#maybe seth was the last to go because he tried resisting

[shmorp-mcdurgen]

jonah snaps and the first people he kills are gabriel, seth, sarah, cesar and mary

1 because he knows theyre important 2 because itll make adam and mark angry and 3 for the funny

It’s just for the funny haha, why are you mad

[prettyboybarzal]

Dancing with Our Hands Tied (5)

A/N: I’m sorry for this being late, and thank y’all for being okay with that and not wanting to kill me. Come chat to me about this chapter after you read! I wanna hear what y’all think.

Word Count: 2.9k

Warnings: Smut, some ass slappin’, lots of cursing, bad attitudes... So, the usual.

Previous Chapter // Masterlist // Next Chapter

Pierre swore that you were full of shit when you said you wouldn’t fuck him again. But, it’d been two weeks since that little rendezvous in the bathroom and you hadn’t so much as looked at him since. In fact, you stopped showing up whenever the boys hung out which was a red flag all on its own. 

Each night that he inevitably ended up going home alone, he passed Charlie’s door wondering if you were in there with him, tangled in the sheets, faking another orgasm. His mind wandered to you and the sounds you made as he fucked you. How sweet they were and how clear it was that you didn’t have to fake with him. Admittedly, he thought about that a bit too much and he wondered if you thought about it too. He hoped you did. The idea of that night living rent free in your head was too good not to fantasize about.  

After a weekend of away games, Pierre returned home on Sunday night and found himself slowing as he passed Charlie’s door once again.

His dogs greeted him as he entered the apartment and he fed them before slipping down the hall to wash the weekend away in his own shower. Again, his mind wandered to thoughts of you as he massaged shampoo and conditioner into his scalp. And, despite his growing erection, he tried to drown the thoughts with the suds until, finally, he had to make the water temperature colder to shock it out of his system. 

When he finally stepped out of the shower, he wrapped a towel around his waist to continue through his routine. He was in the middle of brushing his teeth when an unusual sound floated through his apartment. He peaked out the door to check if it was the dogs, but they were both already laying in bed waiting for him. He turned the faucet off and stood still. 

“Pierre, fuck.”

His eyes went wide and he listened to the moans as reality crashed over him. He couldn’t believe it. You’d been so cocky, so clear that this would never happen again, but it was your voice that he heard moaning his name through the vents of his apartment building. 

Check mate.

---

You truly didn’t want Charlie past the sex, but still you stayed in bed with him overnight and snuck out in the early morning. You never planned on it, and you really never cared for it to happen, but it always did. The moment his arms wound around you and tugged you against his chest, you were done for simply because it filled a void. It’d been a long time since you’d been held intimately in a way that didn’t involve your legs being wide open. So, you just let it happen.

You knew you had to draw the line, though. Because why would you settled for post-sex cuddles when you could hardly stand the guy? Why did you stay over when you found yourself sneaking off to his bathroom to finger yourself to the thought of his neighbor fucking you over a bathroom sink?

You couldn’t believe you actually stooped that low and you were thankful Charlie didn’t wake up to hear Pierre’s name fall from your lips. It was a shock even to yourself when you said it because in the two weeks since the bathroom, you hadn’t thought about it. Then again, you were avoiding the topic completely and now you were just a wall apart from him.

You didn’t stop yourself after you said it, though. You let your mind wander to the way his hands felt on your skin and the dirty words he grunted in your ear, and the way you felt with his cum dripping down your thighs. After your orgasm subsided and you came crashing down to Earth, you realized that even the thought of Pierre could make you cum when Charlie couldn’t at all.

When you slipped from Charlie’s apartment that morning, you were determined to put it behind you once again. But then you ran into Pierre in the elevator. Again. 

You felt your stomach plummet at the sight of him.

“Morning,” he greeted as you entered and hit the lobby button that was already illuminated. He gave you the once over, eyes fixed on the men's sweatshirt draped over your body. He repeated, “Good morning.” “It’s too early for you to be smiling at me like that. What do you want?”

“I knew these walls are paper thin, but apparently so are the vents,” he murmured. Your body ran cold. “Next time you find yourself having to sneak off to his bathroom to get yourself off to the thought of me, just come next door. I can take care of you, you know that.”

“Oh, fuck me.”

“That’s exactly what I’m offering.”

“Pierre, just drop it,” you grumbled, fingers pressing the bridge of your nose as if to relieve a headache before it even came on. You looked back up at him when you were met with silence and glared. “Don’t you ever fantasize about shit you shouldn’t? It’s not a big deal.”

“Nope,” he answered, popping the ‘p’. “And if you’re referring to us having sex in a bar bathroom, I haven’t thought about it even for a minute. Until I heard you moaning my name and I thought, ‘I should be a good friend and offer her my services again’.”

“We’re not friends.”

“No, we’re not,” he spoke. “I’ll correct myself.” He faced you, all cocky and smiling, shoulder leaned up against the wall beside you. “If she can’t stop thinking about my cock, I might as well offer her my services again.”

The elevator dinged, signaling that it’d reached the lobby, and Pierre stepped away.

“I already told you it’s never going to happen again.”

“Let me know when you change your mind.” 

---

“Hands off!” you yelped as soon as you turned into the kitchen. Seth and Josh were standing at the counter, fingers picking at the meal you’d been slaving over for the last hour. You shooed them away with the dish towel that was resting over your shoulder and they jumped away, giggling. “You two are awful.”

“We’re starving, YN.”

“And you won’t be in about fifteen minutes,” you said. “Now, move.”

Seth made himself scarce with one more lunge towards the food and though you whacked him with the towel once more, he still got away with another string bean.

“Thanks for making dinner,” Josh said, leaning back against the counter as you shuffled about the kitchen with more seasonings. “The boys were all out of groceries, me included.”

“Well, you’re leaving for a roadie, so I was honestly kind of expecting you all to show up at my door,” you murmured. “Grab some plates for me?”

There was a rhythm to your make-shift team dinners, so he knew where everything went for serving purposes. The boys raiding your kitchen the day before a long road trip was a common occurrence.

Josh started grabbing plates from the cabinet and as soon as they were stacked neatly on the counter, his phone began to ring. He stepped away slightly and answered. Pierre’s voice ripped through the kitchen.

“Yo, do you wanna grab sushi?”

His voice sent a chill down your spine, so you busied yourself with the dishes.

“Oh, sorry, bro,” he murmured. “I just ate at YN’s.”

He groaned loudly and as Josh turned the camera to show you, you flipped it off. He smiled when he saw you, “YLN, spare me a plate, would you?”

“You can starve, Dubois.”

Pierre laughed it off, and Josh spoke to him a few moments more until you signaled for the boys to come in and he said goodbye. They served themselves and shuffled out to the dining room table that was only ever used when they came by. 

When you finally settled down with them at the table, they were already talking over each other, laughing at a story that one of them was telling.

“What are you all laughing about like pre-teen boys?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Boone teased, “It’s about PL.”

You resisted a heavy roll of the eyes.

“You’ve piqued my interest, do tell.”

The sarcasm was evident in your tone but Boone launched into the story regardless of the face it was clear you didn’t care about the story involving Pierre. At least, outwardly. 

“We’re just ragging on him, taking bets on whether or not he’s going to get a free show tonight,” Boone laughed. Your blood ran cold and you snapped your head up from where you were looking at your plate. 

“What?” It took everything in you to keep your voice even as you furrowed your brows, attempting to mask the panic in your expression. 

“Apparently the vents at Pierre’s place are as thin as the walls because he heard some girl’s moans coming into his bathroom a few nights ago,” Seth said, speaking through laughter. 

“He said she sounded like she was enjoying herself,” Boone added, only making your jaw clench tighter. Josh snickered to himself, “And he enjoyed himself.”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh, come on, YN,” Seth sighed, like she was stupid or something, but when he saw she was serious, he laughed. “He jerked off after.”

You weren’t sure if you responded to that revelation, maybe a soft ‘oh’ before one of the other guys jumped in to comment on it, but you couldn’t remember. It felt like you blacked out the moment it was said.

All week, you were embarrassed that Pierre heard you, and it was made worse when he said he wasn’t also thinking of you. But he was lying, because of course he would be, and now you wanted to kill him for making you feel so… vulnerable. 

---

As soon as everyone was gone, you marched out to your car and began driving in the direction of Charlie’s apartment building. Except this time, you weren’t going to see him. You marched into the building, up to their floor, and all the way to Pierre’s front door. You didn’t hesitate once before knocking at his door, and he didn’t hesitate in pulling it open.

“Why did I know you were going to come over?”

“You fucking lied to me,” you said, jabbing a finger into his chest. He took a step back and you followed as you spoke. “You made me think I was crazy.”

“You are.”

“No, fuck you,” you barked. “You were all ‘I don’t think about you’ and ‘You gotta get over it’, but you jerked it to my moans the other night, you asshole.”

“Care to come inside so we don’t alert your boy toy?” 

Pierre stepped aside and let you into his apartment. You glared at him as he locked the front door and headed into the kitchen, assuming you’d just follow him, and of course, you did. He noticed the tupperware in your hand then and smirked.

“You brought me dinner, too, sweetheart?”

“I poisoned it,” you growled, deadpan. He laughed and took the leftovers from your hand to slide them into the fridge before returning to the pulled out stool at the counter. There was a plate resting in front of him with some sushi rolls, and he continued eating happily while you stood in the doorway watching. 

“Aren’t you going to say something?” You snapped, arms crossed over your chest as you watched him all too contently eating his dinner. 

“What is there to say?”

“What is there to say?” you repeated, voice lowering as you glared fixed on him. His hands faltered as he brought another sushi roll to his lips and you could tell you had him right where you wanted him. “Admit that you haven’t been able to stop thinking about fucking me in the bathroom either.”

He turned on the stool to face you with a look of confidence and threw your words from the elevator right back at you, “Don’t you ever fantasize about shit you shouldn’t? It’s not a big deal. Right, YN?”

You rolled your eyes and tossed a curse his way before turning out of the kitchen to match towards the door. Pierre was hot on your heels, discarding his dinner plate with a clatter in the sink before he wrapped his fingers around your wrist and pulled you back to him.

“Be honest about what you want,” he spoke, voice low, eyes dark. His free hand curled around the base of your throat and he nudged your chin up with his thumb. “You want me to fuck you? We don’t have to like each other to fuck, angel.” He paused. “Is that what you want? Say it and we can both get what we want.”

“Pierre.”

“Say the words and I’m yours.”

“Fuck me.”

“Good girl.”

His lips met yours in a kiss that was all teeth and tongue, his hands all over your body, and he lifted you to wrap your legs around his waist so he could carry you down the hall. Your back hit his mattress moments later, hair fanned out below your head as he kissed your neck, only detaching his lips from your neck as he peeled your shirt from your body and took his with it. He didn’t spend much time on foreplay, both of you already feeling revved up from weeks without touching each other. 

After stripping you of the rest of your clothes, Pierre flipped you onto your stomach and placed his hand on the back of your neck to press you down against the mattress. It trailed along your spine until it finally curled around your hip, the other gripped the other side and he tugged your ass up to pull it flush against the sweats he was wearing. 

Goosebumps rose along your skin beneath his fingertips and he smiled to himself, shaking his head in awe as he admired your naked body in front of him. He was thankful he’d flipped you so you couldn’t see the way he looked at you. It felt like he couldn’t get enough and he desperately didn’t want you to know. 

You wiggled your ass, beckoning him to do something, and his palm came down hard on it. You lurched forward with a filthy moan. 

“Oh, fuck,” you sighed out, fingers gripping the sheets beneath you. He ran his knuckles along the mark he left on your ass. 

“You like that?”

You hummed an affirmative sound and he leaned down to leave a trail of kisses from your tailbone to your shoulders. He shuffled behind you and you heard the sound of his pants hitting the floor, then felt him hard against your ass. 

“Spread your legs,” he spoke. You did as you were told and he shifted closer to you, head of his cock brushing along your pussy lips. The sound of a condom wrapper tearing filled the room and he let out a deep breath as he rolled it over his member.

He wrapped his hand around his cock and slid it along your folds. He watched the tension in your back as your muscles constricted and your hands gripped the sheets again in preparation for his entrance. And then, finally, he was sliding into you with a groan. 

It didn’t take long for him to start railing you into the mattress. As he fucked you, he pressed you onto the bed and listened to you moan and scream as you took his cock. When he finally relieved that pressure on your back, you regained your composure enough to roll yourself back onto his cock and match his thrusts with a desperation of your own. His hands gripped your hips tightly as your ass bounced in front of him and he watched with wide eyes, mesmerized. 

“Taking my cock so well, sweetheart,” he praised.

“You fuck me so good.”

“Better than him?” he asked, pounding into you as he awaited your answer. You nodded, teeth biting into your bottom lip as you stifled more moans. His tone of voice held an animosity you’d never heard from him before, but his cock felt so good that the question was forgotten within seconds.

As he approached his orgasm, he curled around you, hand dropping to your clit to help you catch up to him. His thrusts were erratic and uncontrollable, and he huffed onto your breath as he moaned. 

“Come on,” he coached. “Cum with me.”

You chanted his name as he cursed into your skin. Your legs shook as your own orgasm washed over you and when you both finally came down, he eased himself out of you and rolled onto his back. 

There was a long moment of silence. A looooooong moment. And then you sat up and walked off to the bathroom to pee before gathering yourself in the mirror and retrieving your clothes from the floors of his apartment. 

Pierre was sitting at the edge of his bed with boxers on when you emerged from his bathroom. His head shot up at the sound of you re-entering the room and he watched as you approached the side of his bed to grab your clothes.

“Can you stop staring at me?” you snapped as you slipped into your thong. 

He cracked a smile and looked away, shaking his head in disbelief of your quick switch-up in attitude. He muttered, “You’re fucking crazy.”

“Yeah, and you’re fucking stupid.”

“Yeah, I really am,” he grunted as he stood. “I’ll be in the living room. Let me know when you’re leaving, I’ll lock up after.”

[a-bang-for-your-bucky]

Welcome Home (part two)

(not my gif) 

Summary: After not speaking to her brothers for over a year, Peyton Rhodes’ life is turned upside down when her boyfriend of four years cheats on her. She uproots her life with WWE and returns home to Atlanta. She finds herself among great friends and she is finding herself again after being lost for so long.

Pairings: Cody Rhodes x OFC (Sister), Brandi Rhodes x OFC (sister), Dustin Rhodes x OFC (Sister), past Seth Rollins x OFC, future Kenny Omega x OFC (maybe?), MJFx OFC( maybe?) 

WARNINGS: SO MUCH FLUFFING FLUFF, explicit language, mentioned cheating (ONE EXPLICIT DESCRIPTION),  

A/N: I tried to post this yesterday, but tumblr was not having it. Here is part two. Enjoy<3 

Seth mentioned that WWE was traveling through Atlanta and wanted to know if he could stop by my place. I had gotten an apartment close to Brandi and Cody’s place  not long after leaving. I said sure, but I was going to have someone here with me. I invited Kenny over and told him Seth wanted to talk and that I wanted, no needed, him to be there with me. 

A knock at my door pulled me from my thoughts. Gathering myself together, I answered the door.

“Hey Princess.” Kenny Omega greeted me. I didn’t reply, I only embraced him. “You gonna invite me in?” he chuckled, hugging me tightly. I nodded against his broad chest. We released each other and moved into the apartment.

“Hey Ken.” I finally greeted him as the door closed. He smiled lightly. He knew I was still hurting.

“How are you?” He asked, sitting down on my couch. I shrugged, taking place next to him.

“Honestly, I feel worthless. Ken, I can’t explain it. I don't understand how he can still have this affect on me.” I said, no real emotion in my voice. 

“Peyton Rhodes, you are not worthless.” Kenny rebutted, shocked at my words. “You are wrestling royalty. You are talented. And honest to God, you have Kenny Omega,” He paused to point to himself, “wrapped around your pretty little finger.” He explained, grabbing my hands. “Pey, you are my best friend. You are amazing and I hate to see you think otherwise. I could kick Seth’s ass all the way back to Iowa for making you feel this way.” I laughed, scooting closer to him. 

“Kenny, thank you for coming. I couldn't do this without you.” I said, laying my head on his shoulder. He placed a light kiss to my hair.

We sat in comfortable silence for a while. Suddenly, a knock at the door, broke the silence. “I’ll get it.” Kenny said, getting up and walking to the door. Kenny looked through the peak hole on the door. Seeing the person on the other side filled him with rage, but he composed himself. Kenny opened the door. “Good evening, Seth.” 

“What are you doing here, Omega? This has nothing to do with you.” Seth growled. I had started to make my way to the door, prepared to split up an all-out brawl. I placed a hand on Kenny’s shoulder.

“Ken,” I said, he shifted over, so that Seth came into my sight. “Seth, I told you I was going to have someone with me.” 

“Yeah, but I figured it would be Brandi, hell, maybe even Cody.” I laughed at the mention of my brother’s name and shook my head. 

“Cody wants to kick your ass.” Was all I said and Kenny interjected, “For the record, so do I.” 

Kenny and I moved over to let Seth into the room because the last thing I needed was for a nosey neighbor hearing what was about to go down. The three of us moved into my dining room and sat at the table. I sat as far away from Seth as possible and Kenny moved his seat so we were shoulder to shoulder. 

“So, Seth. Explain yourself.” I offered him the room to talk. 

“I know what I did was awful and I will never forgive myself. But Pey, please believe me when I say she means nothing to me and I am so, so sorry.” he apologized. 

“She doesn’t mean anything? Then why are you engaged, Seth? I saw the fucking pictures, with the giant rock on her hand.” I scoffed, wondering why I did this in the first place. 

“She found the ring I bought for you, put it on, and took those pictures. We are not engaged.” he tried to defend himself, but something didn't feel right. I knew Mandy.

“That doesn’t change the fact that I walked in on you balls fucking deep in her in OUR locker room. Actions speak a fuck ton louder than words. I got the message. I wasted four fucking years on you. FOUR. I got pushed out of the title scene for you. I was basically demoted to a fucking escort.” I snarled, slamming my hands on the table.

Seth jumped and looked at me with sad eyes. He knew I was right, I almost ruined my career for him. "And I know Mandy. She may sleep with other people's boyfriends, but she wouldn't put on some random ring and announce she's engaged." Tears streamed down my face, and Kenny noticed, wiping them away. Seth’s sad eyes changed to jealous. 

“So what, are you guys together, now?” He asked, his voice laced with envy. Kenny whipped his head to face him. 

“If we were, which we aren’t, it wouldn’t be any of your fucking business. It’s called being a good friend.” Kenny seethed, gripping the edges of his chair. "You have no idea how much you hurt her." 

I could tell this wasn’t going to end well. “Thank you for telling me your side of the story. But this doesn’t change anything. I think it’s time for you to go.” I sighed, and moved to get up from the table. Seth rushed to my side. 

“That’s it? After everything, I only get 10 minutes to say my piece?” Seth questioned, offended. He went to touch me and I shrugged away. 

I shook my head. I was done. I heard more than I needed. “I spent the last 4 months coming to terms with what happened. And I’m finally happy. I found myself again, after being lost for so long,” I paused, trying to compose myself. “I learned to love myself again. I fell in love with wrestling again, and I’m not letting anyone take that away from me.” I explained, moving away from him, giving Kenny the chance to move between us. 

He pointed to the door, “I’ll walk you out.”

Seth accepted defeat and walked with Kenny, muttering a simple, “Bye Pey,” as he followed Kenny. Kenny opened the door, gesturing for Seth to walk out of it, but he stopped in the doorway. He turned around to face the other man. 

“I can see you care for her, hell, you might even love her. Don’t fuck it up, Omega.”  Seth advised. Kenny crossed his arms and scoffed. 

“I don’t need advice from the guy who cheated on her. I know how fucking amazing she is. Goodbye, Rollins.” Kenny began shutting the door before he was even out of the way. He flipped the lock and walked back to me.  

“Don’t cry anymore over him.” Was all Kenny said, wiping stray tears away from my face, before pulling me into a hug. That was the last night I ever cried over Seth Rollins. 

We ended up ordering pizza and watching movies that night. Kenny had passed out half way through ‘The Greatest Showman’ mumbling about how he hates musicals. His head was in my lap, and I was running my fingers through those beautiful blonde curls. He had been my rock these last four months. I don’t know what I’d do without him.

At that moment, I realized that I was falling for him and that scared the shit out of me. Kenny made it so easy though. I did my best to push those thoughts down and finish the movie, but they were never far away. 

The next morning, I woke up, surprisingly in my bed, when I remember passing out on the couch with Kenny. I got out of the bed and padded to the living room. “Ken?” I called out, not seeing him on the couch. 

“Kitchen.” He replied instantly. I walked to the kitchen, finding Kenny, brewing coffee. “Morning, Princess.” He said, handing me a cup. I took the cup happily, needing the caffeine. “How did you sleep?” He asked, sipping his own coffee. 

“I swore I fell asleep on the couch, with you passed out in my lap.” I teased him, moving back into the living room to sit. Kenny followed close behind. 

“Yeah, sorry about that. But I woke up and you looked uncomfortable, so I moved you.” He explained, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. 

I smiled, getting myself comfy on the couch. "So Omega, what are your plans for the day?" I asked before blowing on my hot beverage. 

Kenny looked at me with a huge grin on his face. Since AEW started, Kenny rarely had a day off to himself. "I'm glad you asked, princess. You have me for the whole day." 

I squealed, almost spilling my coffee. "Lazy day with take out and movies? Or do you want to get presentable and go out?" I asked him. 

"Let's get dressed. I want to spend a day out with my best girl." Kenny replied, setting his cup on the table, standing up and extending a hand for me to take. 

"What about Kayfabe? I'm a heel now, won’t that mess with that baby face image of yours?" Kenny shook his head. 

"Peyton. Fuck Kayfabe. Let's go out. Please." He smiled sweetly, batting those long eyelashes. And who could resist those grey-blue eyes. 

I sighed, “Fine, we can go out and face the world.” I turned and sauntered back to my room to get dressed. I picked a maroon cami, jeans, and converses. I threw my chocolate brown hair into a messy bun, brushed my teeth, and joined Kenny in the living room again. He had gotten dressed in a pair of jeans and a plain black tee. Fuck, he looked good. 

He lifted his head at the sound of my footsteps. He raised an eyebrow at my outfit. I shrugged it off. “Ready to go, Omega?” I asked, grabbing my leather jacket off the rack by my door. He hopped up, and out the door we went. 

Kenny insisted that he drive, even though he was not used to Atlanta traffic. “So I have a surprise.” Kenny started, I hummed in response. “I got tickets to the aquarium. It was going to be a birthday surprise, but since we are here now, they traded days.” 

“Ken! Are you serious? I haven’t been there in forever.” I bubbled, smiling so big, it hurt. “You are seriously the best friend I could ever ask for.” I had mentioned the aquarium a month ago, when we were talking about things we wanted to do but never really had the time for. I couldn’t believe he actually listened. 

“You are more than welcome, Pey. I knew it would make you happy. Plus, I don’t think I’ve ever been to one.” Kenny confessed, casting a glance my way before his eyes returned to the road. Kenny really was all work and no play. 

“Well, I am honored to pop that cherry for you, Omega.” I giggle, placing a hand over my heart. I could see Kenny roll his eyes before smiling. The rest of the drive to the aquarium was full of laughs and singing. 

“I’m sorry, but how do people listen to this?” Kenny groaned as Brantley Gilbert flowed through the speakers. 

I scoffed, feigning offense. “Brantley Gilbert is a Georgia native, show some respect. If you can’t deal with his music then we can’t be friends.” I shrugged, turning to face the window, before exploding in laughter. I couldn’t help but feel so free with him, and I hoped he felt the same way. 

Arriving at the Georgia Aquarium, we quickly parked and made our way inside. We started with the tropical diver exhibit. The fish were beautiful, but nothing compared to the adult man standing next to me, looking like a small child. 

He stepped closer to me, bending down to whisper in my ear. “It took less than 5 minutes to be noticed.” I cut my eyes to my right, where a few people were taking pictures. I smiled and shook my head. 

“Just keep smiling and let’s have fun.” I whispered back, reaching a head out to him to follow me through to the next tank. Kenny’s words were floating in the back of my head the whole time ‘Fuck kayfabe’. 

The rest of the day went by in a blur. I had never seen Kenny look so care-free. By the time we got back to my apartment that night, the wrestling world was buzzing. Kenny and I had gotten settled and were watching ‘The Mandalorian’ when Cody sent me a text with a link. 

Not sure what’s going on.

You should see this. *link*

If you need me, let me know.

I clicked the link and it opened to a headline. 

PEYTON RHODES MOVES ON WITH KENNY OMEGA. 

From one main eventer to another, Peyton Rhodes has her eyes set on the best in the business.   

Beneath the headline, it showed a picture of us with Kenny’s arm around my waist as we looked at the shark exhibit. I was pointing out sharks, and Kenny’s eyes were trained on me. I showed Kenny and he just laughed. “Let them talk, princess.” He casually threw his arm around my shoulders, pulling me into him and focused back on the show. I placed my phone on the cushion beside me, curled up closer to him, and shut out the world. 

[oss-crime]

Chapter 5-Escape of the Witch Salmhofer; Scene 6

Original Sin Story: Crime, pages 194-199

Once she was moved to a room, Meta wondered if the day had finally come where they would kill her.

The room was without decoration, just like the cell she’d been in up to this point.

Its sole difference was that there was a wooden chair in the center of it. The feet of the chair were bolted to the ground, and it had several leather straps attached to it.

She’d heard some rumors.

That this sort of thing was an execution chair.

An execution device where electricity would flow through it, killing the person sitting there.

Meta recalled Raisa’s ugly features.

…Maybe those burn scars had been from being struck by lightning.

Well, this probably wouldn’t be enough to make her look like that. She had no lingering regrets, nor was she afraid of death, but she did want to leave behind a pretty body when she died, if possible.

That aside…

How odd to have something like this in a temple meant to venerate the gods.

Though, I guess it’s not that strange. This is a temple Yegor runs, after all.

He would probably say something like, “This lightning strike is judgment from the gods!”

“—Sit,” ordered the executioner, someone with their face entirely covered by a hood.

…It was a man’s voice.

There was no one else in the room outside of him and Meta.

“…”

As Meta obediently sat down, she started hatching a plan.

…This room doesn’t look like it was made with any of that magic-sealing artifact.

She could try controlling the executioner with her bewitching ability, or else—

“If you’re thinking about trying to put up some kind of pointless resistance, you’d better think again,” the executioner said to Meta as he released her manacles. “The powers of an ‘Inheritor of Gilles’ don’t work on me.”

Meta’s brow lifted.

“…You. You’re not just a simple executioner.”

Now that she thought about it, she did feel that his voice was somehow familiar to her.

It resembled someone that Meta knew quite well—

“It can’t be…Darling? Is that you!?”

The executioner lifted his hood.

--And underneath was, quite clearly, the face of Meta’s beloved Pale.

For a moment, her eyes light up…

But then her expression quickly regained its composure.

“…No. You’re not Pale.”

The man who looked like Pale grinned when he heard that.

“Hey now. You figured it out pretty quickly. I’d been hoping to poke fun at you by pretending to be Pale for a little bit.”

“What kind of game is this? –Seth.”

“It’s been a long time, Meta. Last we met was I think when you tried to kill me at Merrigod Plateau?”

“You here to get payback for that now? Didn’t think you were the type to hold a grudge.”

But Seth slowly shook his head.

“Hardly. I wouldn’t be holding a grudge against you. It wasn’t something you chose to do on your own, after all—It was Pale’s orders, wasn’t it?”

“Nope. I was just trying to do something nice for him, knowing that he was starting to shun you.”

“Well, whatever the case, the fact remains that Pale had been starting to rebel against me, his ‘brother’.”

“Yes, and you too—have become our enemy.”

Seth once more shook his head.

“You’re wrong. I’m not your ally, but I’m not your enemy either—Rather, I came here to help you.”

“…? What do you mean?”

“It would be too difficult to avert your execution at this stage. Gammon’s ordered the complete extermination of Apocalypse. So…I have no choice but to put you to death, for now.”

“…So you really do want to kill me.”

“Let me finish. It’s impossible to get you out of here alive. But—that’s not necessarily true of a corpse. All criminal corpses are slated to be temporarily taken to a mortuary on the outskirts.”

“…And then you’ll revive me at that mortuary and I’ll roam the graveyard as a zombie.”

Meta had said that in an attempt to be joking, but Seth nodded seriously at her comment.

“I’m glad you’re so understanding.”

“Wait a second…Are you kidding me? I’m really going to turn into a zombie—"

“Ha ha, alright, alright. I’ll explain it properly.”

Seth finally began to tell Meta about the plan he was thinking of from the beginning.

.

--After she was done listening, Meta nodded in understanding.

“I see…But will it really work?”

“On that, you’ll just have to trust me. At any rate, once you have safely escaped from here, you’ll then need to head straight to my research institute and participate in my experiment—that is your condition for my help.”

“…Got it.”

Meta quietly nodded.

“Put this around your neck.” Seth handed Meta a pendant with a heart charm attached. “The decorative piece is designed to open up. Inside is a map that records the route to get to the research institute.”

“You’re well prepared.” Meta put on the pendant as instructed.

“That’s because my own position will be at risk if you screw up—Well, shall we begin?”

Seth began to fasten the execution chair’s straps to Meta’s arms and legs.

She made no move to resist, simply watching him.

“Phew…Hey…Is this gonna hurt a lot?”

“Maybe? I’ve never been executed before, so I wouldn’t know.”

“Obviously.”

Meta’s abdomen and forehead were strapped to the chair.

“All ready…Now then.” Seth pulled away from the execution chair, and put his hand on the switch affixed to the wall to start up the device.

“…”

Meta swallowed.

“Now then—Have a nice trip, Meta Salmhofer!”

Seth threw the switch.

“--!”

Electricity struck Meta’s body—

And she immediately lost consciousness.

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[midnightsvns]

Now I see daylight — a Twilight fanfic

summary: Edward spent his life so long in a ninety-year midnight. Now, all he sees is daylight. A short story about Nessie’s first prom. “How could I ever tell her how grateful I was? Grateful that she could always see past the worst of me and my mistakes. Grateful that she had unlimited selflessness, giving us the family I’d envisioned for her, but thought impossible for me. Grateful that she was all too happy to be the first and only love of my existence. Grateful that cruel fate, after our various ordeals, had turned merciful to bring us to this heaven.” words: 8,280.

