#miss patina

[fannyrosie]

Purple and yellow

Outfit rundown Dress: old Miss Patina (with added ribbon from a IW dress) Cardigan: thrifted Hat: vintage Shoes: old Fluevog Brooches: thrifted/Design Festa Earrings: present

[stylestream]

Taylor Swift | Miss Patina dress • Jimmy Choo pumps • Serapian bag | Street Style: New York | 2015

[popitavega]

GREAT Portrait!

Miss Patina - Royal Anthem Dress

[fashionseenontvblog]

1x04

Miss Patina Love Cat Shirt - $85

Patou Pleated Virgin-Wool Midi Skirt - $626

[ghoulphile]

no use cryin' over spilled milk | c.h./the ghoul

➥ pairing | cooper howard/the ghoul x f!reader ➥ word count | 2.8 k ➥ warning(s) | 🔞 smut; dirty talk, frottage, lactation kink, pregnant!reader, fingerfucking, praise kink, breast play, the ghoul calls reader pretty mama, he's a pervert who wants to lend a 'helping' hand ➥ summary | based off this ask; oops being an experiment from vault 4 where you may be the first rad resistant human pregnant with a possibly rad resistant baby, and you come across the ghoul who helps you get to a safe place but then he gets attached with you and the baby 🥺 (this is just me trying to insert a lactation kink somewhere i'm sorry) ➥ notes | uhhhh pls let me know if i missed anything, my brain is dribbling out my ears (its 3:44 am and i have work at 8 am rip) but the parasites persist. i'll do the tag list when i wake up ❤️ masterlist | feel free to send in thots, questions, requests! | feedback is always appreciated ❤️

Going topside wasn’t an easy decision.

In fact, bile bitter regret often lingers in the back of your throat - a lump that stifled the air in your lungs.

And while you might’ve been bioengineered to survive better under these harsh wasteland conditions, every time you find yourself in a less than ideal situation, you're catapulted headlong into paralyzing self doubt; alone and rudderless.

No one lives in the vaults - not truly.

Birdie (and the others) warned you of what awaited beyond those lead-lined walls. But you couldn’t abide spending the rest of your life trapped in a cage, albeit a gilded one.

Not anymore.

Oh no, you wanted to feel a real breeze instead of air pumped through the HVAC. Experience the sun baking warm into your skin like fresh bread instead of the artificial heat of the UV lamp used for mandatory light therapy sessions. Complain about the chafe of sand in your shoes and hear the crunch of dirt under foot instead of a hollow clunk of sterile metal.

To witness first hand all the sights, sounds, and smells this world offers. 

Only… you didn’t expect it to be this hard.

Nor did you expect to be pregnant when setting off into the great unknown on your own (a definite oversight on your part [you really shouldn’t have had one last hurrah before hitting the road]).

Through trial and error, motion sicknesses that swing into crippling nausea as manic energy - your first taste of true freedom! - dwindled into dragging fatigue, you found a happy medium. None of which would have been possible had it not been for the most unlikely of companions.

Ghouls; who knew, huh?

Sure, you’d heard of them from the rotating door of visitors that found themselves at Vault 4, but you’d never seen them. While you grew up surrounded by visible mutations, seeing the battlefield of his body was off putting; how a person could survive a patina of burns and patchwork slices without unraveling at the seams was beyond you.

And kind of frightening.

But he took it in stride, introducing himself as Ghoul. Refused to divulge anything else of substance no matter how much you poked and prodded.  His life pre-bomb was a complete mystery filled with plot holes and unanswered questions (which is exactly what he preferred).

You learned to be comfortable with his meandering conversations, and all the words he spoke that said much of nothing. And what you did glean, you did so through observation alone. 

He was alone - had been for a very long time.

He was very old - one of the last of his kind.

And he was, in his own way, very kind - at least by wasteland standards.

“The fuck you doin’?”

Pausing, you stop mid push and hover awkwardly on your hands and knees. The vault suit pulls taut across your hips, pinching behind your knees uncomfortably. Your toes squeak in your shoes, socks thoroughly soaked through with sweat.

It’s been unseasonably hot (or it’s the hormones). Whatever the case, this is the first semi-decent lodging you’ve camped in for weeks, and you’re not about to miss an opportunity to freshen up.

And maybe find a way to soothe the building ache in your tits - flesh swollen tender and nipples rubbed raw.

“I’m just, uh, gonna,” you motion towards the back of the house, the askew bathroom door clinging to its hinges by a corner, “y’know, f-freshen up. See if they don’t still have some water.”

The Ghoul scans you up and down, gimlet-eyed. “S’that so?”

You huff, your knees starting to ache.

Being five months pregnant throws your center of gravity for a loop, the atmosphere weighing extra heavy on your bones. It doesn’t help that the baby’s decided sitting directly on your bladder with a foot tucked under your ribs is the best position.

