an almost eerie glow. It’s unnerving, the quiet and the dark, and while Nesta would never admit it aloud, she’s suddenly glad that Cassian will be traveling with her.

As though her very thoughts have summoned him, the sound of a deep voice prickles her ears. The sounds of multiple deep voices. Nesta whips her attention back toward the cave entrance, her stomach dropping when she sees not just Cassian but Azriel standing there. They stop just outside the cave entrance, too far away for Nesta to hear what they’re saying, but it’s clear what, or whom, the topic of conversation is from the way Azriel’s gaze darts toward her.

Nesta waits for them to approach her. Waits for Cassian to announce their journey isn’t happening. Waits for Azriel to tell her to come back inside the cave. She considers what would happen if she refuses, if she decides to take her chances and see how far she can get trekking through the snow. But before she can even take a step, Cassian and Azriel are clasping forearms, Azriel turning and vanishing back inside the cave.

Nesta watches warily as Cassian walks back over to her. She tries to read his expression, tries to look for any sort of clue about what was said between him and Azriel, but Cassian keeps his face decidedly blank. It’s odd not seeing that teasing smirk he always directs at her, the wrongness of it all clanging through Nesta hard enough that she has to look away.

“What was that about?” Nesta asks once Cassian is close enough. “What did Azriel want?”

“Do not worry about it,” Cassian dismisses, tugging her pack off her shoulders and slinging it alongside the one on his own. “It’s this way.”

Something about his tone, about the way he starts to walk away from her through the snow without even a glance back, has her anger flaring. Those flames lick across her skin and leave her blood simmering. She’s been itching for a fight for a while now, pushing down the urge to let it all boil over, to release her claws, but she gives in to that feeling now. Clenching her fists at her side, she whirls around, storming after Cassian through the snow.

“So, what? Now you’re mad you have to escort me?” Nesta calls after him. “Did you forget that I didn’t ask you to? I was perfectly fine on my own.”

Cassian stops walking, turning back to face her, his tone dripping with a dry sort of sarcasm that Nesta didn’t know the sa-khui were capable of, as he drawls, “sorry I thwarted your wish to get eaten by a snow-cat.”

“You have no idea what I wish,” Nesta seethes, daring to step closer until they’re toe to toe.

“I know that you do not wish to be mates. You have made that perfectly clear.”

The words hang in the air between them, carried away on the night breeze. The world is quiet around them, nothing except their heaving breaths as Nesta glares up at him, Cassian meeting her stare head-on, a twin flame to meet her own blazing through his eyes. But it’s Cassian that breaks away first, taking a step back and readjusting the two packs slung across his backs before he continues the trek through the snow.

“It’s this way.”

—

Updated Taglist (let me know if you’d like to be added or removed): @moodymelanist @nesquik-arccheron @sv0430 @talkfantasytome @bookstantrash @eirini-thaleia @ubigaia @fromthelibraryofemilyj @luivagr-blog @lifeisntafantasy @superspiritfestival @hiimheresworld @marigold-morelli @sweet-pea1 @emeriethevalkyriegirl @pyxxie @dustjacketmusings @hallway5 @dongjunma @glowing-stick-generation @melonsfantasyworld @isterofimias @goddess-aelin @melphss @theladystardust @a-trifling-matter @blueunoias @kookskoocie @wolfnesta @blurredlamplight @hereforthenessian @skaixo @jmoonjones @burningsnowleopard @whyisaravenlike-awritingdesk @ofduskanddreams @rarephloxes @thelovelymadone @books-books-books4ever @tenaciousdiplomatloverprune @that-little-red-head @readergalaxy @thesnugglingduck

#nessian #nessianweek2023 #nesta archeron #cassian #acotar #acosf #nessian fanfiction #nessian fic #nesta x cassian #IPB AU #my fic

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hunnyrants · 1 year ago

Text

A/N You'll need context from the ending of CC2 for the beginning of the fic, but if you don't plan on reading that series it will (mostly) make sense. But hardcore spoilers for CC2 😭😭

But lmk if you guys would like more Azriel x Cadre!Reader! I've loved this concept forever and am finally ready to start sharing it 🥰 You'll meet reader in the next part and get her pov 🥰

ACOTAR X TOG crossover

Pairing: Azriel X Cadre!Reader

Warnings: 18+ MDNI, eventual smut, angst, trauma, CPTSD, war (to be updated ❤️)

⚠️ GIGANTIC ACOSF, CC2, AND KINGDOM OF ASH SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT⚠️

The Blade of Doranelle

part 0.5

Rhysand was going to go mad.

He paces behind his desk with furrowed brows, trying to get any sense of something rational in his life. Since Bryce Quinlan fell into his court months ago his brain has been close to bursting. Feyre is no better. They've each had dozens of reports of tears in their world, in the very air itself, with shifting light marking every last one of them. Even when the female made her way back to her world, the rifts didn't close behind her. Both high lord and lady had gone together to the closest one, just outside of Velaris, and tried to close it themselves. When that proved impossible for the two most powerful high fae to have walked Prythian, tensions rose considerably.

Rhys takes a deep breath and turns to his mate who has been watching him quietly from her perch on the couch. She had Rhea, Madja's assistant, watching Nyx while his parents were occupied throughout their busy afternoons, and this was no exception.

"Thought for a thought?" She murmurs gently.

Rhysand stops pacing, and despite the exhaustion weighing on his soul he smiles. Despite his 500 years being alive, nothing could have prepared him for something this absurd.

"I'm thinking… that I want to throw something out of that window," Rhys grumbles. He turns to Feyre who can practically see the instincts in him roaring to protect and slaughter any who threatens what's his. But that now unsealed letter at the top of dozens of reports? It rattled him.

Azriel had brought it in, after his spies witnessed a village go into an uproar after a blonde fae male in silver armor stepped through a rift and politely requested a letter be delivered to their leader. But when Az had gotten there the male was long gone, stepping back through the rift.

As soon as Rhys finished reading the male's letter; he silently handed it to his mate and his eyes glazed over, immediately contacting everyone in his inner circle for an emergency meeting. Feyre's eyes had darted across the page before immediately turning back to Azriel, her face grave. "We need Amren here."

Although its contents itself were as pleasant as it could be, all things considered. Azriel's face had been dark since he brought in the damned thing, and now that the second in command was getting involved? As he winnowed away, Azriel was sure this was nothing but a bad omen.

He returned within a heartbeat with Amren. The small female was still intimidating despite her loss of power. Especially now seeing her delicate face contorted with rage as she's handed the offending paper by her high lady. Azriel's face was still dark as he moved to stand in front of the fireplace and a cunning eyed Amren now read the letter.

Feyre twists towards her mate once more and leans forward, "What is the political side of you thinking, Rhysand?"

Despite her young age, her eyes were sharp and clear. This was her court and her family potentially in danger, no matter how important these rifts may be, to be sent a letter from something on the other side was a security risk, no matter their intentions.

Rhys takes a deep breath in and considers. Just as he opens his mouth the door bursts open- "What the fuck do you mean a queen from across the rift requested an audience?"

"Hello cousin," Rhys grumbles before pinching his brows.

"There's no way in Hel that you're considering it," hisses Mor again, with Cassian and Nesta on her heels looking inclined to agree. She likely had winnowed them to the river house upon getting her own summons and brief explanation from Rhys mind to mind.

"As I was going to say," he rubs his face, "this meeting is risky."

"But so is leaving unattended rifts across our court." Amren says. She had been silent since she finished reading, the letter dangling haphazardly from her pinched fingers.

"We can handle the rifts across our court. We shouldn't be interacting with what is on the other side," says Azriel as he stalks forward towards Rhys, "It has to be a trap."

"What if it's genuine? Look at your orrery Rhys, you already thought other worlds existed. It was confirmed with Bryce. It wouldn't hurt to at least reply to the letter," Nesta says before she catches Azriel's eye, "You're a spymaster, shouldn't you be halfway through that rift to seek your own answers from whoever delivered the letter?" Azriel's eyes narrow in response.

"That is not a risk even I am willing to take. The rift itself could likely kill us-"

"It won't. I already have eyewitness reports of townsfolk stepping through a rift with rope tied around their waists and returning of their own accord," Feyre interrupts as she presses her fingers into her temples.

"Rhys and I entered their minds and they weren't altered at all, Madja looked at several as well and no bodily harm came to them either. And its been well over two months since the first rift opened, if something was going to happen to those people I think it would have already."

"Mother's tits Rhys. First the queens, Koschei, Bryce, rifts opening across all of Prythian and now finding something on the other side of one?" Cassian sighed before grumbling, "I need to make sure the Illyrians are ready to fly again."

Mor's skirt hissed against the wooden flooring as she swept forward to snatch the letter from Amren, who surprisingly allowed her with no more than a sideways glance. She refolds the paper to align the broken seal once more and traces the dark green wax.

"This seal is unfamiliar…" she muses before skimming the letter and promptly dropping it back onto the once organized desk of Rhysand's office. The paper now seemingly mocking the rest of the reports that were deemed unimportant.

"Do the initials A.A.G. ring any bells?"

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aonungyoufuck · 2 years ago

Note

Can you perhaps do a dark ao’nung who is obsessive and manipulative to an innocent reader who believes everything he says.

You can come up with the rest your writing is amazing 😆

My Unhealthy Obsession

GN! Metkayina Reader X Ao'nung

Warnings: Unhealthy obsession. Manipulation tho i kinda lowkey suck at it. Perhaps implications of murder. Innocent reader + plot twist.

uwu thank you anon for enjoying my writing.

youtube

You were all each other had. Realistically you had your families. Sure that was true and more than anything you loved them to death. You liked spending time with Tsireya and Ronal.

Being with Ao'nung was a different story however. Something about his words the way he spoke the way he would touch you left more to the mind to wonder.

Since children something about the way he would speak with you it made little tingles in your stomach. And it made you crave his attention much more.

And Ao'nung knew this. He took advantage of the way you seem to believe his every word. Innocent on the mind and soul. And he was cruel. But ever much more gentle at what ever you would tell him.

Making you believe hi obvious lies. "Oh no Tsireya is out with mother she cant hang" "Tao'lu? oh no he asked you on a bet. his friends made" "Oh wouldn't you like to hang with me instead?"

And you believed every one of his words. Realistically he still had all his friends to hang with. And you were alone. But what good was it hanging out with his friends if he could have you all to himself?

"Ao'nung you really should head on With your father. What good is any training if your wasting it with me?" You spoke in alluring voice. You were always so kind to him.

"Naw i think it will be okay to spend time with you"

"by the way of your attitude im sure they wouldn't think its okay"

You sighed. Your mind again pondering to a distant past. Where you had both guys and girls alike asking you if they could stake claim. But...things had changed. People didnt like looking at you in the eye.

"Ao'nung..Do you know why. Tao'lu or Irir stopped pursuing me? Or why all my friends stopped talking with me?"

"no?" he spoke

"It seems no one speaks to me anymore and it frightens me a little. Have i done wrong? am i undesirable?"

"what nonsense dear. Clear your head of those thoughts"

You were about to speak. Tell him something else before hearing loud commotion outside. and unbeknownst to you two. Things in this dynamic were about to change drastically.

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

The arrival of the Sully's was not something Ao'nung could have foreseen. He had manage to scare anyone away from ever really speaking to you.

But you had been dragged into teaching along side him. And he couldn't threaten the sully's as he had everyone.

He did trust his sister and Rotxo. But even then he would rarely allow you three to have alone time. More so on the knowledge that Tsireya knew what he had done.

But he needed to promise you to himself.

And it was hard when Neteyam would throw you knowing looks. And you could only return it in kind. He couldn't really threaten them. But he could you.

And it wasn't long before he did. Finding you alone in your pod. Lucky for him he knew your family wouldn't be around just yet.

"I dont want you around those Sully guy's"

"it will be hard given i was told to help them too"

"I mean it Y/n"

you turned to look at him. His expression cold, dark and ever more so handsome in your eyes. "Why?"

"Especially Neteyam"

"Ao'nung. Can you at least explain why"

"I dont like the way he looks at you"

You thought. Sure he was friendly but he knew you two were strangers. Only ever talking as acquaintances.

"Like he has you. Like he wants you. To be your Mate or more it makes me sick."

"But Ao'nung what difference does that make. You haven't staked claim of me and i you"

He let out a hiss. Fangs bearing as he held your wrists together. "I haven't yet"

You let your heart sore. How long had you wanted that? was it sick? he was your only friend remaining so what other options did you have?.

"Keep away from him. You never know. He's also the outsider. His family have demon blood. What more does he need for you to understand"

you just stared at him in silence. Subconsciously you began to shake in his hold.

His eyes softened. Sighing as he gently kissed your knuckles.

"He's no good for you. Not like i can be. So please. Please promise to keep away from them"

You let out a small smile. before nodding. Letting him go.

And This promise didn't go unnoticed. You stopped showing up. You stopped interacting. You stopped ever seeing Neteyam or the rest of the siblings.

Tsireya of course had noticed it more. She had seen this happen countless of times. And for once she had enough. Had voiced her voice enough for it to fall on deaf ears.

She went to go see you. Had always found the best of times to see you and this time she had to speak to you.

"Y/n?"

You turned to look at her. Smiling bright. "oh Tsireya, A little early than before?"

"I have to speak to you"

You two sat. You handing her a bowl of fruit.

"Its about Ao'nung"

"Oh! I hope he told you the news"

"The news?"

You smiled brightly. A feeling boiling in your stomach as you spilled the news. But watched carefully as Tsireya's face dropped in horror.

"no, No Y/n That cannot happen!"

You frowned. "What? why?"

"Ao'nung. He's not right. Not right at all! He's he's pushed away every one of your friends. Suitors and any alike. I dont know what he says or what he does. But, But he threatens. He"

you only listened. perhaps that explained it.

"He's almost drowned some kids back when were were little. You dont understand. What ever it is. Who ever it is. And im frightened that your happiness is, Is for the wrong one"

You nodded. Watching her and nodded silently. " I thank you Tsireya. I really do. But i know how to handle this. Trust me with this. Please"

Tsireya could only frown. Watching as your sweet aura didn't falter. Didn't waver and all she could do is pray to Eywa. Pray that everything would work out. That nothing bad would happen.

unbeknownst to anyone but you. This was exactly what you had hoped for. You are Ao'nung's and now he is Yours.

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

im sorry if this is bad in any way shape or form. But i really tried. I was gonna make it super dark but then thats borderline like yandere. And well. Lets save that for another day.

#avatar the way of water #aonung x reader #atwow #ao'nung x reader #ao'nung #ao’nung x reader #ao’nung x you #atwow imagines #ao'nung x y/n

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emma-m-black · 4 months ago

Text

Soul Mate Magic - Chapter Eleven

Rupert Giles x OC (FanFiction) - MATURE 18+

A new magical transfer comes to Sunnydale High, and ends up discovering a magical connection with our favorite Watcher.

OC is 19+ (Not a Minor), Age Gap, Slow Burn-ish (with a little preview thrown in there during the Bandy Candy Episode).

Author Master List

Read: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten,

Chapter Eleven:

Rose sat slumped on the couch in Buffy’s living room, her fingers wrapped tightly around a warm cup of tea, though the heat barely registered against her skin. She was surrounded by a circle of concerned faces, their gazes weighing on her like an invisible force, squeezing the breath from her chest. Among them was the mysterious vampire, standing slightly apart, his dark eyes watching her with an intensity that only heightened her disorientation. Willow sat close beside her, one hand gently resting on Rose’s shoulder. A silent tether in the chaos as Giles recounted everything they had uncovered about their magical connection. Each word felt heavier than the last, dragging her deeper into the suffocating reality she hadn’t yet fully accepted.