AN: so. i was absolutely wrecked after reading the very sad note on which midnight sun ended. to lick my wounds, i wrote this fic, set 12 years after breaking dawn, on the day of nessie’s prom. 404 plot not found just fluff of edward & bella being happy with their now adult daughter. title/summary inspired by the t.s. song daylight. full text under the cut!

Bella and I walked with hands intertwined in the woods behind our house, on our way to the cottage a few miles away that served as our daughter Renesmee’s “room.” When she turned seven, we decided she deserved a space of her own, a space that was removed from her supernatural family who could hear every move she made even if she had a whole floor of the house to herself. It was not unlike the first cottage the three of us had lived in together, back in Forks, in the first year of Bella and I’s marriage. To me, those days seemed as close as yesterday—in reality, twelve years had passed like the blink of an eye. Our daughter was all grown-up now, about to graduate high school for the first time, and today was her very first prom.

We walked at human pace, enjoying the lights and the sounds of early morning in the forest. Before Bella, I would have hated moving at such a glacial pace, always wanting to reach my destination as fast as possible, never lingering under the sunlight long enough to contemplate the diamond-like sparkling of my marble skin. A constant reminder of my inhumanity. But now I relished having the chance to see my wife in the light of day. I knew that all the poets and philosophers who, for two thousand of years, had tried to define beauty, to describe it, had irrevocably failed—because none of them had been fortunate enough to witness Bella smiling and shining under the golden rays of sunlight. I squeezed her hand and chuckled to myself.

Bella, of course, noticed my jocularity. “What are you thinking about?” she wondered.

“I thought that was my line,” I replied, grinning at her. Bella easily controlled her gift now, raising and lowering her mental shields at will. Except in special moments of communication, her shields were always up. She could maintain shields around other people, too, granting peace for me and privacy for my family. The quiet that resulted inside my head was a balm; I could be thankful for it for a hundred years and it would not be enough.

She sighed, and her eyes were suddenly downcast. “Well, I’m glad one of us is cheerful enough to laugh today.” She stopped walking, let go of my hand, and sought shelter under the shadow of a large evergreen tree. I regretted seeing her move away from the sunshine.

Her mournful tone surprised me. “What’s wrong, love? You’ve been looking forward to Renesmee’s prom for weeks now.” It was all I heard the ladies at the house discussing as of late. Alice, our very own literal visionary, was making all their dresses, works of art that were sure to rival even the most revered of Paris’ haute couture scene. Rosalie was browsing our family’s sizable collection of jewelry—composed of heirlooms from our human lives and the very many anniversary gifts from over the decades—for the perfect sets of accessories that would go with Alice’s creations. Esme was renovating and redecorating the front room, the staircase, and the porch, in preparation for today’s sure-to-be endless photo opportunities.

Bella looked up at me, her golden eyes looking regretful. “I just… can’t help but be a little sad that she’s grown up so fast. She’s only twelve, Edward. I spent more time as a clumsy, awkward human child than I’ve spent as her mother,” Bella said, sighing again. “And now she’s graduating and going off to college for the first time? She’s not an adult! How are we even sure she’s fit to be by herself in the human world already? How is she gonna eat? How will she hunt? What if she needs us, or she gets hurt and Carlisle can’t get to her in time? She can’t just go to a human doctor!” Her voice got more and more agitated with every worry she voiced. “And what if she starts dating? And she doesn’t tell us because we’re not there?! She says she’s not interested in anyone romantically now, boys or otherwise, but it’s her first four years in college! She’s bound to catch the sights of some… some no-good jerk who—”

“Stop, Bella,” I said gently, interrupting her before she could spiral any further. I had to resist the urge to laugh at her tirade. It reminded me of the time I went on a very similar, equally anxious rant. Emmett had thought I was a crazy person, worrying about the myriad things that could wipe the human girl I loved out of existence. This time, though, these worries were much easier for me to assuage than when I was fretting over Bella’s mortality and her uncanny ability to attract danger.

I joined her under the cover of the tree and held her marble face in my hands. “Love, I understand wholly all of your anxieties. They’re mine, too. But we need to put a significant amount of trust and faith in our daughter if we want to stay sane during the next four years,” I said earnestly, cracking a little smile, and then started addressing Bella’s concerns one at a time.

“I’m also sad that it has been just twelve short years, and already, we have to let her go. And as much as we may not like it, she is an adult now. She has been for five years. I know she grew up too fast, but if that is the small sacrifice that makes the miracle of her existence possible, then so be it. And she’s had no problems being around humans since she started high school with us when she was eight. As for her eating habits, well, I am worried about the amount of junk food she’ll consume once she is left unsupervised. And she doesn’t need to hunt as frequently as we do…. Once, maybe twice, a month, she can come back here and any one of us would love to go hunting with her. She is also not so fragile that she would ever need the care of any other doctors than Carlisle, Rosalie, or me. As for her first romantic relationship, well... she’s smart, strong-willed. We have to trust that we have raised her well enough that she’ll be responsible, that she’ll know how to protect her heart, and that she’ll be comfortable enough to turn to us for any questions she might have. You are a good mother, Bella. You raised an amazing young woman.” She looked as though she was about to argue, but she said nothing. She must have lowered her shield because I heard her thoughts instead: We raised an amazing young woman. You, Carlisle, Esme, Rose, Alice, Emmett, and Jasper… Even Charlie, Sue, Jacob, and Seth. It really does take a village. Her smile was wry.

I shook my head and smiled back at her. She was still bad at taking compliments. “We just have to trust Ness, love. As much as I would never want to see her hurt, we have to let her make her own mistakes. To let her take risks. And we have to give her freedom while she still thinks it’s ours to grant. If she thinks she’s not ready for this yet, or becomes overwhelmed in any way, she knows she can come back home at any time. All we can do is be there for her, and as long as she knows she’s not alone in this, that she never has to carry the world on her shoulders because we’re supposed to carry part of it for her… She will be fine.”

I looked straight into my wife’s eyes, still holding her face, hoping I had eased her anxieties a little. She visibly relaxed, then placed her hands over mine.

“You know, I really hate it when you make sense,” Bella stated matter-of-factly, glaring at me and pouting a little. I laughed and gave her a soft kiss on the cheek. Then I pulled her close to my side and led us back on the way to Renesmee’s cottage. If, thirteen years ago, anyone—even Alice—had told me that someday I would be trying to soothe Bella after a bout of anxiety instead of the other way around, I would have laughed in their face.

We made it to the cottage in companionable silence, and Bella’s mood seemed cheerier than before, back to being excited for the day’s events. She knocked on the door, calling for Nessie to wake up, but our daughter opened the door in a flash, greeting us with a chipper hello and a wave to indicate that we should let ourselves in.

“Good morning, Ness. You’re up early,” I commented. Not that our daughter was a late sleeper, but she was also not what one would call a morning person.

“I’m very well-rested, thank you,” she said, walking to the couch in the middle of the cottage’s main living area and plopping down onto it.

“How many hours did you sleep last night?” I asked, suspicious. Half-human, half-vampire hybrid though she was, Carlisle’s recommendation was still at least seven hours of sleep a night, and she often ignored it.

“Seven,” she replied too fast. I raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, six. Maybe five total…” she grimaced, sheepish now. “I was reading books! And I finished a movie.” I was unhappy to hear it. We really didn’t have an exact number of how many hours of sleep she needed each night, but I was sure five wasn’t enough for anyone, human or otherwise. I shook my head and sat next to her on the couch.

The cottage was a cozy place, with a kitchenette in the main room, one bedroom and a small bathroom down a narrow hallway. The main area was where Nessie spent most of her time, a rectangular room with big windows that let in a generous amount of natural light. The wide wall in front of the couch served as the canvas for a mural of the turquoise sea and white-sand beach at Isle Esme, painted from memory by Bella and Renesmee. The three of us had spent two weeks there a couple of years ago to celebrate Nessie’s birthday and my tenth wedding anniversary with Bella. It was my favorite painting in the world.

On the eastern wall was a bay window, Renesmee’s favorite reading nook, flanked by two tall bookshelves. And in front of the couch was a low coffee table, cluttered with books, stacks of paper, journals, pens, paints and paintbrushes, canvasses, coffee mugs, and a laptop. I sighed. The organized chaos, as Ness often referred to it, reminded me much of her mother’s old room at the Swan residence. Bella started tidying up the table immediately, replacing books onto the shelves and rearranging the mess on the table. I turned my attention to the kitchenette’s dirty dishes and the haphazardly discarded clothes on the couch, shaking my head at the untidiness. She spent her days with us either at school or at the main house, and sometimes even slept there when she felt like it. How could one girl create so much disarray after one night?

“Mom, Dad, stop it, I’ll do that later…” Nessie admonished us halfheartedly, but we were done cleaning up before she finished speaking the sentence.

“Did you already have breakfast, honey?” Bella asked.

Ness nodded and grinned. “I had cereal and two Pop-Tarts.”

Wonderful. Clearly she knew how to make healthy choices. I almost wished for the time before she had outgrown her distaste for human food. At least on a diet of animal blood, we knew she was getting some nutrients.

Bella rolled her eyes, although I knew she wasn’t really annoyed. “Esme will make you eat some fruit at the house. Are you ready to go now? Alice wants to do a final fitting of your dress, just in case she needs to make any changes.”

“It’s too bad Aunt Alice can’t see me in her visions. She could just decide to make any changes and then know which ones are right,” Nessie mused, then shook her head and bounded up from the couch, walking quickly down the hallway and into her bedroom. She came out a second later, hands deftly fastening a necklace on the nape of her neck. It was the necklace Rosalie had given her as a present for her birthday last year, a thin platinum chain and an oval pendant with the family crest on it. We filed out of the cottage, and Bella locked the door behind her.

The three of us walked together, Nessie in the middle. I asked her what books she was reading last night that she had gotten so little sleep. Instead of communicating verbally, she held my hand and showed me.

I started seeing her memories from only a few hours ago, implanted into my mind as seamlessly as though they were my own. I saw her reading all seven books of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series and watching the first film adaptation. I saw how much she’d enjoyed them. Then, I saw her thoughts on the character Aslan, the wise talking lion and savior of Narnia. She admired him, his kindness and wisdom and compassion…. Suddenly, I saw my own face mixed in with images of the lion. She was trying to tell me the lion reminded her of me.

It shocked me. I’d enjoyed the world of Narnia at the time they were published and became widely popular in the 1950s, and even Bella had told me it was one of her favorite book series. As a lonely immortal, I’d always taken comfort in the fact that I had an Aslan-like figure in my life to look up to. My father, Carlisle. It never occurred to me to think that I could ever fill that role for someone else.

I must be doing something right, I marveled to myself. If Renesmee could liken me to someone who reminded me so much of Carlisle, then perhaps fatherhood wasn’t as lost on me as I had so often felt it was. It was like I was walking on a cloud, an invisible weight lifted off my shoulders. I wrapped my arm around Nessie as we walked, trying to let her know how much I appreciated the privilege of her sharing her thoughts with me. And then she surprised us by speaking in a serious tone.

She moved away from under my arm and moved a few paces ahead, turning around so she could face us. She walked backwards as she talked, her footing steady and sure. “Momma, Daddy, I don’t think I’ve thanked either of you yet… for allowing me to go and study on my own. I know you’ve always tried to let me have a normal childhood, to make sure I never missed out on anything. I love living with you guys. I love talking to Grandpa Carlisle about history and art. I love helping Grandma work on houses. I love shopping and appreciating fashion with Aunt Alice and Aunt Rose. I love playing chess with Uncle Jasper and Uncle Emmett. I love our piano lessons, Daddy, and our two-person exclusive book club, Momma. I love going back to Forks on holidays to visit Grandpa Charlie. I love our baseball games. But now I’m ready to experience the world for myself. I know it must be hard to let me go and that you’re scared for me. I’m scared, too….”

If my heart were still alive, it might have grown in size from the joy I felt. Renesmee rarely addressed us this way anymore. It was always Mom and Dad or Edward and Bella, if we were in public. It carried me back to the days when she was still just a little child. A rapidly growing, highly intelligent child, but still our little child. She was always so perceptive; it was as though she’d sensed the essence of the conversation Bella and I had had before we reached the cottage, and this sober declaration was her way of telling us she understood.

“You have nothing to thank us for, sweetheart,” I said quickly, at the same time that Bella hurried to ask Nessie what she was afraid of, concern in her voice.

Our daughter blew out a long breath. “I’m scared of living alone, of being completely responsible for myself. But I’m really excited about it, too, and most of the time the excitement overpowers any doubts I have. I’m certain I wanna do this, and don’t they always say that something isn’t worth doing if you’re not at least a little bit afraid?” she asked, her smile reaching her deep brown eyes.

Bella paused and left my side to grasp our daughter by the shoulders. “All we want, Nessie, all we will ever want, is your happiness. And we want you to find out what that means for you on your own terms. If you decide tomorrow that you’d be happy never going to college at all, none of us will argue with your decision. But I can see how sure you are about going. I can’t promise you that I won’t be worried sick and that I won’t be calling you multiple times a day until you’re very, very annoyed with me… But I know you can take care of yourself now, and I can’t wait to see what you do next, baby.” Bella’s lovely voice sounded assured, no trace of the anxiety she’d confided in me just moments earlier. This was what I meant whenever I told Bella she was a good mother, and seeing her in action never failed to earn my awe.

“Thank you, Momma,” Renesmee said sincerely, circling her arms around Bella, and Bella hugged her back. “And I promise I will never be annoyed by your calls, even if you call a hundred times a day,” she said, grinning. “I won’t ignore yours, either, Daddy.”

This made me and Bella laugh. Of course Nessie would make time to take her crazy parents’ calls. No one was sweeter than our daughter.

Their hug ended, and we kept walking. Suddenly there was a glint of mischief in Renesmee’s eyes, and then she touched my arm and Bella’s to tell us we were being challenged to a race. Before the thought was even fully communicated she had already taken off running to the house. I shook my head and chuckled as we hurried after her. She couldn’t quite run as fast as vampires, but the head start might be enough to guarantee her win.

When we reached the house, my brothers were waiting outside for us to arrive. They both had cameras in hand—Jasper a professional digital SLR and Emmett a Polaroid instant camera. With Bella around, I couldn’t hear their minds, so I raised an eyebrow at the both of them in question. What were they up to now?

“Nessie’s already in the house, you rusty old slowpokes,” Emmett said in greeting, mocking me and Bella. But mostly me. “And to think you used to be the fastest, Edward. What a fall from grace. Let me take a picture of this really embarrassing moment for you real quick.” He positioned the instant camera near my face and pressed a button, and it started whirring as it printed out the picture. He grinned and deposited it into a large red handbag, presumably Rosalie’s, that he had slung over his shoulder.

I rolled my eyes at my brother and asked what they were doing with the cameras instead of responding to Emmett’s attempts at vexing me. It was Jasper who answered. “We’re having a photography competition. Whoever contributes the most shots for Esme’s photo albums will win. She’s planning to keep one for us and one to send to Forks for Charlie, so we’ll need a lot of pictures.”

“Yeah, and the winner—who will definitely be me—gets to skip the bake sale that Esme is going to for some hospital fundraiser,” Emmett explained with an arrogant smile. I rolled my eyes again. Of course my brothers had found a way to turn this day into some kind of contest.

“Doesn’t the Polaroid give you a pretty significant disadvantage, Em?” I pointed out, wondering how much film he was lugging around in Rose’s handbag.

“Just because it’ll be more challenging doesn’t mean I can’t still win,” he replied, shrugging. “The pictures I take will be better. Plus, the easy way is overrated, don’t you think?”

Jasper shook his head at Emmett’s smugness, then told me and Bella to pose for a picture. I turned to Bella and she turned to me, and I held both of her hands. I smiled adoringly down at her as she stared back up at me with her deep, amber eyes. We weren’t looking at the cameras, but I heard the workings of the two small devices as my brothers captured the moment.

“Aww, you two are disgusting,” Emmett chuckled as Jasper showed the photograph to all of us on the camera’s tiny screen. “Esme’s going to love that one.” The Polaroid Emmett had taken was still developing, and he shoved it inside the red bag with all the others. Then they went inside to find better subjects for their contest.

Bella and I made our way inside as well. The house was alive with the whole family looking forward to tonight’s events. I heard Alice, Rosalie, and Nessie in Alice’s room, chattering and working away on their gowns. I heard Esme in the kitchen, making breakfast for Renesmee or perhaps practicing some recipes for the upcoming bake sale. I heard Jasper and Emmett running around everyone like a couple of paparazzi, taking pictures left and right. Only Carlisle was absent, hard at work at the hospital, but he’d be back in time to see us all off to prom tonight. Bella kissed my cheek in farewell before joining Nessie with her aunts upstairs.

I gravitated towards the piano, as I often did. I scanned the perfect mental repository of all the music I knew, trying out a few bars from different pieces—some my own compositions and some written by better musicians than I—but none of them spoke to me…. Until one did. I sat down and began playing the first notes of “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” from Holst’s orchestral suite, The Planets. It was a piece that sounded abundantly better when played by a full orchestra, but I enjoyed it regardless. My hands glided quickly across the piano keys to produce the quick, jaunty chords of the exposition. Then the development came in ritardando, varying from the cheery main theme to take a strangely calm, nostalgic turn. Although it evoked feelings of nostalgia, it wasn’t sad. Only pensive about a time already past. The piece concluded a tempo, returning to the happy and powerful main theme. I didn’t realize how much the song reflected my mood until I was already finished playing it.

Knowing her thoughts were protected by Bella’s shield, Esme offered me her kind compliments out loud from the kitchen. “That was wonderful, Edward,” she gushed. “I have always been so fond of that piece. Please play some more, darling.” I murmured a thanks, then obliged my mother and started playing her favorite, the very song I had played for Bella the first time I brought her home to meet my family. Even though the memory was tainted by the agony and danger of the events that followed, I still looked back on it with some joy. That was the night Bella became a part of our family.

The day went on that way, calm and peaceful, everyone busy with their respective tasks. Nessie came down to join me once in the afternoon and let me hear a new composition she was working on. It was her best yet, and I told her as much. Bella came downstairs as well, listening to me play and rereading Persuasion by Jane Austen while she sat beside me on the piano bench.

Before long, it was time for us to get dressed and ready for the prom. I quickly changed into my dark brown suit. The color had been my only stipulation, the rest decided by Alice’s keen sense of fashion. Since that overcast Thursday morning—the day that had been my turn to ask questions—my favorite color had never wavered from brown. The chocolate-brown color of Bella’s human eyes was not just preserved fondly in my memories, but alive forever in Nessie, and it was beyond the bounds of possibility for me to separate such a color from the meaning of all my happiness.

After I was dressed, I tried to peek into Alice’s room to see if they were ready to go, but Alice, annoying as ever, blocked my entrance and told me to wait with Esme and Carlisle downstairs. I rolled my eyes but followed her instructions. Arguing with Alice was almost never worth it.

Carlisle was just arriving home from work right as I was coming down the stairs, and when he saw me, his eyes lit up. “Why, you look great, Edward,” he praised, setting his medical bag down on a table in the foyer. I thanked him humbly. He reached up and loosened his tie, likely more out of habit than out of a need to be more comfortable. It struck me as a very fatherly thing to do. Esme came out of the front room, greeting Carlisle with a bright smile and a quick kiss. “You’re home just in time, dear. I think the girls are almost done helping Nessie get ready.”

I snorted. At this rate, we were never going to leave the house in time. “Alice, we’ll be late!” I shouted in the direction of the stairs, knowing she could hear me perfectly.

“No, we won’t!” Alice chimed back confidently. I sighed.

Jasper and Emmett were already in their tuxedos and bounded quickly down the stairs, cameras still in hand. Rosalie was the one who joined us next, looking devastating in a burgundy mermaid dress. Emmett looked like he was about to combust. Jasper smirked at our brother’s dumbstruck expression, snapping a few pictures.

Then it was my turn to be dumbstruck as Bella started down the stairs, moving at full speed to be at my side in an instant. “Alice wouldn’t let me see Ness wearing her dress yet,” she complained, but all my attention was on her at that moment. She looked positively incredible wearing a knee-length, square-necked light azure dress, held up by thin straps with flutter sleeves and inset with a thousand little rhinestones that looked like stars. My wife could have been Selene herself, come down from the moon. I ran my fingers gently through Bella’s long, straight brown locks and pressed my palm to her cheek. And for the nth time in so many years, I was glad for the deal I’d made with Bella on our first wedding anniversary. “You look beautiful, love. Absolutely arresting,” I said honestly.

“I know,” Bella said, beaming up at me, and I laughed happily. This was our deal: whenever I told her the indisputable truth about how beautiful she looked, all she had to say in response was that she knew. In exchange, I was forbidden from spending money on gifts for her for exactly five years, and five years was such a short time for creatures such as we that the zero-gifts rule felt like it was lifted immediately. I circumvented the moratorium, anyway, by getting gifts that were for both Bella and Nessie, or both Bella and Esme…. It may not have been the fairest of contracts, but my intentions were of the purest kind. I leaned down and pulled my beautiful goddess of a wife into a deep kiss, and I felt her wide smile as her arms wrapped around my neck. We only broke away from each other when we heard Alice skipping down the stairs, dressed in a white two-piece cocktail dress that made her look like a mischievous fairy.

“Get ready, everyone!” Alice squealed, clapping her hands in anticipation. “I can’t wait to see your reactions, I know you’ll all just die.”

My sister was right. Renesmee—our only daughter, the greatest joy of our lives—stood at the top of the stairs in a gorgeous, peach pink off-shoulder gown decorated with the same little rhinestones that were on her mother’s dress and delicate leaf-patterned lace appliques, and she was a sight to die for. As she walked slowly down the stairs, one hand on the banister, Emmett and Jasper took pictures fervently, documenting the entire moment. I saw Bella press her hand to her chest, eyes soft and adoring.

“Well, how do I look?” Nessie asked when she reached the bottom of the stairs, a half-smile on her face. Her soft bronze hair fell in long, spiral waves down her shoulders, and on her neck, she still wore the necklace she’d put on this morning. She spun around in a circle, indulging the attention we lavished on her, understanding that today would not have been such a significant event for us if not for her. Esme made me, Bella, and Nessie pose for pictures by the staircase, then on the couch in the front room, and then outside on the porch. After Esme was satisfied with the pictures of the three of us, Jasper and Emmett set up a tripod and took a photo with all nine of us in the front room, our latest family portrait. When the photoshoot was done, we all filed into our vehicles to make our way to school. Bella and Nessie rode with me in the Volvo, and my siblings rode in Rosalie’s M3.

We made it to the high school just in time, and even from the car, I could already hear the booming electronic dance music and the excited prattle of hundreds of human children crowded around in the school gym. I prepared myself for the barrage of human thoughts I would have to hear tonight; the only people Bella would shield here were our family. Although Bella could shield a roomful of people from me easily, I still needed to be on the lookout for any suspicious minds when we were in public like this. The three of us met the rest of my siblings at the doors to the gym and joined the throng of high schoolers, looking like they were having the time of their lives. Little did they know how many lethal supernatural creatures had just descended upon this party. If they knew, maybe they wouldn’t be so happy.

“Are you ready for your first—but definitely not last—prom, Carlie?” Emmett asked my daughter, grinning. Nessie went by her middle name at school to be less conspicuous. At first, Bella was greatly displeased by the necessity of this precaution, but she couldn’t deny the rationale. We stood out more than enough being newcomers in a small town like this one, with our sheer number, our wealth, our beauty, and our semi-frequent ‘family trips’ to avoid the sun.

“Time to dance the night away!” Nessie said, grinning back at her uncle. She bounded away from us to meet a couple of her classmates, two girls who reminded me of Bella’s human friends, not physically, but in their manner and thoughts. Ness didn’t have many friends, and we had started to worry that her only interaction with other living beings was isolated to her family, but she rarely found her human classmates interesting, and when she did, it was because she genuinely had something in common with them.

The girl who was like Jessica, a brown-haired girl named Lindsay, shouted over the loud music at Nessie in greeting. “Oh my God, look how gorgeous you are!” Jesus, she looks like she belongs in some runway show right now. I wonder what designer this dress is by? Probably cost a million bucks…. I kind of hate her. Lindsay’s thoughts were petty and vitriolic, and I resisted the urge to march over there and shield my daughter from the bitter girl. That would have done more harm than good, so I settled for rolling my eyes and whispering in my wife’s ear about the girl’s thoughts. It was gossipy and ungentlemanly, but I had to share the burden of being powerless to protect Nessie from a fake friend.

“Oh, that girl is in my English class,” Bella said, looking unsurprised. “I knew she was mean, but I liked her Shakespeare essays. Nessie thinks she’s smart.” I scoffed and tuned in to the other girl’s thoughts—Annie, a girl with short, pink-dyed hair who made me think of Angela. She greeted Nessie with a hug, and thought, Wow, she looks like a princess. I should ask her to take a selfie with me! My mom will be super bummed if I don’t take a lot of pics tonight…. Annie pulled out a smartphone, and the three girls smiled as the little device flashed and snapped their ‘selfies.’ And then they ran to the dance floor together, jumping and laughing to the music.

I stayed with Bella in a darkened corner, and we watched Renesmee enjoying herself. Occasionally, one of my siblings would pull us away and make us dance to the upbeat music, but neither of us were particularly fond of the DJ’s infernal choices. The DJ, a baby-faced young boy called Drew who had Spanish class with me, exclusively played EDM and bastardized remix versions of classic love songs. By the ninth EDM song in a row, I finally put my proverbial foot down and crashed the DJ booth on stage to bribe him with a fifty dollar bill so he would play a song of my choosing. The boy was astonished and could barely say anything back to me, but as I walked through the crowd to reach Bella again, Johnny Ace’s “Pledging My Love” started blaring through the loudspeakers. I took Bella’s hand as we walked to the middle of the dance floor, and once we were there, I pulled her close to me and led us in a slow, intimate dance.

“This is the most romantic song I know,” Bella whispered, her head resting on my chest as we swayed slowly in a circle.

I chuckled. “Once upon a time, in a very old and decrepit truck, this song came on the radio and provided an apt soundtrack for the most romantic day of my life. Do you still remember that?”

Bella lifted her head from my chest and looked up at me, her eyebrows knitted together playfully. “My God, thirteen years and you’re still hating on the truck? I think you’ve got some issues to sort out there, honey,” she said, her beautiful lips turned up in a smirk. Then her face became more earnest. “But of course I remember. That was one of the best days of my life, too.”

Her amber eyes looked so full of love, so full of sincerity, that I felt like falling to my knees. As a mature vampire, more than a decade after her transformation, she should have no more than a few blurry recollections of her human life. But Bella felt so strongly about me, about the memories we’d made, that she vehemently held on to our past, even as each day, each minute, and each second brought us further away from it. I kissed her, always trying to let her know how precious she was to me. The song was nearly over, and I sighed. I could have stayed there dancing with her forever and never need anything more.

“Smile, please!” I heard Renesmee say, Emmett’s Polaroid camera in her hand. She snapped a photo of us. Then she turned the camera around, sandwiched herself between her mother and I, stuck her tongue out goofily, and pressed the button on the camera to take a picture again. Bella laughed.

“Where did your friends go?” Bella asked. “I was starting to think you guys would never get tired of dancing together.”

“Oh, they went back to their dates,” Nessie said nonchalantly. “So I decided to annoy Uncle Em by taking his camera.” A folky, lullaby-like acoustic song was now playing through the speakers.

“Oh—I love this song so much!” Nessie gasped. “Please dance with me, Dad?” She whispered the last word to keep any humans from hearing.

How could I refuse her? “Of course, sweetheart.”

Bella smiled and took the camera and the Polaroids from Nessie, saying something about finding Emmett and his big red bag. I led my daughter in a slow dance around the crowd, her hands resting on my shoulders.

“You and Mom looked amazing dancing together like that,” Nessie said casually, but by the look on her face, I could feel how serious the conversation was going to be. “I know the story, Dad. I know everything you went through before you could get here. And I am so happy that it worked out for you. Seeing how much you love Momma, how much she loves you… it makes me never wanna settle for anything less than that.”

My brows furrowed. “Is that why you said no to the boys who asked you to be their date tonight? Because you don’t love any of them?”

We kept swaying to the music, and Nessie chuckled. “Kind of. It’s true I said no because I don’t feel a connection to any of them, but also because I didn’t want tonight to be about some stranger hanging out around our family. I wanted it to just be us, so we could be ourselves.”

My heart swelled. Nessie always thought of our family first. That wasn’t her responsibility, and we would’ve been all too happy to pretend to be human and normal for any prom date of her choice, but she thought of us first. She was so like her mother in some ways.

“What did you mean, then? About never settling for anything less?” I asked. Something about the way she’d said it worried me, made me feel as though there were insecurities underneath her positive tone that needed to be addressed.

She took a deep breath. “I just… I realized that real love like I’ve seen with you and Mom, Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle Em and Aunt Rose, Uncle Jasper and Aunt Alice… it’s rare and it’s wonderful. And I think I would prefer waiting for a love where I could feel everything there is to feel rather than try to force something with anyone I’m not sure about. And I realize I could be waiting forever if I keep waiting for something perfect, but that’s the point, isn’t it? And I can’t imagine how I would ever find something like that. And that’s all right, I think.”

Renesmee’s words were full of conviction, and I started thinking about how, someday, the day would come when we would be dancing just like this—I would be in a tuxedo and she would be in a big white dress—at her wedding, for the father-daughter dance. Like her, I could not imagine yet the person she would marry, but I saw our family there. I saw Charlie desperately trying to ignore how our faces still remained unchanged. I saw Jacob, whom Renesmee considered her best friend, taking a break from managing his own auto repair shop to be there as her best man. It would be the happiest day of her life, just as how my wedding had been one of the happiest days of mine, and it saddened me that she couldn’t see herself finding that happiness one day. But I understood Nessie’s conclusions—or maybe more accurately, her fears—about not finding love. When I was still alone, I’d come to similar conclusions that the kind of happiness I saw in my family was simply not meant for me. Even when I’d found Bella, I always chose the saddest path, never daring to hope that I could have happiness with her forever.