“Didn’t know I needed permission to take a piss now,” you snipe. Usually, you try to reign in the hormones but the day’s been too long and you’re in pain. Anyone would be a little snippy (right?). “Can I do that on my own or do you need to watch, Mr. Ghoul?”

A faint smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth, his gaze glinting from beneath the rim of his hat as he tips his head. “Better watch it, sweetheart,” he says. “Otherwise, I might have’ta wash your mouth out with soap.”

Pushing yourself up with a grunt, you determinedly ignore the raspy chuckle that follows as you waddle towards the bathroom. Cussing him out all the while in your mind.

While he’s been ‘nicer’ today - stopping for extra breaks, even packing it in several hours earlier than usual because he noticed how weary you looked - he’s still an asshole.

The toilet’s gone, the tub’s tipped sideways, the linoleum’s cracked, and closing the door sounds like a pack of howling mole rats but its functional. When you catch your reflection in the spider web fractures of the mirror, you grimace.

The wastes have certainly left their mark on you. Gone is the prim-and-proper vault dweller, replaced by a gremlin of a woman Overseer Benjamin would surely scowl at.

A true ‘surfie’ now.

“Great,” you groan, scrubbing a palm over your face. “Just - ugh!”

You’re caked in grime, a steak of dirt smeared across the bridge of your nose. Mysterious stains darken the blue fabric, the golden stripes of your suit an off-putting grey.

Your hair clumps in greasy chunks. You’re glossy with sweat, and while your curves have plumped up over the last few months, you didn’t realize just how much until now.

The vault suit’s always been tight - now it clings and creases in unflattering places. And there’s nothing you can do about it, unless the Ghoul is willing to spare a sewing kit.

You could let the waist out some…

What the hell am I gonna do if he won’t? There’s no way I’ll fit if this baby gets any bigger. Shit, I look like a fucking sausage. Your hand cradles the side of your stomach, stroking over the bump with a frown. This is all your fault, you little parasite.

“You better be so fucking cute - the cutest goddamn baby in the wasteland. Or I will riot.”

Tugging down the zipper over your breasts is heaven, the swollen flesh spilling out of the parting fabric, no longer compressed. It’s almost enough to make you cry as you struggle to tug the lycra off your shoulders, the fabric putting up a fight.

After some awkward contortions that pull uncomfortably at the muscles of your shoulder blades, you manage to wrangle yourself free.

The temptation to burn the stupid goddamn suit is almost too much to resist, but then you’d really be traipsing around the wasteland in the nude and just… no.

Peeling off your undershirt is another story altogether, the soft cotton feeling like sandpaper as it scrapes over sensitive skin. Your nerves tingle with awareness, bolts of pain shooting through your nipples with every shift.

Quick like a bandaid, you think, taking a steadying inhale.

It’s a miracle you don’t scream.

Tears cling to your lashes, your nose running as you toss the shirt to the side with one hand and cradle your chest with the other. Sure, you’ve had tenderness with your period but this kind of pain? A whole new level.

You almost don’t know what to do with yourself.

How is this fair - aren’t you suffering enough?

Sniffling, you peer down at your tits and gingerly cup them with your palms. Swollen hard and warm to the touch; a heavy weight crushing your ribs.

Do I really have to milk myself like a fucking brahmin? Another bolt of lightning crackles through your nerve endings as if in response. Fine. God, this is embarrassing.

Only any attempt at touching your nipples produces pure agony, shards of glass biting into delicate skin.

No matter how slight your touch, no matter how gentle your fingers - it doesn’t work. Leaves you more distraught and in pain than when you began as inflamed nerve endings crackle and burn.

And when the tears truly start, the dam breaks. It’s not long before they drip down your cheeks in fat rivulets, your breath hitching from you in pathetic little exhales.

Your fist shoves against your mouth in an attempt to smother the sounds, teeth sinking into your knuckle until you leave sore indents.

But you should know better, not only does the Ghoul have heightened senses (he’s taunted you constantly with this fact like the asshole he is), but he’s uncannily perceptive in a very annoying way.

You don’t hear the squeal of the door, but you do sense his presence behind you; the rad warm burn of his body as he stops a scant few inches away. You feel his breath against the nape of your neck, the barest brush of his chest as he inhales.

“You ready ta stop bein’ stubborn?” he hums. “I thought I told you not ta wait s’long.”

Your voice warbles from you, “G’way.” You curl into yourself, shoulders hunching as you hang your head. “Don’t need your help.”

The Ghoul snorts. “Cuz you doin’ so well on your own, huh?”

“I resent that.” You shoot him a weak glare, the animosity ruined by the crumble of your lips. “I really, really do.”

You hate always having to rely on him, so desperate to prove that you can take care of yourself only to have every effort to do so thrown back in your face.

Shit, you hate how right Birdie was, “Honey, you won’t last five minutes on your own. Please stay here with us where it’s safe.”

“Well, maybe so. But pickers can’t be choosers, sweetheart,” he shrugs with a languid roll of the shoulders. “Ain’t no use cryin’ over spilled milk. C’mon, the longer you wait, the worse it’s gon be.”