Her thoughts scattered for a moment, disjointed and frantic. “Wait...” Rose’s voice wavered, faltering as a sudden, jagged thought pierced through the haze. “You’re a vampire. How did you get into my house?” Panic surged through her, quick and sharp. Her pulse thundered in her ears, and her grip on the cup tightened painfully.

Giles, who had been pacing nearby, gave a strained chuckle, though there was no humor in it. “It seems I hold some... occupancy over your residence through our bond. Inviting Angel in—it felt like second nature, as though I had every right.”

Rose blinked, trying to make sense of his words. They twisted in her mind like a riddle she couldn’t solve. Her heartbeat quickened, and her chest tightened with a sudden wave of unease. Was anything really in her control anymore?

Buffy’s voice cut through the fog, steady but distant. “Rose, this is Angel—”

“He has a soul,” Rose whispered, her eyes darting to Angel’s face, as if searching for something familiar in the strangeness of his presence. “I can feel it... you’re different, not like the others.” The words tumbled out without thought, as if some part of her recognized him even through the panic. But the comfort that realization should have brought was swallowed by the cold pit growing in her stomach.

Angel’s expression flickered with discomfort, his body shifting awkwardly under her scrutiny. After a tense pause, he cleared his throat, his voice thick with something darker. “Your family is lying to you.”

The room fell into an oppressive silence. Giles’s pacing halted abruptly, his body stiffening as he moved to Rose’s side. He perched himself on the arm of the sofa, his eyes sharp with concern. “What are you talking about?” he asked, his tone like ice.

Angel hesitated, casting a glance around the room before meeting Rose’s eyes. “They’re lying,” he repeated. “Or maybe... maybe they don’t know the full truth.”

Giles’s voice hardened, his body leaning forward in a protective stance. “What truth, Angel?”

“In the years when I first got my soul,” Angel began, his voice low and steady, “a coven offered me sanctuary. I overheard them whispering about a ritual—a sacrifice of their own, a daughter. They spoke of it like a tradition, a dark way to keep their magic bound within their coven.”

Xander scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Right, because that doesn’t sound like a cliché horror plot.”

Angel ignored him, his eyes fixed on Rose. “It wasn’t to protect them from some outside evil. They were afraid of their magic being taken back. The sacrifice was meant to stop someone—or something—from reclaiming it.”

A shiver crawled up Rose’s spine, her hands trembling. “My magic is stolen,” she whispered, her voice barely above a breath. The realization hit her like ice water, flooding her mind with sudden clarity—and fear. Her pulse quickened, a frantic thrum in her chest.

Angel’s gaze darkened as he nodded. “There are whispers—rumors—about a coven that stole their power from a god. It’s possible... your family is part of that coven.”

Rose’s hands tightened on the mug, her knuckles white as her mind spun.

Giles’s voice cut through the growing storm in her head, sharp with tension. “They see me as a threat. Why?”

Angel’s response was slow, deliberate. “A demon I know mentioned once about a coven centuries ago that was being hunted by a man. He was sent by the goddess—a hero, someone meant to restore balance to the magic that was stolen.”

The words washed over Rose, disjointed and surreal, until one thought screamed through the noise. “They want to kill me.” The realization fell from her lips like a stone, heavy and inevitable.

The cup slipped from her numb fingers, shattering against the floor with a sharp crack, but Rose barely heard it. The room spun, the faces around her blurring into indistinct shapes as Angel’s words echoed in her mind, over and over. Her family—her own blood—wanted her dead. Everything they’d said, everything they’d done, it had all been a lie. She felt as though the ground had opened beneath her, and she was falling, tumbling into a void with no end.

“Rose?” Giles’s voice was distant, his hand reaching out to her. But the world was slipping away, her vision narrowing, the walls of the room closing in until there was nothing but darkness.

When Rose opened her eyes again, the world came back in soft fragments—a dull hum of voices, the weight of the room pressing down on her chest, the cold emptiness in her heart. Her limbs felt leaden, the kind of heaviness that comes from carrying too much sorrow. She blinked against the dim light, her surroundings unfamiliar, but the pain inside her all too clear.

“You can’t blame yourself, Giles,” Buffy’s voice, low and soothing, drifted through the haze, but it sounded far away.

Giles’s voice followed, ragged and filled with a guilt that made Rose’s stomach twist. “I slept with her, Buffy, and it wasn’t because of this curse. I took something from her—something that should have been precious. I took that from her.”

The words hit Rose like a punch to the gut, but she couldn’t even react. She lay there, frozen, her breath catching in her throat.

“It wasn’t the real you,” Buffy murmured, her voice full of compassion. “Even if it wasn’t because of the curse, you were still under a spell that day. She wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”

“But I do,” Giles replied, his voice thick with barely contained emotion. “Curse or not, there’s a connection between us, and the closer we get, the harder it is to be the man I should be, and not the man I—” His voice cracked. “Not the man I want to be.”

Rose’s heart fractured further, each beat aching under the weight of his words. She wanted to speak, to reach out to him, to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but her throat constricted. She felt like she was drowning in her own emotions, suffocated by the pain, the betrayal, the crushing realization that her world had unraveled in front of her.

Buffy’s gentle voice cut through the silence again. “Giles, you’re a good person. That’s why you were chosen to protect her. We don’t have all the answers yet, but we will, when Angel—”

Rose summoned the last bit of strength she had, her voice breaking through the fog. “Rupert...” It was barely a whisper, but it was enough to stop the conversation dead.

Giles’s footsteps were hesitant, his voice trembling as he called her name. “Rose?”

Buffy’s kind smile lingered on her face as she gave Rose a soft nod and quietly slipped out of the room, leaving the two of them alone.

Rose swallowed hard, her mind struggling to process everything. The room felt too quiet, too cold. “What...what happened?” Her voice shook as her eyes darted around the unfamiliar guest room.

Giles removed his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose in that way he did when he was trying to hold himself together. “You fainted,” he said softly, his voice tender but strained. “You’ve been out for a few hours.”

He sat beside her; the mattress dipping under his weight, and Rose felt herself pulled closer to the edge of unraveling. His eyes held so much concern, so much guilt, and it made the knot in her chest tighten even more. “You scared us all tonight.”

“I’m sorry,” Rose whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of her shame and fear.

Giles’s response was immediate, fierce. “You have nothing to apologize for, Rose. Nothing.”

The words were meant to comfort her, but they only broke her further. Tears welled in her eyes, and before she could stop them, they spilled over, streaming down her cheeks as the reality of her situation crashed down on her like a tidal wave. “My own family...they want to kill me.” Her voice trembled with disbelief, her breath hitching as sobs began to shake her body. “They raised me, loved me, and now they’re willing to sacrifice me. For magic.”

Saying it aloud made the pain sharper, like shards of glass slicing through her heart. Her family, her blood, the people who were supposed to love her unconditionally—they had been willing to betray her for power. It was a betrayal so deep, she couldn’t even fathom it.

Before she knew it, Giles was pulling her into his arms, holding her as tightly as he dared. His voice, soft and soothing, was barely a whisper in her ear. “You’re safe here,” he promised. “With us. They can’t touch you here.”

Rose clung to him, her fists gripping the fabric of his sweater as if letting go would send her spiraling into the abyss. She buried her face in his chest, her sobs muffled by the wool, her whole body trembling as she broke apart in his arms. He held her as though he were the only thing anchoring her to this world, his hand moving in slow, calming strokes along her back, his murmured reassurances sinking into the depths of her despair.

For what felt like an eternity, Rose cried. Cried for the loss of her family, for the innocence that had been stolen from her, for the world that had been turned upside down in the blink of an eye. And Giles, despite his own guilt and anguish, never let her go.

When the storm of tears finally subsided, Rose’s body felt limp, drained of all energy. She blinked up at him, her tear-streaked face softening as she realized how tightly she had been clutching him. His sweater was soaked through with her tears, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was just watching her, his eyes filled with an overwhelming tenderness.

“I don’t know what to do,” Rose whispered, her voice small and broken.

“You don’t have to know right now,” Giles replied gently, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “We’ll figure it out together. You’re not alone in this.”

It was a comfort in the dark, and Rose pushed her face into his chest and continued to cry.

————————————————————————-

Rose wasn’t sure how long she had cried. Time felt like a blur, colors swirling around her, merging into a haze as her emotions overwhelmed her. The world had lost its clarity, her thoughts lost in a tempest of betrayal and fear. It was only when a steady warmth surrounded her, grounding her, that she began to pull herself back to reality. She shifted slightly, realizing she was nestled against Giles’s chest, his arms protectively wrapped around her, holding her together as she unraveled.

Propped awkwardly against the headboard, Giles had stayed with her, his body tilted at an angle that couldn’t have been comfortable, but he hadn’t moved. The damp fabric of his sweater clung to him where her tears had soaked through, a reminder of the emotional storm that had passed.

As she stirred, a soft groan escaped Giles’s lips. His eyes fluttered open, and when they met hers, a small, gentle smile formed—a look that made the chaos inside her still for just a moment. “Good morning,” he whispered, his voice a soothing balm, quiet and full of warmth.

Rose blinked, still groggy. “How long have we been asleep?” Her voice was hoarse, her body feeling heavy with exhaustion.

“Judging by the current state of my neck,” he replied with a light chuckle, “I’d say quite a while.” His attempt at humor softened the air between them, though she could see the seriousness still lingering in his gaze. There was something comforting in the way he watched her, but also a sadness that tugged at her heart.

Sitting up, Rose ran a hand through her tangled hair, the weight of guilt pressing down on her. “I’m sorry,” she started, her voice barely above a whisper. “For everything. For dragging you into this mess, for crying all over you... for the chaos my life has brought into yours.”

Giles sat up straighter, shaking his head as he leaned closer, his gaze intense but kind. “Rose,” he said, his voice soft but firm, “you have nothing to apologize for. Not for crying, not for any of this.”

His words, spoken with such conviction, made her breath hitch, but before she could respond, a knock came at the door, loud and abrupt.

“Are you two decent in there?” Buffy’s playful voice echoed from the other side.

Giles groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose in mild exasperation. “Dear god,” he muttered under his breath, though there was a glint of amusement in his eyes.

Rose couldn’t help but smile at the timing. “It’s safe, Buffy,” she called out, trying to hide the laugh that bubbled up.

Buffy pushed the door open, covering her eyes dramatically with one hand as she stepped into the room. “Dinner is almost ready! I left some clothes and towels in the bathroom for you, Rose. Thought you might want to freshen up.”

“Thanks, Buffy,” Giles said, rising to his feet as Rose followed suit, a subtle but noticeable distance now settling between them. The closeness they’d shared just moments ago felt like it was slipping away, and Rose’s heart gave a small pang at the loss of that comfort.

As Buffy turned to leave, she glanced over her shoulder with a smirk. “When you’re ready, everyone’s downstairs. Xander’s already eating half the snacks.”

Rose nodded, but her pulse quickened. “Everyone?” she asked, her voice betraying the sudden anxiety swelling inside her.

“The whole Scooby gang. You’re one of us now,” Buffy reassured her, the playful edge in her voice making it sound like no big deal. But for Rose, it felt like everything had changed.

“I’ll be downstairs,” Giles said gently, stepping closer and brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear, the brief touch sending a shiver through her. “Take your time.”

Rose watched him go, the door closing softly behind him, and let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. The warmth of his touch lingered, even as the air in the room grew cooler in his absence.

After a long shower, Rose dressed in the clothes Buffy had left for her—a pair of jeans and a soft sweater. It was strange how the simple act of putting on clean clothes made her feel more like herself. She stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, noting the puffiness around her eyes, the faint shadows of exhaustion that no amount of sleep would erase.

As she descended the stairs, the sound of laughter and conversation greeted her, pulling her out of her spiraling thoughts. She entered the living room, where Xander, Faith, and Willow were engaged in a lively discussion, each of them wearing paper crowns from Christmas crackers.

“Here,” Giles’s voice came from beside her, and she turned to see him holding out a steaming cup of coffee. “Coffee, just the way you like it—too much sugar and a splash of cream.”

Her fingers brushed against his as she took the cup, the brief contact making her heart skip a beat. “Thanks,” she whispered, the rich aroma offering some much-needed comfort.

Joyce’s voice broke through the conversation as she entered from the kitchen. “Dinner is served, everyone!” Her warm smile was tinged with sadness as she approached Rose. “Buffy told me about... everything. If you need a safe place to stay, you’re welcome here for as long as you need.”

The sincerity in Joyce’s voice was almost too much for Rose to bear. She had barely known this family, and yet, they had opened their arms to her when her own family had betrayed her.

“Thank you,” Rose replied, her voice tight with emotion. “But I don’t want to put anyone in danger.”

Giles stepped in, his voice steady but serious. “You’ll need somewhere safe, Rose. Your family will come looking for you, and we need to be prepared.”

Rose’s heart twisted as she looked at him, worry flashing in her eyes. “What about you?” she asked, her voice soft but urgent. “They’ll come after you too, won’t they?”

“I’m not the priority,” Giles said, his tone even, though there was an unspoken heaviness in his words. “Their focus is on you.”

“But they’ll use you to get to me,” Rose argued, the thought of him being hurt or taken gnawing at her. “If they do... I couldn’t—”

“Rose,” Giles interrupted gently, stepping closer, his hand resting lightly on her arm, his touch warm and reassuring. “We’ll talk more after dinner. For now, let’s just focus on the fact that we’re safe, and it’s Christmas.”

His words, though simple, wrapped around her like a protective shield, offering solace amidst the uncertainty. And for a moment, Rose allowed herself to believe that everything might be okay.

Dinner had been a soothing backdrop to the storm brewing inside Rose. The laughter, the warmth, the glow of the Christmas tree—all of it felt like a moment borrowed from a different life, a fleeting escape from the dark reality she was caught in. It was her first time truly experiencing Christmas, and though she smiled, the weight of her family’s betrayal lingered like a shadow in the back of her mind. Still, the sight of everyone gathered around, playing Texas Hold’em with Christmas cracker prizes, offered a brief respite.

“I’ll see your finger puppet and raise you two jokes and a Santa figurine that kind of looks like my Uncle Steve,” Xander declared, his eyes twinkling as he glanced at Rose.

“Umm…” Rose hesitated, unsure how to navigate the game that had grown more competitive than she’d expected.

“Call, Rose.” Giles’s voice came from behind his newspaper, his tone steady, a hint of confidence lacing his words.

“Hey, no cheating, Giles!” Xander groaned, shooting him a mock glare. “She’s supposed to learn on her own.”

A small smile tugged at Rose’s lips. “Call,” she said, her voice light, following Giles’s advice.

“Fold,” Faith sighed, tossing her cards aside with a shake of her head.

Rose laid her cards on the table, revealing a flush. For a moment, triumph bubbled inside her, and she glanced at Xander, whose eyes had widened in disbelief.

“How did you know?” he spluttered.

Giles didn’t even look up from his newspaper as he replied, “You tap your foot when you bluff. You were shaking the entire bloody table.”

A laugh escaped Rose, and she shrugged at Xander, pulling the pile of chips toward her. The victory felt small but precious, a fleeting moment of normalcy amidst the chaos.

Joyce entered the room with a kind smile. “Do you guys need anything before I head to bed?”

“I think we’re good, Mom,” Buffy said, leaning back in her chair. “We’ve had enough pie and caffeine to last us through the night.”

Joyce chuckled, but her eyes lingered on Rose a moment longer, a silent message of care and concern. “You know where I am if you need anything,” she said before heading upstairs.

As her footsteps faded, the atmosphere shifted, the unspoken tension resurfacing. Xander, ever the one to break the silence, asked, “So, the spell... it’s worn off by now, right?”

“Xander!” Willow’s voice was sharp, a mixture of disbelief and concern. Ever since dinner, everyone had been careful to avoid mentioning Rose’s family, as if speaking it aloud would bring the danger back to their doorstep.