“I admire your position about refusing to settle, Ness, because you deserve only the best. And I was just like you once. Before I found your mother, I never saw the point in pursuing relationships that I knew weren’t going to be meaningful. But you shouldn’t let yourself believe that you won’t find what you’re looking for.” I brushed a stray lock of curly bronze hair behind Nessie’s ear, hoping she could hear the honesty in what I was saying. “You know that for our kind, waiting through decades of being alone before finding who you’re meant for is more common than finding that right away….So please, don’t be so resigned. You are entirely too young to resign yourself to an eternity of being alone. It will work out, somehow,” I finished, echoing Esme’s confident words to Bella long ago when our relationship was at its very beginning.

Renesmee nodded, and I hoped my reassurances had lifted a little of the weight off her shoulders. I didn’t need to have Jasper’s gift for empathy to know that existing in both our world and the human world, not quite belonging in either, was a difficult thing to process. I didn’t know what the future held for my daughter—none of us did—but I looked forward to it with the same optimism my own parents had always had for me.

The acoustic ballad we were dancing to ended softly, and I escorted her away from the dance floor so we could rejoin our family.

“My feet kind of hurt,” Nessie complained as we found Bella sitting beside Rosalie on some folding chairs, but a smile was still bright on her face. She was having such fun tonight.

“Do you want to go home, baby?” Bella asked as Nessie dragged over another chair to sit down between Bella and Rose. Nessie rested her head on Rose’s shoulder, and Rose circled her arm around Nessie in a one-armed hug. “You’ve been dancing all night, I’m sure you’re tired.”

“Yeah, I think I wanna go home,” Ness said, sounding a little sleepy.

Suddenly, Lindsay and Annie appeared out of the crowd as an upbeat pop song started playing. “Carlie, come dance with us!” one of the human girls said.

Nessie perked up. “Wait, I love this song! Just one last!” she said enthusiastically, heading back to the dance floor with her friends. I shook my head, amazed at her energy. I sat down on the seat that Nessie had just vacated.

“We’re still a go for tomorrow, right, Rose?” I asked Rose discreetly. If the weather was safe enough for us to be out, we were going into the city tomorrow so Rose could help me pick out Nessie’s very first car. She learned how to drive when she was seven but always used the cars that belonged to the rest of the family. Now that she was going to college, she needed a vehicle to be able to get around on her own. Bella was coming with us, too, to be the voice of reason. Apparently, Rose was just as likely as I was to pick a car that Bella would deem—and this was her word—‘overkill.’ Rose only nodded in response, but I saw the corners of her mouth turn up a little.

We all watched as Nessie danced to one last song with her friends, and I could pick her lovely voice out of the babble of other noise as she sang along. “There’s a mountaintop that I’m dreamin’ of…. If you need me, you know where I’ll be!”

“She’ll call us constantly once she’s in college, right?” Bella asked me in an emotional whisper, looking at our daughter jumping up and down and singing with her friends. Since she became a vampire, I rarely thought of my wife as vulnerable anymore, but she looked vulnerable now. If our bodies were still capable of shedding tears, I wondered if she would be crying. Honestly, I realized I wanted to cry as well. Renesmee was ready to create her own life, and she needed us less and less every day. Years ago, I’d thought loving Bella was the greatest accomplishment of my life, the only good thing I would ever do. I’d thought that, after a hundred years of emptiness, loving Bella as thoroughly and as completely as I did was the strongest feeling I would ever experience. But Nessie—she proved those assumptions wrong, time and again. It was an honor to have raised her, and I knew Bella felt the same.

I held Bella’s hand and kissed her temple. “I’m sure she will, love. I’m sure she will.”

After a few moments, the song was over, and Nessie was saying her goodbyes to her friends. When she had made her way back to us, she cried, “My feet are killing me! Please never let me dance all night in heels ever again.”

Bella let out a short laugh. “It’s fine, baby. You can take off your shoes and your dad will carry you to the car.”

“Oh, bless!” she exclaimed. Bella laughed again. Nessie pulled off her heels, which Bella promptly carried for her, and our daughter let me lift her up in my arms. As we walked, Bella wrapped her arm around my waist. I glanced up at the night sky and saw the pale moon untrammeled by the usual gray clouds, bathing the high school parking lot in its ghostly light. It conjured up memories of a similar evening. Another prom night—Bella’s very first. I’d carried her in my arms just like this, and I remembered how desperate I’d been, how important it was for me that she did not miss her prom, in case her future children ever asked about it. I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t have an empty story for them because of me. And here we were, thirteen years later, with the miracle of our own child in my arms, Bella’s arm around me. Not even the sweetest of my dreams could compare to the reality we lived in now. I stared at Bella’s face, wondering if her thoughts had taken the same turn mine had. She pressed a hand to her throat, remembering how I’d kissed her there that night. We shared a secret smile.

When we reached the car, Bella opened the door to the backseat, and I sat Ness gently down in the middle, making sure her limbs were in comfortable positions. “Thanks, Dad,” she whispered, looking seconds away from succumbing to sleep. Bella got in beside her, and I sat in the driver’s seat to take us back home.

At moments like this, I still struggled to believe how I could have been given so much happiness, so much unadulterated joy that went beyond the ambit of anything I had ever dared to dream of for myself.

It felt like a reward I didn’t deserve. Maybe it was futile, looking for reasons when I knew I would get no answers. But in all my musings, the only conclusion I came to that made any kind of sense was that… it was because of Bella.

Because of Bella and her goodness, that rare kindness I saw only in her—she was why I was allowed all this happiness. And I was just the fool lucky enough to be in the range of her shining sun. Lucky enough to love her and be loved by her.

How could I ever tell her how grateful I was? Grateful that she could always see past the worst of me and my mistakes. Grateful that she had unlimited selflessness, giving us the family I’d envisioned for her, but thought impossible for me. Grateful that she was all too happy to be the first and only love of my existence. Grateful that cruel fate, after our various ordeals, had turned merciful to bring us to this heaven.

I looked back at them again, Nessie now sleeping soundly on Bella’s lap, and Bella absentmindedly twining her fingers through the mess of bronze curls fanned out on the soft fabric of her dress. “She’s dreaming,” Bella whispered. I could see Nessie’s hand on Bella’s arm, inadvertently letting Bella see the pictures she was swimming through in the land of her dreams.

I was sure that no words in any of the languages I knew could ever sufficiently reveal the feelings of peace and contentment that I felt, staring at them, the two halves of my heart, at ease in the backseat.

Bella caught me looking then, her golden eyes piercing through mine in the rearview mirror. She smiled, lowered her shields, and allowed me to hear one thought: I love you.

“I love you, too, Bella,” I whispered. I willed the past and the future that stretched out infinitely before us to give those words weight, seeming too simple and inadequate to convey the depth of what I felt.

No, I didn’t have the words that could tell Bella how grateful I was for her. For Renesmee. For our family. Perhaps I never would…. But that was fine. I had the rest of forever to try and find the words. Forever and forever and forever. I smiled and felt lighter than if my heart were not made of stone, and sped up the car to take us faster towards home.

[siren-queen-imagines]

Bet

I’m going through the Wayback Machine and bringing over some fics that I wrote when I was imaginingwwesuperstars!! Well, at least what they have archived…and has been edited since the original post. Down to the last of them! I hope you enjoy!

Masterlist

The betting among your friends got out of control really fast.

You and Seth had been hanging out with the usual suspects: Roman, Dean, Sasha, Charlotte, Becky, Cesaro, Kevin and Finn at the bar one night. Long story short, Kevin had started betting Cesaro that he could do more of something…you weren’t too sure of that because you were half listening because Seth had you a bit distracted with his hand caressing your upper thigh.

That one bet brought on one more bet and then another…until you and Seth were brought into the equation because of your lack of participation.

“So, Y/N, what should you and Seth bet?” Sasha asked, catching your attention.

“I know what they should bet.” Dean replied, a mischievous smirk on his face.

“Why, Dean, do tell.” Roman said with a matching smirk, knowing immediately what Dean was gonna suggest.

“Y/N, bet Seth that you can go longer than him without sex.”

“Um, w-what?” You asked, unsure you heard Dean correctly.

“You heard me. Bet Seth you can go last longer than him without having sex.”

“I got this one babe.” Seth replied for you before turning to Dean. “Dean, isn’t that a bit unfair? I mean come on, we all know that she’d cave wayyyyy before I would.”

You backed up for a moment to look him in the eyes better.

“Excuse me?” You challenged him.

“Come on, Y/N. You know that you usually have a hard time resisting me. With our track record, I think it’s a surprise that you’re not pregnant yet.”

You raised your eyebrows at him, still challenging him.

“It’s true, those two go at it like rabbits who just got out of prison.” Dean commented for the rest of the group.

“It’s surprising I haven’t–” You cut yourself off for a moment. Okay. This is how he wanted to play? Game on. “Okay, bet Rollins. I bet you that I can hold out on sex way longer than you could.”

“Oh really?” Seth replied.

“Really.”

The whole table exchanged looks of smiles and shocks. They didn’t think this would actually happen. Maybe as a joke where they burst out laughing immediately after but you looked serious.

“Deal.” 

You two shook hands and created a little bit more space between each other.

=================================

It’s been almost two whole months.

Two whole fucking months. Take that back, fuckless, months.

And it sucked.

Apparently, Seth took this bet seriously because you had expected him to cave within the first week or two. He had a lot more self control than you expected.

So you guys went back and forth on playing dirty.

You came out of the bathroom a few times, ready for bed completely naked.

He retorted with the same thing after the 3rd time.

You tempted him with sexts one night.

He retorted by standing in front of the TV, taking off his basketball shorts and shirt and stretched, showing off the muscles you had complimented on many times before.

Those were just some of the things you both tried without actually touching each other. Playing games back and forth and you two miraculously had a LOT of self control. You were dying…surely Seth had to be suffering too, right?

You walked into the gym with Sasha and Charlotte in an attempt to work out your sexual frustration. The three of you decided to start it out on a treadmill when you noticed Seth coming into the gym in the reflection on the mirror in front of you.

You took a deep breath and closed your eyes for a moment before turning up the speed on your treadmill. Things were working out well until you watched him take off his shirt, his back muscles flexing and just…ugh….fuck this.

Fine. He won. You cave.

You stopped the treadmill and got off.

“Hey guys, I think I’m done for the day. I’m not feeling too well all of a sudden.” You told them. 

“Okay.” Charlotte replied, a look of worry on her face.

“Feel better, honey.” Sasha added.

You offered them a small closed mouth smile before heading to the other side of the gym.

“Oh she’s sick alright.” Sasha mumbled to Charlotte with a giant smile on her face. “Sick of not having some dick.” 

Sasha pointed to you walking over to Seth, causing Charlotte to laugh.

You went over to Seth and offered him a closed mouth smile.

“Hey, I need to talk to you.” You told him. “It’s really important. You think you can meet me upstairs in a few? I gotta take a shower.”

“Yeah, sure.” Seth replied with a slightly worried look on his face.

He watched you nod at him before you left. He watched you leave the room, unable to keep his eyes off your ass. 

=================================

You were running a brush through your wet hair when you heard the door to your hotel room close. You heard the sound of Seth walking towards the bathroom.

“Hey.” Seth said as he peeked into the room, leaning against the doorway. “Everything okay?”

You put your brush down and looked at him, leaning against the counter.

“No. Not really. Seth, I really can’t keep doing this anymore.”

You watched Seth visibly gulp. If you were gonna cave, you were gonna scare him first. You at least deserved to have some fun before you would most likely be shamed in front of your friends for being the first to cave…mostly because everyone expected Seth to be the first of the two of you to give it up.

“Okay…” Seth paused for a moment. “What? You can’t do what?”

“You know what, Seth.”

“Yeah, but I need to hear you say it, Y/N.”

“If you know then you don’t need me to say it.”

Seth’s jaw clenched in frustration.

“Just say it. If you’re gonna break up with me then I need to hear you say the words.”

You walked closer to him and sighed as he stood his full height, steeling himself for what was going to be said next.

“I cave, Seth. You win.” You told him, smiling.

Seth’s eyes widened as he shook his head at you.

“You scared the crap out of me, Y/N.” Seth said with a mixture of relief and irritation.

“I know.”

“You wanted to scare me? That’s messed--I-- I don’t even think I wanna have sex with you after that.”

“Okay, yeah, mm hmm.” You said as Seth headed to the door. You knew he wasn’t leaving.

“Okay, you’re right.” Seth turned back to pull you into his arms. “I thought I could scare you too.”

Seth’s arms wrapped around your body before pulling you into a kiss, making sure to smack your butt as his way of punishing you.

Oh yeah. Based on that spank, you were gonna get it. And damn was it gonna be good.

[youralternantpersonality]

Thanksgiving

Paul x Reader: Thanksgiving

Warning: Child Protective Services (CPS) and Adult Protective Services (APS) involvement mentioned. Death of elderly, and implication of abuse and neglect are written

Takes place LONG after the war with the Volturi; Renesmee is 16 and Jake JUST imprinted on her. Not when she was a baby. Let’s just act like Bella didn’t almost die when she had her and they just moved away until recently, okay? Cool.

Also like I said before, all the imprints are the same age as the guys. No pedophilia bs is EVER in my stories.

***

I met Leah in my Sophomore year at Washington State. I was going into Development and Family Structure whereas she was going in to be an RN like her mother. We met in a Health and Sex class that was considered as an elective course. Because we had to travel across campus to make it to this class, we always ended up sitting in the back of the class together. Eventually creating a friendship that you’d rarely see develop and stick together. Now, we’re Juniors and I am currently packing to head to La Push with her and her boyfriend Lajohn for Thanksgiving since I didn’t have a family.

I was lucky if I’m honest. I was given to the state at 12 after CPS finally indicated that my parents weren’t fit to take care of me and my grandmother. Unfortunately, it took the death of my grandmother for anyone to do anything. Although I was given to the state at 12, I didn’t leave until I was 18. The likelihood of getting adopted after 10 is slim. I was happy for those who did, but it hurt to see some of them come back. You realize through others that just because the idea of parenting is wonderful, being a parent is completely different. I was lucky enough to take advantage of resources that were provided for me and some of the other kids that lead me to this point.

I got my first job at 16 and worked from then onward. I applied to college and financial aid as fast as I was able to so that I wouldn’t be alone. I receive enough grants and scholarships for my associates and now working on my bachelor's. My previous roommates were, well, trash; which motivated me to get a job and move into the nearby apartments. My roommates now are chill, we all just don’t talk to one another. Which lead me back to this moment at my apartment.

“I don’t know what to wear!” I said looking in my closet for a perfect outfit to bring to Thanksgiving.

“I don’t know why you’re stressing about it. I told you, no one is going to care. But, if you’re that worried, wear the ripped jeans and the black off the shoulder sweater shirt. Oh! And the booties!” Leah said going through my closet. Even though she says and acts like she doesn’t care about fashion and appearance, I know deep down in the pits of hell that we call her soul, that she really and truly still doesn’t, but she has a soft spot for it.  

“Thank you! Oh, and I’m mad at you, you bitch.” I said packing up the outfit.

“What, why?”

“You got your eyebrows done without me! You see mine looking like Chewbacca over here!”

“I’d say more like baby Chewbacca…”

“That’s not the point!”

“Sorry, look, it should be around 12:30 or 1 by the time we get to Seattle, we’ll stop there. I promise.” She says smiling while hugging me. Bitch.

“Fine. Now let’s go before Lajohn comes up here like a brat crying.” We laugh and start heading towards the door. We have a long seven and a half hours to get to La Push. Let’s see how this goes.

~

We stop to get something to eat, fill up, and get my eyebrows done. Lajohn took that time to fall asleep in the car because knowing us, we’d get sidetracked and find some shit for everyone. But we resisted! Mainly because our paychecks don’t come in until next week and I’m barking on this dinner and the leftovers (if there is any based on what Leah tells me about her brothers) to last me until then.

 Paul’s POV

“Alright guys, now Leah is bringing her friend Y/n. can we please not repeat what happened when she brought Lajohn over to meet us.” Sam said, looking directly at Quil, Collin, and me.

“I swear I didn’t start it!” Collin tried to defend himself.

“It doesn’t matter who did or didn’t start it! We can’t have y/g knowing what we are. Lajohn is Leah’s imprint, she’s just her friend. Got it!” Jacob stated. I rolled my eyes but said nothing. I won’t lie though, I haven’t seen someone run as fast as he did, especially when he is almost as big as us and just as human as the next person.

“We won’t, I promise. Scouts honor.” Making a joke about this situation.

“You weren’t in boy-scouts Paul,” Jared said.

“That’s beside the point. Look, we’re not going to do anything to out us again.” I said with a smile. Not one person believed a damn thing I said, hell I don’t think I did either. But it’s worth a shot.

“Well now that we have that settled, we have to meet up with the Cullen’s. There’s going to be some unwelcome visitors stopping by in a few days, and the last thing we need is to deal with this on Thanksgiving.” Jacob said. We all got up and begrudgingly met up with the leeches. Can’t they give us a break?

Y/n POV

We pull up to this cozy small house with a swing set on the porch. A lady who I’ve seen in Leah’s room steps out of the house to greet us. I can positively assume she’s Leah’s mom.

“Lajohn! How are you!” She says, ready to embrace the giant man twice her size. Compared to Ms. Clearwater, he was a good foot and a half above her. Compared to Leah, a half a foot maybe. He was “6’7”, black hair in a fade, soft brown eyes, mocha skin, slim yet buff, and a complete gentle giant. He and Leah met in their anatomy class. She said she walked into class late after getting lost and the only seat available was in the front. The bad news was, she had one of those teachers who was a stickler and a petty asshole. He made it hell for her. The good news was, she met Lajohn who was good at the class and had no problem tutoring her. It was “Love at first sight” for both of them.

“Sounds like some hallmark bullshit. Let me guess, it was raining, you were soaking wet, and by the end of class he gave you his jacket and you looked into each other eyes and BAM! Instant connection.” I laughed. She rolled her eyes and smiled.

“Yeah, yeah, shut up Bunny. One day, it’ll happen to you. $20 says it will”

“What, falling in love or love at first constipation?” she gives me a look, and I just smile.

“Love you too Leah-bird” I laugh.

I snap back to reality to Leah joking around with another person coming out of the house. He looked just as big as Lajohn but resembled Leah and her mom. I can assume this was Seth. I step out and walk over to everyone as Lajohn goes to the car to get our luggage.

“Mom, this is my best friend-”

“Holy shit, Leah can make friends!?” Said the babyface giant.

“Will you shut up Seth! Yes, I can. Can you get a girlfriend? No, you can’t. So, hush.”

“Ouch Leah. That hurt.” He says folding his arms over his heart and rolling his eyes with a sad look on his face. I just want to make him cookies and tell him its okay.

“Anyways, this is my best friend Y/n. Y/n/n, this my mother Sue and my annoying-”

“Yet handsome.”

“-Little brother, Seth.” She says, ignoring him completely.

“Hi, it’s nice to meet you guys. I’ve seen pictures of you guys back at Leah’s apartment and she talks about home all the time.”

“It's nice to meet you too Y/n. Come on in and let the guys get your stuff.”

“Yeah, Seth, chop-chop little puppy,” Leah says clapping her hands to rush him. He just looks at her and gives her the finger when their mom isn’t looking and walks towards the back of the car. I can hear him and Lajohn talking about some pack of cold ones. I don’t think Seth is old enough to drink…

The next day: Thanksgiving

For the rest of yesterday evening, Leah and Ms. Sue (who keeps on insisting I drop the Ms. Part; I will not, my grandmother taught me to always say Mr., Ms., and Mrs.,) showed me around town and I was able to meet Emily and Sam, and Jacob and Billy. They seemed welcoming. Emily especially, although, Sam, Jacob, and Billy seemed on edge with me. I told that to Leah and she reassured me that their faces and attitudes are always like that with everyone. Lajohn eased my worrying saying they were worse with him because he was dating Leah. He was more scared of Seth and their mom out of everyone though.

Currently, Leah, Ms. Sue, Lajohn, and I are on our way to Emily and Sam’s place. When we pull up, we’re greeted by her and a few other girls from the reservation. We walk up and I’m automatically hugged by this small “5’8” girl with wild layered hair with streaks of color in it.

“Hey everyone! Y/n, this is my niece Clair. Sorry, she just gets excited about meeting new people. And this is Halulah and Kim, Embry and Jared’s girlfriends. Come one inside, the guys will be back in an hour or so. That should give us enough time to finish the turkey and dessert.” I waved at them and we all went inside. That time was short-lived until we heard wolves howling in the distance and Sam and Lajohn were out the door. I was about to ask what that was about but was cut off by Leah shoving plates in my hands to set up the table.

A little while later, we hear laughter and thumping of footsteps coming from the front door.

“HONEY I’M HOME! Ouch! Jared! What was that for?!” one voice said.

“For being a dumbass, that’s why.” I assume is Jared’s voice.

“Language!” said Seth followed by a loud punch and a yelp from him.

“Ouch, damnit Paul! That hurt!” said Seth.

“LaNgUaGe!” said, who I can assume is Paul with a bolstering laugh. Emily rolled her eyes and looked at Sam, who looked at them before they turned the corner. A choir of “sorry” and “my bad” was said before they showed themselves.

“Y/n, I’d like you to meet my children for all intended purposes. The boy who is giving Clair a piggyback ride to is Quil; the boy hugging Halulah is Embry—the one I told you about. This is Jared, Kim’s—godforsaken—boyfriend.”

“Hey! I’m not that bad!” she ignores him.

“Jake should be here with his girlfriend Nessie in a little bit, and the one behind us thinking I CAN’T SEE HIM STEALING THE TURKEY! Is Paul.” I looked behind her and catch a red-handed guilty-looking, Paul.

“Hey, at least I tri-” he stops mid-sentence as our eyes connect. I felt like I was in my apartment room reaching cloud 9. Everything around me blurred and all I saw was him. I felt my heart skip a beat and was knocked the air out of me. I couldn’t move, didn’t hear a sound, and kind of dizzy. I snap back when I hear laughter.

“Aww! Bunny! See! I told you it would happen!” Leah says laughing. I look at her confused then looked back at everyone else who was laughing too. Paul coughed and I looked at him. His expression went from being shocked, angry, sad, then content and surprised. He looked at Sam then walked over to me. Standing in front of me, he smiles and introduces himself.

“Hey, I’m Paul. What’s your name beautiful?” Damn, I guess I owe Leah $20.

[brokenkingdom-forgottenempire]

Never Regret

....took me a while to finish this long ass fic. Please don’t hate me. I wanted to write prequel fic for ‘Off Night’ and I didnt expect I’d spend days trying to make this fic....readable? 

WARNING: LONG FIC. POOR ATTEMPT OF SEXY TIME. AND MAYBE AWKWARD. Human flesh as plates. Drew does the sucking around here. Roman can just relax. Some errors. Uhhhh.....some cbt .. idk. Dont look at me. I kept on seeing gif of Drew low blowing Roman, alright? 

Okay, so here is my second attempt on trying to write sexy scene for McReigns! husbands vers au.

(08/12/20)

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It was raining all day. Grey skies since 8am. It was only 4pm now but the dark clouds made it looked like it was already late evening. A bit of lighting once in a while but it was not a compete downpour. It had been raining a lot lately, and Drew did not really enjoy it. He would go out to work and come back soaking wet. He hated it. 

Roman liked the rain. It was calming for him. He could rest his mind, the sound of low grumbling thunder somehow made him relax. He could stay in bed all day, snuggle with his husband, take a nap. The two of them a completely opposite about the weather but that was why they were so deep in love with one another.

Drew went out that afternoon to buy some groceries. Roman wanted to go along to accompany the other man but Drew insisted the Samoan to just stay at home. He did not want Roman to get sick again. He noticed how Roman could easily get sick lately too. It’s probably caused by the weather, Drew thought.

“Don’t forget to buy some desserts, babe,” Roman called out from the kitchen before Drew stepped out of the house. Drew just replied back ‘OK’ and walked out, dressed in just black t-shirt, jeans and raincoat. It was windy outside, he knew the umbrella would not help much in this situation but he brought it with him anyway.

A hour or so later, as expected, Drew came back with the needed things and food. Soaking wet head to toe. Roman was sitting comfortable in their couch in the living room. Knees tucked close to his chest, hair neatly tied into a bun, reading glasses on, he had his phone in hand, probably checking for updates on his social media account again. The Samoan lifted his head up when he heard the front door was opened, and failed to hide his smile when he saw a soaked, grumpy Drew. 

“Yea, laugh all you want. I’m fucking freezing and you didn’t even bother to help me grab a towel,” the Scottish man grunted as he placed the grocery bags on the floor. He tossed his ruined shoes at the side, grumbling how much he hated life sometimes especially when it had to put him in this kind of situation. Roman just shook his head, got up and handed his husband a towel he had prepared earlier. Drew just stared at Roman as he did. 

“You really thought I wouldn’t prepare anything for my own husband who sacrificed himself to go out and buy me food in this crazy weather? I’m hurt, Drew,” despite the last sentence, a warm smile graced Roman’s beautiful face. Drew did not reply and just moved his face closer to Roman’s to give the older man a quick kiss on the lips. A thank you. Drew did not say it, but Roman knew. 

“What did you get me for desserts?” Roman bent down to pick up the bags. 

“Ice cream, some cakes, chocolate and strawberry syrups just incase you want them on your ice cream. Also I bought this pie from the bakery you loved so much. The lady behind the cash register said hi,” Drew shamelessly stripped down in front of the door. He did not want to step on the carpet. Roman would kill him. Once he was completely naked, he wrapped the towel around his waist and looked up to see Roman staring at him. “What? Something’s on my face?” Drew reached up to wipe his face. 

“You silly, sexy, handsome brute,” Roman chuckled and slightly tiptoed to kiss Drew on his cheek. “Thank you for the cakes and pie,”. The Scottish man huffed, his large hand came down to rest on Roman’s ass and could not resist giving it a squeeze. The shorter man gasped at the sudden action but laughed as he slowly pulled away to prepare their dinner.

“Shower and dress warmly, dinner will be ready by then,” Roman was back inside the kitchen and Drew still had a smile on his face as he walked towards their room to do what Roman told him to. 

20 minutes later, Drew reemerged. He wore a navy blue t-shirt, slightly loose on him and grey sweatpants. He was not sure if the sweats were his or Roman’s but since when did he care. Roman had prepared the food, and they ate in peace, randomly talked about their work and friends’ updates. Once dinner was done, Drew helped out with the cleaning. 

Roman told Drew to wait in the living room as he took the desserts out of the fridge. Drew complied and waited patiently on the couch. The TV was on, and Drew just lazily flipped through the channels, nothing attracted him so far. When Roman came back with desserts, Drew dropped the remote as he looked at his husband. Roman just casually walked around inside their home with nothing but an apron. With lace. What the fuck. When did he change?!

“Oh, I forgot the plates,” Roman was about to get up to get some utensils but Drew’s sudden grip around the older man’s wrist managed to stop him. 

“What do you think you’re doing, Roman?” Drew’s voice became huskier than before. The Samoan had some guts to look down at him with his innocent, confused eyes. Drew did not wait for Roman’s replies as he yanked his smaller husband down, and Roman landed on top of Drew. Their positions forced Roman to straddle Drew’s thighs with the Scottish man’s hand rested on both sides of Roman’s hips. The tattooed man chuckled and bit his lower lip, his fingers playfully danced on Drew’s chest.

“Do you like it? Seth told me to get one. I got it months ago but I didn’t know when to wear. It’s a bit too small, I think, should’ve gotten a bigger size,” Roman looked down at his black with white lace apron he had gotten on the internet. He ordered L for size but it was meant for ladies, and he was a 260 pounds Samoan with muscles and tattoos. Some kind of maid kink whatever it was stated on the description. Seth mentioned something about it and though he did not really need it to seduce his husband, he wanted to try something new.

Drew’s silence made Roman looked back up to the man he currently straddled. Drew’s blue eyes seemed slightly darker than before. It got him worried, maybe Drew did not really like this kind of thing? Roman gulped and tried to move away but Drew’s strong hands held him in place. “Drew?” Roman’s soft voice did it for him. The Scottish man placed a hand on Roman’s nape and pulled him down for a deep kiss. The older man’s moan were muffled, his hands gripping Drew’s loose t-shirt. 

“You fucking tease. You’re going to regret this,” Drew breathed out before he claimed his husband’s lips once again. “I’m going to tear that ass, and I don’t want you hear you whining about it being sore tomorrow, or I’m going to tie you up for some spankings. Do you understand?” Both of his hands were back on Roman’s ass this time, squeezing and parting the cheeks a part, causing the other man to whimper. His teeth left marks on Roman’s neck. The Samoan could not say anything but a simple ‘Yes, sir,’. 

Drew lifted his smaller husband and gently laid him down on his back on the couch. He ordered Roman to stay still as he moved to grab something from the kitchen, and then came back with a can of whipped cream. Oh God, Roman thought to himself. 

“Drew, wait, are you-” Roman tried to sit up but Drew was quick to push him down again. The Scottish man’s hand moved down and gave Roman’s teat a pinch. His husband yelped in shock. 

“Did I tell you to move, Roman?” Drew’s deep voice forced him to strop struggling and just laid still on his back. “And just for trying to stop me, you’re not allowed to touch yourself or me. If you do, I’m getting the handcuffs out,” Drew did not wait for Roman to say anything as he ripped (not really, he just aggressively peeled off the velcro straps of the apron) the only fabric on his husband’s torso off, and dove down to attack Roman’s smooth chest. He bit and tug at Roman’s nipples drawing more whines and cries from the man below him. Drew grabbed the can of whipped cream and Roman could do nothing but watched as his Scottish lover sprayed out some cream on his chest then licking it cleaned. The whipped cream was cold on his heated skin. Drew continued to spray some more cream on his husband but now focusing on the hardened nubs. 

“Ah, Drew!” Drew bit down harshly on Roman’s nipple that was surrounded by the sea of ink on his chest as he cleaned the cream off the Samoan. It felt good. So good, Roman thought he could come just with Drew messing around with his sensitive nipples. 

“Fuck, you’re so sexy, Ro,” The Scottish man pulled back and wiped his mouth. Roman did not dare to move as his eyes followed his husband’s movement. Drew grabbed one of the cakes Roman had placed on the coffee table earlier before carefully placing the dessert on Roman’s belly. Drew knew how insecure Roman was when it came to his physique especially his abdomen area. While Roman did not mind Drew squeezing and groping his thick ass, he did not really like it when his Scottish husband paid too much attention to his ‘fat stomach’ (as Roman called it). Drew obviously hated it whenever Roman tried to push him away because of it. The Samoan was clearly blind if he did not notice how much Drew loved every part, every inch of his body. It was a daring move for Drew’s part but he would risk it all as long as Roman knew nothing on him was imperfect for Drew. 

The Scottish man could feel how Roman’s body stiffened the moment the cake touched his skin. Roman’s eyes darted down to Drew, silently pleading to have it removed. Drew was having none of it. Not this time. Drew moved up to kiss his husband.

“You never believed me when I told you I love every side of you. I know you still won’t believe me now even if I tell you, but Roman, I love everything about you. Your beautiful face, you ass, those killer thighs, your so-called fat tummy. Whatever bullshit you’ve been telling yourself for years, I’m ending it tonight,” Roman’s eyes turned glassy as he let his husband kissed him again. Roman could not find his voice so he nodded, trusting Drew to make him understand. Drew smiled down at the older man before he peeled off his loose t-shirt and sweatpants, throwing them on the floor. Then he moved back down to take a bite of the cake. Roman was trying to calm himself down as he watched his husband having his dessert using his belly as the plate. Drew smirked when he realized Roman would not struggle, he licked his lips once before he marked Roman’s skin with his teeth. 

“I love this so much,” Drew continued to bite and suckle the skin around his husband’s middle. “Such beautiful body, only for me to enjoy. No one else can have this. No one else can taste it. Only me,”. The Scottish man began to tease the bellybutton, licking down the navel and then came dangerously close to Roman’s hard on. Roman grunted when he felt Drew bit down on his skin again. The Samoan knew he was not allowed to hold Drew yet so his fingers had turned white from gripping the fabric of the couch hard. He bit his lower lip to stop himself from moaning too loudly as Drew continued to mark around his middle. He wanted to cry out whenever Drew bit his skin a little too hard but Drew seemed to acknowledge Roman’s movement and he would kiss the reddening skin as a silent apology. 

Drew sat back once he was satisfied. He took the cake off Roman and brought it up to his husband’s lips. Roman did not immediately accept the offer and looked up to Drew, waiting for permission. “Open up, baby,” Drew ordered softly. Roman complied. The Samoan opened his mouth and let Drew fed him. Once he finished the dessert, he continued to lick Drew’s fingers. The Scottish man did not hesitate to push his fingers inside his husband’s mouth, letting Roman licked the icing and cream away. 

As Roman was busy suckling on his fingers, Drew moved his free hand down to tap at the older man’s puckered hole. Roman whimpered in need and began to spread his legs apart further. Drew moved to settle between his husband’s thighs without removing his hand from Roman’s mouth. 

“Someone is already wet for daddy,” beads of cum began to leak out of Roman’s pisshole. Drew teasingly gave the head a squeezed and watched as the precum flowed out, dripping on Roman’s stomach. He laughed when Roman suddenly bucked his hips, needing more from his lover. His muffled whines and pleads were ignored as Drew began to use the fluid as lube. He scooped some precum using his fingers before he circled Roman’s hole again. 

“Drew, please,” Roman gasped out as he felt his husband’s finger tip teasingly pushing in. Drew did not even lift his head to look at the other man as he continued to slowly push through the muscle ring. 

“Ahh, fuck!” cried the Samoan when Drew suddenly pushed his middle finger in deep, his knuckle was resting against Roman’s spasming hole. The younger man did not stop as he began to move his hand, finger fucking his husband in several times before adding another finger to spread his husband’s needy hole further, drawing louder moan from Roman. 

“Please, please, please, please,” was all Roman could mutter. His own fingers dug into the couch, trying to strain himself. Hips bucking every time Drew mercilessly rammed his fingers in. 

“Please what, Ro?” Drew’s other hand reached up and grabbed a handful of Roman’s hair, yanking the Samoan’s head back, exposing his marked neck. Roman winced from the pain and pleasure that Drew gave him at once. When Roman did not answer fast enough, Drew slid his fingers out of his husband’s hole causing the older man to whine in frustration.

“Nooo...please, daddy.....put it back in. Please fuck me. Please wreck me open,” Roman panted out. Drew was still holding him down by his long locks. The Scottish man smirked evilly. Using his free hand, he flicked Roman’s balls, causing the man to yelp in surprise. “No, please, don’t,” The Samoan tried to move his hip away from the assault. Wrong move. Roman cried out when Drew tugged his hair back harder this time. 

“Did you just try to run away from me, Roman?” It was not really a question so Drew did not wait for replies. He gave the balls some gentle taps before flicking them again, eliciting more cries from his husband. Roman tried to close his legs but Drew would just order him to spread them out again. 

The Scottish continued to mercilessly punish his husband’s balls. From gentle slaps, to flicking, to taps and some hard slaps, even a pinch or two. Roman’s thighs were trembling. His breathing was uneven as he surrendered his lower half to his lover. Tears trailed down the sides of his face. Drew delivered one last slap at the sore balls and he watched as Roman’s eyes rolled, mouth hung open, fingers turned white as he held onto the couch for his dear life, hips lifted slightly, toes curled in, and his dick spurted out ropes of cum, creating big mess on his own abs and chest. Drew was loving every second of it. His husband’s dick twitched and spurted more white fluid as Drew’s fingers lightly stroked the spent organ. 

“Fuuuuuucckkkkk,” Roman moaned loudly when Drew tapped his pisshole with his finger and gave the sore head a swipe. The Samoan was super sensitive to touches now but knowing his husband he knew Drew was not going to stop yet, and he hated when he was right. Roman’s chest was heaving and trembling as he tried to catch his breath from the orgasm. Drew had released his hair after he came the second time. Roman watched through hooded eyes as his Scottish lover bent down to take the spent cock into his mouth, giving it a gentle suck but it was enough for Roman to arch his back, crying out ‘Stop!’ when Drew began to graze his teeth along the twitching organ. “No more. Please, no more, daddy, it’s too much,” he winced out.

Drew thought he had punished his husband enough that night so he let go. The Scottish then moved up to once again kiss his husband deeply on the lips. Drew pushed some hair off his husband’s sweaty forehead before he planted a kiss. 

“I’m not done with you yet, Roman,” The said man’s eyes grew wide as he stared back at his husband. Before he could protest, Drew flipped him on his front this time. The taller man stood up, grabbed both of Roman’s arms and held it on his back. Drew bent down to pick up the apron that Roman had dropped earlier and used the straps to tied the Samoan’s hands on his back. Drew moved their position so Roman’s ass was facing him and Roman had to bury his face between the pillows on the couch. Drew forced Roman to kneel at the edge of the cushioned seats and present his ass up. Drew kneeled so his face would be at the same height as Roman’s ass, he grabbed both of the cheeks and spread them apart to reveal the pink hole. The Scottish man did not waste time as he dove in to rim his husband’s hole this time. 

“Oh God. Oh fuck. Oh God, feels so good, daddy” Roman whimpered out. He could feel Drew’s tongue pushing in passed the ring and Roman pushed back. He was being tongue fucked by his husband. Everything just felt so intense, he got slightly lightheaded.

Drew stood back up again after he made sure Roman’s hole was relaxed enough for him. He placed his big girth against Roman’s entrance before he thrusted in balls deep. Roman’s scream was muffled by the pillows. His hips bucked and trembled from the sudden movement. “Please...be gentle with me, daddy. You’re so big,” Roman’s voice cracked as Drew began to pull out half way before slamming in again.

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do. You’ll accept whatever I give to you, slut,” Drew rammed his cock harder, drawing high pitch cries from his Samoan husband. He spread the fat cheeks further and shoved in deeper. 

Roman could not stop screaming as Drew rammed at his prostate over and over again. He was about to come again. He tried to tug his hands free from the bond but he could feel his muscles began to weaken from all the fucking. Drew’s thrusts became rougher and merciless. His heavy balls slapping against Roman’s hardening boner. After several thrusts, Roman came on the couch this time. His dick spraying out cum. He was crying from the endless pleasure. 

He knew Drew was close to coming as he felt his lover’s dick grew. Drew gripped hard at Roman’s already bruised hips, balls resting against Roman’s, he grunted as he came inside his Samoan husband. Roman’s body jerked few times when his inside was flooded by streams of hot cum. Drew thrusted few more times, letting his spurting cock softened inside the warm hole. He bent down, slowly grabbed his husband’s wet face and gave him a kiss. Drew finally pulled out after few minutes, he watched as the cum leaked out, trailing down to Roman’s balls before dripping to the floor. Drew then reached down to untie his husband’s hands. Once released, Roman drew his hands closer to his chest. His eyes closing as he tried to catch his breath again. He came a lot in only few hours. 

Drew sat back down next to Roman who was still kneeling. Carefully, Drew pulled Roman up to straddle his thighs again. Roman whimpered as he thought Drew was not done with him yet, but his Scottish husband just shushed him. He pushed Roman’s head down to rest on his bare chest, strong arms holding his lover in place. 

After some silence and Roman seemed to calm down a little, Drew spoke, “Are you alright, baby? Did I hurt you too much?” Roman just shook his head. Drew gently gripped Roman’s chin to lift his face up. Romans eyes were still glassy from crying, some hair messily plastered on his forehead. “You’re in pain?” Drew asked worriedly. 

“It was a good kind of pain,” a small smiled formed on Roman’s tired face. Drew chuckled and pecked his husband’s lips. “My hands hurt though....and my balls,” Roman reached down to cup his sore organ. The sacs were slightly swollen. Drew took Roman’s hand and kissed the mark around the wrist from the apron straps he used to tie him up earlier. 

“I’d love to kiss you balls too, if you want,” Drew said playfully. Roman rolled his eyes and hit his husband’s chest.

“No, you won’t. You ruined the apron, and my ass.. No more fucking until next week,”. Now, it was Drew’s turn to whine at how cruel Roman’s decision was. The Samoan ignored him and continued to bury his face in his husband’s chest. 

“You fucked me so deep, my ass will be sore until next week. Tomorrow will be our off night, and if you dare to put your dick anywhere near me, you can spend the night on this lovely couch alone,”. Drew pouted, quietly grumbling that it was not even his fault and Roman was the one who started it. Roman giggled at his husband’s childish reaction, but he needed rest. His ass needed rest. “I need to shower, I feel disgusting from the cream and cake you put on me,” Roman slowly moved off Drew to stand, he winced as he felt Drew’s cum began to flow out more and trail down his thigh. 

“I’ll help,” Drew offered. He placed an arm around Roman’s waist and guided him to their bathroom. He helped Roman to wash his long locks, chest and hole. Roman almost smacked Drew on the head when his lover roughly shoved a finger in his super sensitive and sore hole. 

Did Roman regret his decision to tease his husband in the first place though? Never, and best believe he would do it again. Maybe he would order some more things online too.

[goldeneyedgirl]

Part 2 of MCU/Twilight verse

“That MCU crossover I’m writing that actually hasn’t mentioned the MCU at all yet.”

Alt 7: Found Family 

Rating: T for swearing

Words: 2,551

Summary: Twilight X MCU crossover. The Snap doesn’t just kill humans. What happens next?

Notes: Is this even Whump-y enough to count to Whumptober? I don’t know, everyone’s grieving. I made myself watch Endgame again and I found something useful. I know it probably feels like I wiped out a lot of characters, but there’s method to my madness. I’m desperately resisting the urge to make some obvious corrections to the MCU, and I’m pretty sure the last two chapters are going to be needlessly self-indulgent. And yes, I need a title. 

Part One here

two. survivors

What happens next?

It’s a good question, and one Alice used to be able to answer. Her predictions have… well, they haven’t stopped, but there are less. Maybe she’s not saying everything but he doesn’t press.

They stay in Forks. It’s the easiest option, really. They have resources at the Forks house - all of Jasper’s computers, Rose’s cars, Carlisle’s medication stash. And for, now, it makes sense to keep up the masquerade - the orphaned Cullen kids, in that big old house.

And Seth Clearwater. Neither of them have made more than polite inquiries about the Quileute reservation, because what can they do, really? They weren’t allowed on the land, and nothing they offer will be accepted. Seth doesn’t want to talk about it either, so they just… don’t. Not yet.

The first announcements and news reports are hard to listen to - half of all living creatures. Humans, animals, plants, sea-life… just gone. Then there are the people who survived, but died in the aftermath; the patients in surgery with the dust of their surgeons sinking into their chest cavity, the passengers on an airplane, the school bus with no driver. The news plays on, listing losses and catastrophes until he loudly asks if Seth wants to play Xbox instead.

Alice goes with them, and sits crosslegged on a recliner, watching them.

“Carlisle would have liked that,” she says suddenly, when Emmett realises the error in picking a war game - should have opted for a racing game instead.

“Liked what?” he asks, as he gets up to change the disc. Seth doesn’t say anything, playing with the recliner buttons instead.

“‘Half of all living creatures’,” she quotes. She’s been wearing one of Jasper’s t-shirts under her cardigan, and the scent of his brother is fading the longer she wears it. “Carlisle would have appreciated that. That the universe thought we were living creatures. Might have convinced Edward that we weren’t total monsters, either.”

Seth looks up at her, confused. “Why wouldn’t you be living creatures?” he asks, concentrating at the recliner tips him right back.

“We don’t breathe or age or change,” Alice says, a smirk playing around her face as Seth yelps when the entire chair begins to tip, but luckily it doesn’t fall.

“But you eat,” Seth accepts the controller Emmett passes him. “And you’ve got families. That means you still count.”

“I wish we didn’t.” Emmett doesn’t realise he’s said those words aloud until he realises Seth and Alice are both staring at him. He wants to explain that if they didn’t count, then there wouldn’t be five vases lined up on the mantel (three empty) full of dust. That he wouldn’t be sitting here playing Xbox with Seth Clearwater, and Alice wouldn’t be wearing leggings and her husband’s t-shirt, looking brittle and tired. That he wouldn’t go into their room every night, and bury his face in Rose’s clothes to keep himself from going insane.

But he doesn’t need to. They both understand - Alice sits with Seth when the boy sniffles and tries to hide it; Emmett hears Alice padding around Jasper’s office, having a conversation with thin air, questions asked to silence. If there was some loophole they could grab with both hands and exploit, he knows he and Alice and Seth would take it, humanity and life and all those upright and moral things be damned.

“Just what everyone needs,” Alice muses, leaning back and stretching like a cat. “A world where humans and animals were cut in half but the vampires weren’t.”

And she’s right. That would be a mess. The fucking end of times.

“That would be a cool movie,” Seth says absently, focused on the screen and forcing Emmett’s car off the road and into a ravine.

Alice watches them play for awhile before getting up. A few minutes later, there’s a knock at the door and low voices. Charlie Swan, with Carlisle’s phone.  Emmett lets Seth win a second race, focused on the conversation Alice is having - why it took Charlie so damn long to bring the phone, how they’re holding up; his irritation at the delay it took to get Carlisle’s phone is tempered when he hears the genuine concern Charlie has for Alice. He doesn’t know much about Bella’s father, but he seems like a good guy.

Not that Alice needs to act the part - she looks broken. Most of the time he feels like he’s seeing a part of her that he shouldn’t be seeing, that the loss and grief that becomes her is somehow shameful to witness; it’d be less awkward to see her naked than to see her twisting Jasper’s t-shirt in her hands with that glassy look of hopelessness she tries to hide.

Alice feels the same about him; that Emmett without Rose is devoid of that joie de vivre, that endless good humour, the extra joke. He feels tired in his bones, deflated, and distracted with the space in his chest that Rose used to fill. He feels like an old man, when he was never finished being a young man, never made it to middle-age.

But they are trying. Especially with Seth in the house - he’s taken over the bedroom that Esme planned to give to Bella, mostly because it didn’t stink of vampires as much as any other room; and neither of them wanted to dismantle Esme’s studio or Carlisle’s office. It wasn’t really much - a mattress and boxspring, a dresser and desk. Alice had given him a laptop to use, and found some new bedding for him, and occasionally even remembered that a fourteen year old boy shouldn’t be eating pizza six nights a week, and probably needed more boundaries than they were giving him. But Alice isn’t maternal, and her attempts at forcing vegetables and a bedtime on Seth usually get forgotten within a day or two.

Charlie Swan leaves, and he listens as Alice puts Carlisle’s phone into his vase, and then he focuses on the game so that Seth doesn’t think he’s letting him win because of pity or anything.

—

It’s not until late summer than people start bothering them. Parents of classmates who suddenly don’t have any children of their own to worry over. Colleagues and acquaintances who feel some kind of lingering responsibility. Busy-bodies, usually a part of some self-aggrandising self-appointed community group butting into everyone’s grief.

Alice ignores the early attempts to interfere, to crack open both the metaphorical and literal door for anyone who isn’t Charlie Swan. She’s taken to doing the oddest tasks, but Emmett doesn’t ask. At the moment, she’s painting every single door in the house with a swirling pattern of flowers that is tiny and detailed and fills up the day. Esme would have a conniption if she saw her lovely doors like this (he remembers when Alice and Jasper first arrived, and her art projects ran afoul of Esme - she had apologised and channeled that manic energy into embroidery instead; there’s a pair of unspeakably ugly curtains hanging in the Vermont house from one panicked week when Jasper went off with Peter and Charlotte).

Then the harassment starts - both her and him, since he’s apparently considered her ‘guardian’. Alice hangs up the phone numerous times wordlessly before being so outstandingly rude to Mrs Newton that both he and Seth stare at her before Emmett remembers he’s actually supposed to be in charge - as far as the rest of the town knows, at least - and calls to deter any more visits or phone calls or casseroles because Alice isn’t well and the disruptions are upsetting her.

If Carlisle or Esme were here, they’d think to send Mrs Newton flowers or something as an apology, but they aren’t, and no one can get Alice to apologise when she doesn’t want to, and Seth confided in him that she’s crying when he’s hiding in the garage and Seth is totally at a loss over what to do about a crying girl that isn’t Leah, so maybe they’ll just leave it at that. Give the town something new to gossip about.

But it does spark sudden realisation in both Cullens about a topic that has been long forgotten - school. Alice and Emmett have both graduated, but Seth had not. Seth had another four glorious years in high school, even if the Res school is down to double digits of enrolments, and probably won’t even run every weekday.

Seth whines and begs and negotiates until Alice stamps her foot and demands to know what Sue Clearwater would say and that makes Seth all small and miserable, and Alice hates herself and Emmett solves the problem by making a large donation through one of their anonymous charities to the Res school so that Seth can at least do online learning, and apparently that’s a huge deal that is on the local news, and that makes Alice and Seth laugh because only Emmett would stop a teenage boy’s whining by revolutionising a tribe’s educational provisions with a cheque large enough to sustain a small city for a year.

But it’s good help - it means the children who suddenly have no parents and have to raise siblings can still study; it means that half-empty classrooms don’t necessarily mean half-empty classes; it also means that other tribes with larger losses and no way of schooling are invited to join them.

That’s one good thing they’ve managed.

He also fixed the backdoor as good as new, so it should be two, but he’s pretty sure that doesn’t count now that Alice has painted flowers blooming and dying all over it.

At some point they both bully Seth into going home again, to get his own stuff - clothes and bedding and photos and all those things you look for when you’re in a house that isn’t yours. He yells at them, they yell at him, and he storms off. But now there’s a photo of him with his parents and sister on his dresser, and a bunch of books crowding his desk, and the world’s most beat-up DS under his pillow. There are more photos, somewhere - Emmett knows that because Alice knows where they are and then one day there are two framed photos joining the vases on the mantle - one of Sue and Harry Clearwater on their wedding day, and one of Leah laughing. Neither of them knows what happened to Sue or Leah precisely on that day, but Seth doesn’t bring the ashes with him, so they don’t ask.

Summer folds into fall, and what’s left of Esme’s gardens wither up. Charlie Swan checks on them every few weeks, sounding tired. There’s a lot of work for him right now - mostly community and social issues, like scared and orphaned children hiding, people struggling with money, grief, religion. There’s been some shortages of food, since there’s less being grown, less people to process and package and ship it, and a little town hours outside of Seattle is not a priority to whomever is deciding where to send a milk delivery.

They order Seth’s food from high-end places online that deliver them quickly and quietly; Alice starts choosing long-life and bulk items, and no one needs to ask because it’s obvious things will get worse before they get better. Seth holds a pretty intense grudge against the powdered strawberry milk, though.

But food shortages are the least of their worries, as Alice uses the dining room wall to start taking nonsensical notes, and Emmett’s heard enough stories to know that losing a mate can be… well, he’s not having much fun, but the very last thing he needs is to wrangle Alice if she’s lost her mind. Dead or not, he knows he could never lay a hand on her even if she did go nuts out of love for his family, out of respect for Jasper, and out of this funny bond they’ve somehow formed, being the last ones left.

The notes turn into lists, lists of everyone they’ve ever known, in her swirling handwriting. Even people they know are gone, like Bella, goes on the list.

Then she starts striking out names, like she’s slashing with a knife - Carlisle, Esme, Jasper, Rosalie, Edward, Bella, Charlie, Sue, Leah, Sam, Jacob, Paul… Slash, slash, slash.

Then it starts getting interesting. Peter and Charlotte are gone, but so are half the goddamned Volturi (Alice smirks as she crosses out Caius, Jane, Alec, Dimitri because imagining Aro on his throne with grief-mad Marcus and only the minions is a pretty picture indeed). Carmen and Tanya have survived, but Kate, Irina, and Eleazer are gone. Garrett is alive, but Randall and Mary aren’t. J Jenks didn’t make it either, which makes things… difficult.

Alice scowls darkly as she scratches out Maria’s name, and Emmett wonders if it’s because she didn’t get to do the honours of destroying the Mexican harpy herself. Or because wherever Jasper is now, so is Maria, and Alice is left behind.

Finally, she is done, and the list is nearly balanced in living and dead. Alice’s left eye twitches, and whatever she’s thinking she doesn’t say as she stands up.

“Alaska and then Mexico, then,” she says to him, and he gives her the Look that he gives her and Edward and Jasper every time one of them forgets that not everyone has a gift and some of them have to use their words.

“We need to check on Carmen and Tanya; I think they need us,” Alice explains, still examining the list. “I saw that we need to go. And then we’re going down to Mexico.”

“Maria’s dead,” he gestures at her list, and Seth wanders in stuffing his face with Pringles, and turns white at the sight of Esme’s freshly defaced walls; evidently Motherly Wrath is something universal across all of the species.

“Maria’s dead, and left behind a bunch of fresh newborns,” Alice sounds tired. “There’s no one left for clean up, Em, no one who knows. And it will be bad if we don’t step in soon.”

There might be something cathartic in that for Alice, undoing Maria’s life’s work. Maria’s lands weren’t exactly in the wealthiest or most populated lands these days - Jasper kept a secret map that wasn’t at all a secret - and if going down there and taking off a few heads saves a mother or father or child, then maybe it’s worth the hassle.

“Fine. Alaska and Mexico,” he agrees, and Seth cheers.

“Road-trip!” he declares around a mouthful of chips. Alice rolls her eyes.

“I’ll make you up a passport,” she says, not even bothering to argue with the younger boy that he’ll be joining them. “We’ll take the Jeep, Em - Rose just finished it.”

The words hang in the air for a second, and he nods in agreement. There might be something in that, taking the last gift-gesture-offering Rose ever did for him on their End-of-the-World Road Trip. Alice can rip the heads off newborns, he can drive around in the SUV his wife carefully and lovingly put together just to please him, and maybe he’ll buy Seth a beer in Tijuana.

Closest thing they’ll ever get to therapy, he supposes.

[jewish-privilege]

...This was the last day of the year for the class of 2018 at Glenelg High School. There was going to be an awards ceremony, a picnic, that end-of-a-journey feeling that always made [principal David Burton] so proud of his job. But as he was on his way to work at 6:25 a.m., the assistant principal had called, agitated and yelling about graffiti...

...Beneath his dress shoes, there were more swastikas. Spray painted around them were crude drawings of penises.

Then Burton saw the letters “KKK.” He saw the word “Fuck” again and again next to the words “Jews,” “Fags,” “Nigs” and “Burton.”

He kept walking, following the graffiti around the building’s perimeter. It was on the sidewalks, the trash cans, the loading dock, the stadium around back. There were more than 100 markings in total, though he didn’t bother to count.

He turned a corner and saw something written in large capital letters on the sidewalk: “BURTON IS A NIGGER.”

...A quarter of all hate crimes reported to the FBI, more than any other category, are similar to the attack discovered at Glenelg on May 24, 2018. Vandalism and destruction of property, a physical marking of an age-old threat: You don’t belong here.

...In one of those homes, 72-year-old Susan Sands-Joseph was watching. She knew Glenelg well. She was one of the first black students to attend the school after desegregation. Suddenly, all the memories that she tried not to dwell on were dredged up again: the words she was called, the tomatoes thrown at her head, the looks her parents gave her when she came home saying scalding hot soup had been pushed into her lap again. “It’s okay,” she had promised them. “I’m fine.”

...Panicked, [Seth Taylor, one of the vandals,] started Googling:

“How long do you go to jail for vandalism?”

And then: “Can you get a hate crime for painting swastikas?”

...He had already begun to separate what he’d done from who he believed himself to be. He hadn’t intended to hurt anyone, he said. He would always maintain he wasn’t an anti-Semite, a homophobe or a racist.

...At 11:35 p.m. on May 23, the students’ IDs began auto-connecting to the WiFi. It took only a few clicks to find out exactly who was beneath those T-shirt masks.

“You have the right to remain silent,” an officer said to Seth before long. “Anything you say or do . . . ”

They told him to remove his graduation cap and gown. They cuffed his arms behind his back.

Seth realized they were about to march him outside, past the windows of the cafeteria. By now it would be filled with students eating lunch.

“Can you cover my face so that the kids don’t videotape me?” he asked.

“No,” an officer replied. “You deserve this.”

...Most are unaware of the history that came before Columbia [a planned community founded on the principles of integration and inclusion in Howard County]. ... An estimated 2,800 people were enslaved in the county at the beginning of the Civil War. A century later, when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 that schools must be desegregated, Howard County was so resistant that it took more than a decade for the black-only school, Harriet Tubman, to close its doors. The opposition to black students learning alongside white ones was so fierce, a cross was burned. It happened outside a school dance at Glenelg High School.

...Among black families like [Tyler Hebron’s], there were doubts that the white teens would face the kind of punishment black teens receive for similar crimes. Two years earlier, a group of students had painted swastikas on a historic black schoolhouse in Northern Virginia. A Loudoun County judge sentenced them not to jail time or community service, but to reading: along with visiting the Holocaust museum, each had to choose a single book about Nazi Germany or the Jim Crow era and write a report on it.

...Two of [the vandals] had tried to have the hate-crime charges dismissed. Their attorneys claimed that their First Amendment rights were being violated. They could be punished for the vandalism, the argument went, but not for what they wrote.

It didn’t work.

Now, it was [Judge William V. Tucker’s] job to answer a question the community had been debating for nearly a year: What consequences did these young men, now 19, deserve?

...Seth said he just wanted all of them to understand: He is not a racist.

Later, he would explain himself this way: “I never really understood the symbol of the swastika. I knew it was wrong to plaster it somewhere. I didn’t learn exactly what [the Nazis] were doing to the Jews until I went to the Holocaust Museum. I never learned that they were mutilated. I knew that they were, like, burned. But I never learned that they had experiments done on them, were injected with diseases. The school didn’t include that. They just included the burning and the train cars.”

His understanding of the KKK was limited, too, he said. “Some people think it’s just a word, or a symbol or three letters put together. . . . But they were lynching people, hurting people for no good reason.”

...“I spray paint one racist thing and, suddenly, I become a racist? Just because I did it doesn’t mean I hate Jews, gay people or black people.”

He was standing before the judge, pleading guilty to a hate crime, but he would not admit that he harbored any hate.

...Behind her, Principal Burton was listening. He’d heard Joshua Shaffer’s attorney give a similar speech. When Matthew Lipp was sentenced, he would hear it then too. Tyler Curtiss had written it in a Facebook apology the day after the crime...

They all believed it was possible to do what they did without really meaning it.

Burton wanted to look them in the eye and say: “You did something very racist. How you don’t think you’re a racist, I don’t know.”

...He believed what possessed them to draw those words and symbols that night wasn’t a lack of knowledge, but something deeper, something ugly, something taught to them, consciously or unconsciously, along the way. If they couldn’t admit that now, maybe they never would. But it wasn’t his responsibility to educate them any more.

When it was Burton’s turn to speak at Seth’s sentencing, he didn’t say the word “racism.” He talked about all the people the crime had affected — the teachers crying in his office, the parents who pulled their kids out of his school, his daughter in tears, and for just a few moments, himself: “I know I give up my time, my effort, I give up my life for my students,” he said. “I think the only thing I am asking in return is just a little bit of respect.”

...[Burton] had to focus [this year] on his 1,200 current students: the LGBTQ kids who still felt isolated. The Jewish girl who told the local paper she still wishes she could transfer. Whoever was still scrawling swastikas on the bathroom stalls.

In the past year, he’d created a task force of diverse students to work on the school’s climate. Soon every freshman would go through an empathy workshop. And nearly 40 of his employees had spent the year meeting to discuss the book “Waking Up White,” a memoir of a white woman who comes to understand that racism is a system that she had been shaped by and contributed to her entire life without even realizing it. Maybe, he thought, that lesson would get passed on to Glenelg’s students...

[Read Jessica Contrera’s full piece at The Washington Post]

[xxfanfiction-emo-trinityxx]

Fireworks - Ryan Ross x Reader

Summary: You’re on a party on New Year’s Eve, but it doesn’t seem like you get to spend it the way you would like, so you decide to leave.

Reader: female (implied)

Warnings: mentions of alcohol

Word count: 1 293

A/N: Quick drabble for New Year’s Eve, that I’m writing between 10pm and 11:30, because I’m still sick, and want something cute with Ryan

“Ten more minutes!”

You rolled your eyes. In the beginning you had been looking forward to this party, you had even dressed up, and made an effort with your make-up. You had felt confident earlier, thinking maybe your friend Ryan would finally see you as more than just his buddy. But the way he was chatting to one of these long legged blondies now, it seemed he was far more interested in her. You did not blame him. She was beautiful, and you were just his friend.

Did you really want to spend midnight watching him kiss her? No, definitely not.

Turning around, your eyes scanned the room. Dan was talking to Nick and Aaron, and neither Seth nor Noah were in sight, and those two were, other than Ryan, the people you would have enjoyed talking to the most right now. But without them around you might as well leave; this party had been over for you the moment the blonde had chatted up Ryan anyway.