But Rose, tired of avoiding the inevitable, nodded. “No, he’s right. We can’t pretend it’s not happening.” Her voice was low, tinged with the heaviness of truth. “They’re out there, waiting. We need to figure out how to stop them, how to break this curse. If it takes away their magic, then they won’t need me anymore.”

Buffy hugged her knees, her expression fierce with protectiveness. “Angel’s working on it. He said he might know someone who can help.”

A flicker of hope flared within Rose, though it was laced with apprehension. “Who?”

Before Buffy could answer, a sudden knock reverberated through the room, startling them all. Everyone went still, tension coiling like a spring ready to snap.

“That’s Angel, right?” Faith asked, already on her feet, her body taut with readiness.

“I hope so,” Buffy muttered, standing as she grabbed the axe she had stashed earlier. The others followed her into the kitchen, where they stood poised in front of the door. Xander, Willow, and Faith were on edge, their movements sharp and alert. Giles instinctively stepped closer to Rose, his arm curling protectively around her waist. The warmth of his touch sent a shiver down her spine, the proximity awakening a flood of emotions she wasn’t prepared to deal with.

“Buffy, it’s me,” came Angel’s voice, muffled but unmistakable from the other side of the door.

Buffy hesitated, her fingers resting on the doorknob. Doubt flickered across her face.

“How do we know it’s him?” Willow whispered, her anxiety mirrored in everyone’s tense posture.

There was a pause before Angel’s voice answered, steady and familiar. “The first time I saw you, Buffy, you were sitting on the steps of your school, saying goodbye to your friends. I watched your Watcher approach you for the first time. It was the day you learned you were the Slayer.”

With that, Buffy relaxed, turning the knob and opening the door. Angel stepped inside, his presence casting a solemn shadow over the room. He held a worn leather-bound book in his hands, the weight of whatever he had to say pressing visibly on his shoulders.

“You’re being watched,” he said without preamble, his voice grave.

“We figured,” Buffy replied, her brow furrowed in concern. “What did you find?”

Angel led them all back into the living room, where they gathered once more. The atmosphere was thick with tension as they settled in. Rose sank into a chair, the anxiety that had been briefly lifted during dinner crashing back down. Giles stood close behind her, his presence a quiet reassurance, his hand brushing lightly against her shoulder as if to anchor her in the midst of it all.

“They’re planning something,” Angel said, his voice low but urgent. “Something bigger than we thought. This book…” He lifted the old tome, eyes dark as they scanned the room. “It’s the key to everything.”

The silence in the room deepened, the weight of his words sinking in. Rose’s heart pounded in her chest, the enormity of what they were facing closing in around her. She glanced up at Giles, his steady gaze meeting hers. There was no fear in his eyes, only resolve.

“Imbolc,” Angel said simply, his voice steady but layered with a sense of urgency.

“Saint Brigid’s Day?” Giles asked, stepping closer, the air thickening with anticipation and the weight of unspoken truths.

“Who’s Saint Brigid?” Buffy interjected, her brow furrowing in confusion as she glanced from Angel to Giles, a hint of frustration in her tone.

“Imbolc is the name for the first of February. Pagans celebrated the goddess Brigid, daughter of The Dagda.” Giles’s voice carried a depth of knowledge, the gravity of history settling over them like a heavy cloak. He slipped his glasses off, rubbing the back of his hand against his forehead in a familiar gesture that conveyed both stress and intense focus. “In old Irish mythology, The Dagda was a god—the chief of the gods, actually. He was often portrayed as a king, associated with fertility, agriculture, strength, and magic. It was said he could control life and death.”

His gaze swept around the room, finally locking with Rose’s, a current of unspoken understanding passing between them. It felt like a silent acknowledgment of the weight they both carried. “The Mórrígan was his wife; their daughter was rumored to be Brigid.”

“Wait, I know this one!” Xander exclaimed, lifting a finger as if he had stumbled upon a great revelation. “Morrigan was the evil sorceress lady in King Arthur.”

“Brigid was said to have been born on the first of February, with flames around her forehead. She was a bringer of humble miracles—healing the sick, feeding the hungry, rescuing the weak from violence. Prayers to her were rumored to still the wind and rain,” Giles continued, his voice thickening with emotion, each word imbued with reverence.

“Your coven stole her power. What is your last name?” Angel’s gaze sharpened, intent and piercing as it fell on Rose.

“Murphy,” Rose replied, struggling to piece together the fragmented history swirling around her, feeling the weight of her heritage pressing down like an anchor. “But—they changed it centuries ago.”

“It was Pendragon, wasn’t it?” Giles pressed, urgency edging his tone.

“I... I don’t know. The coven never talked about it before they fled,” she replied, her heart racing with the revelation of secrets hidden in the shadows of her family’s past.

“Rose, your name is Guinevere,” Willow said from her spot on the couch, her voice a whisper that hung heavily in the air, wrapping around them like a shroud.

Angel moved forward, flipping open the book on the table before handing it to Giles. The urgency in the room deepened, thickening the atmosphere as Giles hastily replaced his glasses, staring down at the text as if it held the keys to their survival.

“The fire of the temple of Brigit has burned and will continue to burn. It is said that no man may cross lest he be cursed. Each sacrifice to the fire allows the continued connection to the power of The Tuatha Dé Danann until the last daughter of the last daughter survives till spring.”

Giles’s eyes crinkled with concentration as he examined the page, the weight of discovery settling around them like a cloak. “Guinevere Rosemary Pendragon, the last daughter of the last daughter.” His gaze shot up, locking onto Rose’s with fierce intensity, a flash of recognition igniting between them. “Your family stole their magic from the Tuath Dé. You are a descendant of the Pendragon line.”

“Your line Giles is descended from the first man to cross the flame when they tried to save the first sacrifice,” Angel explained, his voice low but filled with urgency. “Magic always needs balance, so your bloodline was cursed to become the protectors of the last daughter of the last daughter—the protector of the next sacrifice. To find some way to stop the sacrifice from being completed.”

“Wouldn’t Giles just want to kill her then? Why the protecting?” Asked Buffy.

“The goddess would still be trapped. She would be tethered to this plane. It isn’t just about stopping the ritual, it’s about freeing the goddess. Restoring balance.” Giles then flipped the page, carefully placing the book on the table for everyone to see. On the weathered page lay the most beautiful painting Rose had ever seen. A woman with dark red hair and a flaming crown as bright as the sun framed her wild waves. Draped in a cloak of deep green and gold, she cradled dirt, water, and a small plant, just beginning to crawl from darkness toward light, a symbol of hope and rebirth.

“Rose, she looks just like you,” Willow whispered, awe etched on her face as everyone turned from the painting to her, the revelation settling over them like an unshakable truth.

“You are the embodiment of the goddess Brigid,” Giles murmured, his voice barely above a whisper, as if afraid to disturb the fragile moment.

Suddenly, Rose shot up from her chair, her heart racing and thoughts swirling in chaos. “I’m not this person. I’m not a goddess!” she exclaimed, pointing at the picture, her voice trembling with defiance. “I’m just me.” Weakness washed over her, and before she could falter, Giles’s strong arms were around her, grounding her in the storm of her emotions.

Looking up at him, she felt tears begin to spill down her cheeks, hot and unwanted. “I don’t want any of this,” she confessed, vulnerability breaking through her defenses.

“I know, love, I know.” The endearment slipped out softly as he pulled her against his chest, offering a sanctuary amidst the chaos raging within her, his heart steady against her cheek.

“Love?” Angel’s voice was filled with surprise, cutting through the moment like a knife, shattering the fragile cocoon they had woven.

“Yeah, it’s part of the curse; they seem to be attracted to one another,” Xander chimed in, raising an eyebrow, a hint of amusement glinting in his eyes despite the tension.

“That’s not part of the curse,” Angel countered slowly, his gaze moving between them, the seriousness of the situation dawning upon everyone. Rose pulled back slightly to meet Angel’s gaze, confusion swirling in her chest. “Giles’s part is only meant for him to want to protect you, to free you from the curse.”

Silence enveloped the room, heavy and suffocating, as everyone processed the weight of his words.

“So they’re not supposed to be drawn together... romantically?” Buffy asked, her voice tinged with disbelief, as if the very idea challenged everything she knew.

“No,” Angel replied, his expression grave. “According to the book, it should be like the activation of the Slayer’s magic. Giles should become stronger, more attuned, but that’s it.”

“But they...” Willow whispered, her eyes darting between them, seeking answers in the unspoken bond shared between Rose and Giles.

“Wait, you two banged?” Faith smirked, her surprise laced with mischief, breaking the tension with a teasing edge.

Angel remained silent, the implication of his words hanging heavily in the air, each heartbeat echoing with unresolved tension.

“Well, in our defense, we were under the influence of cursed chocolate bars at the time,” Giles interjected quickly, attempting to defuse the sudden tension that filled the room, a nervous chuckle escaping his lips.

“Good job, Rosey. I knew you wore that dress for him,” Xander quipped, a grin plastered across his face, the lightness of his tone a stark contrast to the weighty revelations surrounding them.

“Faith, not helping,” Buffy hissed through clenched teeth, her irritation palpable.

“What? I think they’re cute together!” Faith exclaimed, her smile wide, a beacon of playful energy in the gathering storm.

“But my magic...” Rose began, pulling away from Giles, the connection between them feeling tenuous and frayed. “When we’re together, it’s stronger than it’s ever been. My magic pulls me to him. That’s not the curse, that’s the magic doing that.”

“I can confirm the connection is quite strong,” Giles admitted timidly, a hint of color rising in his cheeks as he caught her gaze. “And I would like to say I normally pride myself on my discretion and restraint.”

“But you do feel the connection to protect her?” Angel pressed, glancing between them, the gravity of their situation pressing down like a weight.

Giles sighed, a heaviness in his voice. “So much so that when we first met, I was convinced something was wrong—that this was some ploy against Buffy.”

“Strange,” Angel mused, picking up the book again, his brow furrowed in thought. “There’s no mention of a romantic element in the curse.”

“But then why do I feel like this?” Rose whispered the question with sadness, her voice trembling as doubt gnawed at her.

A heavy pause lingered in the air, thick with unspoken fears and tangled emotions, before Xander broke it. “So they didn’t need to do the nasty?”

“XANDER!” Buffy snapped, her voice sharp with frustration. The tension between the group thickened, Buffy’s flushed cheeks betraying her discomfort.

“You two were... intimate?” Angel asked, his brow furrowing as the implications settled in. The gravity of the situation dawned on him, his jaw dropping.

Rose’s world tilted. The floor beneath her seemed to give way as Angel’s words echoed in her mind. “Oh God,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. Her hand flew to her chest, clutching her sweater as if it were the only thing keeping her tethered to reality. Panic clawed its way up her throat. “I can’t—” Her breath hitched, heart pounding in her ears. “I can’t breathe.”

Giles moved to her side instantly, his presence like a beacon through the fog of her panic. “Rose, look at me,” he urged gently, his voice a steady counterpoint to her spiraling thoughts. His hands found her shoulders, grounding her. “Focus on me. Take a breath in. Slow... and now let it out.”

Her chest heaved as she tried to follow his instructions, the air around her thick and suffocating. His touch was warm, a tether pulling her from the edges of collapse, but it wasn’t enough to stop the avalanche of confusion and fear bearing down on her.

“They didn’t want me to come to Sunnydale,” she choked out suddenly, pulling away from him, her eyes wild with realization. “They wanted me to stay... stay with them. I’ve traveled with them my whole life. They—they didn’t want me to leave.”

“If they needed to sacrifice her, why not just do it when she was born?” Faith’s voice cut through the haze, practical but jarring in its bluntness.

“They needed to wait until Rose was of age for the ritual, then come the first of February, they can complete the sacrifice.” Angel answered, his tone somber. His gaze rested on Rose, sympathy mixed with resignation. “If you die before the ritual is completed, the coven loses their connection to the power.”

Rose’s breath caught in her throat again, a tremor running through her body as her mind raced to piece together the shattered fragments of truth. “They lied to me,” she whispered, her voice barely a breath. “Everything they did, the training, the warnings... it wasn’t to protect me. It was to keep me alive... for this.”

Her words hung in the air like a death sentence. The weight of it pressed down on her, suffocating. Her family—her coven—had been preparing her for sacrifice her entire life, shaping her into a pawn in their twisted game for power. It was all a lie. Every moment, every bond, every promise. The betrayal hit like a tidal wave, crashing over her, dragging her under.

“I’m nothing but a tool to them,” she gasped, her knees buckling as the enormity of it all became too much. She staggered, and once again, Giles was there, catching her before she hit the floor. His arms wrapped around her, holding her together as she fell apart.

“They lied to me, Giles,” she sobbed, her voice raw with despair. “My whole life... they lied.”

“I’m so sorry, Rose,” he murmured, his voice breaking with the weight of her pain. He held her tightly, but the comfort he offered felt like a small solace against the storm of betrayal and fear crashing through her.

Chapter Twelve

#buffy the vampire slayer fanfic #Rupert Giles #Rupert Giles x OC #Rupert Giles/OC #Rupert Giles FanFiction #Rupert Giles FanFic #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #buffyverse #Giles x OC #Giles/OC #Giles FanFic

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alphapiscis2001 · 2 months ago

Text

In the next life time.

Azriel × reader( let's say her name is Gwyn )

I'm a big Gwynrial fan and was in a mood of angst today. It's my first public writing.......I'm nervous

Part 1

(gwyn pov)

Battle around us raged on, but I was barely aware of it. The clang of weapons, the shouts of soldiers, the chaos—it all blurred into nothing. I couldn't focus on anything other than the aching emptiness in my chest.

I had known the bond had snapped for years. The moment I realized it, I understood the truth: I was his mate, but he wasn’t mine. Not in the way I had hoped. He was in love with someone else. Elain. She was everything I wasn’t—pure, innocent, beautiful. The perfect match for him. I could see it every day in the way he looked at her, the tenderness in his touch when they were together, and the joy that seemed to radiate from his soul when she was near. He was finally happy. He had finally found someone who could make him whole.

And it hurt. It hurt in ways that words could never explain. To watch him love her, to be completely invisible in his presence—it was a kind of torture that I couldn't escape. And yet, I never told him. Not once. Because I wanted him to be happy. I couldn’t be the one to ruin that. He deserved her, not the broken, scarred version of me.

He had chosen Elain out of love. And I—what could I offer him? I was nothing like her. I had scars, inside and out. And besides, he had always ignored me. The bond might have snapped for me years ago, but I had learned to bear it in silence. He never noticed, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. The bond wasn’t a burden—it was the only thing keeping me alive, even though I knew it would never be reciprocated.

But today, everything had changed.

The battle had been brutal, relentless. Every swing of my sword felt like it took a piece of my soul with it. But I couldn't stop. I wouldn't stop. Not with the lives of our people on the line. The clang of steel and the cries of dying warriors blurred around me, my focus narrowed only to the fight. I gazed behind me and only than i noticed that i was edging toward the cliff's end, a canyon beyond that. I swing the blades with more urgency, the stakes are high. I looked around and...

I saw him—Azriel—rushing toward Elain, his shadows twisting and striking down the enemy in his wake. His movements were so fluid, so deadly. For a split second, my gaze lingered on him. I couldn’t help it. His power was intoxicating, and it made my heart ache in ways I wasn’t ready to confront.

And then the world tilted.

I didn’t see the blow coming. One second, I was blocking the warrior’s strike, and the next, I felt the cold steel sink into my side. Poison. I could feel it spreading, numbness slowly creeping through my body as the warrior grinned, pulling the blade back. My breath caught, my vision blurring at the edges. That bastard !!...

I swing my sword with everything i've left with and it striked right. The head is gone . Much better!!...