You pushed past a couple of people who all were eagerly handing out glasses with sparkling wine or whatever they used to drink to the New Year in a few minutes. Quickly, and without drawing any attention to yourself, you made your way out of the living room. Your jacket had to be in the hallway, buried somewhere between other jackets.

Sighing you searched through the heap of clothes, and when your fingers closed around the familiar material of your coat, you pulled it out. Luckily you were still wearing your elegant boots, so at least you did not have to search for those as well. Your scarf and hat were tightly tucked into the pocket of your jacket. Quickly you slipped into the coat, and were about to put on your hat, the scarf already tightly wrapped around your neck, when suddenly someone spoke up behind you.

“Where do you think you are going? And don’t you dare lie to me, and say you’re watching the fireworks.”

You immediately recognised the familiar, smoky voice of your best friend, and turned around to Z. She was dressed in a beautiful, sparkly black dress, high heels, her lips painted fire red, and her eyes accentuated with dark make up. You sighed again, quietly this time, and turned around to her.

“I’m going home,” you answered truthfully.

“Ryan?”

You just nodded.

“Is there some way I can stop you,” she asked, a sad smile on her lips because she already knew your answer.

“Not unless you know magic,” you laughed, and tried not to let show how close to tears you were.

“Then get home safely, darling,” she whispered, and stepped over a couple of shoes to wrap you in a tight embrace. “Happy New Year.”

“Happy New Year to you, too,” you smiled, and when she pulled away, you moved over to the door, and let yourself out, waving quickly at her a last time. Upstairs at the party someone shouted that it was only three minutes until midnight now.

You walked down the dark and cold street, your hands buried deep in your coat’s pockets, your fingers closed around the car keys. Since you did not drink you had no problem with not being allowed to drive. A couple of families started to leave their houses, preparing the fireworks, some people just held glasses with their drinks.

Just when you had reached your car, quickly approaching steps grew louder behind you. Since the streets were filled with people by now, you were not worried about an attack, so you stepped aside, close to your car, to let whoever hurried down the pavement pass. But instead the steps halted right behind you, and a hand grabbed your wrist turning you around. Alarmed you got ready to defend yourself, but were met with a familiar face.

“Where are you going? Z said you wanted to go home-?”

Ryan was confused, so much you could tell, and apparently he had hurried to get to you; he was not even wearing a jacket in the cold night.

“Yeah, I didn’t really enjoy the party that much,” you shrugged, trying to pull your hand away, but his fingers were still wrapped around yours tightly.

“Why, what’s wrong? It’s so close to midnight,” Ryan asked, and he seemed genuinely upset about you not having stayed.

“Exactly, it felt like I was in the wrong place,” you confessed; you might as well be honest with him, “like nobody even cared if I was there or not.”

“I care,” Ryan protested, making you smile.

“I know, Ry, I know,” you told him, “but let’s be honest: we both know you’d rather be with this pretty girl for your new year’s kiss, so hurry up or you won’t make it before midnight.”

Wide eyed he stared at you.

“Who?”

“That blonde girl? Come on, it’s okay, go have fun. I’ll watch the fireworks, and then drive home,” you assured him, but he shook his head.

“I didn’t, still don’t want her to be my new year’s kiss,” he mumbled, “I wanted to ask you if it’s okay if you I kiss you this year.”

Now it was your turn to be confused and stare at him wide eyed.

“But new year’s kisses are for romantic partners, not friends,” you argued, making him chuckle slightly.

“I know,” he whispered, stepping a little closer to you “That’s the point, you see? I’ve wanted to ask you out for ages now, but I didn’t find the right moment, so I figured…”

You looked up to him, finding he had backed you against the car by now, leaving just a little space between your and his body.

Just when you tried to form an answer that made some sort of sense, cheers erupted all around, and fireworks went off left and right.

“What just happened,” you asked instead. Your mind was still so hard trying to understand what Ryan had just told you, that you had even forgotten that the New Year was merely minutes away.

“I guess it’s midnight,” Ryan realised, and took a careful step back, “Happy New Year, (y/n).”

“Happy New Year, Ryan,” you replied, nervously looking at him.

Had he interpreted your hesitation earlier as rejection, so was it pretty obvious now that you were nervous, but in a good way; your glances wandering between his eyes and his lips gave you away.

“So… new year’s kiss,” he asked quietly, taking the step forward again.

Carefully you nodded, unable to take your eyes away from his face. Gently he let go of your hand, and cupped your face, pulling you in for a kiss. Unable to resist, you grabbed him by the collar of his black dress shirt, and pressed yourself closer to him, making his heart beat faster, and a smile pulled on his lips.

Above you a thousands of fireworks exploded, painting billions of stars into the sky. When you pulled away from Ryan, the lights reflected in his eyes, which looked down on you with so much adoration and love.

“Shall we go back,” you asked, melting into Ryan’s touch as he gently ran his fingers down your jaw.

“Actually I’d rather watch the fireworks together with you,” he smiled.

“But- you’re gonna be cold,” you worried, running your fingers over the thin fabric of his shirt.

“Then let’s sit in your car, and then go home after. We can watch a movie at my place,” he suggested, making you laugh.

“I’d like that,” you grinned, and pulled the keys out to unlock your car, “but what about your jacket?”

“I’m gonna text Dan later,” Ryan smiled, and climbed into the passenger seat. “Now let’s watch the fireworks and kiss some more.”

Taglist (if you want to be added or taken off, please let me know):

General: @justawriterinprogress @robinruns @jayloverthe3rd @lookalivefrosty @angelevansfalls @butterfly-writes @rene-royale @500240

[the-jade-cross]

A Thousand Years - Chapter 7

“Kamber isn’t feeling well?” Calliope asked. “That’s strange. Do you think it has something to do with the pregnancy?” Carlisle shook his head, “I don’t think it’s anything physical…. But emotional.”

Zayne smiled. “Well that is more than enough reason to want to see us…. But why did she specifically ask for Calliope and me?”

The doctor vampire shrugged, “She didn’t say.” Zayne was about to speak again but Calliope interrupted him. “We’ll go see how she is. Where is Edward?” “He left last night for a business trip,” Carlisle replied. “He’ll be back in three days. The twins are out with Jasper and Emmett, hunting.” The two Vicasi kids nodded before heading upstairs to Kamber’s room. When they entered, they found her sitting on the edge of her bed, a piece of paper in her hand and staring off into space.

“Kam?” Zayne asked. “What happened?” Kamber looked up at their appearance and her face showed signs of relief. Calliope rushed over and sat down next to her sister, wrapping her in a hug, “Whatever it is, we’re here to help you.” Zayne walked over and grabbing a chair, sat down on it backwards so he was facing Kamber, “So what’s up?”

Kamber sighed, looking down at the paper in her hands, “Edward has been acting weird the past several weeks. At first, I thought he was just busy or worried about trying to find a job and I told him it wouldn’t matter if he got a job or not, but he said it wasn’t that. Then yesterday he came home and acted all different and more loving than usual…. And he disappeared again to leave for the trip.” “He still isn’t around when you wake up?” Zayne asked, frowning. “Maybe he’s going through something difficult and he doesn’t want to worry you about it.” Kamber nodded, “That’s what I thought…. Until I saw a text on his phone while he was in the shower.” The girl grabbed her phone and turned on a photo that she had taken and showed it to Zayne. The boy looked at it and saw it was a screenshot of a text.

Edward: I told you to not contact me like this anymore.

Bella: You think I would listen? When will you come by tomorrow?

Edward: Usual time

Bella: Man of few words huh?

Edward: Stop annoying me

Bella: ooh so scary!

Edward: I’m warning you

Bella: Fine, just hurry over here before I die of boredom

“Why in the world is he texting his ex?” Zayne asked, frowning.

“Maybe she is annoying him,” Calliope suggested.

Zayne shook his head. “The way that she is talking, it sounds like they are doing something together. She asked when he would come by…. So that means he has gone to her house.” Calliope frowned, “Kamber, what do you think?” The girl shook her head, “I don’t know what to think. That’s why I need your help.” The two Vicasi kids smiled, “What is it?” “I need you to follow Edward. I don’t want to doubt him, but I am beginning to,” Kamber replied. “He is staying at this address.” She held out the piece of paper to Zayne who took it and looked at the address, “Seattle. Okay, when do we leave?” “In an hour,” Kamber replied. “Alice reserved you two tickets for a direct flight there. I got you a hotel room across the street from the hotel Edward is staying at.”

Calliope smiled and tapped her ear, “Good thing I have overly enhanced hearing. We may not even need to leave our room! And with Zayne’s sixth sense, we won’t get caught. What about mom and dad?” Kamber smiled, “I asked Jacob Black and Antigone to cover for you. They’re going to make up a story that you two went with Seth and Leah to Alaska to visit Edward’s cousins up there. Leah and Seth know about it and they are going up there to hunt.” “What about Edward’s cousins?” Zayne asked. “Just making sure there is no hitch.” “Rosalie called them.” Kamber replied. “The only ones who know the truth about the plan are Edward’s cousins, Rose, Alice, Jasper, Emmett, me, you two, Antigone, Jacob, Seth and Leah.” “That’s quite a few people,” Zayne pointed out, but Calliope interrupted him.

“But they’re all reliable. Don’t worry sis, we’ll get to the bottom of this.” Kamber smiled, “I was going to ask Alice or Rose to go but Edward can read their minds. He cannot read yours.” “Got it covered,” Zayne told her, patting her shoulder. “Leave it to us.”

***********

Edward groaned. He had barely checked into his hotel room when Bella had called and told him that she was in the room across the hall from him. He had five minutes to get ready before they went out for a stroll.

Edward grabbed his jacket and pulling it on, stepped out of his room. He saw that Bella had already left her room and was walking toward the elevator. Edward followed but kept rolling his eyes and internally groaning. He completely ignored Bella as she waved her hips seductively as she walked.

When they reached the elevator, Bella opened the door and stepped in, revealing that it was empty. Edward stepped in and forced a smile onto his face.

He walked in and stood across the elevator from Bella. Edward watched as she punched the first floor.

The doors closed and they were left alone in silence.

“Good thing I chose the rooms on the top floor,” Bella smirked.

Edward frowned before looking at the panel to see that indeed they were on the 50th floor and were going all the way down.

Before he had time to register this, Bella had crossed across the elevator and had pressed her leg between his thighs and crashed her lips to his.

Edward wanted to resist but then he remembered their agreement. Groaning in his head, he grabbed the girl’s face with one hand and her thigh with the other, spinning around to pin her to the wall. Bella gasped and moaned as he pressed his weight against her and kissed her back, hard, darting his tongue into her mouth.

Little did he know, that a certain Vicasi girl was standing in her bedroom across the street from him with a shocked expression her face.

“Kamber isn’t going to like this,” Calliope whispered to Zayne.

The boy sighed, “There is no way we can avoid telling her. She knew something bad was happening. The least we can do is tell her the nicest way possible… that Edward is not loyal.”

***************

“Kam?” Alice whispered, peaking into her bedroom.

Viggo and Hunter were asleep in the room across the hall which had been renovated for them since they were now the size of five-year olds and moved in their sleep which meant that there was little room for them in the same bed as Kamber.

When Alice looked in, she was shocked to see Rosalie and Antigone in there, helping the girl pack!

“What is going on?” she asked, charging into the room but closing it so that the twins, who were napping, weren’t roused.

“I have to leave Alice,” Kamber replied, taking a pile of shirts from Rosalie and putting them in her backpack.

“But Kam…” Alice started but Rosalie interrupted her.

“Don’t tell me that you didn’t see this coming Alice. You can see the future,” Rose snapped. “You just didn’t tell us what you saw because you didn’t want to hurt Kamber.” Kamber lifted her eyes and Alice realized the girl had been crying… a lot!

“But why Kam?” Alice asked. “We should talk to Edward about it. He might have had a reason.” “For what?” Antigone snapped. “For kissing Bella in the elevator?” Alice froze. She had always tried to support her brother and remain loyal to him but now that she thought of it, Edward would have told them if something was going on or he was having a hard time…. And yet he went and did something like this without explaining it.

Alice sighed, “But where will you go?” Kamber took the books that Antigone handed to her and stuffed them into the little space left in her bag, “To visit my aunt and uncle in Austria.” “But that’s….” Alice started.

“A long way away,” Kamber finished. “Yeah I know. I was considering leaving one of the boys here with Edward but the last thing I want is for the two of them to be separated…. But I didn’t feel comfortable leaving both twins here. I don’t want them growing up without their mother and….”

The girl couldn’t finish for her voice caught in her throat and she had to swallow a sob. Alice walked across the room and drew the girl into a tight hug.

“I understand Kam. I only hope that one day you’ll be able to return home and we can fix this all up.” Kamber nodded, “One day… I hope.” Without another word, Kamber drew away from her and silently left the room. Rose and Antigone followed, carrying the two bags Kamber filled. When they met her in the living room, she was carrying Viggo on her hip and had Hunter’s hand in his. Both had backpacks on their backs and were looking rather puzzled.

The whole Cullen family, minus Edward, were in the living room as well as Kamber’s whole family.

“Are you sure about this honey?” Mrs. Vicasi asked, trying to fight tears.

Kamber nodded, “I need to do this.” One by one, her family members walked over and gave her a hug. She set Viggo down and allowed the twins to go and say farewell to their many aunts and uncles and grandparents. When Kamber reached Esme, the woman embraced her gently.

“I am glad that you met Edward when you did,” she whispered. “I believe you may have helped him.” Kamber smiled sadly and shook her head, “Not enough.” Finally Carlisle reached the girl and placed his hands on her shoulders, “Be careful. I know you are more than capable of protecting your family.” Kamber smiled before hugging the doctor vampire. Finally, the girl stepped back to look at her family. Viggo and Hunter walked over to her, both of them taking one of her hands.

The girl smiled at her family before she turned and headed out the door. Silently she threw her bag into the back of the truck that her dad had given her. She then lifted each of the twins and buckled them into their car seat before climbing into the front seat herself.

They were about halfway down the road when Kamber picked up her phone and dialed a number rather quickly before putting the phone to her ear.

“Calliope,” she whispered. “Update?”

There was a voice on the other end of the line before a smile lit up Kamber’s face, “Great. Let dad know…. No don’t call Alice, remember? Edward can hear her thoughts. Okay. Bye.” After hanging up, Kamber smiled but quickly put on a serious face before closing her eyes and concentrating. She entered her own mind and began to balance it out, that way her mind was no open to everyone…. No longer blocking her thoughts.

‘Why? Why Edward? Why did you do that?’

Then quickly, the girl reset the balance in her mind, so her mind was now blocked before she smiled into the rearview mirror at the twins who were smiling back.

Viggo turned to Hunter and quickly connected their minds.

‘Poor mother. She is so sad. I wonder why daddy isn’t coming home.’

Hunter smiled, ‘Same. I wonder why we’re going to Austria without daddy.’

Kamber smiled when she saw the twins looking at each other in the back seat. She knew what they were doing. She glanced down at her watch and saw she had two hours before the plane was to take off.

‘This is going to be interesting.’

***************

Edward was pressed against the wall of an alley way again. Bella was all over him, practically eating his face off. He sighed. This was the last day and then he could return home to Kamber and the twins and live a normal life. He would talk to Carlisle about moving, making an excuse about people suspecting Carlisle’s immortality.

Bella pressed into him and moaned, smirking when he was forced to smile at her. However, as Bella latched her lips to his neck, he froze. Did he just hear someone’s thoughts? He always stayed in tune with his parents and siblings’ thoughts…. But there was another pair of thoughts that caught his attention.

It was two people’s thoughts…. and they were talking to each other. Then it dawned on him. It was the twins! Maybe listening to the twins’ thoughts would help time fly by to when he wasn’t bombarded by Bella.

However, what the two boys were thinking of made Edward freeze.

Poor mother….

Why is daddy not home….

Mom was crying last night when Aunt Calliope and Uncle Zayne came home from Seattle….

Aunty Rose is really mad….

I think she’s mad at daddy….

Where is daddy….

Where is daddy….

Poor mother….

Why are we at the airport….

Mommy said we’re going to Austria….

Where is Austria….

Why isn’t daddy here?

Edward frowned, forgetting all about Bella and concentrating on his sons’ memories that kept coming in and out of his mind. Suddenly…. He caught a whiff of another thought close to the twins and he froze when he realized who’s it was….

Why did you choose Bella Edward?

I thought you loved me….

I promised I would always love you….

Maybe I wasn’t the right one for you….

But you were the right one for me….

I love you Edward….

Love you….

Then it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. Edward seemed to snap and pushed Bella off of him, almost making her fall over.

“What’s up with you?” she asked, smirking, thinking that it was part of Edward’s playacting.

“Times up Bella,” Edward hissed. “You say a word and there will be a houseful of vampires after you.” Bella was barely able to open his mouth before Edward ran out of the alley at top speed and back to his car that was parked at the gas pump. He basically threw himself into the car and turned it on, flying out of the lot.

“Come on boys,” Kamber called to the twins.

Viggo and Hunter were staring around them in wonder as they walked through the airport. Kamber found a bench away from all the other people who were waiting to get on the plane and set her bags down. The twins walked over and plopped down on the bench next to her.

Kamber opened her phone and glanced at her texts. Antigone and Glynn had both texted her to check to see if she had gotten to the airport alright.

She glanced at the time and saw they had thirty minutes till the plane arrived.

“Come on,” she whispered nervously. “Please don’t be late.” Almost by magic, she sensed someone’s presence nearby and looking up, she saw a pair of amber eyes staring at her as the person rushed toward her. Kamber rose to her feet and glanced at the twins to see that they had spied the person too but were just smiling, probably talking to each other in their minds.

“Kamber,” Edward whispered hoarsely, coming to stop in front of her.

He was staring at her long and hard, expecting her to do anything…. Yell at him, slap him… anything. However, the girl just smiled up at him sweetly. Reaching up, she planted a warm kiss on his cheek.

“About time you got here,” she remarked in a teasing tone.

Edward furrowed his brow in confusion, “Listen Kam…. What happened with Bella…. I didn’t want to do it…. she… I mean she blackmailed me…. she said that if I didn’t…...” The girl cut him off when her laughter broke out and she had to clutch her stomach to stop from laughing. Edward stared at her wide eyed. What was going on with Kamber? After everything he had done to her, she was laughing. Was she drunk?

“You think I didn’t know that?” Kamber asked, finally calming down. “You think I didn’t know that Bella blocked you from getting a job and met you at the mechanic shop?”

Edward frowned, wondering how on earth she knew about that when a thought dawned on him, “But that is not even the half of it…” “Yeah I know,” Kamber replied, completely placid and calm. “She threatened to not let you get a job unless you spent time with her for a month but when you refused, she threatened to reveal her knowledge of your being a vampire. You agreed to a month of allowing her to fondle and kiss you if she agreed to keep quiet…. Then a few days ago she made a new offer to cut the deal short if you went on a three-day trip with her and pretended to return her advances….”

Edward felt his jaw drop and his eyes widened though his wife just smiled up him, a mischievous look in her eyes.

“How….” “You think I don’t know you Edward?” the girl asked, crossing her arms. “You don’t clear your history on the computer, and I saw what you were searching and all the emails you got with the refusals. In case you have forgotten, my dad is a lawyer, so I didn’t fail to notice that the refusal emails you got also had Bella’s email attached as well.” “Wait what?” Edward asked, freezing.

Kamber nodded, “Yeah, you kinda missed that part. Anyway, I paid a visit to the Swan’s and the chief told me that Bella was at the mechanics… and I knew you were there too. I called Calliope and asked her to investigate and find out what Bella was doing to you. Chief Swan admitted to going with Bella’s request of spreading a rumor about you to the employers and he promised to tell me whenever Bella left her house.” “But Bella lives alone,” Edward pointed out.

“Yeah well,” Kamber mused aloud. “Chief Swan isn’t stupid, and he knows about Bella’s habit of getting into mischief, so he tracks her phone. Whenever you left home, I would contact him and he would let me know where Bella had gone, then Calliope or Zayne would follow and…. Let’s just say my parents gave birth to a bunch of Sherlock Holmeses.”

Edward ran his fingers through his hair. His wife had known what had been happening the whole time!?

“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked.

Kamber smiled and wrapped her arms around his waist, placing her cheek on his chest, “I wanted you to tell me in your own time… but when you never said anything about it and tried to deal with this by yourself, I decided to take things into my own hands… a little more than I already had.” Edward frowned and glanced over Kamber’s head at the twins who were grinning cheekily at their father.

Fooled ya!

Don’t say that! Mommy said to not tease daddy

It’s funny though that he actually believed it!

Edward’s eyes widened at his sons’ thoughts before he gently pushed Kamber back to look at her grinning face.

“You mean…. Letting me hear your thoughts…. Alice, Emmett, Jasper and Rose’s thoughts about you leaving…. you pretending to go to Austria….” “It was all a set up stupid,” Kamber said, punching his chest playfully. “I had to get you home somehow and I thought that if you believed that I was leaving with the twins, then you come home and actually open up about what is going on in that brain of yours. It’s great that you can read minds but Edward, that doesn’t mean you cannot share your thoughts with others.” Edward let out a shaky breath and felt tears creep to his eyes. He should have known that Kamber was suspicious. After all, she is her father’s daughter!

He slumped, his hands falling to rest on Kamber’s shoulders before he lifted his head, tears rimming his golden eyes. Finally, he did what he had been wanting to do for three days. He drew the girl’s head up to him and crashed his lips to hers.

Yay!

Shut up!

Don’t tell me to shut up! You are just as happy!

Shut up.

I wonder when mommy is going to tell him about the surprise.

Like he isn’t surprised enough already.

You’ve got a point.

Edward smiled at his sons’ thoughts. They definitely got their sarcasm from their mother! However, what Viggo had said caught his attention. Gently he pulled away from the kiss and looked down into Kamber’s eyes.

“So… what is this surprise that our sons are thinking about?” he asked, smiling.

Kamber looked over at the twins to see that they were smiling sheepishly, not realizing that their father had been listening the whole time. Turning back to Edward, she reached down and taking his hand into hers, pressed it to her abdomen.

“I was going to wait until you got back from Seattle to try and reach you… but after I found about this little one, I didn’t want to wait.” Edward’s mouth dropped back open and the twins chuckled at this. They found it rather amusing to see their father’s surprised expression. Viggo scuttled off the bench and dragged his twin over to their parents before gripping his father’s leg and looking up at him.

“You better kiss her daddy, or I will,” the boy replied, a mischievous glint in his blue eyes.

Edward and Kamber chuckled when Hunter quickly covered his brother’s mouth and clobbered him over the head for saying such a thing.

Edward looked down at Kamber who was smiling at him and he felt his heart relax. He bent down and pressed a warm, gentle kiss to her lips and Kamber smiled into it, both of them ignoring the gagging noises that Hunter was giving them and the fangirling squeals from Viggo that were partially muffled by Hunter’s hand that was still over Viggo’s mouth. Everything was going to be okay now. He hadn’t lost Kamber or the twins and he could figure out how to deal with Bella…. No scratch that…. They could figure out how to deal with her together.

Suddenly Edward pulled away, his eyes widened.

“What about Bella?” he asked, biting his lip.

Kamber smirked and patted her husband’s cheek, “You’re so cute when you’re clueless.”

Edward cocked his head in confusion while Kamber looked at the twins. She wasn’t sure she wanted them to hear this, so she stood on tiptoe and whispered into his ear.

“She was trying to seduce you to make her crush jealous.”

“How can you be sure that was it?” Edward asked. “She might have had an ulterior motive.” “Oh she did,” Kamber replied, whispering into his ear again. “Cuz her crush is a girl.” Edward froze, Kamber’s mouth still close to his ear. “You mean….” “Yep,” Kamber whispered. “Bella is lesbian.”

[shreddedparchment]

The Brightest Star Pt.04

Enkindled Starfire

05/27/2019

Pairing: Thor x Reader          Word Count: 11,697

Masterpost          Warnings: smut, unprotected sex, language, angst, fluff, polyamory

A/N: I don’t know what it is about this fic that has me struggling so hard to get it just right. I love it but I’m rewriting a lot more for this than I ever have for other stories. Anywho, I hope you like this chapter. More smut for y’all. If you happen to reblog, thanks so much for helping me spread my work! xoxo

“What's this? No. Jeremy, you are not making me go to another stupid gala.” You shove the dark gray envelope back towards him, heavy paper hissing against the table.

“You have to go. You skipped the last one, besides this one is going to benefit the places in need of clean drinking water.” Jeremy isn’t even looking at you.

You watch him flip through another page of the thick binder on his lap. He's focused. Aware of you but not watching you. He looks relaxed, wide shoulders slouched as he leans back in the chair across from you at your desk.

He's not phased by your resistance anymore and that annoys you. You wanna throw a tantrum. You wanna literally scream and shout, despite knowing that you'd send your desk through the wall.

You slide down your chair, letting the only person you’re comfortable around have front seat to your pouting.

He smiles, his full lips slowly stretching upwards. A grin. A smirk. Smug bastard!

“You’re going, Y/N.” He says sternly and finally swings his feet towards you. The chair turns, and he peeks at you over the rims of his glasses. “I’ll go with you.”

You spring back up into your seat, elation shooting out of every pore.

“Really?” You gasp, stunned by the offer. Slightly touched by it too. He knows how much you hate to be the center of attention and because you rarely go to these benefits and banquets, people flock to speak with you.

They're so damn curious about Henry’s little girl. What is the Surestar Energy heiress up to?

Then of course there’s all those eligible bachelors looking to pad their bottom lines.

You’re pretty sure that's why Seth had befriended you. Then he got distracted by Nan, who is much more appealing. She models in her spare time and has an extensive following on social media.

His parents were not happy. Your wealth is no joke.

Jeremy lays his binder aside, a ton of numbers written and highlighted across the paper. He scoots closer to your desk, sitting up straight.

“Yeah. I gotta make sure you walk through the door this time.” He watches you with a gentle smile, pleased by your happiness.

And you are…happy. Happy that you won't have to be alone at the benefit among those people who only care about your net worth. But if you could have gone to this gala with anyone…

Jeremy's hand slides over onto yours. He grabs it, wrapping his fingers around your own, cooling your heat with his normal human temperature.

“It's been a week, Y/N.” His voice is smooth, consoling.

“He never called.” You smile at him through the sadness that's overwhelmed you constantly over the past week. A break down here. A few tears there. No eating one day—Jeremy had been so angry at you he forced you out to dinner and wouldn’t let you leave until you’d consumed something. Anything.

He doesn't understand. He tries, but he can never get it.

For a few blissful hours, you had felt whole. There's no other way to explain the way finally talking to Thor had made you feel.

You’ve been alone for so long.

Yes, you have Jeremy. However, he's not like you. He knows how you tick but he doesn't get it completely. He can't.

Even though Thor didn’t know that you were closer to being like him than any of your fellow humans, the possibility that he'd someday know what you’re capable of and understand the power within you had been an unprecedented comfort. Something to look forward to. A blessing bestowed upon you by the Universe.

Thor, for some odd reason, had asked you for a coffee suggestion and then sat next to you, and asked for your number and…what happened? What went wrong?

“I…I just don’t know what I did, Jer. What did I do?” Your voice cracks as tears sting your eyes. It burns, like acid but you know that's not a power of yours.

It's just the heartache making them burn because Jeremy pulls your hand up to guide you onto your feet. You do what he wants because you’re broken a bit more by this small and short exchange with Thor.

His warmth had been so intoxicating. That Godly aura, the essence of who he is. You'd bathed in it for months and now to have it gone…you feel empty. Like your soul is missing.

“I’m so stupid.” You blubber, angrily. You hate feeling like this. It's more than a crush but why?!

Jeremy makes to pull you down onto his lap but you freeze and yank back away from him. Your eyes roam over the glass wall behind him and the door.

Jeremy releases your hand and hurries to lock it then press his fingers against a small illuminated square of purple light where several arrows and words shine.

The glass wall suddenly darkens, shutting out the eyes that might be watching. Your close relationship with Jeremy isn’t really a secret but you’re at work.

The complicated nature of just how he takes care of you, emotionally, physically, professionally…you'd rather keep it quiet even if some people already guess.

You and Jeremy aren’t in love.

He moves back towards you and turns to lean against the edge of your desk. He pulls you towards him, his hands moving up to wipe the tears from your cheeks.

See, his fingers aren’t burning. You don’t have acid tears.

“I don’t know what you did, chipmunk. But you should have stopped texting him when he didn’t reply.” He's not chastising you but you know he's right.

You fall forward, resting your forehead against his chest as his hands stroke the sides and back of your head, caressing you. Comforting you. Giving you what he knows you’re second most starved for. Physical touch.

“I am stupid.” You whine.

Jeremy chuckles. “No, Y/N. You’re just eager. Is it because he's hot?”

You lean back to look up at Jeremy with his eyebrow quirked as he watches for your reaction.

You shake your head because sure, as good looking as Thor is, it’s not his body that pulled you to him—but come on, you know you’re dying to have those massive arms wrapped around you, those slightly pouty pink lips pressed against your own, those massive thighs shoved against yours.

Yes, you wanna fuck Thor! He's beautiful, but what you remember…you shut your eyes, remembering the first moment that golden aura washed over you.

The smell of spring rain, soil, and then the slight bite of ozone followed his heavenly essence after him. Then you looked for the source because that warmth was everything. Hotter than you. Hotter than the sun.

Like clashing lightning, charged and scorching.

That’s what you want. All the time. Every minute of every day. It fills you up. The fact that it came from Thor had deterred you. He didn’t see you that one time. He'd bumped into you and he'd stared right at you and didn’t see you.

He was out of your league. So his rejection makes more sense than you'd like to admit.

“He's different, Jer.” You explain. “Like…he's like a magnet but it's him. His soul. The very core of what makes him, him. He's good and strong and right and just…”

You sigh, Jeremy strokes the sides of your head, his fingers reaching down to tilt your head back so that he can look into your eyes. Your lip trembles when you find him searching for answers in your own gaze.

“I wanted him, so much. More than I’ve ever wanted anything or anyone.” You sigh, shakily breathing in and out.

“I’m sorry, chipmunk. I know you don’t get this attached often.” He pulls you close, wrapping one arm around your waist while he cups the back of your head with the other and tucks your face in against the side of his neck.

“Or ever.” You correct. “Just you and Papa Roman.”