As the chaos continued around me, I felt the pull of the bond stir. I thought I had forgotten what it felt like, but the familiar tug in my chest was undeniable. I turned, and there he was—Azriel. His eyes locked with mine, and I saw it. His expression shifted, a flicker of confusion, pain, and then... something else. Something I couldn’t name.

I locked eyes with him, my breath coming in ragged gasps.

It was too much. Too much to process in a split second. And then, in an instant, the world was upside down.

I was falling down the cliff.

The world blurred, my vision turning dark as I plummeted toward the ground below. So that's how it's going to end...tragic, painful...incomplete. I should've told him.......Az...

But then,

I felt him. I felt him dive after me. I couldn’t see him, but I felt the force of his presence, the shadows that whipped around us. In the last moments of consciousness, I felt him catch me, his wings enveloping me, his body pressing against mine.

The impact was brutal. He shielded me from the worst of it, but still—pain coursed through me. He was holding me as though I was fragile, as though I was the most precious thing in the world.

And all I wanted to do was tell him—tell him that I was his mate, that I had always been there, but I never let him see me. Because Elain had always been his first choice, and I was too afraid to ruin that.

His voice was frantic, desperate. “Mate.” He whispered it, but there was no triumph in his tone, only confusion and anguish.

I didn’t have the strength to say it. I couldn’t. I couldn’t speak the truth to him now. Not when he was finally holding me, finally realizing that I was the one who had always been there.

I had always been broken, scarred beyond repair. Azriel deserved better. He deserved her.

“I love you,” I whispered, my voice barely audible, knowing it would break him in ways I couldn't undo. “But you don’t love me.”

He froze, his breath catching in his throat as he looked down at me, his face contorted in horror. But I saw it—the realization. The bond had snapped for me. It had always been there, even when I tried to ignore it.

And now... it was his turn.

His voice cracked as he tried to speak. “Gwyn... I... I never wanted this. I never wanted to hurt you.” His hands cupped my face, trembling with the weight of his regret. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see it. I didn’t see you.”

I closed my eyes, the darkness overtaking me. I had always known this would be my fate. I had always known I would love him from the shadows, silently watching him find happiness with someone else. But in these last moments, I finally felt seen.

I gasped for breath, the world slipping away. My vision blurred, and all I could focus on was him. Azriel’s face above me, his eyes wide with terror.

“Can you feel it?” I whispered between painful breaths, each word like a dagger through my chest. “Can you feel the bond breaking?”

Azriel froze. His body shook with raw emotion as he looked at me, the shadows in his eyes flickering with the agony he couldn’t hide. “I... I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice trembling as he gently brushed the hair from my face, his fingers lingering on my skin as if I was the only thing keeping him tethered to the world.

I forced a weak smile, despite the agony tearing through me. “You can feel it. I know you can.” My voice cracked with each breath.

“No... nothing is going to happen to you, you'll be fine...yes you'll fine,” Azriel said, but there was a tremor in his voice, the desperation impossible to miss, as he was reassuring himself.

I could see the fear in his eyes, and even though the darkness was closing in and I've no energy left to say anything . I couldn’t help but smile faintly. “Next lifetime,” I whispered.

Azriel’s breath hitched, and he began sobbing uncontrollably. “No, no, no... not like this. Not like this...” His voice broke as he held me tighter, as if trying to stop the inevitable. “I’m so sorry, love.”

I managed to whisper through the pain, “It’s okay.” I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t sad anymore. I was at peace with everything. “I’ll wait for you."

Azriel shook his head violently, his hands trembling as he cradled my face in his palms, trying to find some sign of life in me. “I love you... i love you” he sobbed, his voice breaking with guilt. “I was too scared to say it. I should have said it sooner.”

But I couldn’t reply. My breaths were shallow now, my body growing colder with every passing second. The shadows around Azriel seemed to mourn with him, writhing in the air as if they, too, felt the loss.

“Rhys... someone... please...” Azriel whispered desperately, but no matter how hard he tried, no healer would be able to save me now.

I closed my eyes and whispered one last time, “It’s okay... in the next lifetime. We’ll be together forever...”

Azriel let out a sob, his grip tightening on me. “I promise, Gwyn,” he whispered fiercely, as if swearing to the heavens themselves. “I’ll find you. I’ll make it right. I swear.”

But I knew the truth. I knew it was too late.

I smiled at him one final time, though it was broken. The tears in my eyes blurred everything around me, and I whispered just before the darkness consumed me, “Liar,” with a fond smile that he would never see again.

Azriel screamed, his roar shattering the stillness of the world. The shadows that had always followed him erupted into violent beasts, thrashing with grief. The sky darkened, clouds gathering above as thunder rumbled in response to his agony.

He cradled her lifeless body against him, his wings wrapping around her as he disappeared into the shadows, his form vanishing into the darkness that had consumed him.

wait for part 2 ...

#angst #gwynriel #fanfic #He loves another #angst with a happy ending

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misslavenderlady · 2 years ago

Text

The Prince & The Princess 👑👑

Marko/Female!OC

Summary: Marko has held onto the guilt of hurting his bride for months now. She's sad to see him feeling so down, so she decides it's time they properly made up~

Thank you @aairadaebak for the request! I appreciate your patience and I hope you enjoy this!

This is the sequel to the KARMA collab series with @ghoulgeousimmaculate. It features her OCs from Party The Pain Away and Little Red (which I highly recommend you read). This has references to her stuff, and takes place in the modern world, not 1987!

WARNINGS: N.s.f.w./18+ Readers Only, References to physical/sexual abuse, References to torture, Pregnancy, Guilt, Panic attack, Fear, Make-up sex, Cunninglingus, Vaginal sex, Sex on a desk, Language Kink, Light Dom/Sub, Romance, Cutting skin, Blood drinking Credit to @losthavenmine and @ofallingstar for gifs

Being a bride of the Lost Boys wasn’t for the faint of heart.

David and the boys were cruel with their love, showing no mercy until they ensnared the objects of their desire. The four lured vulnerable victims with sweet nothings and gentle caresses before swooping in to seize their mind, body, and soul with sadistic torture and manipulation.

Only the most resilient women could see their twisted affection for its beauty.

And Sis was one of those women.

Out of all the sisters, she sacrificed the most to be their mate. Her mother was deceased, her sanity was fried, and her soul was compromised. But out of all the horrific things the men she loved did to her, she never expected one of them to force themselves on her.

The boys held her prisoner for over a year before they wed. But every time she opened her legs, she gave herself willingly.

Marko’s assault was an exceptional betrayal that disgusted the entire pack. The vampires who once feared and revered him now looked down their noses like he was nothing more than a disrespectful cockroach scurrying across the ground. Marko felt out of place in the pack, like he was no longer welcome despite atoning with his flesh.

Life after the traumatic event was challenging for him and Sis.

Despite enacting her triumphant revenge and being blessed with another child, Sis had some hurdles to conquer. Her confidence was restored, but she was still uncomfortable in the petite vampire's presence. Being in the same room with him without David or Dwayne for support was difficult, but she didn’t want to spend the rest of eternity distrustful of one of the vampires she loved immensely.

She wanted nothing more than to restore the bond that was broken all those months ago.

Marko had never been one to fall into self-loathing or shame. He was a ruthless man in life and in death. When he once walked in the sunlight, he was a noble lord, a powerful man to be feared and respected by all.

He took great pleasure in torturing others. There was an entire dungeon of horrors named in his honor. Servants whispered theories about what he did in such a dark, terrifying place.

That sadistic thirst for pain stayed with him as a vampire. In fact, it was dialed up to a greater level. He found sick pleasure in the cries of anguish the brides made in his beloved toy room. It made his cock as hard as stone.

But this time around, he wasn't in a position of power. David was. Marko was his lackey, always doing as he wished, no matter what. Whether it was running errands or bending over to let his body be used, Marko would follow David's order.

He wished with all his blackened heart he had done so this time around.

Marko truly didn't know what came over him. In his moment of weakness, the feral side had completely taken over, wanting nothing but to breed the beautiful vampire bride. Perhaps it was an ancient, animalistic call to grow the coven.

Whatever it was, he should have controlled himself.

After every last punishment David put him through, Marko was healed in body, but not mind. He wasn't like himself. Instead of sneaky and confident he was now meek and silent. His impish nature had gone, leaving behind a frightened, cherub-faced boy who would never dare to look anybody in the eye.

Sis noticed his change in demeanor and ironically, it hurt her so. Marko’s mischievous nature caused her great terror during training, but it was also the very thing that drew her to him when they first met. She first laid eyes on him across the bar roughhousing with Paul—with a cheeky smile upon his lips. She loved the chaotic glint in his eye when he was about to inflict the most exquisite torment.

The vampire queen was made from the worst parts of the boys. Her sadism in particular was nurtured by Marko. Some of her most cherished date nights were with Marko after her turning. Together they would trap the prettiest women and release them in the woods to be hunted and devoured.

She loved the mania in the petite vampire’s eyes when he picked her up around the waist and spun her around. She missed that vampire. It was like he didn’t exist anymore.

And that was something she couldn’t allow as the mother of the pack. So, with shaky legs and an uneasy belly, she sought out her fourth husband. She searched their underground kingdom high and low until she found the littlest vampire hiding in a nook deep in the bowels of the sleeping wing.

Marko looked up to her doe eyes, her presence startling him from his project. He was surrounded by vivid scraps of fabric, obvious trinkets from recent victims that he had eaten. He was in the process of adding the patches to his jacket, which had gotten quite the upgrade over the years.

“How’s the sewing going?” Sis whispered as she lingered by the doorway of the alcove. She didn’t enter the room fully, afraid that Marko might flee before she could show him that she meant no harm.

Marko didn't look at her with hunger like he used to. He instead had the sad expression of a puppy who misbehaved and got a scolding from its master. It didn't look right to Sis. Those deep, hazel eyes were meant to burn with a playful fire.

They had since fizzled out after that fateful night.

"H-Hey there," Marko mumbled. He set down his needle and thread and got back up to his feet. When he was alive, his servants greeted him in a similar manner. Frightened, yet on alert for his orders.

"Oh…this is nothing. Whatever you need, I can do this later."

If he had been his usual self, Marko would have gleefully told her stories about each patch. They would have snickered devilishly together over each victim and how they screamed.

It hurt Sis dearly to see her husband act in such a way. With a gentle look in her eyes, she slowly made her way further into the room.

"Master-"

"N-No! Please…" Marko winced at the title. He brought his entire body downward, making himself smaller and lower to the ground compared to her. "I don't deserve to be called that…not after….w-what I did…"

Sis pouted at his display. The night she tortured him with the help of David was something that brought her power and confidence. She had survived the attack and came out stronger than ever. Now she hated the way Marko continued to punish himself.

"You can't keep doing this to yourself, handsome," she cooed. "It was bad the first few weeks after the toy room, but ever since I got pregnant, you've been so much worse.”

“It’s what I deserve,” he whispered, skittishly scurrying to the corner.

Sis could tell he was calculating a way out of the room to escape her. She sighed, using her speed to block his path. She mentally kicked herself when she saw him yelp and cower against the cold stone. The last time she used her speed against him, she feasted on him, leaving the vampire drained and unable to heal while she tortured him nearly to death.

It was her pound of flesh for all that he’d done to her, but she hated that it had tainted his spirit.

“I’m sorry,” Sis soothed as she spoke to him in hushed tones. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise. I just want to talk to you.”

“I’m not worth to be in your presence…”

“You are worthy, Marko,” Sis challenged. “I’m your wife.”

“You’re David’s wife…”

Sis seeped into her irises, Marko’s words hurting her beyond what she could ever imagine. She and David had a very sacred bond, but she belonged to ALL of the boys. Their blood ran through her veins, not just David’s. On her wedding night, she fed from all of them.

“Is that what you think?” Sis questioned.

“That’s what I know,” Marko replied in defeat, his eyes drifting to her baby bump. “You didn’t want my child…”

Sis let out an exasperated sigh. Even though she was just finishing her first trimester, Marko was still pained to see her growing belly. It was a mark of her bond with David. They were king and queen and would bring another precious heir into the world. One that could have been Marko's.

"I didn't want your child by force, Marko."

The blond trembled, immediately regretting his choice of words. Every time he was reminded of how he pinned his wife down to the ground, his stomach churned, and his head felt dizzy. The mere memory sickened him.

"I'm s-sorry! I…I know I shouldn't have done that…" he stammered. The shaking was getting worse, and it worried Sis terribly.

"My Marko…love…please.." Sis said to him. She was gentler than ever. It was most certainly foreign to her experience with him, but absolutely necessary. Not wanting to startle him, she slowly and gently reached out to cup his cheek.

Even if he was scared of hurting her again, she had to show that she held no fear towards him in return.

"First of all, we raise our babies together. We're all a family. Laddie, Eva, Jasper, Paulina, and the little ones on the way. They're all ours. Second, you have to understand that I'm not upset with you anymore. You paid for your crime, and now you're a free man. How can we grow from this if you keep beating yourself up?"

Marko's gaze fell to the cave floor. He spoke so softly, yet Sis heard his words loud and clear.

"Because I don't deserve you…" he muttered somberly. "I don't deserve the boys, I don't deserve Red and Spunky, and I especially don't deserve that baby on the way…the one I didn't appreciate like I should have…."

“If you didn’t appreciate the child you had, you wouldn’t have compromised everything you believed in to make sure Red was safe when Gem and the sisters protested on my behalf,” Sis pointed out. “You couldn’t bear the thought of Red starving or miscarrying. That sounds like a father who loves and deserves his child to me.”

“But not a man who loves and his wife…” Marko countered. “I carried you into that room kicking, screaming, and begging for mercy….I tortured you for days…I don’t deserve you.”

“I was out of line for attacking Spunky. She infuriated me, but I shouldn’t have tried to kill her. My punishment was justified, and your hand wasn’t the only hand I suffered under. David, Dwayne, and Paul punished me too.”

“It’s still no excuse…”

Sis’ shoulders slumped. She was getting exhausted with this melancholy banter, but she refused to give up until he was alive again.

“Marko…Master, I wouldn’t be me if it weren’t for you. You and the boys made me what I am today…”

“And I’m disgusted by it! By what we did to you,” he spat, springing to his feet. “We destroyed your entire life.”

“You gave me a second chance. I wasn’t living. My grief crippled me. The way I drank, smoked, and popped pills, I would have been dead by 40. You gave me eternal life. Love. Children—a family I thought I’d never have. You and the boys forced me to sacrifice some things, but I feel more alive than I ever did when I had a soul.”

Marko opened his mouth again, most likely to continue on with his words or self-degradation. But Sis would not allow such a thing.

Quick in her actions, she took hold of both sides of Marko's face and pulled him in as close as possible. Her plush lips pressed against his own, silencing any of his negative thoughts with a kiss.

The blond vampire let out a noise of surprise. He hadn't tasted her love in such a way for months. It was as if he was a teenager again, so inexperienced for a kiss. Getting to feel her again like this was making his knees buckle and his heart swell.

When she finally released him, they were both panting, practically breathless from such an intense moment.

"Dio mio, principessa…" Marko sighed, his native tongue coming out from such a surprise.

“Mio principe, farai l'amore con me?” Sis whispered with hopeful eyes.

Marko hesitantly glanced at his wife from under his brow. He studied her beautiful face, thinking about how long it had been since he’d seen it contorted in pure ecstasy. Thinking about her dainty coos of pleasure. The warmth of her soft breasts against his chest. How good it felt inside her.

Marko missed holding his wife in his arms. Missed running his nimble fingers over her tender flesh and kneading her ample curves.

Oh, how Sis fit so well in his arms! One of his fondest memories as an immortal was holding his tiny future bride in embrace while she wantonly bounced on his lap at the dinner table.

It was one of the best first dates he EVER had.