Jeremy gives you a squeeze.

“What would he have done?” He's wondering genuinely as he asks you.

You chuckle unexpectedly because picturing what your Papa Roman would have done and what Jeremy did…well, “Definitely not what you did.”

Jeremy smiles. “But I did help you feel better for a little bit, right?”

You nod. A whole day and a half. Jeremy had distracted you from your heartache by making you feel like you were desirable when Thor had made you feel utterly forgettable.

“You want more?” He asks, and your core shifts but your heart sinks.

“Maybe later. I’m not really…I don’t wanna go to this stupid benefit, Jer.”

Jeremy smiles, running his hands from your shoulders down to your waist.

He pulls you against his body roughly. You gasp, not expecting it.

“You’re going, chipmunk. If only so that the board members stop wanting to fire me for not doing my job.” He leans down to press his lips to the side of your chin.

You shut your eyes, tempted to accept his offer to distract you. But Thor's smiling eyes manifest in the darkness behind your lids to send another painful lurch through your chest.

You fist Jeremy's sleeves, fingers aching with the tightness.

Jeremy pulls back, looking for something in your eyes, a look. A tell. He knows you too well.

“You sure?” You love him, not like you might have loved Thor, but he's good to you. Good at what he does. He sees that you need it, to feel wanted and desired so he offers and it's always up to you.

“No.” You relent, loosening your fists to stroke the hard bulge of his arms. “I'm not."

“Tell me, chipmunk.” Always ready and willing, he waits for instruction. You feel bolder suddenly.

“Touch me, Jer. Make me feel like I-like I’m important.” You beg.

Jeremy frowns, his brow creasing with disapproval. He caresses the sides of your head and gives it a teeny shake.

“You are important, Y/N. That guy doesn’t know what he's missing. I swear, chipmunk. Someone someday will see you for the amazing and strong woman you are.” He seems so sure.

“But when?” You whimper.

He trails his hand down along your sides, running his hands over the curves of your back, hips, and finally butt. He turns you slowly then pulls you up, sitting you on the edge of the desk before slipping his right hand down along the long open slit at the front of your fancy yellow office dress.

He unhooks the little latch that holds the dress closed and pushes it open to expose your left breast. He pulls the fabric of your bra down and latches onto your nipple, suckling gently as you sigh a moan and slip your hand into the back of his hair.

He moans too and that’s so rare that it catches you by surprise.

You pull his head back to look at his face to see what might be his expression but he doesn't give you a chance. He rushes up to meet your lips in a languid, sloppy, wet kiss.

His lips move along yours lazily, his tongue taking long strokes of your flavor to taste. He groans again into your mouth. You pull back again.

“Jeremy?”

His eyes are dazed as he meets yours and you feel a rush of fear. What is he feeling?

“What? What's the matter?” He asks, slowly regaining the sharp look of his dark eyes.

“You're…you’re not…” You don’t even want to finish the sentence. Catching feelings here would spell ruin for the two of you. “Maybe we should stop?”

Jeremy laughs, breathless but his hands are sliding up along your shoulders, pushing the dress down and away.

“No. I’m not…I’m sorry. I’m just-this dress is really doing things for me, today.” He shrugs. “That's all.”

“You and Lily?”

“We’re still together.” He assures you.

He dives back down to trail kisses along the side of your neck.

When you’d first learned that he had a girlfriend, it had been just after he'd made you “feel better" a few times. You'd panicked but Jeremy had assured you that he and Liliana had an open relationship and though they both loved each other very much, they were both unwilling to commit monogamously just yet.

You even met her once, at the office Christmas party. She was sweet but very confident. You'd avoided Jeremy for weeks after that, afraid of what sleeping with you after sleeping with someone like Lily must be like.

Jeremy had been quick to show you how amazing he found your body. You never fought him on it again.

Despite his reassurance, your body is still tense.

He pulls back and places his hands on either side of you on your desk, his thumbs caressing the clothed side of your upper thigh.

“Should I stop?” He asks, serious but somehow still soft in his expression to reassure you.

You half shake your head, feeling the need to feel arms around you, hips throbbing against yours.

“Tell me when to stop.” He orders.

He takes his middle finger and slowly slides it down along the outside of your left thigh. As he nears your knee, where the end of your dress sits, he shifts his finger to the top of your leg as they slide along your knee. He stands up straighter, closer, his face is so close to yours his hot breath wafts along your lips.

You’re so distracted by the sudden proximity of his face that you don’t notice how high up his fingers have gotten until he's got his middle finger pressed against the damp center of your core.

You gasp and reach out to take tight hold of his sleeve at his bicep. He smiles. A corner tilt of his full lips as he trails that finger up and down along your wet and clothed slit.

You feel all resistance fall away as you shut your eyes and lean your head back, allowing your body to exhale in pleasure.

His lips are back on your breast, suckling gently while his finger hooks your underwear aside to touch your soaking sex.

The noise is dirty, squelching and squishy, not loud but enough for you to hear it.

“You’re so ready, chipmunk.” He teases and you groan, wanting him. Wanting to be wanted.

“You-you want me?” You ask him, uncertain whether it's okay to do so.

He smiles big, pearly whites shining and blinding. His left hand wanders between the two of you and you realize now that he's between your legs. When did that happen?

You hear the clinking of his belt and the loud growl of his zipper.

“Look at me, chipmunk. I’m all swollen for you.” Your eyes flow down between the two of you and your mouth waters at the bulging sight of his rounded head, cock stiff and throbbing.

The darker peach tint of him flows red at the head and you want to taste him though you know he won’t let you.

“It's not about me, Y/N.” He'd argued once. “Lily does that for me. Let me make you feel better.”

You reach down anyway and he lets you. The smooth heat of his cock is nothing compared to the raging temperature your body is flowing with right now.

He grunts as you stroke him, your elevated temperature probably feels good for him.

“That feels good, chipmunk.” He groans.

Reaching up, he slips his hand behind your neck and pulls you down to kiss.

Your hand stutters as his finger pokes at your entrance. He tickles it, teasing you before he slides it in smooth.

“Jer?” You moan, breaking the kiss. “Tell me I-I'm wanted.”

Jeremy frowns again, that impossibly upset crinkle between his eyes. His glasses fog up along the bottom as your breath flows towards him. He's pushing his finger inside of you, quickly, curving it up in search of that special spot.

Your legs are spread wide, slightly lifted. He puts his free hand on your knee and pushes it back, spreading you more.

“I want you, Y/N. I want your body. I wanna be inside you. I want to make you feel better; make you come.” His words make you shiver and he pulls his finger away.

You barely have any time to react because the head of his cock is suddenly in you.

He wraps his arms around your waist and slowly walks closer, plunging deeper into you with each move. You moan. Loudly.

Jeremy shoves his hand over your mouth but doesn't tell you to be quiet. He smiles instead, pleased.

“I’ll make you forget him, chipmunk. I’ll give you what he won't.” Jeremy promises and while he stuffs you, pounding into you hard and passionately, you sadly pull him in for a kiss because you know that despite his promise, in this moment, you wish Thor had called you.

What did I do wrong? You think desperately as Jeremy meets your kiss eagerly.

“Why are there so many reporters?” You gasp, leaning forward in your seat. The limo’s leather squeaks as you pull your dress back down. Skin pulling at the fabric as you try not to completely climb over Jeremy’s lap.

Not that he’d mind, but being so close to prying eyes, best to keep things cool.

Layers of light blue chiffon, beaded and worked through with shining crystals that glitter like stars, fall back down around your waist. Jeremy pulls the pale blue sleeve of his Gucci tux then sighs with disappointment.

His hand had been crawling up your leg, feeling the soft skin of your inner thigh. You’d needed the relaxation but the car ride to the repurposed theater had been short and you’d gotten distracted by the crowd outside of the large art deco building.

“They’re not reporters, Y/N. They’re papz.” He counters but then goes about straightening your dress around you. He’s so careful and he takes care of you well. “And you look amazing. They’re going to go crazy snapping your pic.”

“Great.” You groan. Your picture all over the paper again? What will Thor think when he sees it? Will he even care?

Stop thinking about Thor. You growl at yourself.

Jeremy chuckles. “It’s your own fault for being so reclusive. You’re a hot commodity. Everyone wants to know you.”

The cool firm hand on your back gives you a little bit of comfort. “I’m nothing special. And having them know nothing about me is how I like it. They always bring them up and I-I don’t feel like talking about it…Jer?”

Jeremy’s eyes are soft as you meet them, his expression saddened. “I’ll handle it.”

His promise has weight. He’ll physically remove anyone who tries to talk about them with you. Yet another reason to be glad for his fit physique.

“Thanks.” You smile at him, so grateful he’s here with you because you’d probably have run again if he weren’t here to walk you in. He strokes your back and you lean back into your seat and into his arms, cuddling into his side because you like the way it feels and you know that it means nothing more than just that, it feels good.

This doesn’t happen often. You and Jeremy cuddling and sleeping together as much as you have been the past two weeks. Your relationship is usually pretty professional if not familiar. Like that day of the board meeting. He knows how to steer you and you know how to take his cues—well, the ones you’re going to do anyway.

You’re not a mindless puppet. You have your own opinions even if you don’t speak them aloud with most people. Jeremy knows better. He prefers it when you argue with him. The one person in your life you can be open with completely.

You’d hoped Thor would be too…

Jeremy squeezes you, careful not to crush your dress. He holds it for only a second before he sits you back up. He reaches up and fixes a few of your stray hairs.

“You’ll ruin your look.” He chastises, also recognizing the gesture as what it is besides a need for physical comfort.

You’re stalling.

You chuckle. Amused by his preoccupation with how you look.

He’d spent much more time getting you ready than he should have. He’d chosen your dress, your hair, and then matched himself to you. You’d laughed when he’d told you that he’d got himself a tux to match your dress but that’s only because you’d been picturing the most absurdly blue seventies tuxedo with one of those white ruffled shirts with the black lining. Bright bold colors designed to catch the eye.

When you finally saw Jeremy dressed in head to toe couture, sleek black trousers, shining black shoes, a crisp white shirt—no ruffles—and that stunning pale blue tuxedo jacket you renounced all misgivings about his fashion sense then snapped a shot and sent it to Lily.

She’d thanked you for the instrument of blackmail and told you to have fun.

Lily: As much fun as you need. He enjoys it too, Y/N. Don’t let him make you think he doesn’t.

You feel bad monopolizing Jeremy intimately this way lately but with Lily’s blessing you’d relaxed and let Jeremy treat you like he would a girlfriend. You just try to not think about how he’s your assistant all the time and that he’s only doing this out of a deep sense of duty to you.

“We don’t have to stay long, right?” Your smile wavers and you look out at the throng of photographers yelling obnoxiously at the high-profile guests walking into the gala.

Like you, they’re late and they make no time to stand for photos despite the shouts and pleas of those stationed outside.

“Just an hour and we’re gone. Dinner should be wrapping up about now.” He explains.

“What was the point of me spending so much money on buying a table if I wasn’t going to eat?” You grumble. You can care less about the fancy party but the food?!

“I’ll buy you some pizza afterwards.” He offers.

“You? Why would you buy me a pizza? I can afford my own damn pizza.” You sigh but he laughs once. Then he’s silent. Too silent.

“Why aren’t you like this with your friends?” He suddenly asks you, catching you off guard. You look at him, searching his face for what he might really mean.

“I-I don’t know. They don’t give me a chance to? Nan and Seth have a lot to say. Everyone does. It’s easier if I just let them talk. No one cares about what I have to say, Jer. It’s okay. I’ve come to terms with that.” You smile at him, ignoring the pulsing heartache at having lost someone who had genuinely sat and listened to you talk for hours.

Thor…Why can’t you stop thinking about him? You’d known him for less than two days. Feeling that magical pull he has for months doesn’t translate into time known.

Did it really mean nothing to him that he can ignore you the way he has?

“Well, they’re missing out. You’re really funny, Y/N. And you have quite the dirty mouth.” He wiggles his eyebrows at you and your cheeks burn.

“Jeremy.” You chastise, and he chuckles.

“Come on, chipmunk. Let’s get this over with.” He makes to open the door, but you pull back on his hand and he looks at you, concern etched across his handsome face. “What? What’s wrong?”

You shake your head once. “I-I feel so silly in these big ball gowns.”

Jeremy smiles at you fondly, reaching out to straighten your skirt again. He lets his hand flow down beneath the external skirt, to the tighter, sheer fabric of your front. His hands slide along the covered flesh of your thighs where the skirt is so sheer that the lovely color of your skin peeks through. His eyes roam over you, appreciating you the way he knows that you need.

“You’re gorgeous, Y/N. You look like a waterfall, cascading with stars.” He grins at you, appreciating his own word choice. You smile at him, rolling your eyes.

“Stars? Really?”

He chuckles. “Come on, pouty. Let’s get out there.”

He pushes the door open and then helps you out.

He looks you over once you’re on your feet and steps very close as he reaches onto your waist to adjust the gleaming silver and black belt. He gives you another appraisal and when satisfied, he steps back.

“Okay. Ready?” He offers you his hand and you nod and take it.

No talking. You’re in public again. You can already feel yourself withdrawing. With Jeremy here, at least you’ve got an anchor.

You zone out for a minute, startled by the sudden burst of white flashes, allowing Jeremy’s strong arm around your waist lead you forward through the small space provided for party goers to walk through. You can hear people shouting your name. They’re louder than they were with the others and this draws an even larger crowd as pedestrians and passerby stop to gawk at you too.

Terrified by the attention, you focus on the ground and don’t dare look up.

“Look over here, Y/N! Over here. Come on. Just one picture?” Someone shouts but you don’t stop because Jeremy’s speeding forward.

“Steps, chipmunk.” He warns and you lift your foot.

You blink hard, eager to clear the blindness from your eyes. The flashes remind you of lightning which only make you think about Thor again that makes that dark pit in your stomach bigger.

This is stupid. Get over it. Stop thinking about Thor!

Once you’re inside with the cool night air cut off, you feel yourself burning. The stress of those photographers. Your wallowing on Thor. It’s catching up with you quickly and you wish you were back at home in your bedroom where you can be you and you don’t have to pretend to be anyone other than who you truly are.

Hell, you’re even more you in the café.

Jeremy feels your heat and he knows what that means. “Hey, it’s okay. Um…here. Come here.”

He tugs you away from the room that you still haven’t looked up at. It’s only the foyer but you can hear the chatter of people echo around you. There’s a gentle hum of a string and piano ensemble coming from the main ballroom. Your eyes are only for the stunning pale marble floor.

You shift into a stuffier room, which doesn’t help your heat, but you hear a door click and Jeremy’s body is before you. “Hey.”

You shake your head. “I can’t do this Jeremy. I-They’ll ask about them. I don’t want to talk about my parents.”

“Look at me.” You don’t. “Hey, look at me, Y/N. Right now.”

The stern order drives your face up and you meet his dark eyes with layers of fear and trepidation sewn into your very being.

You shut your eyes and in the sudden quiet you feel a familiar warmth. Surprised by it, you look towards the closed door. It’s faint. And then it’s gone. Thor’s influence is so ridiculous. You miss him.

You’re also in a coat check closet. The array of smells and perfumes are giving you a headache.

Jeremy reaches up to grab your chin, leading you to face him again. With your attention reclaimed and your heart resigned to the fact that you’re going crazy if you think you’re feeling Thor even when he’s not around, you focus.

“You can do this. And if someone asks you something you don’t want to talk about, you tell them you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Jer…” You begin to complain.

“You say, ‘I don’t really want to talk about that.’ And if they bring it up again, then just walk away.” He instructs.

You frown at him, knowing you may not be able to do that. You’re such a wimp sometimes, despite the ability you know you have to literally burn the entire room if you wanted to.

“You want a kiss for courage?” He asks, seriously too.

You blink, smiling, taken aback by his question but not offended. “I’m staring to think you just want to kiss me.”

Jeremy shrugs a shoulder. “Well, I don’t not want to kiss you.”

His words are like solace. Someone likes kissing you. Even if it’s not the someone you wanted it to be. You look down, hating yourself for tying Thor to even these moments when Jeremy makes you feel good. Smile gone.

“Can you hang in there for an hour?” He checks, waiting for you to respond and when you don’t look at him, he reaches up again to cup your face to force you to meet his eyes. “Can you do this? Or do you wanna run again? Like you always do? You want to keep running?”

He’s guilting you. You know he is. He’s holding up a mirror to the person you’ve been in the past. The person you are. You’re tired of running. You don’t want to hide anymore but you’re not ready to talk about your parents. So, you’ll try and do what he suggests. You’ll tell them no and leave if they don’t stop.

“No. I don’t wanna run.” You pout and Jeremy smiles, bright and ecstatic.

“Good. You walk out there with your head held high; you hear me? You don’t look down to anyone, Y/N.” He says it so passionately. Like he means it with all of his heart. You believe him. “You’re powerful and unique. And you’re really good in bed.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” You laugh.

“It just…trust me. When someone’s being a jerk to you, tell yourself that and you’ll walk with your head held a little higher. Okay?”

“Okay.” You shake your head, but you resign to his logic.

He leads you back out into the foyer. Now that you’re actually able to look at it, you see that it’s a large room with three large staircases that lead up to a second floor lined with dark gray carpet. The center and largest staircase is lined with purple flowers and this is the staircase that everyone seems to be filing up through.

There are so many people here; women in gorgeous silver, pink, black, gold, and gray gowns. There are a few in darker blues but not one as light as yours. It draws attention and though your instinct is to curl into Jeremy’s side, you wrap your arm around his tighter and fist the sleeve of his jacket and draw yourself up.

He looks down at you and smiles as he leads you up the stairs to a large set of ornate brown doors through which you can see a mass of people sitting at tables and dancing at the center of what looks like hundreds of small tables.

The lighting is dim but white like winter daylight only not so bright. It gives the party the feeling of ice though the room is toasty warm. As you cross into the large room you see that the ceiling is hung with fake white lilies made of porcelain and the cold light streams from within bunches of them casting spots of illumination along the black and white marble floor.

Jeremy runs his hand over the skin of your hand then reaches up to cup the farther side of your neck. He’s checking your temperature and he seems pleased that it’s leveled out. It’s too beautiful in here to focus on your stress and social anxieties. With Jeremy beside you, confidence is easier to fake.

“’Atta girl.” He praises you and it fills your belly with warmth.

You see that as you pass, the small white tables with their white puffed chairs are decorated with stunning silver plates and silverware, crystal glasses, and more of those beautiful purple flowers that fill the room with the fresh scent of spring.

Just as Jeremy said, dinner seems to have come to an end and everyone is up and about, talking and filling the empty spaces with lively conversations about things that you could care less about.

Portfolios and assets and lavish vacations. You spot Nan and Seth about halfway down the large room and point them out to Jeremy. He nods and leads you in their direction.

Your body twists as that familiar warmth washes over you again and you strain to look through the crowd around you. Stopping you pull your arm out of Jeremy’s and grab your dress and follow the warmth. Heaven’s aura.

No. Not heaven.

Asgard’s.

You stop when you’ve reached the center of the dance floor. Several people turn to look at you curiously, admiring your dress and your visage in general.

“Y/N?” Jeremy catches up to you and waits as you look around frantically.

“I-I thought…” You frown, disappointment washing over you as you realize that maybe you’re just imagining things. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”

“You sure?” Jeremy wonders, reaching out to place his hands on your waist and pull you close. Too close. People will talk. Then again, you don’t care. The disappointment in your heart is too big.

Too consuming.

“Yeah. I’m sure. Let’s go see Nan and Seth. Sorry. I-I won’t do that again.” You’re going to ignore it if it happens again.

He doesn’t want you. You remind yourself.

Jeremy pull you along again and when you reach Nan and Seth you can hear them bragging about their contributions to several charities. They’re not even being humble or discreet about it. They’re just whipping out their dicks to see who has the biggest one. At least that’s the comparison your mind draws to the way they’re talking about their carefully calculated altruism.

“No.” You pull on Jeremy’s arm just before you reach them. He turns to look at you, observing the frown on your face. “I don’t want to go talk to them. I changed my mind.”

Jeremy tilts his head, disappointed but relenting because he can see your distress. “I’m a bad assistant.”

“What?” You ask, surprised by his leap. He moves closer to you, taking your arms in hand as he pulls you close.

“I should have forced you out a long time ago. You’re too shut off from the world, Y/N. You can’t keep pushing people away.” He says it sadly, like he really does consider it his failure. “I know this isn’t your scene but it’s part of your life. I should have prepared you better for it.”

“Jeremy…this isn’t about not being ready to socialize I just…these people…”

“They’re not all bad, Y/N. Some of them are, I admit, a little fake.”

“A little?” You gasp, looking back over at Nan and Seth.

“You have to give someone a chance at some point, chipmunk. I can’t be the only one you count on.” Fear builds in your chest, terrible fear of losing him.

“Are you leaving me?” You breathe, quickly wondering if you’ve been putting too much pressure on him. “I-You don’t have to come with me to these things, Jer. In fact, if you want to go home right now, you can! I know Lily probably had some plans for you two. D-Do you need a vacation? If I’m stressing you out, just tell me and I’ll back off. I’ll try not to do whatever it is that’s bothering you. Just tell me, okay?”

You reach up to grab at his shoulders, too hard you realize as he winces.

“Sorry.” You sigh. “I’m sorry.”

“No, Y/N, that’s not what I…Come on.” He reaches down to take your hand and pulls you off towards the left side of the room instead. “Let’s jus sit for a bit, okay? And I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

Your heart relaxes, grateful for the opportunity to catch your breath and the reassurance that you’re not losing Jeremy because of your neediness.

This is all so overwhelming. And this party is not your kind of thing.

He stops at an empty table where all the plates sit unused, your name on a placard at the center. He leads you around to the far side of the table so that when he pulls out your chair and you sit, you’re facing the dance floor. Not many people are dancing. Some.

For a split second, a startling pair of electric blue eyes flash through the crowd, crowned with a golden head of carefully styled hair.

You shoot to your feet, heart aching because this time you know you saw him.

“What?” Jeremy asks, curious but more stunned than anything. “What is it?”

Your eyes roam over the couples gently swaying to the gentle music. You scan for blonde hair. Blue eyes. Wide shoulders. Huge arms. But he’s tall. Surely, he’d tower over everyone else on the dance floor?

“Y/N?” Jeremy reaches out to touch your arm.

You jump, on edge, afraid to see Thor but also eager to get your eyes on him once again.

“What?” Jeremy asks, eyebrows high.

“N-Nothing. I just thought I-Nothing. Never mind.” You settle yourself back down into your seat, careful to spread your dress around you.

“You want something to drink?” Jeremy asks, leaning down over you.

You nod, feeling parched all of a sudden. Maybe a good drink will help you forget Thor. You’ve seen and felt nothing but his ghost since you got here. This is just you letting go of him.

“Okay. Sit tight. I’ll be right back.” He hesitates but then leans down to kiss your cheek. He leaves you, winding his way through the finely dressed crowd as he searches for a waiter or waitress.

You keep your hands on your lap, folded carefully under the table as you stare around at the stunning crowd. It takes a few minutes but you push Thor to the back of your mind.

Now that you’re sitting you can appreciate the splendor of the décor and the beauty of the people. The music is good too. Although it’s a string quartet with piano accompaniment, you can now hear that they’re playing modern music.

Chandelier?

You smile, amused by the song for some reason. The bliss of the moment outweighs your anxiety and you genuinely begin to enjoy yourself. Quietly, like this, you can appreciate being here.

Feeling lighter than you’ve felt all week, with the beautiful music to distract you, you’re not aware that you’re looking right at him until you hear his laugh.

Smile vanishing, you avert your eyes from the man of your dreams.

He’s dressed in a stunning black tuxedo. His tall frame wrapped in the expensive fabric; it fits him like a glove. Why can’t you feel him? You’ve always been able to feel him.

You peek up at him and find him at a table close to the head of the room. There are others at this table. A redhead, the Black Widow, who you know from the papers when S.H.I.E.L.D. first collapsed. She’s sitting next to a man with long brown hair, carefully styled and straightened, tucked behind his ear. A shine on his hand pulls your attention. The Winter Soldier. He’s holding the Black Widow’s hand under the table. They’re a couple?

Beside him is a black man with short cropped hair and a small gap in his two front teeth. It only adds character to his handsome smile. He’s sitting with a young woman with brown hair. You don’t recognize her, and she seems friendly with him, though it doesn’t look strictly romantic.

Beside the girl is a familiar redhead wearing a long form fitting golden dress, sequined with paler gold sequins. The dress falls low along her back but she’s busy chatting with the black man who you suddenly realize is the Falcon. You’ve seen him in the news a few times too. Pepper Potts, Tony Stark’s fiancé, sits next to an Asian woman. Korean? She’s beautiful.

Her own dress is long and flowing, black velvet scattered with rhinestone stars. Her dark hair is draped over her left shoulder as she leans in towards Thor, whispering in his ear about who knows what? He sits with his arm draped across the back of her chair, his left leg, jutting out at the end of the table as it’s too long to keep bent maybe?

He’s so tall.

He’s also smiling. He looks happy. While you’ve been broken and a recluse, he’s happy.

I am so…so stupid.

You tear your eyes away, unable to watch any longer. You’re grateful when a group of women with large dresses plant themselves in your line of sight to that table. At least this way your heart can break completely in semi-private.

“You’re a hard woman to get a hold of.” A teasing sarcastic tenor voice stiffens your back and you turn to your right to look up at Tony Stark himself.

Well, maybe not so private.

Tony looks snazzy, as he always does, his mustache and goatee carefully styled and trimmed like his dark chestnut hair. His bowtie is undone. Like he’s been here for hours. You realize that he must have been. This is his benefit, you realize.

The table of Avengers suddenly makes really stupid sense.

“I thought it was a slim chance that you’d show up, but you showed up. Remind me to thank that assistant of yours. Or…maybe you can thank him for me?” The way he says it, he knows. How does he know? Most people just guess…but Tony Stark knows.

He sips his umber liquid, sloshing around with the ice in his glass. The bite of liquor reaches your nose and you realize he’s probably a little tipsy. He might not have made that comment about Jeremy had he been sober.

“I-I don’t know what you-” You begin, voice quaking with the knowledge that Thor is here with someone else. A date. A woman. A beautiful one. Clearly outgoing. She’s probably nothing like you.

No wonder he dumped you before you even had a chance to start. How can you compete with that?

“I’m not here to judge. Pepper was my assistant. Did you know that?” Tony undoes the front buttons of his chic tuxedo jacket then sits beside you, placing his glass on the table as he snaps his fingers. “Waiter!”

You’re astounded by how quickly one runs up. “Champagne for my friend and bring us a couple grapes?”

He turns to you.

“You like grapes, right?” He turns back to the waiter. “Grapes. And some strawberries if you’ve got them.”

“Right away, Mr. Stark.” The waiter says then scurries off to do as he’s bid.

You admire this about Tony Stark. He’s like you, in some ways. Just like you he’s grown up in this life but he seems so much more at home in it than you do.

“Not gonna say hi?” He asks, smiling as he leans back and lounges on the expensively purchased seat.

“Hello again, Mr. Stark.” You say, giving up because he’s not going anywhere until he’s ready. Maybe he can pull your mind away from the blonde at the head of the room?

“Again?” He smiles, “Oh, you mean that last time we saw each other? What was it? Six years ago? Just before you hired that assistant of yours?”

“Why do you keep bringing up Jeremy?” You ask, self-conscious that maybe you and Jeremy are giving out some sort of vibe. Where is he? If Thor is here with someone else, you want to show off that you’re here with someone too.

Okay, sure, it’s Jeremy and he’s technically getting paid to be here but…fuck my life. You think.

“Isn’t that who you brought as your date? Little weird, isn’t it?” He takes a drink of his bourbon, then he looks up as the young waiter brings a plate split in half with strawberries and grapes. He places it in between you and Tony and then places a glass of champagne in front of you. “Thanks.”

The waiter leaves and you shake your head. “Jeremy knows I hate coming to these things, so he offered to be here with me. It’s not a d-date.”

“But you are sleeping with him, right?” He asks, reaching out to rip a grape from its stem.

“I-I don’t see how that’s any of your business, Mr. Stark.” You stutter, flustered. You grab your champagne and drink about half the flute.

“You’re right. It’s not. But there’s a certain someone I know that has a deep interest in your relationship with that ridiculously good-looking assistant of yours.” Tony’s teasing is unbearable but he’s smiling, chewing on his grape.

Thor? Not possible.

“No one cares about me but Jeremy. Mr. Stark.” You say quickly, resolute. Convinced. And sad.

Tony sits forward, tensing up as he leans his elbows on the table to get a better look at your face because you’re staring at the pretty centerpiece which you can now see are purple orchids. Stunning.

“I know—Look, I know that after what happened with your parents I wasn’t really around much. I had to-”

His tone, the casual way he’s talking to you, familiar. It floods back a flash of blurry memories of a tall handsome teen carrying you in his arms, making you laugh, watching cartoons with you and making silly faces. Telling you stories. Hugging you. Taking you outside to play. A happier life when you hadn’t been stripped of everything you once were. When your innocence had still been intact.

It hurts to remember Tony like that. Present. Close.

“I don’t want to talk about my parents, Tony.” You sigh, frustrated with him for making you remember when you try so hard not to think about the small bit of life you’d had before your mother and Uncle Arnold had turned you into this…thing.

Tony cut himself off from your life for so long and only recently wants to reach out? It’s too late! You don’t need him anymore. You have Jeremy. You have…fuck…you have no one but Jeremy. And what if he leaves you too?

“This isn’t about them.” Tony insists. “I-I should have been around, and I wasn’t. I’m sorry, kid. I messed up.” You don’t want to hear this now, but he sounds so genuine and it hurts.

You meet his eyes and find that he’s staring at you with a pleading to understand.

“Fine. I forgive you. Okay? Can we drop it?” You ask, desperate to get back to the little bit of peace you’d found before you’d spotted Thor.

Every fiber of your being is telling you to bolt but you don’t want to disappoint Jeremy who has been the only one showing you any sort of true kindness lately. You don’t want to run.

“Okay.” Tony relents.

“Alright.” You sigh.

“But seriously, how long have you and the assistant been shacking up?” Tony probes.

“Tony…” You whine.

“I’m just curious.” He shrugs.

This is embarrassing. “Years. Three, I think. Why do you care?” You growl.

“I don’t. Like I said, other interested parties.” He admits, sipping his bourbon.

“Other interested parties? Who the hell would be interested in who I’m sleeping with? Paparazzi? You selling info to trash magazines now?” You ask, your voice soft and meek despite the strength of your vocabulary. You shrink into your seat, lifting your arms up to wrap them around yourself as you steal a glance back towards Thor’s table only he isn’t there.

Your eyes scan the table again, quickly. The woman wearing stars is gone too.

“Is it love?” He asks.

“No.” You reply simply, distracted. Truthfully. And he doesn’t argue so he must see how you mean it. The thought of what you and Jeremy share pulls your attention back to Tony. “I-”

You can’t explain this to Tony without him finding out about what you can do, and you don’t want him to know. He’s been after you for testing to see what that explosion when you were a kid might have done to you since you somehow managed to live through it. Telling him why you and Jeremy started to sleep together would be revealing just that. You can’t do that.

“I have anxiety of sorts. Social anxiety. I don’t connect with people the way others do and that makes creating relationships difficult. Jeremy helps me with that. It’s just sex, Tony. Nothing else. He h-has a girlfriend.” You scan the crowd again, looking for him but he’s nowhere to be seen. Did he get stopped? Pulled aside by someone from the board? They’re probably here too.

As you scan, your eyes stutter over Thor’s familiar golden head.

No. This isn’t happening. Now you have to watch him dance with someone else too?

You shoot to your feet and Tony slowly rises to his beside you.

Run, Y/N. Run.

All of our instincts scream at you to run.

“See something?” He asks, glancing in the same direction you’re staring.

The dancing crowd continues to sway and dance to the slow ethereal tune of Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Rey. It’s like magic, the way the music makes your heart pound and the way seeing Thor again after weeks fills you with such sadness. He’s here with someone else.

Not you. His aura reaches you finally. He’s closer. At the center of the dance floor now. He’s still obscured and you can’t see him clearly, only the top of his blonde head.

You really have to concentrate to feel it, the golden glow of him. Too many people.

The crowd parts and your chest caves in. Expecting the sight but not ready to see it.

“Who’s that?” You gasp, your heart aching so painfully you’d swear someone has literally plunged their hand into your chest to physically twist it for it to feel like this.

Tony looks over, placing his hand on your lower back to keep his balance. “Oh, that’s Dr. Helen Cho. Thor’s date.”

Thor’s date. Thor’s date. Thor’s date.

You swallow hard but don’t dare tear your eyes away from the beautiful couple. This Dr. Helen Cho, the black of her dress is so deep it looks like someone carved out a piece of the night sky and forged it into a dress for her. Her long slender neck, the rose of her cheeks, her smile—she’s ecstatic to be here and in Thor’s arms. She wants him too.

You see that in her eyes because you feel it in the core of your very soul.

And Thor’s holding her close, swaying with her to the magical melody of the song.

This must be why he never called you. He’d found someone else to be with, that’s the only explanation for why he never reached out. No texts. Nothing.

Maybe she blocked you from his phone when she saw your messages?

You watch her lean up to whisper into his ear again as he swings her around slowly, forcing him to turn towards you.

Run.

He laughs, stunning smile on display for the room to see but she put it there. Her joke made him smile. His arms are around her waist.

Time to face it. He’ll never be yours.

Run. This time, you’re inclined to obey.

“I have to go.” You gasp, trying to ignore the weight in your chest. How does it feel so heavy but hollow all at once?

“Go? You just got here.” Tony argues.

Half an hour is not just. You tried. You hung in there even when you saw him here. You should have never come here. You should have stayed away where people like you to be. Alone, in your home. A recluse. The mysterious heiress.

Not good enough to fall for. Not worth listening to. Unimportant. Small. Insignificant. Forgotten.

Thor’s electric blue eyes find yours and your heart shatters. You claw at your stomach, hating the painful twist as his smile instantly vanishes.

That’s what you do to him. You take his smile away. Wipe it clean and non-existent.

Run!

“I have to go.” You repeat, almost crying. “Move, Tony.”

You push past him hard, using some of your strength and ignore his protests as he reaches for your wrist. You slip by him and behind the next table and the next but ahead there’s a crowd of partygoers laughing and talking. They’re blocking the way to the door with their huge dresses and chairs all wonky and out of place.

They’re drunk and fighting through them will take time.

Panicking you turn to your right and shift into a small run towards a lone wooden door, your dress hissing as it sways against the marble floor.

You don’t know where the door leads but anywhere is better than this place.

As the wooden door shuts, the music of the ballroom nearly dies as you find yourself in a smaller side room with sofas around an expensive looking ornamental carpet. The room is dark, save for a small lamp casting the room in a dim yellow glow. A waiting room.

This light is nicer. Warmer. Like the sun. No ice.

You move towards the lamp, like a moth to the flame and stop only when you can stare down at the small source of light.

It’s not hot enough. You wish there was a fire. You could make one if you really wanted to, but there’s no wood in the large fireplace. Just a grate with no logs.

The door behind you clicks shut again and you refuse to turn around. Addictive golden energy flows through you, engulfing you in pleasurable heat.

It completes you but you don’t want to see. You don’t want to know.

It’s probably Tony. You lie to yourself.

Yeah…just Tony.

“Y/N?” Thor’s voice asks gently. Confusion floods his tone.

Your heart lurches. Shattered as it is, it grinds against you painfully.

You don’t want him to see you. You don’t want to see him. What will he see? Why is he even here? Shouldn’t he be with his girlfriend? His date?

If he’s just going to apologize for ghosting you, you’d rather not hear it.

“Don’t. Please.” You beg. You don’t want to hear it. You don’t want to deal with this. Why can’t you just disappear?

“I was not expecting to see you here.” Thor says, closer. He’s not by the door anymore.

Maybe you can make a run for it? You’ll dive around him and hurry out before he can grab you.

“I’m sorry I came. I-”

“For work?” He offers and you turn to look at him.

It might have been better if you hadn’t.

The sight of him in his black and white tuxedo is too good. Tall. Majestic. He’s glorious all golden and formal.

His words spark something in you. Something like courage but not quite. Indignation? How dare he presume to know anything about you when he made it so very clear that knowing you is the last thing he could ever want.

The thought of all those unanswered text messages fills you with shame and embarrassment.

“What do you know about my work?” You demand, angrier because you’d tried so hard to keep that from him. What you do. Who you have to be? This life is the life that was given to you. The one you were born into. It’s not who you truly are.

You’re not delusional, before all of this mess you’d known you couldn’t hide it forever but for a while at least. Just until he could get to know you as the person you really are without all the money and the rumors. You just wanted to be the girl who loves coffee and pastries and books.

Or maybe it’s like you thought and maybe that’s why he didn’t call you? He’d seen who you are, and his interest had disappeared with the knowledge. Is that it?

“Is that why you didn’t call me? Because I-I didn’t tell you who I was?” You sigh, feeling worse. “I was going to tell you when I was ready I just-”

“No!” He rushes to say, stepping forward a few steps but he stops when you attempt to take a step back only to crash with the lamp. It rattles behind you, glass on porcelain.

You reach back to steady it, hating yourself for being so open with your reactions. Why can’t you be cool and collected? Hide it all underneath some carefully calculated outer shell?

“Then why?” You plead, forgetting the lamp as your insides peel and cut at the very sight of his chiseled chin, covered in the neatly trimmed fuzz of his beard. A few strands of his hair have come undone from his carefully styled hairdo and they’re falling against his forehead, tempting you to tuck them back. “Why didn’t you call? I waited and waited. I-From what you said I thought that…do you hate me because I didn’t tell you who I was right away? You can tell me the truth, Thor.”

“No. I meant to call you; I did.” Thor assures you, his voice straining with sincerity. A groan of regret in his throat. “But I-”

He stops, hesitating. Not sure why, you recover from your shock of having him step towards you and take a step towards him yourself. “But?”

Oh, he’s so close. You could touch his skin…that heat…like a moth to the flame.

“I-I forgot.” He says it quietly, as if he might be able to take it back the moment he wishes to. But he can’t. And now it’s out there.

Your eyes drift down to his hands which are balled into fists as your emptiness grows.

Just where I belong. Forgotten. You smile with your heartbreak, a small breath of a laugh whispered through your lips. Eyes stinging, you blink furiously to drive them back. You won’t cry in front of this man.

You swallow hard, moving back until your legs hit the edge of the fancy gilded sofa and sit.

“You forgot me.” You state, smiling sadly at the floor, speaking slow and quiet.

Every bit of confidence that Jeremy had built up in you tonight seems to vanish.

“I guess I’m not really surprised. Everyone seems to forget about me. Silly of me to expect different. Silly. It’s okay.” You nod. “I’m used to it.”

“No.” Thor rushes to your side, dropping down beside you. He takes your hands in his own, the heat of his skin so lovely compared to the cooler temperatures of everyone else in your life but you can’ even really enjoy it. “I don’t mean that I forgot about you. I have thought about you every day since I last saw you.”

Your heart flutters. Can he mean it?

“The mission we were on pulled Stark and I into space in pursuit of our enemy. I should have stopped to call you then when I realized that we would have to leave, or at least sent you a message that it might be possible I would not return for a while, but we were in such a hurry that I didn’t think of it until we got back.”

“You don’t owe me an explanation, Thor.” It sounds fake anyway. It lines up with the story of him going away and then coming back later. Your mind shoots back to the beautiful Korean woman he’d been dancing with. Helen Cho. “If you found someone else, you didn’t have to hide it from me. I-”

You hesitate because you don’t like to outright lie, and this is most definitely a lie.

“I would have been okay with just being your friend. She’s very beautiful, your date.” You smile at him, forced, still sad. Damn your lack of a poker face.

“No.” Thor grieves. He scoots closer, cupping the sides of your face.

God, his touch could melt metal.

“No, Y/N. Although I cannot deny that I am here with Dr. Cho, I can assure you that I am only here because she asked me to be her escort when Steve could no longer accompany her. Nothing more. And you…I could never be just friends with you.” He shakes his head, smiling affectionately at you. “I’d go mad.”

You search his eyes, yearning for him so much that you know he must be able to see it. Can what he says be true?

“You really left Earth?”

“Yes.” He nods, thumbs caressing your cheeks.

“I’m sorry I sent you so many texts.” You confess, still hating yourself for the slip. Like Jeremy said, you should have played it cool and stopped when he never replied.

“I loved them.” Thor smiles, your heart soaring at the subtle stretch to his lips.

“But-you got back and never—you never responded?” You look down at his chest and he tilts your head back up to stare into your eyes again.

“I was not truly back. The members of the team that did return thought it best to release the story of our return to keep our enemies at bay. If they knew we were off planet for more than a day, they might try and cause trouble. Steve did not realize what releasing that story would do to us.”

Us. Oh, good God! Us! You and Thor are an us?

You lick your lips, staring at his then diverting attention back to his eyes. “So, you weren’t ignoring me?”

“No.” He shakes his head, shifting closer. Is he going to kiss you?! “I came to you as soon as I received those messages only…”

He pulls back and you hate it. So much that your hands react on their own and find the hard bulge of his shoulders. You pull him closer and his eyes go slightly wide at the strength with which you do it.

He elects to ignore your slip and you’re grateful for the moment.

“I came to see you, at your home at the tip of your tower but when I arrived you were…preoccupied. I left straight away.” The way he says it you know what he must have seen.

Fuck!

His hands slide down along your neck then finally come to rest on the sides of your shoulders.

“Oh.” You loosen your hold on him and bring your hands down to his sides.

Touching him at all has your head dizzy. The smooth fabric of his suit, the lovely aura he exudes right up against you, is all so delightful but you also have to contend with the guilt of what he must have seen. Wait…why are you feeling guilty? You and Thor weren’t together.

Your mind flurries over the confusion of how intensely you feel about Thor already. It feels like fate or destiny. Drawn to him the way you are. You don’t even have a choice whether you should be with him or not. The answer is yes. You must be with Thor.

“Have you found someone to cherish you?” He asks, giving your arms a squeeze. “It’s what you deserve.”

His assurance breaks your heart again. You’re the reason that he’s kept away this past week. He came to see you when he realized what you must think but then found you in bed with Jeremy.

“Jeremy’s always been very considerate of me, Thor. There are things about me that only Jeremy knows, and he’s been there for me through that. When you never called I-I withdrew. I hadn’t come out of my home in days and Jeremy offered me the only comfort and distraction that he can. He’s done it for years.” You bite your lower lip. Will this make Thor run? “I’m different from regular people, Thor and Jeremy offered once to help me experience something that would be dangerous for anyone to try with me, but we managed it and he’s been there for me in that way since.”

You’re not ashamed of what you and Jeremy share. It’s unique, sure, but it had been a necessity.

“It’s not an everyday occurrence, although I do have to admit that since you never called and when I finally gave up, it’s happened more and more often. I know that it must be strange but it’s just a way to cope. A way to get something that’s been missing my whole life. The emotions might not be there, but I-I can feel wanted when he’s with me. Like there’s nothing wrong with me.”

You avoid his gaze, embarrassed by this admission. That you need the sex to feel normal, not the sex itself.

“So, you are not in love with him?” Thor asks, eyebrows high on his forehead.

If that’s what he pulls out of what you just said to him, he’s even better than you ever realized.

“No.” You smile at him—a real smile—eager to please and assure him that you’re only interested in him. “I love Jeremy—as weird as this might sound—like family. He’s the only person I’ve ever been able to trust after my Papa Roman passed.”

“But you are not with him?” Thor asks, eagerly, his hands shifting up along your neck again.

The trail they carve burns hot.

“No.” You shake your head. “I-I only w-want to be with you, Thor. I’ve never felt this way about a guy before. Anyone, really.”

The nerves in your stomach make you queasy to say such stupid, sappy, and open things aloud to his face. If he weren’t sitting right in front of you, you might have blown chunks.

You drop your voice even lower, quieter. It’s a whisper in the semi-darkness with the hum of the string quartet finishing up their rendition of Young and Beautiful.

“I like you, Thor. A lot.” You blink, staring into his blue eyes hoping that the spark you see there means he’s passionate about you too. “Do you think that m-maybe you could like me ba-?”

You don’t get to finish as he lunges down towards you, pulling you up until your lips crash against his. It’s rough at first, needy and your teeth click. Your lips burn with the roughness that he kisses you with, but you groan, happy to have his lips on yours though it does hurt.

He pulls back, gasping quietly, hot breath on your lips. You sigh and laugh lightly. “Ow.”

“I’m sorry.” He says, eyes still shut as he strokes your cheeks with his thumbs once more. “I’ve been wanting to do that for months.”

This surprises you and you pull back, confused. “Months?”

Thor’s eyes shoot open. “Oh, I mean, not months. That would be strange right? It’s not like I’ve been following you around or anything I just—Well, I went to some of the places I knew you happened to go to and if you happened to be there, then I would get to see you. That’s not weird, right?”

Months?! “You’ve been watching me?”

“No!” He nearly screams in panic.

“You haven’t been watching me?” You ask, slightly disappointed, though it’s veiled in bewilderment.

“I mean, yes. I wasn’t stalking you or anything like that, even if that’s what Natasha kept saying.” He hurries to explain himself but you’re too busy basking in the blissful warmth of your confusion. “One day I just, I saw in you the café and you were so happy. Your eyes shone like stars, but you were so unappreciated by those friends you keep, and I wanted to keep seeing you. So, I kept going to the café and one day I was out by the park and you passed by with your friends and I saw you go into that museum of art, the Met? So, I went by a few days later-”

He’s babbling, quickly. Explaining himself as thoroughly as he can but all you’re hearing is the fact that every time you felt his warmth, every single time you bathed in his aura and thanked the universe for letting you feel it, Thor had been there intentionally to see you.

You.

You wrap your arms around his back again, under his arms and use your hands to push him towards you once again. His eyes widen once more at the shocking strength you exert but he doesn’t complain when your lips find his.

You shut your eyes and surrender to the bliss. You can feel his power coursing underneath his skin. It sends subtle shocks through to yours and you smile against his lips and let yourself burn him in return. He pulls back, a little, shocked by your heat. Not far enough to really break your kiss.

“What-?”

“I told you, I’m different.” You whisper against his lips. “I’m…I’ll explain it all to you but Thor, please can you just-?”

He seems to know what you want because he wraps his arms around your waist and kisses you again. This time, his lips are sensual, slow, and soft. His tongue traces the edges of your lips and you let him in, whimpering against his mouth as he softens for you.

He’s like velvet, smooth and slow, his beard tickling your chin and cheeks. His electricity charges you and your heat burns him. This kiss, slow and riddled with such yearning and feeling, chars him to you and finally you can use your strength.

You crush yourself to him. He groans and the sound is a tease of what’s to come. You can’t hold anyone like this, not Jeremy. No one. He seems to realize that he can use his strength too and he squeezes you tighter, breasts crushed against his chest and he tilts his head to the left and leans you back against the sofa.

After tonight, you can never go back to a time when you are not able to kiss Thor. Although you know he has a say in the matter, mentally you claim him as your own. Thor is yours and you wish anyone that hopes to stand in your way of having him luck.

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[twins-parted]

Relationship: Seth & Nora

                              “ There you go being a people-pleaser again. “ 

She stood in the doorway to his office, the same frustration and bewilderment present from earlier in the evening. He tried to ignore her and keep typing his report, but the stare drilling into the back of his skull made it impossible. 

“ Nora, your father has very clear expectations of what he wants for you. Besides, I thought you’d be happy about the proposal, everyone else certainly was. “ 

He turned the office chair so they could face one another. She was so easy to read & he liked that about her ... he grudgingly found himself enjoying just how easily she read him in return. Her arms were folded as she took a few steps further into the office. He reached a hand out for her and she took it, allowing him to pull her onto his lap. His cheek nuzzled into hers. She squirmed, but otherwise didn’t resist.

“ You told me a long time ago you didn’t believe in the institution of marriage & I don’t blame you, it seems marriage is the place love goes to die - ( My father has been married 8 times in the last 20 years ... I get it.  ) - Why did you not just tell him how you felt ?? “

Her dark eyes tried to search his, but he wouldn’t tilt his head up. She felt his breath speed up as if he’d suddenly had a burst of anxiety. 

“ Nora - I would do anything to keep you with me. If it means sucking up my pride and just carry out my perfunctory duties as a Groom, so be it ?? While I don’t care if we’re married or not - your father does, and need I remind you - - - ??? “

She rolled her eyes and fought to be released. his grip around her middle tightened and she grit her teeth:

“ So, you’re afraid my father won’t permit you to work in the hospital if you don’t marry me ? “

She was surprised when he agreed:

“ It’s a very valid fear, yes. I’m also worried he’ll cut you off if I don’t. Nora, I know how much you adore your Dad. I wouldn’t do that to you. “

Why was he bending so willingly ??? 

He’d never been this pliable, not even with her & it was maddening. She tried again, her approach softer as she leaned back into his shoulder:

“ I don’t much care if we make it official or not, so long as we’re together and love - “

( He flinched unknowingly and she tried again. ) 

“ - er, and care for one another. I suppose if you’re sure you don’t want to stand up to him ... I’ll try to talk Daddy into a small wedding with only our close family and friends. “

He let out what sounded to her like a sigh of relief. 

“ ... If you’d like. Maybe you tell him to slow down while you’re at it ??? “ 

Nora turned her face and buried it in his neck, calmed by the scent of the cologne on his shirt collar. She closed her eyes and simply enjoyed existing in the same space with him. Instinctively, she hugged him and he planted a kiss on her exposed arm.

“ ... He’s already talking about grandchildren. “

She laughed, that did sound like something her father would focus on not long after she had accepted a marriage proposal. 

“ Oh, what ? You don’t want a baby with me, Mr. Trimble ?? “

She was teasing him, but her stomach twisted involuntarily anyway. She hadn’t really thought that far ahead, but it seemed that soon enough that would be part of her station. Her heart leapt into her throat - she was terrified at the prospect of carrying life inside or her and more worried she’d somehow fail this one task. 

“ No. “

He answered sharply and she winced automatically. His response cut through her in a way that almost brought tears to her eyes. No, he wasn’t always the most forthcoming about his feelings, and there was always something that felt like it was lurking under the surface ... but, she refused to let herself dwell on it. 

“ I’d like to have lots of babies with you. Well, at least 2. Not anytime soon though - I want to be established at the hospital first. After about 5 years ... I’d say we look into it more. “

She nearly fainted right there from relief, but forced herself to get up and stroll back towards the office door. She needed to start dinner anyway. She turned once to look back at him & he was still watching her - something completely unknowable about his expression.

“ ... Are we at least going to keep in practice, you know - for when the right day comes ?? “

He smiled sheepishly and dropped his gaze, a light blush coloring his cheeks:

“ I think that could probably be arranged. “

She began to ascend the stairs:

“ Good, because our first practice is tomorrow when you get home. “

[lilacmoon83]

Finding You Always

Also on Fanfiction.net and A03

Chapter 222: Reverberations

Once the fireworks ended, people began to disperse and leave for their homes for the evening. The clean up crew was already deployed and the band was packing up. Leo and Elsa were preparing to depart for a short honeymoon aboard Pegasus. They had accepted Glinda's offer to stay at one of Emerald City's luxurious resorts for a couple days and were going there soon. But not before they sat down as a family to hear about James and Aphrodite's experience in the Underworld.

"Wow...so you were actually Anchises?" Leo asked.

"I was...and before you ask, no, Eros is not related to you by blood. Zeus explained that I'm only related to David in this life as James," James replied. Leo let out a small breath of relief at that.

"And the curse on you both...it's finally broken?" Snow asked. They nodded.

"Once George placed my mother's enchanted charm in my hand, it restored my memories. Or at least my real memories of this life and how we were in love," James replied.

"The man I was...after I lost her wasn't the real me, it turns out. After George stripped me of my memories of Aphrodite, he found a way to warp my mind and mold me into what he wanted me to be," James explained.

"My memories of James were erased too, by Blue and Hera," Aphrodite added.

"It wasn't much longer after that, maybe a year at most that I was killed. But this time, Zeus decided that he was tired of seeing her be hurt and bargained with Hades to deny my revival," he explained.

"But then Athena convinced him to allow James to be revived after he met the two of you in the Underworld. She said that, as my champions, you two could indirectly bring our curse to an end," Aphrodite said. Snow and David exchanged a glance.

"I...I don't think we did that," Snow said.

"Yes you did...Blue was exposed for what she is because of you. It led to all of this," Aphrodite replied. They smiled.

"We're just glad that you've broken the curse and you'll never lose each other again," Snow gushed, as she rested her head against David's arm.

"Yeah...but how did the Horned King know about the curse? Did you ever find out?" David asked. They nodded.

"We did...it was because James is the one that banished him," Aphrodite said.

"It's how we met in this life, but you and Hermes helped me banish him," he reminded her.

"But you saved me from him, just like you saved me as Anchises and Adonis," she gushed.

"Wait...who else did he save you from?" Emma asked curiously.

"Well...as Anchises, he found me near his home after a bad encounter with Clayton's ancestor. He, with the help of Blue and Hera, tried to trick me into thinking he and his consort were true love to get the chalice," Aphrodite revealed. Snow gasped.

"So that's how he knew about the chalice…" she realized. Aphrodite nodded.

"The knowledge of exactly what the chalice is and what it could do was passed through his family. Later on, Adonis rescued me from Clayton's grandfather, who tried to force me to...be with him," she said, with a shudder.

"Yeah...then Clayton tried to do the same. He wanted her to bear his heir and planned to take her to Atlantis so he could have control of the chalice," James added.

"Oh my God…" Snow said in outrage.

"That explains his obsession with you and the Chalice...and us," David replied.

"You have no idea...he told us himself. His plan was to replace you after Snow was forced to crush your heart. His last ditch effort to have a Divine heir was Snow," James explained.

"Of course it didn't happen, nor did he factor in that you wouldn't be able to have children after Bobby," Aphrodite added.

"Bastard...please tell me he's burning in hell," David said.

"Apparently worse than that. Nyx decided that Tartarus was even too good for him. She sent him somewhere called Gehenna, which apparently only the absolute worst scourges are sent," James said.

"Trust me...Tartarus is a picnic compared to Gehenna," Aphrodite confirmed.

"Good...that's the best news I've heard in awhile," Eva agreed.

"Yeah...now if we could just get rid of Creepyl so Nyx could send him there too," Leo said.

"And we will…" David assured, as he squeezed Snow's hip and she smiled at him.

"We will...and the power rests in your family," Aphrodite said.

"How?" Snow asked.

"Now that I have all my memories...I remember how to utilize the chalice and your star gems to their full extent," Aphrodite replied.

"Then let's do it," David said and she winced.

"The problem is...he'll see it coming a mile away," Aphrodite said.

"Then we have to find a way to take him by surprise," Emma said.

"And we will," Aphrodite promised.

"I guess Clayton is about to get his wish though," Natalie mentioned.

"Hey...no, this baby will be a Charming and his son isn't getting anywhere near him or her," David assured her.

"He's right…" James confirmed, as he looked at his father.

"Did you know about her? Did you walk out on her too?" he asked, a bit sternly.

"He didn't know," Natalie confirmed.

"I didn't...and I wouldn't have walked out if I did. I regretted that with David, as much as I regretted having to give you up," Xander answered. James seemed to accept that answer with less resistance than David did and for the moment, any other questions were quelled for the evening, for the hour grew late.

With that, they saw Leo and Elsa off and everyone else dispersed for the evening after a lovely celebration, despite the brief, rude and unwelcome interruption.

~*~

Jekyll stormed into his lab, with his partners in crime trailing behind him.

"I was so close…" he growled, as he angrily tossed one of the lab tables against the wall, shattering the contents and sending debris everywhere.

"Yes...that backfired quickly," Grimm agreed.

"It's those brats, as usual," Drizella said.

"Particularly the young one, it seems. He did have a significant hand in defeating Seth, after all," Grimm replied.

"What is your point!?" Jekyll snapped.

"My point is...those magical children will always block our path to victory," Grimm said.

"They will block my path to gaining the authorship and they will block hers to the Prince, just as they will block yours to Snow White," he continued.

"This device you created to keep him from touching her was ingenious, but the boy will always circumvent it," Grimm said.

"I still fail to see what your obvious statements contribute toward our success," Jekyll growled.

"I thought it was obvious...we have to isolate Snow and Charming from anyone else that can help them. Then you must be able to overcome the power of their chalice," Grimm reiterated.

"Neither of those is an easy task...but perhaps not impossible," Jekyll mused.

"What...what is this on my arm?" Drizella asked, as she noticed there was a large patch of grayed skin.

"I told you there may be side effects from the injection...it's probably wearing off," Jekyll replied.

"But I need magic if I'm to be the new Evil Queen! Can't you improve the serum?!" she demanded to know.

"I will make some adjustments, but none of this does us any good if we cannot thwart our enemies more completely," Jekyll said.

"Then we have work to do," Grimm replied.

~*~

He was trying not to, but he knew he was brooding again. He stood out on the balcony in the cool night air, only in his sleep pants. Snow was getting changed out of her dress and ready for bed, while he attempted to quell his feelings of anger and failure over Jekyll's latest strike and near victory again. He loved their children and was constantly in awe of their power. But he didn't want them fighting these battles for him. He wanted to take on and defeat Jekyll himself, once and for all. But with his demonic powers combined with his scientific ability to invent seemingly anything, he knew the odds were stacked against him. The image of that monster's hands on his beautiful Snow was seared into his brain and he seethed with barely restrained rage. He felt it start to ebb away though, as he felt her presence behind him. It was their mystical connection and irrevocable love that kept him grounded. She could banish his anger in an instant and the heat of her body behind him beckoned. He turned to her, finding her in a slinky white negligee and emerald eyes that pierced through him. Her eyes spoke to him and he cupped her face in his hands. Whatever fear remained in her slowly ebbed away in that moment at his touch. Their lips met in a smoldering kiss and her arms went around his neck. When their lips finally parted, they were breathless and gasping in ragged impassioned breaths. Her knees nearly gave out, as he kissed her throat and she pressed herself flush against him.

"I need you…" she pleaded.

"I need your hands on me," she begged. Jekyll had starved her of his touch for only moments, but it felt like a lifetime. Perhaps because he had meant to make it a lifetime. They needed each other like air and he had found a way to keep them from the simple act of touching one another, not to mention holding or kissing and it nearly broke them. Just the thought of not feeling his hands on her or his lips pressing against hers was enough to drive her mad and him as well. Never one to deny her anything, he swept her into his arms like she weighed nothing and carried her the short distance to their bed with purpose. David kissed her deeply and pinned her beneath his hard body.

"Charming…" she whimpered, as her body writhed beneath him and ached to be touched. She clawed at his waistband and managed to push his pants down his legs.

~*~

Their lips crashed together again and she moaned, as he gripped her thighs and parted them. She raised her arms and arched toward him, as he pushed her negligee over her head. She mewled, as his hands slid up her sides and to her breasts, cupping her firmly and his lips trailed down her neck.

"Charming…" she cried out again, as he raised up and sat back on his haunches. He pulled her up, straddling her in his lap, as he slid her onto his thick, pulsing cock. She hooked her arms around his neck and he began to pump in and out of her at a rapid pace. He rode her hard, taking her to a place of pure ecstasy, as they made love. As he took her, she hummed in pleasure and she slid her hands into his hair, gently running her fingers through it. They stared into each other's eyes and their shared heart pounded in sync. No words were spoken, but their eyes and heart spoke volumes. For them, this went far beyond physical and always had. They had always been so in tune with each other; a love that had always been on another level than most. Being one in heart and mind already made their connection awe-inspiring. So when they became one in body too, it was nothing short of purely magical and almost ethereal.

He shifted their positions and gently lay her on her back, as his pace became slow and languid, as he now glided deeply into her with each thrust. She lay writhing beneath his undulating body, legs splayed around him. With every thrust, he hit her sweet spot and slowly pushed her to the edge. As she neared her climax, her mewls grew in volume and she raked her nails along his naked back, as her entire body trembled beneath him. He had her right at the edge and her cries became whimpers, as her body begged to come. She was beside herself, her mind clouded in the ecstasy that was him taking her. His slow lovemaking was expertly extending her pleasure in a way only he could do for her. If there was one thing Charming was an absolute expert in, it was all things Snow. They could make love and fuck each other for eternity and it would never be enough for either of them. And she was determined to have him for eternity, despite another looming threat from Jekyll and many other adversaries. He watched her come apart and marveled at the sight. Snow...beautiful Snow, emerald eyes dark with love and lust for him, only for him. Red lips parted, as short pants of air were inhaled and exhaled. Her body writhing and glistening with perspiration, her back arching and her aching for his touch. Her round, full breasts bobbing between them and the moan she made when he put his hands or lips on them was one he wanted to hear forever. The feeling of thrusting inside her was pure heaven and he'd never tire of making love to her. When he was inside her like this, he could hardly form coherent thought and he liked it that way. He liked that it was him that made her dripping wet and cry out wantonly. Gliding into her slickness with slow pumps and feeling her tightness clenching around his cock, quivering and begging for release, was a feeling he wanted to feel for forever.