"I…I…." Marko stammered with a shuttered breath. He felt as if an angel and devil were perched on his shoulders, whispering to him. One telling him to ravage the beauty before him and the other ordering him not to hurt her.

His usual personality was fighting with his punished self. Sis just knew how to turn his world upside down in every way possible.

Perhaps it was possible to have a little bit of both. Enjoy her touch and savor it for what it was. No chains, no floggers, no toy room.

Just man and wife.

"Oh God, come here, beautiful," he sighed, finally giving in to temptation.

He moaned deeply as he brought her in for another kiss. His arms wrapped around her waist, desperate to keep her close. It all felt so right. Like he found his missing piece of the puzzle. One little taste was already driving him wild with need.

And Sis was unraveling too.

The ebony queen slithered her taloned fingers under Marko’s crop top to caress his pale flesh. She giggled when Marko shivered under her ministrations, the curly-haired blond moaning into her mouth as he crushed his lips to hers.

Pressing her toes forward, Sis ejected herself into the air and wrapped her legs around Marko’s waist. She gyrated her hips, grinding her pelvis against her husband’s burgeoning erection. The large stiff bulge of his manhood pulled a sultry sigh from her full lips.

“Ooh, Master,” Sis cooed as Marko trailed kisses down her throat. “Ti amo tanto~”

The blond vampire carried his bride across the room, holding her about the waist with one hand as he swept the other over the desk. Spools of thread and patches of intricate fabric scattered on the ground in a chaotic heap.

But Marko didn’t care. His jacket was usually his pride and joy. But at this moment, all that mattered was the precious time he was spending with his beautiful wife.

With her legs still wrapped around his waist, Sis purred in delight underneath her husband. She loved it when Marko tossed her around for some fun. Even if he was being more gentle with her for now, she still loved getting to be with him again.

She tugged at his shirt, silently begging him to take it off. Marko's body was absolutely flawless. The image of a Greek statue carved to perfection. He shouldn't have to hide it.

"God, you're so sexy, Master," she sighed, her manicured nails running along his muscular chest. "I want you~"

It truly felt amazing to hear his wife beg to have him again. Her voice was pure music to him, and he wanted to make her sing out some more.

"I always want you too, principessa~" Marko whispered to her. If he was going to do this, he was going to do it right. "Please, beautiful. May I taste you?"

Sis was certainly never one to deny the chance to get eaten out. With a newfound desire in her eyes, she spread her legs for Marko, granting him access to her body.

For once in his life, Marko didn't tear off her clothing like a wild animal. He wanted to treat her right. Like a real lady in need of some love. He trailed kisses down her plush thighs as he gently tugged her panties down her legs.

Seeing her pussy glisten for him again was making the front of his pants sore. He had to have her.

“Ti leccherò la figa,” Marko purred as his nimble fingers caressed Sis’ smooth chocolate thighs. The blond vampire kneaded the supple flesh, sighing from the sublime sensation of her body beneath the pads of his fingers.

With tender dominance, Marko seized Sis’ thighs, pulling her to the edge of the table so he could dine. He plopped in his chair, scooting towards his wife’s dripping orifice with a devilish glint in his eye.

“Sembri così gustoso amore mio,” Marko whispered against his wife’s folds. He lulled his tongue from his mouth, teasingly panting like a greedy puppy against his wife’s dripping loins.

Sis whined as she felt the soothing heat waft over her needy body. She squealed in delight when Marko rolled his tongue over her slit before delving in face first, vibrating his tongue like a ravenous creature who fed on lust. A sinful shiver tore through her needy body from the ministrations of Marko’s evil little tongue. He was driving her mad, the woolly walls she used to hide her inner beast unfolding.

Sis percolated with madness; the vixen giggled uncontrollably until her child-like titters turned into wails of passion.

A moan fell from Marko's soft lips, muffled by the warmth of his wife's womanhood. She was absolutely delectable, inside, and out. Every time he had a taste, he felt starved for more. He'd give up all the blood in the world just to feed off her.

"Ooooh M-Master~!" Sis sighed out. Her head fell back as she relaxed more into Marko's hold. In between each girlish giggle was a womanly moan. She flipped back and forth between her states of mind when the boys were pleasuring her so intensely.

That only fueled the blond's hunger more. He grabbed hold of her soft thighs and threw her legs over his shoulders so he could dive in deeper. He knew every sweet spot within his wife's body, and he rubbed each one nicely with his tongue.

"Ooh! Ooooh fuck, mi principe vampiro~"

“Ti piace quella, principessa?”

“Sì, mio principe...but I need you inside me,” Sis panted. “Please, Master…”

“I tuoi desideri sono ordini…”

Marko gave his wife one last teasing lick before standing at his feet to mount her. He unzipped himself, dropping his jeans in a heap around his ankles to free his dick. His manhood sprang free, standing at attention engorged, veined, and weeping. He stroked it as he lined himself up with Sis’ slick hole. He playfully tortured the writhing woman, running his glans up and down her sensitive slit.

Marko enjoyed watching Sis shiver and coo with anticipation as he denied her desire to be filled, but his game backfired. The petite vampire could barely hold out long enough to get her begging, because feeling her reminded him of how long he hadn’t been inside. Halfway through his torment, he abandoned his teasing and slipped into Sis in one motion. The vampire queen was so slick that he slid in with ease, her juices producing a lewd squelching as he entered her body.

"Mmmn yessss~" she sighed out, delighted by the feeling of Marko stretching and filling her with ease. She was incredibly grateful to have not one but four different husbands with amazing cocks to fuck for eternity. They never left her unsatisfied.

She eagerly tightened her legs around Marko's waist. The closer he was, the better. Sis always longer to feel Marko fuck her nice and deep. Make her go positively dumb with lust.

But this time was different. Marko wasn't his usual self. Rather than roughly fucking into her, he was smooth and slow with his motions. Gentle, in fact. A little too gentle.

"Master…" Sis cooed, cocking her head to the side, and looking up at the blond with big, beautiful doe eyes. "Is something wrong?"

He figured she would notice. They had embraced as lovers enough time to recognize the unique ways they made love. Marko smiled sheepishly down at her. It was quite different from the usual sadistic smirk he gave her.

"Sorry…didn't want to hurt you…or the baby…" he admitted. Marko gently placed a hand on top of her baby bump, softly massaging her skin.

“Master…” Sis sighed as her breath hitched from the tender kneading of her bump. “I trust you…I know you won’t hurt me.”

“I appreciate that, principessa,” Marko purred, “but I want to savor you…just this once….”

Marko rolled his hips, arching his back in a serpentine manner as he pistoned his hips into Sis. His thrusts were confident and powerful, but slow and sensuous. And with purpose. He may not be dominating Sis in the way he usually did, but his sadism still shined through as he massaged her deep inside.

Each time he pumped into his wife; he could see her eyes widen with ecstasy as the plump ridges of his manhood caressed her sensitive erogenous zones. A playful giggle fell from his lips when her back arched and she whined pitifully. Sis murmured in Italian, little curses falling from her pretty painted mouth.

“FUCK…signore oscuro! Mio principe, ti amo! SHIT!”

Hearing his beloved mate say things in his first language drove Marko wild. It made him imagine her with the title of Lady to his Lordship. Though he and his brothers had plenty of money to spare in the modern world, he would have enjoyed spoiling her in his human life as well.

Still, she had an even greater title to her name; Vampire Queen of Santa Carla.

"Sei bellissima. Sei la mia vita. Ti amo, cara mia~"

The words of romance poured out of Marko's mouth like water from a stream. It just came to him so naturally having her like this. Craving even more of Sis, he brought himself down, pressing her body onto the desk with his own. Not too much pressure to hurt her belly, of course, but just enough to enjoy her even more.

"My beauty. I missed you so fucking much~" he purred into her ear. Marko slipped his hands over here, intertwining their fingers together. "I swear I'll never hurt you again, principessa."

Sis mewled, her body vibrating as Marko led her to orgasm. She gripped his fingers tightly, holding on for dear life as her walls pulsed around his thick shaft. Marko continued riding her, his hazel eyes boring into hers. He leaned forward, crushing his lips to hers once more before running his tongue along her cheek.

He sighed into the crook of her shoulder, the taste of her driving him ballistic and sending him over the edge. The salt of her tears. The sweetness of her juices.

And that GRIP!

Marko rolled his hips as long as he could. But her vampiric muscles of her core trapped him in place, milking him. He came with a grunt, bathing her insides with his seed—reclaiming her as his own.

But she wasn’t fully his. Not just yet. They had to complete one more sacred act to make things right. Marko picked Sis up around her waist, carrying her around the desk. He seated himself while he was still attached, holding her tenderly in his arms as she clung to him. Her body still rigid from orgasm.

“Principessa…look at me…” Marko whispered, untangling Sis’ arms from around his neck.

Sis sat back, looking at Marko with reddened eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. She watched him in curiosity as his claws extended and slashed a section of his own throat to free his century-old blood.

“Mi amore…Drink…let’s renew our vows as husband and wife.”

Sis nodded, overwhelmed with emotion that Marko wished to renew the unholy sacraments they participated in on their wedding day. She wiped a tear from her eye before she wrapped her lips over the weeping cut, drinking deeply from her mate. His blood, thick and rich with wisdom and power flowed down her throat and into her belly. She would digest and metabolize his essence, making herself one with him once again.

And to return the favor, she wanted him to do the same.

“Mio principe, prendimi…” She whispered as she ran her index over her breast, her red talon freeing her fledgling blood. She was young, but she was made from greatness. Her blood a fusion of the covens—the boys and the sisters. By Marko drinking from her, their bond would come full circle, and they could finally move on as a family.

Marko's tongue slowly traced over his lips in hunger. She truly was his. He could see that clear as day with her offering her blood to him in such a way. Months ago, he used his talons on her, accidentally slicing part of her skin. She was so scared and helpless that night.

Now she was willing and happy. That was all he truly wanted. Even if it would be centuries before he could give her another baby, he'd be more than satisfied to enjoy the marital bliss as it was.

"Come to me, beautiful," he purred, bringing her bosom to his mouth. He greedily lapped at her blood, thrilled to taste her. Such perfection would only get better with age. Like the world's finest wine.

"Master~" Sis sighed out for him. She ran her fingers through his silky curls as he drank from her body. It felt right to be like this again. No fights or punishments. Just love.

By the time Marko took the last drop and cleaned her wound, their connection was fully restored. Both the vampires could feel it. Life would still have plenty of ups and downs, but now they were stronger than ever.

"I love you, Marko."

"I love you too, beautiful."

Once Sis had been properly cleaned and set up in her luxurious bath to be pampered by the other boys, Marko decided to go off on his own. He was more than satisfied with how he and his wife made up, but there was another special lady who needed his attention.

Slipping through the hall of the cave, he made his way to the nest of a certain little redhead.

He poked his head in the entryway to see Red in her room. She was deep in a fit of nesting, carefully folding all of the baby clothes she had been gifted so they were all ready for when she gave birth.

That delivery could happen any day now, as indicated by the great roundness of her belly. It made Marko's heart swell with pure love.

"There's my beautiful girls," he cooed.

Red lifted her head to meet his gaze, surprised by him after being so lost in focus.

"Hi, Marko," she smiled. "You seem like you're in a much better mood. Everything going well?"

"Going fantastic, actually," he sighed. He stepped into the room, his hands hidden behind his back as he moved. It made Red grow quite curious.

Marko finally had his smirk back. The one that made it clear he was up to something sneaky. Red would have gotten nervous if she didn't already know his games were on hold while she was heavily pregnant.

"I have a gift for you, love," Marko said. He pulled his hands out from behind his back.

Marko revealed a tiny satin box, opening the vessel to reveal a dazzling ring—a ruby, similar to Sis’ mammoth opulent gem, but unique. It was white gold, emerald cut, and flanked by two large diamonds.

“I know Sis is my wife,” Marko whispered, “but you are just as so special to me, mi amore. You accept me for the beast that I am, and you blessed me with the best gift a man could ever ask for. I may not be king, but I am eternally grateful that you carry my legacy. I wanted to give you this months ago, but with my crime…and my shame. I thought I was unworthy of you…I still am, but…that’s because I know how important you are to me. Principessa, ti amo….”

Red’s bottom lip quivered, her pregnancy hormones triggering her turbulent emotions. Her heart fluttered in her chest as she laid eyes on the sparkling ring. As a child, Red always dreamed of getting married, being a bride, and living happily ever after. But when Marko handcuffed her to his bed over a year ago, she thought she’d die without ever becoming a bride.

And yet, he made her one.

She was born in blood, becoming his mate for eternity, but in comparison to her elder Sis, she felt inferior. Sis was strong, commanding, and exceptionally beautiful, with the wit and charisma worthy of a queen.

Red loved Big Sis, but she was sometimes jealous. Envious of the looks of adoration that blanketed Marko and the boys’ faces when she walked in the room. How they waited on her hand and foot. How she had the power to make them buckle and bow when she played her cards right.

And the ring. The beautiful symbol of matrimony that represented a union between two lovers. Red longed for a gem of her own. A sheath for her bare ring finger.

Now, thanks to her dark prince, she had one of her own.

“Marko!” Red gasped, springing from her seat and dropping the baby items she had obsessively fussed over for the last hour. “For me?”

“Sì, mia bellezza! I love you so much! I want you to know you are royalty too…una degna sposa.”

Red gazed at Marko with a great look of adoration in her eyes. She leaned in to kiss him, her baby bump set in the middle of their bodies as she did so. Marko didn't mind, of course. It felt good being reminded of the newest edition of their happy little family.

"I may be a monster, but I promise to be good to you forever, Red. To both of you."

He leaned down in order to press a sweet kiss on her belly, showing his love for his unborn daughter. To think that a wicked, corrupt soul like Marko could have this second chance with love and a family was such a miraculous gift.

All truly was right again.

Italian Translations:

Dio mio, principessa - My God, princess

Mio principe, farai l'amore con me? - My prince, will you make love to me?

Ti Amo Tanto - I love you so much

Ti leccherò la figa - I will eat your pussy

Sembri così gustoso, amore mio - You look so tasty, my love

Ti piace quella, principessa? - you like that, princess?

I tuoi desideri sono ordini - Your wish is my command

Signore Oscuro - Dark Lord

Sei bellissima. Sei la mia vita. Ti amo, cara mia - You are very beautiful. You are my life. I love you, my dear

Prendimi - pick me up

Sì, mia bellezza! - yes, my beauty!

Tag List: @britany1997 @6lostgirl6 @pixielostboy @bloodywickedvamp @kurt-nightcrawler @bezinful @american-idiot-jpg @vampirefilmlover @crustyraccoon @legal-lost-boy @ria-coolgirl

#nsft #smut #writing collab #the lost boys #tlb #writing request

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novankenn · 7 months ago

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Irresistible Force <> Immovable Object

(If you would like to know more about the "Hares Breadth AU" check out @pilot-boi as she is the mastermind behind it. These shorts are not to be considered "cannon" to her AU. These are me having fun with her idea. Nothing more.)

RNPR was not having an easy time with the Knuckleleave that had been the ultimate demise of Ren's village, and singular focus of all of the young man's rage. It's extendable arms making closing with it almost impossible, there by limiting Nora and Pyrrha's actual strengths as close-quarters-combatants.

Not that Ren nor Ruby faired much better. The fell beast seemed to just shake off the effects of their attacks. It was becoming a battle of attrition... one they were losing.

Seeing Ren getting knocked aside, Nora rushed to his aid while Pyrrha and Rudy did their best to draw the great grimm's attention away from their teammates. The beast slung out it's arms, snapping them like whips. Ruby dodged from her perch, barely avoiding one, while Pyrrha ducked behind her shield and tried to tank the inescapable hit.