"Baby…" she whimpered, as she writhed and bucked in the wake of a powerful climax; one that only he could give her. He was close to his own and increased his pace, as the whole bed rocked with them.

"Snow…" he cried out, as he finally came inside her and they trembled together in the wake of their purely magical coupling. He collapsed beside her finally and they cuddled together, as their ragged breathing slowly returned to normal.

"We'll beat him, Snow...because he is never taking you from me. I'll find a way," he promised, as he kissed her forehead.

"I know...I have never doubted you, nor will I. You're the hero in my story, my love...my hero," she gushed, as he kissed her tenderly and they finally drifted off to sleep, thoroughly entwined together...

~*~

Three Days Later

"And Good Morning United Realms!" Le Fou announced, as the morning news show began once again.

"Welcome fellow United Realmers on our first day back from hiatus," Goldilocks said.

"As usual, there's no shortage of news. Just days ago, Prince Leo married Queen Elsa of Arendelle in the celebration of the year," Le Fou reported.

"But since this is Storybrooke we're talking about, it didn't quite go off without a hitch. After the happy couple exchanged nuptials, their reception was interrupted by a dastardly trio," Goldilocks said dramatically.

"Yes...Drizella Tremaine declared herself as the new Evil Queen, a mysterious man named Grimm seemed to issue a challenge to our favorite author, and once again the raging psychopath, Dr. Jekyll made another play for the fair and beautiful Snow White," Le Fou said.

"Yes...and this time, the United Realms' embattled pair had to be saved by their youngest son,"

"They are insufferable...seriously how do they still have jobs?" Paul asked, as he finally turned off the television, while Eva poured coffee into their travel mugs.

"Well...they're mildly entertaining I suppose, though I wish they would find things other than my parents to gossip about," Eva replied.

"Yeah, they definitely need to stop calling them news," he countered and she chuckled.

"Yeah...news, they definitely fail at that. But you know that gossip sells far better than news," Eva said, as she handed him his mug and kissed his cheek. He smiled and pecked her on the lips. Today, they were not headed to the hospital right away, but rather to her parents castle for a meeting. In the infamous war room.

It had been a very long time since her parents had called an actual formal council meeting at the table in the war room and never yet in her lifetime. But with the worldwide undertaking they were about to embark on with the Major, they had decided to convene it to discuss the operations they were about to embark on.

"Are you ready?" he asked. She nodded and they joined hands, before leaving their loft for the day.

~*~

Snow giggled, as they cuddled in bed together that morning.

"We really have to get up," she cooed, as he kissed her neck and his hands roamed in the wake of a bout of morning lovemaking.

"Remind me why we scheduled this thing so early?" he asked.

"We didn't baby...we scheduled it for eleven and it's almost ten," she reminded him.

"Really?" he asked. They had been awake for hours, but very busy since.

"Yes," she replied.

"Well, you know what they say...time flies when you're having fun," he said and she giggled, as he kissed her again.

"These last three days have been amazing," Snow said, as he spooned her against him.

"Mmm...yeah, but definitely not long enough," he replied, as he kissed her again.

Since Leo's wedding, they fortunately heard nothing from the wedding crashers and their most nefarious adversary. Instead, they had been allowed three blissful days to spend with each other and their family.

They had family picnics with their kids and grandkids, complete with horseback riding and campfires. They had taken romantic walks on the beach, family dinners at Granny's, and then the last day, they had spent alone together. And they hadn't left their bedroom much on that day.

"We should have pushed this back another day," he murmured against her skin.

"You know we can't...not if we want to take the first two cabal members down," she reminded him.

"Well…Italy is supposed to be romantic so I guess there's that," he agreed, as he slipped out of bed.

"Care to join me in the shower?" he asked, with a sly look.

"Oh, that is an offer I'd never refuse," she replied, as she took his hand and they hurried off to the bathroom.

~*~

Mephisto arrived in Milan and made his way into the luxury hotel where that evening's event was set to take place.

"So...you're here," a man said, as he met him in the lobby with a woman.

"Mr. Landers, I presume?" Mephisto asked.

"Yes Stefan Landers...and this is Ms. Erin Mercer," he replied.

"Perhaps we can go somewhere a little less public," Mephisto suggested. Stefan nodded and led them to the freight elevator, which descended below the hotel.

When they arrived, several levels below ground, the elevator door opened and he observed young women in cages, as well as empty cages ready to snatch unsuspecting young women from the modeling pool.

"So...this is your operation," Mephisto observed.

"Yes...and from what we've been told, you believe that they are coming for us," Erin said. Mephisto smirked.

"Oh, I'm certain of it," Mephisto replied.

"They will come tonight...and we will be ready for them," he added.

"And these two...they will give us the power you said?" they asked. He smirked.

"With these two...we'll have a first class golden ticket to the United Realms and all its power and treasure," he promised...

~*~

It had been a long time since they had held a meeting in the war room and the last time they did, many of the people in this room hadn't been born yet and the one person they used to combat was now one of their best friends and confidantes. How times had changed and evolved, only to come full circle to this moment.

The last time he had led a war room meeting, he had been dressed in his formal royal clothing or battle wear. But today, he wore a simple button down shirt and jeans, common clothing of this realm. But the casual clothing did not mean this was just a casual meeting. They were about to embark on a series of missions outside the comfort of the United Realms borders and taking on some very dangerous people that wouldn't bat an eye at slitting one of their throats. But they would be potentially saving many by taking down this network of corrupted people that purportedly were the people that really ran the world. So, as they always did, Snow and David would begin this new undertaking, despite the looming threat of Jekyll, who they still had to neutralize once and for all.

"Thank you to everyone for coming," David said, as he began the meeting.

"As you know, Snow and I are about to embark on a series of missions with the Major, outside our borders, to dismantle an evil underground network that poses a threat to us and potentially the entire world," David began, as he looked at her. She nodded.

"We've decided that the best way to approach each mission is to assemble a small team to go with us and rotate the team members for each mission," Snow said.

"For this mission, we're going to Italy and attending a high end fashion show. Supposedly, our first two targets are there and they reportedly run a very large global trafficking ring there," David added.

"David is right...and once we take down these two, it will put the others on alert. I will be honest, these missions will be dangerous, each one more so," the Major said.

"And we're supposed to be okay with you putting our parents in the line of fire to fight your battles?" Emma interjected.

"Yeah...I have to agree with Emma. Give me one good reason that we shouldn't wall off the United Realms and let your world deal with its own problems," Regina said.

"Ninety-eight percent of the population doesn't even know these people exist or that their lives are controlled by them," Patricia said.

"The same ninety-eight percent that doesn't believe in magic," Leo chimed in.

"True...but that doesn't mean they don't deserve saving," Patricia countered.

"She's right," Snow agreed.

"Mom...we love you and we love that you and Dad always want to help everyone, but this is so risky," Emma said.

"We know honey, but you know we can't turn our backs on this. Clayton is gone, but this network that he helped create is still doing his evil bidding," Snow replied.

"She's right...we need to take them out, because we know that there is no guarantee that even a barrier will keep these people out of the United Realms forever," David added. Emma sighed, but didn't argue that, because she knew he was right.

"Okay...well since you two are a walking target for mayhem, I volunteer for this first mission," Regina offered.

"We're not…" David started to say.

"Yes you are," all five of his children echoed before he could finish. He rolled his eyes and Snow smiled with a wince.

"We kind of are," she said.

"Fine," he relented.

"Elsa and I are going too," Leo announced.

"You two are still on your honeymoon," David protested. He shrugged.

"And Italy sounds like a great place for an extended honeymoon," he said, as they shared a smile.

"Besides...I think we may enjoy the danger and adventure just as much as the two of you," Elsa replied, as she and Snow smiled at each other.

"Okay, with the Major, that's a team of six," David said.

"You and Mom are going to hate it, but I probably should go on every mission with you," Bobby chimed in.

"You're right...I hate that," Snow said.

"Mom...my magic was the only one that defeated Jekyll's stupid crazy bastard sciencey invention," he reminded her.

"Language," she scolded and he sighed.

"The point is...you're probably going to run into Mephisto out there. You need me if you do," he said. David sighed.

"He's not wrong," he muttered and Snow huffed in annoyance.

"Don't worry Mom...he's got a lot of other magic surrounding him. You know Aunt Regina would blast the crap out of anyone that comes near him," Leo said.

"He's not wrong either," Rumple agreed.

"Fine...then I guess we have our team of seven. That's a good number," Snow said. David nodded in agreement.

"Then we should pack and leave soon," David said.

"How are we getting there? Using a bean isn't a great idea. We'll just freak out a bunch of people and Milan isn't exactly a harbor city," Leo mentioned.

"He's right, though I loathe the idea of a commercial airline and all the staring," Regina said.

"Can we even get on a commercial airline?" Bobby asked.

"There is too much red tape for that, not to mention that none of you have passports and the United States government doesn't even consider any of you citizens," Patricia said.

"That sounds like it could be trouble...especially since you've been fired," David replied.

"It may be...but you do have protections on the borders watching for a breach, right?" she asked.

"My men regularly patrol the outside borders," Fandral chimed in.

"Now that I'm back, I'll be reinforcing our magical protections," Aphrodite said.

"Aye...and if any unrecognized ships enter the Harbor, they'll call me immediately," Killan added.

"Then we shouldn't have anything to worry about for now. If they thought they could invade without it being a bloodbath, they would have done it already. But they have seen what magic can do," Patricia replied.

"So no Jolly Roger or plane. It has to be a portal, but how do we do that without freaking people out?" Leo asked.

"There is plenty of countryside just outside the city. You'd be fairly safe portalling there. I can give you coordinates if you can will the chalice to open in a specific location," Natalie replied. Snow nodded.

"We usually have no trouble willing the Chalice to do what we need," she said.

"Then it's settled. The team leaving Milan needs to meet back here in an hour," David replied. They nodded and dispersed, as Aphrodite approached them.

"Is it true that Blue is locked up?" she asked. Snow nodded.

"Fandral was able to capture her," she replied.

"Yes...she was foolish enough to come after Rose to try and keep her from reading your real story," Fandral said. Rose nodded and presented a book to her.

"You mean...it was in your library all along?" Aphrodite asked. Rose nodded.

"Yes...but it was cloaked and only appeared after you left. Aesop informed us that he was commissioned by Zeus to record the real thing and then it was hidden in our library by Hermes," Rose replied.

"When you left to learn the truth, it appeared," Fandral added.

"I'm sure Athena is responsible for that," James deduced, as the blonde leafed through the book.

"It's all here…" she said gratefully, as he put his arm around her waist.

"And Blue is where she belongs. She'll remain there until her Royal Tribunal that will decide her ultimate fate," David replied. James looked at his twin brother with scrutiny.

"You're really going to try her?" he asked. David nodded.

"But Royal Tribunal usually has one outcome. The death penalty," James reminded him.

"We know...and it's not something we will likely ever be comfortable with, but Blue's crimes are too devastating. She is too dangerous and a threat to the safety of everyone, as well as the sovereignty of every Kingdom," Snow said.

"She's right...she's more than earned this fate and if found guilty, then she'll be executed," David replied.

"We will never regret showing mercy, even to our enemies, but we've learned that not all of them deserve it. She's one that doesn't, especially since she has been trying to destroy true love for so long," Snow added.

"Between James and myself, as well as Zorro, I'd say we'll be able to keep an eye on things around here," Fandral said. David nodded.

"Yeah...we'll be on psychopath watch with Dr. Creepyl, but I think we should find out more about this Grimm guy," James said.

"Oh Fandral and I can talk to Aesop. He started to tell us a bit, but seemed reluctant to talk about his past," Rose replied.

"Perhaps in light of these recent events, he'll be more willing to tell us what he knows," Fandral said.

"Then I guess everyone has their assignments. Once this mission is over and we locate the next, we'll rotate a new team in," David replied, as they dispersed. Snow slid her arms around his waist and he kissed her tenderly.

"You were amazing, as usual," she gushed.

"If I am...it's only because of you, my darling. I...I just wish we had a clear, concise plan to take out Jekyll," he said.

"And we will...I'm fine," she assured him.

"I know...it just haunts me at how close he came this time. I couldn't touch you...it was torture. He knew it would be," David said.

"He's sick and evil...he gets off on tormenting me and pursuing you. He's the one evil we can't seem to shake," he added.

"But we will...there is nothing our love cannot overcome. He caught us off guard at the wedding, but there is no doubt in my mind that we would have found a way to defeat his device, even if Bobby hadn't intervened," Snow said, as she caressed his cheek.

"Have faith...our love has never let us down," she added. He smiled and kissed her again.

"You're right...it never has and it never will," he said, with renewed confidence.

"Now...let's pack. We may be going on a mission, but this is Italy and the prospect of going to such a romantic city with my husband is exciting," she replied. He joined hands with her and they returned to their room to pack.

~*~

The black sport utility vehicle drove along the winding roads of Maine and General Mendoza sat in the back, looking over the Nolan files he had seized from Major Donovan's office. He was in complete control of her operation now and had everything, except an item for entrance into the United Realms. But that wasn't going to stop him from exploring the rumored location of this mystical place.

He thumbed through David Nolan's file with great interest. He found it very intriguing how he had been found on a rural Maine road, bleeding from his side, with an infant in his arms. He had then spent ten years in a coma, only to awaken upon his daughter finding her way to him. She had only done so after having run away from a group home and he wondered how she had even obtained his location or even knew about him in the first place.

Even more interesting was Xander Nolan and his shadowy presence in this world for nearly as long as his son's. As an operative to the Collector, Xander had moved around the world in the shadows, doing the Collector's bidding, and evading law enforcement with ease. He had little on him, but that wasn't surprising. Clayton was a part of the Underground cabal that his own family was a part of, even if he ended up screwing them all over in the end.

In 1993, David Nolan awakened and disappeared into thin air with his daughter and only re-emerged more than thirty-years later in Seattle, not having aged a day. With him, his wife and five children came with him. Then after the supernatural events in Seattle, they disappeared again until two years ago when they popped up in Boston again. Major Donovan had a detailed explanation of everything, but he was still having trouble wrapping his head around such fantastical stuff, even after they saw it during the battle only weeks ago. He knew about his ancestor's travels and quests, but he had never put much stock in the more fringe nature of the story. Now he was realizing that it was all true. Traveling to far off realms, lost worlds, mystical warriors like the Dragon King and his betrayal of him...it was all true and thus he had a duty to continue his family's mission.

"Stop the car," he said, as his driver obeyed and he got out. These were the coordinates, but all he could see was woods. But that would not remain for long. He was determined to find a way in and for that, he made a deal with the Devil. He only hoped he came through soon. With that, he got back into the car and instructed his driver to take them to the nearest town. He was a patient man and he would find a way in.

~*~

On the other side of the invisible barrier, Zorro watched the man, as he looked around with scrutiny. He didn't know who this man was, but he clearly was clued in on their location, that was obvious.

"Keep patrolling. I'll be doubling our men," Zorro said, as he mounted his horse.

"I must inform Fandral of this development," he said, as he headed for Andresia.

~*~

Agent Green winced, as she finished getting dressed. Her stay in the hospital was thankfully at an end and she looked at the young doctor, who was writing on her chart

"You've healed nicely, but I have to insist you take it easy for a few days," Eva said, as she watched the agent look at her phone.

"Well, if I stick with Major Donovan, I won't have a job anyway," she replied.

"Then you know about her being fired," Eva said.

"Yeah...agent Harding texted me and gave me the rundown," Tessa replied.

"What do you plan to do?" Eva asked.

"Relax…I'm not going to work against your parents or anything. Agent Harding is going to need help on the inside of this thing," Tessa said.

"I thought you hated us and this whole thing," Eva replied.

"I do...but you did save me and I do not like the idea that I've been working for such corrupted people," she said.

"I'm glad to hear that," Eva replied.

"Did...did you happen to recover Agent Brooks' body?" Tessa asked.

"Yes...he's at the morgue and we were waiting to ask you if he had family," Eva replied.

"No…I'm afraid not. It was just him and he has no wife or kids. His parents are also dead," Tessa said, with a sigh.

"As his partner, I guess it's up to me," she added.

"We'll help you do whatever you need," Eva replied.

"If you can tell them to cremate him...then I can scatter his ashes in the ocean. He...he would have liked that," she replied. Eva nodded.

"I'll tell Doc and he'll take care of everything," she said.

"Doc?" Tessa asked.

"He's our medical examiner and Bashful is our forensic analyst," Eva replied. Tessa shook her head.

"This place is wild," she commented. Eva smiled.

"It can be," she agreed.

"Anyway...thank you for saving me," Tessa said. Eva smiled again.

"Paul and I can take you to Granny's to get a room for the night and then we'll help you find your way back to Boston after Agent Brooks' remains are taken care of," Eva said. Tessa nodded and followed her out.

~*~

The sparkling orange portal opened in the Italian countryside and the seven of them stepped through. Thankfully, there was no one around and Regina poofed a sport utility vehicle into existence for them to use.

"It will be a tight squeeze, but it will get us there," Regina said. Snow looked at her husband and he smirked.

"Or we could follow you in something else," he said, as the chalice glowed between them and materialized a motorcycle.

"Fine, ride the death trap," Regina commented.

"Relax...it's enchanted. We'll be fine," David said, as they willed the chalice into their rings to conceal it. They put helmets on, while David got on the bike and Snow got on behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist. The others got into the car and they headed for the city.

~*~

James put the car in park and looked over at his wife. After spending the morning with their babies, they had dropped them off with Granny for an hour to come to the prison.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked.

"Yes...and I can't wait for her tribunal. I want to see her behind bars," Aphrodite replied. He sighed.

"Okay...then we'll go," he said, as they got out and joined hands. They were allowed entrance and they took the elevator to the top level. Sneers and calls from some of the worst, high level criminals were ignored, as they made their way to the end and peered into the cell.

"Well, well...you're back from your little adventure," Blue said. She looked horrible. Her hair was matted and her makeup, what was left of it, was smudged. Apparently, she wasn't using the time allotted to her to clean up or even try to maintain her appearance.

"Yes...we are and your failure is complete, because we have broken the curse you placed on us," James hissed. She began to slow clap dramatically.

"Oh congratulations...now you get to live happily ever after with your bimbo and your brats," she growled. James advanced on her cell and wrapped his hand around her neck.

"And you...you'll face justice in your royal tribunal. The Goddess Nyx will then be waiting for you and has promised you a very unpleasant afterlife," he growled back. Aphrodite put her hand on his arm and he calmed down, releasing her and stepping back.

"And still...my only regret is that I didn't succeed in destroying her," Blue said, looking to Aphrodite with pure hatred in her eyes.

"I never did anything to you...except be born. Was the power of the Chalice so important to you that it warrants this hatred of me?" Aphrodite asked. Blue rolled her eyes.

"It was never really about you. Power is everything and when Rhea created the Chalice she gifted to your mother, I knew that it was the key to ruling all the realms. I also knew how foolish it would be to place it in mortal hands. That's why Hera and I knew we had to rid ourselves of your idiotic mother," Blue replied. Aphrodite glared at her.

"Once Hera married Zeus...it was supposed to be her Chalice. We would have still had to place it in mortal hands, but that's why we chose Clayton's bloodline. We knew their ambitious quest for power and control would serve us well," she continued.

"Imagine...all the realms under his control and thus ours. It would have been an ordered world," she said.

"You mean an enslaved world, void of hope and love," Aphrodite corrected. Blue snorted.

"Love...it causes only pain. Look at his brother and Snow White. They may have a blissful true love, but look at all the problems that come with it," she said.

"Love is worth any of the strife or problems," Aphrodite refuted. James smirked.

"Yeah...because love always wins. That's why you're there and we're here. And that's why anyone that tries to defeat love is either already dead or will meet that same fate as the Clayton family you seem to champion," James said smugly.

"Yeah...you definitely backed the wrong family," Aphrodite agreed, as they joined hands.

"Enjoy hell, you blue flea," she said, as they walked away, satisfied that the woman that had cursed them and caused so much pain was imprisoned. They had all their memories and their family was whole again, because love would always win out in the end.

~*~

Once they arrived at the hotel where the event was taking place, they arrived in their suite and proceeded to get ready for the evening. David wore a tux again and was stunned when his wife emerged dressed in a gorgeous white evening gown. It shimmered in the light and the bodice hugged her curves perfectly. The straps were very thin and the collar dipped in a low v. The dress was long, but had two daring slits up the sides and she sauntered toward him.

"Wow…" he said, as she slipped her arms around his neck.

"Wow yourself, handsome," she purred, as she kissed him passionately.

"Are you ready?" he asked. She nodded.

"I know we have no idea what we might be walking into, but I do know that we're going to face it together and eliminate two really bad people," she replied. He nodded.

"Together," he agreed, as they shared another kiss. He offered his arm to her and she hooked her hand on his elbow, as they stepped out of their room and prepared to embark on the mission ahead...

[deepdisireslonging]

Corrupting Sin

Prompt: “Hi. I love your blog so much. I was wondering since there isn't that much stuff of Seth Gecko from the series from dusk till dawn. Maybe you can write a smut about him?” [Any particular episodes or details I should pay attention to?] “Season 2 episode 1 is a really good episode to kinda get a feel of what Seth is like after Richie turned and what not. And the reader can take place of Kate (the girl who is traveling with Seth) or could be with them both? And tells him what she really thinks about him. Sorry if this is bad Lol not really a used to this” [You did great! I hope you like how this turned out!]

Pairing: Seth Gecko x Reader (Y/N) [No mention of Kate, sorry]

Warnings/Promises: talk of show-like violence, almost drug use, language, SMUT, dirty talk, bonus accidental Princess Bride quote

Word Count: 1760

Note: My goodness, why is this so long? Because it’s smut filled; that’s why! Oops, haha. I lost count of how many sitting this took, but it came out great. And doing research was a lot of fun (watching and reading.) Thanks for the request. Don’t forget to reblog it; comments and gif reactions are much appreciated!

“What the hell was that?” Seth’s gun clattered across the table. The meager bag of money bounced off the bed onto the floor.

“The guy was trying to be a hero,” you said, “so I kicked him in the balls.”

“And then his buddy slapped you. So I had to drop ‘im.” Seth stormed past you, making sure to bump your shoulder on the way by. The not so secret black bag in his stuff landed on the bed next.

You shook your head, apologetic. “Please… don’t. I’m sorry.”

But he continued to unpack. Out came the syringe. The spoon. Your hand on his finally stopped his practiced movements.

“I don’t want to watch you shoot up again.”

Seth wrapped the elastic around his arm. “Then leave. Go study your notes. Don’t come back if you don’t like what you see.”

“What if the problem is that I do like what I see. But I don’t like watching him pump himself full of poison.” You kept your eyes downcast, waiting for the next smart retort. When it didn’t come, you looked up. Seth had leaned back against the headboard.

He licked his bottom lip. “If you can’t allow my sin… did you have something else in mind?”

This was a switch. Did you miss something? Had he already shot up? Because there was no way he was actually saying this while being fully sober. Then again, you had mentioned your sort of crush on the Gecko brother.

“If it takes that long for you to think about it, forget it.” Seth reached for his stuff again. Again, you got in the way.

It was your turn to lick your lip. Stalling for time. “We’ve both lost people. And we could lose each other at any second, knowing what we do. If we do this, if I become your new ‘sin’… this stuff goes. Even if you lose me too. Deal?” All you could, or wanted, to see was your hand sitting over his. Seth crooked his finger under your chin and angled your face to look up at him.

“The poison is already there, sweetheart. I can’t promise that I’m not going to drift back to it now and again. But I would appreciate the help. I don’t… I don’t want a thirst of any kind ruling me like one’s ruling… Richie.” His thumb caught over your chin, giving him enough leverage to pull your face closer to his leaning to meet you. “But do you really want this? Or were you just saying it to keep me from doin’ my thing?”

“I really mean it, Seth.” You’d spoken without really thinking. Then again, you’d wanted this since surviving till that first morning.

His touch was gone for just long enough to get rid of his stuff. Then his hands were back, cupping your face gently. The things on the bed were pushed out of the way easily to make room for two sitting spots. He hesitated for another moment, making you think he was second-guessing himself. In the next moment, you finally got to taste his lips. He hummed into your mouth moving slow and deliberate. Damn this man. He was learning you. Which direction to tilt to match. How much to press forward. How much to lean back so you’d chase him. Seth’s thumbs smoothed down your neck, his other fingers curling in your hair at the base of your neck. You reached up to do the same.

He chuckled and nuzzled his nose across your cheek. “How much sin are you willing to give?”

“I don’t know. How much will it take to re-corrupt you?”

Seth laughed back in his throat. While his hands fell down to your hips, his smile kissed down your neck. You controlled what clothes moved. His shirt. Yours. You tried to open his belt buckle but sat back when you couldn’t. No quips from him, though you could tell they were on the tip of his tongue. Standing, Seth smirked and made a show of undoing the buckle and lowering his jeans. Before he could get them much past his hips, you hooked a finger in his boxers.

“These too?”

The boxers went too. Even the heat of the room wasn’t enough to stifle the heat rising under your skin and racing through your veins. You didn’t notice the rest of your clothing being removed. Or how grimy the sheets felt under your skin. Instead, there was Seth. His tattoos rippling under your fingertips. His lips latching around your perked nipples. And his length hard and trapped between you. He caught your wrists as you tried to reach for him, pinning them on either side of your head.

With a wicked grin that made your whine catch in your throat, he kissed between your breasts. It was a distraction. Your wrists were shifted to one hand above your head. The other suddenly cupped at your sex. It was inevitable that you were going to buck onto his hand. If anything, that’s what Seth wanted.

“You going to cum all over my fingers, Princess?” He worked up past the hollow of your throat to your pulse point. “I bet I can make you scream just with these.” To emphasize that point, he roughly curled two fingers. His knee kept you from squeezing your thighs together. “See? Sinning so well for me already.”

A spark shot down to your toes as he did it again, pressing the heel of his palm into your clit. The rasp already in your voice distorted your words.

“What was that? I didn’t catch it.”

Cheeky.

“Please, Seth… need you.”

He huffed a laugh under your jaw. “Nuh-uh. Not until you’ve cum. Not until I’ve begun to corrupt you too.”

Seth pulled back as you arched into his chest. All the while, he kept working you, teasing your clit, making you gasp and moan. You knew he wanted to make you scream. He was nearly there. The arch in your back gave him an advantage. Again, he took your nipple into his mouth, sucking on it like you knew he’d do to your clit given another chance. Your whines reached a tipping point. Seth moved on to the other, giving it the same attention as the first. His hips began to rock, sliding his cock over your hip. So close. But not until you gave him what he wanted.

The quickening of his movements sent you over. And yes, screaming. But without the oxygen that he’d been stealing from you by sucking on your breasts made it weak. It stuttered out quickly without nearly enough power to satisfy your hungry lover.

“Well that won’t do,” he said, sitting back perplexed. That didn’t last long. He leaned forward again, nose to nose. “A deeper approach should work.”

Finally, your hands were released. But it was so he could control your hips with a vice-like grip after moving you up to rest on the pillows. There wasn’t room for you to wriggle or to try and get away. Chest heaving, you did your best to prepare for whatever he had planned. He noticed your unease and titled his head, refusing to go any further until you spoke up.

You nodded. “I’m ready. Just please, Seth, fuck me.”

“As you wish, Princess.”

But he didn’t fill you immediately. No, Seth wanted to get every ounce of pleasure out of you. Se he moved slowly. Rolling his hips to only give you less than an inch at a time. If it was this easy for him to make you breathless, you should have given into this a long time ago. You clawed down his forearms. When he was fully sheathed, he fell forward, bracing himself on either side of your hips. You were ready. You were ready a lifetime ago. Without his hands blocking your hips, you could circle up to hopefully get him to move. His hands flashed back to their position.

Seth did move though. Slow and irritating, but oh so blissfully eye-crossing. He leaned down to nip at his favorite spot between your breasts as you arched. “That’s it,” he whispered. The need to see you fall apart cracked. He moved just a little faster, eyes bright with watching your mouth fall open from where you’d been biting your lip. Then a bit more. Your nails dug into his wrists. You pulled him down so you could feel his chest heaving against yours.

There you both hovered. Somewhere between ice and passion-consuming fire. Where you were connected, Seth slammed into you over and over. With a slight dip of your head, you could just see him filling you with each thrust. And you could see your body resisting to let him go. Titling your head, you gave him access to your neck to suck as dark a mark as he wanted. Your resolve, your fear, and your walls were broken. What were a few broken blood vessels in the shape of his tasting you?

Behind his back, you locked your ankles. He angled your hips back, giving him a deeper reach. You cried out. Triumphant, Seth kept spearing that point. He explored around there, searching for the spot that would make you really loud. Finding that spot made your walls clamp around him. He gasped into your neck and faltered in his pace.

“That feel good, Princess?” he moaned. Seth kept speaking, revealing how delirious you made him. “You feel so good. Taking me like this. Marking me. Those sounds. You sound so wrecked, Princess.” A growl shuddered through him as you scraped your nails down his back. “You make me so wrecked.”

Whimpers of pleasure gave way to clipped screams of desperation. So close. A little bit more and he’d have the sin that he wanted. You would be fully corrupted.

You came, screaming into his shoulder and melting. Seth continued to control the last movements of your body until he too went rigid before collapsing beside you. He rolled onto his back and pulled you half over him, amused by how your arm raised up and down on his chest.

The room over, someone banged on the wall and shouted words too muffled to understand.

Seth banged back. “Oh hell no,” he muttered. “I hope you’re up for more, Princess, because I’m about to annoy the hell outa that asshole.”

He pulled you to sit across his stomach, ignoring your exhausted squeak of surprise.

“How ‘bout we try this with you on top this time?”

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