Her arms burned, and she could feel her aura in the early stages of failing. Rolling back to her feet, as Ruby unloaded several rounds from Crescent Rose, Pyrrha tried to come up with something, anything. Dodging to the side avoiding another whip like crack of the Knuckleave's arms, Pyrrha was unfortunately caught by the back snap of the other.

She didn't hear the shouts of her team mates, nor see how they as well had once again been knocked aside by the monster's arms. They were all spent. Running on fumes, and Pyrrha lifted her head up, and watched as the beast trotted towards her.

She grabbed for Milo, only to have it torn from her grasp as she was knocked on to her back. Fear boiled inside her as the Knuckleave raised one of it's forelimbs. It's intent was obvious... it planed to crush her.

Sporadic gun fire, striking the grimm didn't even cause it to pause as it brought it's foot up as high as it could.

The bellow of rage startled all of them, and drew the attention of the human like head of the beast. But it was too slow...

/==/

Jauniper was beyond terrified. His mind and body screaming for him to flee. The thing in the center of that space. The monster attacking the two-legged creatures he had been following for months, was an amalgam of everything he feared. Those dark beast that had harried him for as long as he could remember.

He was shaking in utter terror, and slowly started to back away, preparing to bolt... then it happened. The one he spent so much time watching standing alone. The one whose motions with the shiny stick he had copied for many a night, was knocked down. The horror moved forward and raised it's great hoofed foot.

Jauniper's heart tore, and a rage ripped through him. No his soul screamed, as every muscle in his body tightened. This was not going to happen. He WOULD NOT lose them again!.

Jauniper didn't even know he had that thought as with a great bellow he charged forward. He had the distance to reach hid peak speed, and even though terror still coiled about his mind, he pushed forward.

The Knuckleave roared as Jauniper slammed into it broadside. 500 pounds of lean, anger and panic fueled muscle moving at close to fifty miles an hour. The impact knocked it over, and Jauniper's own momentum carried him into that tumble.

Suddenly inky black hands wrapped around his antlers attempting to twist his head. Jauniper knew it had to fight, it had to stay alive. He had to keep the one with the shiny stick from harm. He must keep them all safe. He WOULD save them all...

==/ Hares Breadth AU - Shorts /==

#hares breadth au #rwby #jaune arc #pilot boi #non-cannon #just having fun

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thefantasticreader · 1 year ago

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The Deep End

The Cullen clan has a female mate who happens to be human and struggles with mental health. This is a short story about how they react to finding out about it and how they help. (we are gonna pretend that a coven mate is a thing for this instance and they're all with her) Mostly features Carlisle

TW:MENTIONS BLOOD, SH, AND COULD BE A TRIGGER< PLEASE DON'T READ IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO THESE THINGS (and know there are always ways to help if you ever need it)

They say that blood is thicker than water, sweeter than honey, warmer than summer, but they are mistaken. Blood can be thin, cold, and bitter, it can be filled with sorrow and tear you apart yet can be beautiful and heartfelt.

Y/n's mates never imagines that their lover with such a kind and loving soul could be so dark and broken. She had never imagined them to figure out her secrets the way they had, her darkest ones she had hopes of them never finding out about had in fact been seen. Jasper had been the first to see them, the lines that littered her arms. Some were fresh while some were older, crackled from being there so long, there had to be over a hundred at least, maybe fifty or so on each arm. All his broken cold heart wanted to do was sweep her into his arms and kiss them to show his love, to show he cared and it was ok.

Alice and Edward had been the next to witness the harsh markings that ran up her arms to her shoulders, as if she had run out of room. Fear coursed through their dead bodies as they tried to persuade the female to see their father. How sad it made them to hear her plea's not to tell the rest of her lovers, not aware they had returned from hunting early to check up on her when Alice and Edward had ran to the house. Her mates hadn't expected to hear the pitiful cries for them not to make her see the only doctor they trusted around their mate. It had somehow taken both Edward and Jasper to drag the squirmy girl to the man they called their father. The blonde almost 400 year old vampire smiled gently at the girl who seemed disheveled.

Her hair was tightly matted against her head and looked like it hadn't been brushed in a week, considering however that was how long she had been hiding in the room she called "her's" it made sense to the male as she had not come out but once. The doctor led the teary eyed female to his office on the first level, the door clicking behind him to make a boundary between her mates and them. "Sit, please." her mate muttered lowly. She took her spot on the medical table and pushed her sleeves down further, the hoodie had somehow found itself back on her body. Her black hoodie began soaking up the strong and pleasant smelling blood from her wounds enticing the pale vampire greatly. "Take off the hoodie please." wide eyes connected with his and she shook her head.

"Love, please, I can't help you if you won't trust me. It's alright, I understand, I simply want to help you love." His sweet words and gently voice guided her in removing the hoodie from off her body. He reached over to help guide it past her head and felt her body tremble under the contact of the cold hands while the enhanced hearing the vampire was blessed with gave him the access to hear her heart skip a beat. In any other situation it would have made him smile and peck her forehead with a soft kiss but he could tell the girl was in no mood to even be in the same room as him right now. Feet from the other side of the door seemed to not stop moving as hushed whispers about how they felt bad and what had happened went around and the door creaked with pressure from being leaned against.

The man couldn't contain his gasp as he began to see her thin, malnourished body be produced from under the hoodie. Her ribs stuck out of the t-shirt she was wearing and if the male wanted to his whole hand could wrap around her thin and bony wrist. "Your so thin my love," Her head twisted away from him as she began to look at anything other than his face. "When was the last time you ate?" his loving mate seemed ready to throw up at the mention of eating to which told him she had been avoiding it to the best of her abilities. His cold hands met her arms as he watched the crimson color ooze begin to drip down her fingertips. He brought over a bowl filled with water and a clean wash cloth. The water was made lukewarm as to not shock the girl more in the instance and he dipped into the bowl and began using the washcloth to wipe her arms down carefully.

The water began to turn red from the blood almost instantly and the smell of the enticing liquid enchanted the man as he bit back the want to indulge himself in it. As he cleaned her off he began to take notice just how deep each of them were and how they were seemingly held together by medical tape, which she most likely had stolen from his office. "They aren't too bad... there's a lot of them but most of them are just touching blood." His voice trailed off on the end confusing the h/c haired girl. "I mean they should be able to heal on their own. They won't need stitches and you haven't gone too deep to cause any major issues. I'll put some antibiotics on them to keep from getting infected and wrap your arms up and you should be good to go." she nodded as he walked away to get his tools.

The silence lasted for the duration of the sanitizing, application of medicine and wrapping before he began to place everything back in its spot. "Carlisle?" She finally asked in a meek voice "Yes love?" her voice softly said something and if it weren't for him being a vampire he would have missed it entirely. "Are you and the other's mad at me?" Carlisle paused upon hearing the sadness in her voice. He turned to her and took a spot beside her on the edge of the table, bringing her into a hug he gently held her close to him. "Of course not love, we're here to help you. We love you so much." She smiled a little as he planted a small kiss on her forehead. "Come, you should try to eat something. Even if it is small, and I'm quite sure if I hog you anymore my door might break open." the chuckle felt reliving to the male as he walked her up to the living room.

"Bunny!" Alice cried racing for her mate, wasting no time in wrapping her in a hug, soon being joined by the other mates. They smushed her between them and held her there for a short minute, the icy cold sensations cooling her from her embarrassment and the hug in general pleasant. She felt her eyes sting as fresh tears made their way down her face against her will, something that didn't go unnoticed but the others. Esme gently wiped them away and whispered ever so softly, as if to make sure she didn't hurt her ears, "Oh don't cry my love. You're alright. We love you so much dear, we hate to see you in pain. Please, why don't you just dry your eyes and come eat something with us." Rosalie and Alice each grabbed a hand and pulled her to the kitchen. Everyone watched as she was served some warm tomato soup and a grilled cheese. Her thoughts raced as she eyed the bowl that seemed to never want to end according to her brain.

Edward noticed her thoughts began to race and stepped into easing her thoughts "You don't have to eat it all, just a little bit baby. Just four or five bites for us. We're right here for you." Y/n hesitantly picked up the spoon and brought it to her lips. Her stomach turned in pain from not eating yet her brain told her she'd throw up if she tried to eat anything. A cold, yet reassuring hand on her shoulder from Emmet gave her that little push she needed as she took a small bite. Smiles passed through the room as they watched her eyes light up like a Childs. "Made it just the way you like it dear. Everything to your liking." Esme said from her spot beside Carlisle. Both held hands hoping the girl liked the food and would eat a little more than just two bites as to begin getting nutrition back into her body.

After a few bites Y/n set the spoon down but thanked Esme kindly which was rewarded by yet another amazingly soft forehead kisses. After cleaning up her mates forced her to shower, to which Rosalie spent an hour brushing and styling her hair and then forced her to wear one of Jaspers warm t-shirts and Alice's shorts to keep tab on when she cut again, once changed she crawled onto the couch. Alice and Jasper both smushed her into an ice cream sandwich as they made her sit between them, though she didn't mind as the movie they put on was much more interesting. It however didn't take long before they themselves moved to cuddle and Rosalie got her turn with her mate. Her heartbeat began to steady and slow down as she began to drift off, Finally after another couple of minutes her head gently leaned against Rosalie's shoulder. "Sleep tight my darling." Sure it would be hard these next few months, but her mates would help her and watch her closely. She would get all the support she needed in the world, and Y/n herself knew that she had the best and most supporting lovers in the world who would be beside her forever.

#twilight saga #alice cullen #carlisle cullen #esme cullen #jasper hale #twilight #rosalie cullen #edward cullen #emmet cullen

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giggly-squiggily · 2 years ago

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hi!! idk if u can but i was wondering if u could do 💛soul mate with sonia and gundham from danganronpa v2? no pressure thank u for doing this event!

These two make my heart happy ajkerkjaekjajkr I've gotcha covered, anon! And thank you for participating! :D

Soul Mate: "Not there? What about here?"

“Guhuuhuhundam, noohohoohoho!” Sonia giggled helplessly as her boyfriend gently tickled her sides. “Nohoohoht thehehhhehere!”

“Oh? The dark queen wishes me to move somewhere else?” Gundam teased, smiling in his scarf as he moved up to her ribs. “How about here then? Or perhaps here?” One hand remained at her side while the other dropped to her hip, squeezing it and making her jump with a squeal. “Your siren song is quite endearing, my Dark Queen. Please, grant me more time to listen to it.”

“AHehahahahahahha! Oohoohoho yohohoohoohu dahahhhahasthahahrdly ohohohoverlohahahard!” She cried, twisting around in an attempt to tickle him back. “Thahahht’s it, coohohohme hehehehre!”

“Heh, good luck mortal. I am immune to such att-ehehehehehempts!” He yelped as her hand found his side, squeezing rapidly. “Ohohohohoho nohohoho! Nohohohot agahahhahain!” It wasn’t long before they were having a proper tickle fight, reaching for each other's bad spots in search for the best reactions.

“Gihihiihive up, you!” Sonia squealed when his hands grabbed her waist, pressing into the sides of her stomach with his thumbs.

“Nehehehehhever! Yohohoohu won’t brihihihng me DOHOHWN!” He all but cackled when she stuck a hand under his arm.

It all came to a hilarious end when Gundham managed to get the upper hand, pulling her into his chest as he scribbled his fingers into her back. Sonia practically shrieked, thrashing about as she squealed and giggled in mirth, tapping at his arm rapidly.

“OHOHOOHKAY OOHOOHKAY! YOOOOHOHU WIHIHIIHN!” She begged, gasping for air when he finally stopped. Planting her face into his chest, she reached out to taser his side, making him squirm. “Yohohohou jehherk! You whehehnt for my back!”

“And you my neck, dear.” He replied simply, leaning up so he could kiss her brow. “I’d say we’re even.”

“Heh, fair.” She nodded, snuggling in for cuddles. “How was my “siren song”? Did I enchant you?”

“You already do that.” He ran a hand through her hair, satisfied at her blush. “And yes. Very much so. Especially when you started screeching like a wraith.”

That earned him a new round of tickles.

Worth it.

~Send me a pairing and a candy heart phrase~

#Candy Heart Valentine Event #chve2k23 #tickle #tickle dabble #danganronpa #sondam #sonia nevermind #gundham tanaka #fluff #I am so in love with them help-

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averagejoesolomon · 1 year ago

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It's heeeeere! This one surprised even me, so I hope you're ready! I'm so stoked to share 1986 with you all. If you're new here, you can read Full Circle from the beginning on Ao3. Enjoy!

Chapter Three

In the white-steepled churches of Nebraska, Hell is said to be fire, and brimstone, and torture. Nine layers of labyrinthine stone cast in a heat so demonic that even a soul can feel it. There are stories devoted to its wrath. Songs written about its misfortune. Matt’s childhood church, situated on the far edge of Hay Springs, has an entire window dedicated to the fall of Lucifer, wings burning as the angel descends from clean, uniform strands of blue to the chaotic, shattered shards of red. He always wondered what would happen if he reached out and touched the glass—if he would feel the fire in his fingertips. He’s never had the guts to try.

And anyway, Matt knows better now. Hell isn’t hot embers and smoldering chains. Hell is a two-cushion loveseat in a Russian safe house.

He blinks awake for the sixth time in five hours, his right foot on the verge of total numbness. Last time, it was his left hand and the time before that it was his entire right shoulder. It seems every part of his body is keen to fall deeply asleep before he gets the chance. In a halfhearted attempt to soothe the prickling static, he throws his leg over the arm of the loveseat and sinks back into his drowsiness.

When his entire calf begins to buzz in response, Matt reckons this is some sort of karmic payback��for what, he doesn’t know, though he’s surely tallied up some serious ill will over the past few years—and he finally surrenders. With a sigh, he rolls to his feet and convinces himself that five hours of sleep is enough to run an op on.

This is Moscow, after all, and mornings always come early in Moscow.

It helps when the crisp, smoky scent of bacon wafts through the room. Matt latches onto it like a hound on a rabbit, shaking feeling back into his foot as he lumbers through the predawn darkness. With as little noise as he can muster, he cracks open the door and slips into the low, golden light of the living room, careful not to cross into any of the shadows Rachel still sleeps through.

“Morning, mate,” someone greets him. “You must be Matthew.”

Across the room, where carpet gives way to linoleum, a broad-shouldered brick of a man stands at the stove top. The glow of the range light outlines the stockiness of his silhouette as he scrapes a spatula against cast iron, dueling with the pops and sizzles of bacon fat. “Uh, yeah. Matt’s fine,” Matt mutters, softly shutting the door at his back. “You must be… the husband?”

At this, the man breaks out into a broad grin, as though the wind is at his back from here on out. It’s beyond endearing. “That I am, Matt,” he says. “Although most people call me Abe.”

Matt’s next words get caught up in a yawn. “Mighty nice to meet you, Abe,” he drawls, twisting sleep from his eye. “Don’t suppose you’ve got any coffee over there?”

“Tea?”

“Mm.”

Abe’s laugh, much like the rest of him, is a small but mighty sort of ordeal that’s perfectly suited to the ease of slow mornings. “Understood,” he says. “I did spot some grounds in one of these cabinets—ah, yes, the one with the map of the Moskva shoreline taped to it. How about I heat up another kettle and let you handle the rest?”

“Sounds awfully fair to me,” Matt agrees. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure.” Without breaking focus, Abe points the spatula toward the living room’s sole chair, just at Matt’s side. “Your bag, by the way. You’ll be happy to know it’s bug free.”

Sure enough, Matt’s backpack rests beside a lonely throw pillow. It looks pristine and untouched, but Matt knows better. Abe has been through every zipper, every pocket, every shirt, every sock, and every last bristle on Matt’s toothbrush. Probably for the best. A fella can never be too careful in Moscow.

“Thanks,” Matt says, grabbing the bag by its top and unzipping the main compartment. This early into an op, all of his clothes are still neatly folded and grouped by type, so it’s easy enough to rummage below his sole sweatshirt and slip into the concealed pocket sewn into the lining. The resulting device is no bigger than his palm, save the long rubberized antenna sticking from the top. He runs his thumbs against each ridged knob. Finds the hard plastic switch along the side. “D’you mind if I…?”

Abe eyes Matt just in time to see him gesture broadly toward the room. “Not at all,” Abe tells him. “Although you should know that I already swept the place last night. We’re clear.”

This is said with the sort of calm, reassuring tone that probably works wonders on assets and assailants alike, but it doesn’t do much to put Matt at ease. Not in Moscow. Not when he’s lost three guys in the last year, not when Langley won’t let him fly overseas without signing a half-dozen waivers, not when he’s only just learned Abe’s name. Rachel Cameron is one room over and Matt would prefer to live long enough to make things right with her.

“Sure,” he cautions, still sluggish from a night of sporadic sleep. “And I’m not looking to offend, but they do build bugs straight into the walls, here in Moscow.”

Abe nods, laying another few strips of bacon into his pan. “Yes, I’m aware.”

The part of Matt that was raised with Midwest politeness struggles against the part of him that’s trained to survive a volatile Russia. “Sometimes they’re remote activated,” he goes on, trying to keep his tone light. “And after your first sweep, once you’re sure you’ve got everything, they turn on a second batch.”

At Matt’s continued insistence, Abe finally glances up at Matt when he says, “Which is why I did another sweep this morning.”

This ain’t the first impression Matt likes to make, but he also can’t compromise like he’s used to. Instead, he holds his arms out to each side, trying to broker a little bit of peace on the subject. “It’s not you I don’t trust,” he promises. “It’s just the Soviets can be real bastards sometimes, is all.”

“Right.” Abe considers this and seems to take in Matt anew. Then, just as quickly, he drops his attention back down to breakfast. “Well, I’m told you’re the expert. Far be it from me to stop you. Do you want one piece of bacon or two?”

And that’s that. “Four, please,” says Matt. “If we can spare it.”

“Four it is,” Abe replies.

Matt’s stomach rumbles at the thought. “And eggs?”

“Of course,” says Abe. “I like to fry them in the leftover fat.”

“Good man.”

With breakfast on the horizon, they leave one another to work, descending into the sort of easy quiet that doesn’t feel like it needs filling. For his part, Matt searches the room the way he was taught, starting with the perimeter and spiraling inward. He has access to the kind of tech that Langley only spares for agents regularly posted in this part of the world—minimizing the risk of equipment being captured, reverse engineered, and shared among enemies—which might explain why he finds his first bug in five minutes flat. It’s a tricky one, tucked inside a hollowed door hinge, but it’s enough to keep Matt vigilant throughout the rest of his search. The scanner click, click, clicks in his hand as he goes. Goddamn Moscow.

He’s about halfway through his sweep, ruling out a potential false positive triggered by a wayward nail sunken into a crooked floorboard, when Grace makes her first appearance of the morning. She seems to have gotten no shortage of sleep, positively glowing as she joins Abe at the stove top with a soft, “Good morning, darling.”

He mutters his own sweet nothings in return, lends her a kiss on the cheek, and leans into the way her arms wrap around his waist. Something about the way they sway, and touch, and giggle sends a flush to Matt’s face. Even though he knows he ought to look away, he can’t seem to stop himself from stealing glances at their casual intimacy. The simplicity of her chin on his shoulder. The peace of his voice, kept low and rumbling so only she can truly hear. A calm and unbroken back-and-forth between two people who really, honestly love one another.

Matt turns his attention back toward the floorboards, lest his chest collapse under the weight of his own want.

He overturns every cushion, unscrews every light bulb, checks every outlet, and disassembles the entire phone, promising to piece it back together when he’s done. Meanwhile, Grace pours herself a cup of tea, props herself onto the countertop, and begins to debate the finer points of egg making with her husband. “Honestly, Abraham,” she says, taking a sip. “The yolks are meant to be runny.”

“That may be so, my love,” he allows, “but sometimes a yolk simply must be sacrificed for a crispy edge—I don’t make the rules.”

“Likely story,” she teases. Then, across the room, “What was that you said to me last night, Matt? The guy with the spatula makes all the rules?”

By now, Matt is standing on top of the dining table, combing through each component of the overhead lighting. He doesn’t break focus when he says, “Guy with the knife, I think is what I said.”

“Close enough,” Grace replies.

This prompts another one of Abe’s compact laughs. “Close enough,” he echoes, breaking away from a busy stove top to make a move toward Grace. “I ought to show you close enough.”

“I’d like to see you try—” But her words are interrupted by her own short squeaks as Abe pokes at her sides, her legs, and anywhere else that may cause her to squirm and smile. “Oh, you absolute beast of a man,” she says through a laugh like sunshine. “You stop it, stop that right now.”

Abe obliges, but not without trading ticklish teasing for an eager and earnest kiss. Grace meets him with equal enthusiasm, leaning in without another word. Her arms fall loose along his shoulders while her legs wrap around his torso. With no end in sight, Matt glues his eyes to the light fixture, focusing hard on each individual piece needed to reconstruct it. It takes everything in him not to clear his throat, as he wonders whether or not this is how the third wheel on his Radio Flyer trike always felt.

Thankfully, Grace has the good sense to break away in the presence of company. “You’re going to burn your eggs,” she tells Abe.

“Eggs?” Abe sounds like he’s never even heard of such a concept, still leaning in close to his beloved. “Who ever cared about eggs? Let them burn—let the whole world burn.”

“I would, darling,” she says. “Except I think Matt probably prefers his breakfast to be… well, eatable.”

Matt would do just about anything not to be included in this particular conversation, but this point does seem to slow Abe in his tracks. With a sigh, he gives up his hold on Grace and returns to the perfectly mundane task of frying eggs. “Yes, well,” he says. “You really ought to try sitting at the table, Matt, rather than standing on it. Really, breakfast will be ready shortly.”

Matt, glad to be back in more neutral conversational territory, screws the final piece back into the light fixture. “Just wrapping up,” he says. “Can never be too careful.”

“Even so,” Abe agrees, “nothing that can’t wait until after a good breakfast. Titanium locks, bullet-proof windows, sound-proof paneling in every wall—”

“Amen to that,” Grace chimes in, with a little more flirtation in her tone than Matt feels comfortable hearing.

“We’re safe for now,” Abe assures him. “So come make yourself some coffee while the kettle’s hot.”

Matt reckons they’re about as safe as mice running through a room full of spring traps, and it’s only going to take one wrong step to bring fury down upon their necks. Frankly, he’s a little concerned by the attitude in the room. He likes Abe. He likes Grace. He’d hate to see them end up dead before he really got to know them, so he channels the same energy Joe once gave him, when he needed a wake-up call of his own.

He climbs down to the ground, reaches into his pocket, and leaves six missed bugs at the center of the table.

Their eyes both go wide, and they’re not smiling anymore. “Look,” says Matt. “I’m sure you’re excellent agents. Rachel knows how to pick‘em—except maybe myself, as the one notable exception. And I don’t mean to be a buzzkill, but this ain’t a usual romp through western Europe. This is Moscow. When the agencies send us in, they immediately assume we’re dead until proven otherwise. We’re not safe here, and we won’t be safe anywhere we go.”

The pair of them take on the same look Matt’s teammates used to when his mama scolded them for playing ball in the house. It sends his insides twisting, because he’s never been good at this kind of thing. Maybe that’s why he lets them off the hook so soon. “Good news for us, though,” he says, crossing into the kitchen. “Those bugs are long dead, which is why we didn’t catch them sooner. No signal. Must’ve fried up years ago, and the Soviets didn’t want to risk retrieving them. Probably out of date, too, so they won’t tell us much—my guess is mid-to-late sixties. Completely useless, and if I’m remembering the specs right, they wouldn’t be able to transmit through our jammers anyway.”

He rattles this off during a thoughtless coffee routine, moving through mugs, filters, and grounds. “As far as live bugs go, you’re right. We’re clear for now,” he goes on, reaching for the kettle. The water steams as he pours it over dark roast. “Well done on that, Abe.”

Abe plates the last of his eggs, a little more life in him now that Matt’s scorn has been met with renewed reassurance. “Thank you.”

Matt’s well within his wheelhouse now and can’t stop himself from rolling onward. “We should keep up with regular sweeps, in case of sleepers. And we’ll need to sweep again every time we leave and come back—there’s no telling who can get in while we’re away, I don’t care how secure Langley says we are. The pencil pushers in charge of managing the safe houses aren’t the same people putting their ass on the line by staying in one, y’know?” Water trickles into his cup and it seems like a waste to get so little use out of these grounds. “And no matter how many times we sweep, don’t say anything you wouldn’t want to explain to a KGB agent after twelve-to-eighteen hours of torture—coffee for anyone else?”

He might be imagining the dumbfounded shock on Abe and Grace’s face, with the way they watch him, jaws dropped ever so slightly, as though they’re not quite sure if he’s some half-man-half-computer hybrid. It’s possible they just didn’t hear his call for coffee, but before he can offer again, a third voice answers.

“I’ll have one.”

The thing about Rachel Cameron is that she never looks out of place in a room. This is different from Matt, who sinks into the crevices of a crowd to go unseen—Rachel doesn’t go unseen, and she never will. She’s a lot like Abby in that way, wrapped up in enough beauty and stature that it’s impossible to miss her presence. But while Abby is the white-hot crackle of static over a signal, Rachel is the low and even buzz. She is the steady constant that’s always supposed to be there, acting as she’s expected to act, being as she’s expected to be.

Even now, buried somewhere in the backmost forests of Russia, she looks well and truly in her element. Gone is the heiress he last saw, replaced with someone who has spent the last two years getting her hands dirty and isn’t afraid to show it. She’s a mix of denim, and flannel, and a good night’s sleep, leaning in the doorway with an eye toward the entire room. “Now you see why I looped in a specialist,” she says, working her way toward the table. “And a coffee aficionado.”

When Rachel sits, the entire room follows suit. Abe and Grace bring plates to the table and Matt makes quick work out of pouring a second cup of coffee, delivering it, and taking the seat at her side. “He’s clever, Rachel,” Grace comments. She finds a seat in Abe’s lap, ignoring the table’s fourth and final chair. Abe doesn’t seem to mind. “You didn’t say he was clever.”

Rachel blows ever so slightly at the steam of her mug. “Sure I did.”

Abe, who has already cut into his eggs with the side of his fork, shakes his head. “I distinctly remember you saying trustworthy,” he says, one cheek stuffed. Matt finds this tidbit to be awfully interesting. “Reliable and trustworthy—”

“And good in a crowd,” Grace adds. Even more interesting.

“Yes, good in a crowd, thank you love,” he says. Then, back to Rachel. “But you never warned us he’d be clever, too.”

Matt does his best to bite back a creeping grin, glancing up at Rachel. There’s no sign of a crack in her usual cool demeanor, save the slightest purse of pink lips, but she swiftly covers this with her first sip of coffee. Like a barn cat with eyes on a field mouse, he can’t resist pouncing on the moment. “Reliable and trustworthy, huh?”

Her eyes flit toward him. “Careful, Matthew.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He hides the rest of his smile behind a sip of his own coffee and by the time he turns back to Abe and Grace, he’s got his grin reigned in. “In Rachel’s defense, I’m only clever on occasion. Y’all happen to have met me in my area of expertise—I’ve been in and out of Moscow so many times, they ought to give me a key to the city.”

Grace rips off a bite of bacon. “I’m surprised Langley sends you over that often,” she says. “Six only sends in agents as a last resort.”

A twinge of something sharp and electric zips between Matt and Rachel, because they both know Grace is onto something. More often than not, Matt is in the Soviet Union on his own orders, not Langley’s, and that’s the kind of thing that has all the makings of their usual fights. Rather than work their way toward an argument so early in the morning, Matt shifts the subject. “MI6?” he asks. “I didn’t realize this was a joint mission.”

Grace shrugs. “More like a tag-along, really,” she says. “You lot are running this one—Six just wants to know what you find.”

“Grace is being humble,” Rachel cuts in, apparently satisfied to skirt around the frustration, same as Matt. “We worked an extraction job in France a couple years back, and you’d be hard pressed to find someone more knowledgeable about escape and evasion tactics.”

Matt digs into his breakfast. “Useful skill set to have in this part of the world.”

Rachel joins him. “When they told me to put a team together, she was one of the first on my list,” she goes on. “And lucky for us, she was able to open up her schedule.”

“Yes, well,” says Grace, “I do still owe you one after Paris, and anyway you’re much better company than some of the stiffs at Six. Acting all high and mighty with their Windsor knots and their posh boarding school backgrounds.”

Abe is gentle in her ear when he reminds her, “Darling, you have a posh boarding school background.”

“Yes, but I don’t go around acting like it, do I?”

“Certainly not, you’re perfect in every way.”

This is said with another one of their sickly sweet kisses, which prompts Matt to fixate on his eggs as though they are the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. When they carry on a little too long for comfort, Rachel steps in. “You’ll have to excuse these two,” she tells Matt. “They’re still in their honeymoon phase.”

Grace breaks free with a doting glance toward Rachel. “You can hardly blame us.”

“That’s sweet,” says Matt, and he means it. “How long have you been married?”

The two of them turn toward one another, mentally running through the numbers. Grace hangs from Abe’s shoulders. Abe’s hand rests along her leg. Finally, Abe replies with, “Oh, probably, sixteen hours, by this point?”

Matt, who made the mistake of sipping his coffee again, chokes on the answer. “Sixteen hours?” he repeats through a cough. “You’re not in the honeymoon phase—you’re on your honeymoon.”

“Why travel on your own dime when your agency will pay the airfare for you?” says Grace, downright logical about the whole thing. “And this will be better than sitting on some boring old beach anyway.”

Matt’s morning starts to make more sense, given the context, and he’s glad to have a reason for all of the extra love going around. He’s not quite sure how he would have handled it, if Grace and Abe were like this all the time. Honeymoon is fine. Honeymoon is good. “I suppose congratulations are in order.”

Grace waves a hand. “We left our congratulations back in London where they belong,” she says. “I’m far more interested to find out what I’m supposed to be doing in Moscow.”

The table turns toward Rachel, who sits completely at ease as she finishes her last bite of eggs. Once again, she looks perfectly positioned to rise to this moment, as though she knew the conversation would lead this way eventually and all she had to do was wait patiently for everyone else to catch up with her brain. Matt wonders how many times she’s had to wait for the rest of the world to rise to her level. He’s not sure a number that high can be counted. “We’re confident there are no bugs?”

“As confident as we can be,” Matt confirms. “And if we’re wrong, we’ll find out soon enough.”

Rachel doesn’t seem especially satisfied with this answer, but she must decide to contend with it, because she goes on with a strong and easy cadence. “Right,” she says. “The details are need-to-know, but long story short, my last op uncovered a possible exchange happening in the city tomorrow.”

It’s like a switch has flipped in the room, and he’s now sharing the table with entirely different people.

Grace asks, “Two agents?”

Rachel answers, “As far as we know.”

Abe asks, “What agencies?”

Rachel answers, “Langley would very much like us to find that out.”

Grace asks, “What are they exchanging?”

Rachel answers, “Passports.”

Abe asks, “We’re in Moscow for a bunch of bloody passports?”

Rachel hesitates. The moment is brief, but Matt knows her well enough to spot it. He watches closely, looking for any of her usual tells. Chewing on her cheek. Jutting out her jaw. None of them come, which tells Matt that she’s trying very hard not to say something, and she’s trying even harder not to show it.

“We have reason to believe,” she starts, “that hostile agents have intelligence about select US operatives. Aliases. Cover legends. Official cryptonyms. And we suspect that once they get their hands on the passports, they’ll be able to confirm the real identities of everyone on that list—walk back every mission they’ve taken part in, target their families, target their allies, target them.”

Rachel speaks like stone. Sits like glass. She divides her eye contact in perfect thirds across each of them, as though she’s counting the seconds. Rachel is strict and disciplined by nature, but she is never rigid. Not like this.

Abe doesn’t seem to notice. “So these aren’t fakes,” he clarifies. “These are real, genuine passports—name, picture, birth date.”

“Correct,” says Rachel.

“And we need to intercept them,” says Grace. “Before our hostiles blow the cover of every US operative they have access to.”

Rachel nods. “They get the passports, some of our best operatives die,” she confirms. “We get the passports, those operatives get to live another day.”

It’s a continuation of the same dangers he’s been hearing all summer—agents selling out other agents for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Stolen identities leading to the very real executions of significant allies and informants. Ten dead last summer. Plenty more missing. Now Rachel’s gone and pulled him into a Moscow op, and there’s no such thing as coincidence.

So Matt asks, “You said select US operatives?”

And Rachel answers, “Yes.”

Matt asks, “How select?”

Rachel answers, “We think it’s between six and ten passports.”

Matt asks, “Who are they targeting?”

Her eyes linger now, no longer bouncing evenly between everyone and landing firmly on Matt. Rachel’s out-of-character reluctance reads a lot like her in-character stubbornness, but somehow Matt can spot the subtle difference. She’s nervous, which ought to scare the shit out of everyone else at the table. She’s nervous, which ought to tell them all everything they need to know.

Still, he needs her to say it. “Rachel,” he tries again. “Who are they tar—?”

“Soviet specialists.” It comes out fast. Cold. An icicle falling from a rooftop and shattering along the sidewalk. “US operatives with ties to the Soviet Union.”

Abe and Grace turn toward him, and suddenly everyone at the table is watching him like he’s a dead man walking. Logistically speaking, he doesn’t need to ask his next question. Everyone already knows the answer. But he still has to get it out, if only for the sake of his sanity. “Do they have my passport?”

Fire and brimstone have nothing on the look in Rachel Cameron’s eyes when she doesn’t seem to have an answer. “I don’t know… I tried to—” She takes a deep breath. Sets her jaw, the same way she always has. “I don’t know, Matthew.”

It’s his mama that comes to mind first. Then his pops. Joe, Joe, Joe. He’s always known the risks of this profession, but he’s always had a way of justifying them. Rationalizing them. Except now all he can picture is a Soviet bullet in his mama’s forehead and that’s a mighty hard image to wave away. Before he knows what he’s doing, he stands. Nods. “Excuse me.”

And then Matt bolts toward the sole bathroom, hunches over the toilet bowl, and hurls up all four pieces of bacon.

#Full Circle #Gallagher Girls #Ally Carter #Matthew Morgan #Rachel Morgan

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centeris2 · 2 years ago

Text

Happy Dark Core Day!

[More chapters to be released throughout the week]

Seeing her was seeing the sun after being trapped underground for centuries. Her voice awakened something long dormant in him and he was drawn to her like a moth to fire, desperate for her warmth and light.

Rosalinda. She was sweet and charming, and far too good natured to have to put up with his gawking and awkward approach. There was something so familiar, memories buried deep that made Owen wonder if they had done this before in another life. Could such a thing be possible? What else could explain the strange sense he had that he knew her, that being at her side was his purpose in life?

Trying to explain it to his family and friends only brought about laughter and slaps on the back, it was young love! He was not yet a man, so inexperienced in the world! Of course a pretty girl who smiled and spoke to him a few times enchanted him! It was only natural for a boy his age to worship her as a goddess, he would grow out of his infatuation soon enough and realize reincarnated lovers and soul mates were all poppycock.

She continued to indulge him though, eagerly agreeing to meet him whenever possible. At first he was flattered, if a bit confused, that someone as lovely as she would choose to spend time with a gangly boy on the cusp of adulthood. He secretly feared perhaps it was some odd trick, a twisted joke, and he would find himself the laughing stock at any moment. But he reached the startling conclusion that she was lonely. As they were seen together in the village he began to receive comments and questions about her.

“Her family came from the eastern mountains, didn’t they? Quite a distance.” Meical, a family friend remarked. He hadn’t thought about it before. He hadn’t cared why her family relocated to the small western fishing village, only that it had brought her into his life.

“I’ve seen her wandering off into the forest. Doesn’t that girl have chores? What is she doing out there?” A buyer, Tessie, made small talk while Owen dropped off a delivery at the fishmonger. He had no answer, not knowing why she would be going into the local forest. But why wouldn’t she go into the forest? Nothing wrong with a little adventure as long as she was back before dark, returning to safety before night set in.

“She’s got a lovely face but nothing behind the eyes. I’ve seen her sitting and cheeping at birds and vermin, little fool.” Owen had to restrain himself from punching the woman who made that comment, Bernadine. It wouldn’t go over well to hit a woman, especially one who was a close friend of the family. But he liked how Rosalinda fawned over animals, marveling at how she could get them to feed from her hands and seemed to listen to her. Maybe it was a little unusual, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t intelligent, nor was there anything wrong with being a little strange.

The infatuation did not end, the feeling of familiarity only growing stronger as they walked and talked in sync as though they had done so for a hundred years. As the weeks stretched into months he began to get looks from her parents. At first he thought it was merely the rightfully protective looks of parents concerned about their only child, wondering about his intentions towards her. Her mother, Sera, started to look more and more worried and distrustful, downright skittish, whenever she spotted the two of them walking together. Rosalinda would take a purposeful side step away from him, mutter a quick apology and farewell, and return to her mother’s side. But Sera never looked relieved, instead glancing around and watching Owen carefully while scolding her daughter. He didn’t know what for.

Her father, Bentley, had a similar nervous look to him, but with an aggressive scowl instead of a worried frown. Rosalinda would hastily return to him whenever he spotted them, Bentley glaring at Owen before grabbing Rosalinda’s arm and hauling her home. And he seemed to be growing more paranoid, going looking for them and even finding Owen a few times alone and demanding to know where Rosalinda was. When Owen couldn’t answer, her father stormed away, muttering about “that damned girl”.

“They’re just worried about me,” was all Rosalinda would ever say when Owen asked, not giving further context. She also rejected any suggestions that Owen try to talk to her parents and explain he had no intentions of disrespecting her. So they continued their friendly meetings as best they could, often cut short by a vaguely frantic parent.

“Can you meet me tonight? I want to share something with you,” Rosalinda whispered to him one afternoon. He hoped his face wasn’t as red as it felt, heat rushing to his cheeks.

“Where? What time?” he asked, curious and nervous.

“After my parents go to bed, I can meet you outside your house.”

He agreed, his stomach twisting into knots. What was she planning? Everything they had done was proper, respectable, always in the public eye, but this… he didn’t know what to expect. What sort of thing did she want to share that she couldn’t tell him on one of their walks? His mind swam with possibilities, some of them embarrassingly shameful. What would he do if she kissed him? He felt weak just thinking about it.

The nerves made sure he didn’t accidentally fall asleep, and when the house was quiet and night had fully set he crept outside.

She was there, waiting for him, an unlit lantern in her hand.

“Will you follow me?” She whispered in the dark, the moon slowly rising overhead. He nodded, wondering where she was going to lead him. The docks, perhaps. They had watched many ships and sunsets and waves togethers. Or the market? It would be quiet in the middle of the night, the little gardens and potted plants from the nearby homes could be lovely in the starlight. Maybe the base of the lighthouse, for a better view of the ocean?

But she didn’t take him to the lighthouse, or the market, or the docks, or even an eatery or house or building. He followed her out of the village and into the woods. The tree canopy cut off the moon and the stars, darkness swallowing her up, and he followed her without hesitation. The lantern sparked to life, a light in the void, and he followed his guide. He wanted to ask where they were going, what they were doing, what she was going to share with him, but he was afraid to break the little pocket of silence around them as though it would attract attention. He had heard stories, he knew things wandered the forest, dangerous things. Animals, of course, and humans who meant harm. But also other, stranger, things that were neither man nor beast.

The lantern barely illuminated the trees around them, the light devoured by the branches and trunks. She was not following the road, yet she did not seem lost as the vegetation pushed in around them. The trees parted, an eerie glow suddenly appearing in front of them, the lantern catching ancient stone. Owen had heard about these rocks, carved by cults and tree worshippers and witches thousands of years ago.

“Owen, may I- do you know what this is?” She changed her question, setting down the lantern and approaching the stone.

He looked at the pillar that towered over them, easily twice as thick as the two of them and three or four times as tall. How ancient people had managed to move and erect such a thing he didn’t understand.

“It’s a runestone. They’re all over the island, made by ancient cults for magical reasons. Have you seen one before?” He puffed out his chest a bit, happy to be able to teach her something.

“Heh, yes, and ancient trees,” she murmured, touching the stone. His chest deflated as she looked disappointed in his answer.

“Is this what you wanted to show me, Rosie?” he asked as he stepped around the lantern, not wanting to knock over their lightsource.

“No. Yes. I- no…” she bit her lip and wrung her hands as she looked at him, her indecision making him raise an eyebrow and tilt his head. She pursed her lips and seemed to make a decision, bracing herself before clicking her tongue.

Owen didn’t know what to make of it at first but movement to the side put him on alert. Thankfully it was not brigands or bears but a horse appearing from the forest. The horse had a shaggy mane, thick coat, and stocky legs, no doubt a wild horse from the region, yet it had no fear as it walked right up to Rosalinda.

“You won’t tell me to be careful?” she asked as she stroked the long brown face.

“You seem to know the horse,” Owen pointed out though he shied away from the creature. He had limited experience with horses personally, other than the wagon horses around the village.

“And you follow me into the dark woods, alone. Why?”

“You said you had something to share with me.” He was now thoroughly sure that whatever she wanted to share with him was not going to be the sort of intimate that he expected.

“And that’s enough to trust me?” She looked at him thoroughly, up and down and into his eyes, assessing him.

“You’re smart and seem to know where you are going.”

“And that is enough?”

“What are you getting at?” Owen shifted, not uncomfortable with her scrutiny, but still growing anxious. There was a gnawing at the base of his skull, at the back of his head, growing stronger as they spoke.

“I… it’s foolish, perhaps. But when we first met, it didn’t feel like meeting someone new. It was like reacquainting with an old friend. Which I know doesn’t make sense. But it was in little things, like knowing how to match your stride so we’d always walk in tandem. Or…” Rosalinda flushed, looking away as she spoke, her hand pushing her hair back into place even though none had fallen over her face. There was a growing nervous energy about her, a vulnerability as she made her confession.

“Knowing how you’d finish a sentence,” he began, her face lighting up as he continued. “And silence isn’t awkward-”

“Because we know everything important!” Rosalinda faced him.

“It’s just small details we’re catching up on.” Owen took her hands, smiling.

“You feel the same way?”

“Everyone said it was just young- fool, I was being a fool,” Owen corrected, hoping the lantern and the glowing runes wouldn’t properly show the rush of blood that went to his cheeks momentarily.

“I don’t think so. I have dreams. They don’t make sense, and I don’t know how you fit into it all, but I just know that… that you’re important.” Her flush came back and she broke eye contact in a moment of shyness.

That made his heart swell, a lump forming in his throat as they held hands in the dim light and she looked up at him through her lashes.

The horse nuzzled his face, startling him and making Rosalinda laugh.

“Speaking of important, this is Fallen Leaves,” Rosalinda introduced, patting the horse on the neck as Owen backed away.

“Nice horse… interesting name…” he balked, put off by the horse’s bravery. Wild horses were supposed to be wary and skittish, afraid of people, yet this one was calm and sniffing him and nudging him as though it knew him. Did it know him?

“Animals tend to have names that relate to their strongest senses,” Rosalinda began, watching Owen carefully. “She smelled like fallen leaves as a foal, thus her name.”

“She did?” he glanced at her, wondering how long Rosalinda had known this wild horse.

“That’s what she told me.”

That made him stare at her, processing for a moment.

“That makes me strange, doesn’t it?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer, Fallen Leaves turning away from Owen to nuzzle Rosalinda now, the young woman pressing on. “My parents want me to stop it, but I can’t. You can’t just choose to not hear a crowd of talking people all around you. Nature just speaks to me.”

She paused to stroke the mare’s face.

“It’s not so much words. It took me years to figure out how to understand it in a human language. Sensations, instincts, feelings… it’s communicating concepts and ideas in their rawest form.”

“That’s amazing,” he murmured, awestruck.

“I wish everyone thought so,” she grumbled, frowning.

“Your parents know?”

“Somewhat. We moved here because of me. They’re scared for me. They just want to keep me safe…”

“But what you can do is… is amazing! Just think of the stories we heard growing up, the magic and heroes! It’s not just legends and tales of a bygone era, if you’re here then what other stories are true?” He asked, excited, gesturing to the runestone next to them, a relic of the past that somehow seemed to glow brighter now that he realized those stories weren’t long gone myths.

“You even have a horse! There are so many stories of magical heroes and horses! Have you ever gone to one of Aideen’s sanctuaries? You would fit…” he trailed off as he realized she was uneasy, turning into the horse as he continued on.

“Do you know much about them? The druids?” she asked with her face against Fallen Leaves’ neck.

“Just what I’ve picked up from the ones around the village. They worship Aideen and the ‘old ways’, whatever that means. They like horses and trees? Never attended their services,” he admitted. “What do you know about them?”

“I know they don’t like anyone who practices magic.” She at least was looking at him again, rather than hiding her face.

Owen thought for a few moments, thinking of the whispers of witches, the investigations when there was suspected magic use in the village. He tried to remember if those who worshiped with Aideen’s druids were ever involved with the inquisitions, but it wasn’t something he paid enough attention to in order to recall now. The stories of Aideen, the soul riders, and the like were full of magic, so he couldn’t understand why they would have a problem with it. But they also didn’t advocate for anyone who was accused of magic, and now that he thought about it that didn’t make sense.

“You don’t think they’d like what you can do?” He asked, pushing his confused thoughts away so he wouldn’t stand there for the next five minutes thinking to himself.

“I don’t. When I was young I attended their worships. I thought what I was experiencing might be explained there, but it wasn’t. They spoke against evil and corruption, and how we must always strive for purity of spirit and peace to ensure that dark forces could not take hold in our hearts and our home. They said witches and demons like Garnok use magic to trick us, making us believe we are doing the right thing while leading us to ruin, and that’s why we have to always be on guard. Magic is evil and must be stamped out.”

“But that’s ridiculous! There are stories about Aideen having champions, and the soul riders, and blessing people with magic!” Owen protested.

“You can pray to Aideen, you can hope for a gift or a miracle from her, you can become a druid and learn her ways and may be blessed by her divine gifts,” Rosalinda scoffed, gesturing to the heavens mockingly.

“So you can have magic, as long as it is magic they approve of,” he crossed his arms, annoyed.

She let out a sigh and nodded, folding her arms as well and leaned against the runestone, Fallen Leaves nudging her hair.

“This is what you wanted to share with me?” Owen asked, just to be sure as he mirrored her, resting against the runestone.

“Yes. We should get back soon.”

“Now what?”

“What do you mean?” Rosalinda turned her head to look at him, an eyebrow raised.

“We figured out we both are… familiar with each other, as though we’ve known each other before. What do we do from here? Anything?” Owen glanced away at the forest floor, playing with the soil with his foot.

He felt her hand slip over his.

“I guess we see if we remember anything, and if not, make new memories?” she suggested. He squeezed her hand.

“I’d like that.”

#SSO #Star Stable Online #Star Stable #StarStable #StarStableOnline #fanfiction #my writing #my work #Dark Core Day

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