“I just - you don’t understand…”

He reaches around you to set his hat on the sink, the dwindling light of twilight creeping in through the holes in the roof to bathe him in its bloody light.

He looks like a grotesque demon that clawed its way from the depths of hell. It gets your pulse thudding, electric awareness an unwelcome visitor as it roosts behind your navel.

“I understand plenty. Now, let me.”

Not an offer - not really.

More akin to a demand, one wrapped up pretty like a gift. You’ve been here many times before, and while the Ghoul proffers his help under the guise of not wanting to hear your bitching and moaning, the hungry gleam of his eyes as they rake over your face say otherwise.

If it’s one thing you’ve learned in your travels with him, it’s this: he is entirely self-serving. He offers because he wants to suck on a set of pretty tits. If you happen to cream your panties while he does, well, he counts it as a win-win.

Quid pro quo.

And what you hate more than how utterly correct everyone is about life on the surface, is how needy he makes you. How desperate and dumb and dripping he’s got you by the end, drunk off the flick of his tongue and the rasp of his touch.

Because it’s so hard to be strong in the face of pain when the solution is right there; open-palmed.

“...Fine, just don’t - don’t leave marks this time, okay?”

A slow waking smile creaks across his face, and he says, “I ain’t makin’ any promises, sweetheart.”

Your stomach swoops, and your thighs clench.

Shit.

Scarred lips work over tender flesh as a talented tongue flicks and swirls over the bumps of your areola, the tip digging into your nipple and drawing the swollen nub into a hot mouth. You whimper, arms tossed over the Ghoul’s broad shoulders.

Cold ceramic digs into the base of your spine, your body crowded back against the sink as he plasters himself to your front. Cuts off any escape routes and refuses to let you squirm away from the overwhelming sensations as he suckles.

Heavy palms grope at the plush curves of your hips, fingertips digging into the fat.

His lips pop off your nipple with a sticky smack. “Always taste s’fucking good,” he groans against your sternum. “Got the prettiest set a tits in the wasteland.”

“Hnn! N-Not so hard.”

While you say that, you don’t mean it - not really. Your pussy throbs in time with your heartbeat, clit swollen and aching for friction. Your inner thighs are a mess of slick, your vault suit caught around your knees.

He never touches you below the waist directly (some boundaries still exist between you two), but at this point in your pregnancy, you’re so sensitive a gentle breeze could set you off.

“Heh, ain’t you know lyin’s a sin?” he says.

A scarred cheek drags over the swell of your breast, the rasp of rad burn alighting your nerves. Bolts of desire ricochet down your spine, fizzle like Nuka Cola on your tongue. He presses an open mouth kiss to your nipple, his tongue flicking out to massage the tender bud.

At the taste of your skin, his cock twitches where its grinding against your thigh. You feel him through his ragged pinstripe slacks, his shaft a thick line of heat.

It’s probably the hormones (you refuse to admit its anything else) but just the thought of touching him, of sinking down onto his erection - feeling how fucking good he’d stretch you out and fill you up - makes you dizzy.

You pant, your voice distinctly whiny when you say, “Please, d-do something. It still hurts.”

His grin reminds you of the mongrels roaming the wastelands. “Sh,” he hushes you. “I got you, sweetheart.”

The tips of his fingers brush along the side of your swollen stomach. Your heart flips in your chest, your breath catching as he follows the contours of your body, reaching down to brush over the skin of your mound. This is new, he’s never done this before. It’s simultaneously as arousing as it is terrifying.

“Can smell how wet you are for me,” he says, tone low and gruff. “You gonna be a good girl for me, ain’t you?”

“I-”

Then his mouth is slurping at your tit, his teeth biting down on your nipple gently as those strong fingers dip between your thighs. Blunt nails scratch through your pubic hair, a calloused pad swirling circles around your slippery clit. Your hips jump, your head rolling back between your shoulders as a loud moan rips itself from your throat.

You arch back so far your belly presses against the Ghoul’s, your tits smothering his face.

You think, half deliriously, it’s a good thing he doesn’t have a nose otherwise you might’ve broken it.

“Shit, that’s so - oh, fuck, please, please, please!’

Your legs widen to make room for his hand as yours fly up to grab his biceps, nails biting into the rough leather of his duster.

His tongue flutters across your areola. “C’mon, pretty mama, give it ta me.”

“Oh.” Sparks dance behind your eyes, your knees shaking as the Ghoul strokes over your folds, tests your wetness and the give of your cunt as he plays with your entrance. “Right there,” you gasp. “I’m gonna…”

He grunts, tugging on your nipple with his teeth.

The sharp bite of pain shoots through you, deepens the kindling warmth behind your navel that steadily builds and builds and builds. You feel on the very edge, nerves plucked like the keys of a piano.

So close you can taste it.

Then a tingling starts in the tips of your fingers.

Burns its way up your arms to settle in the weight of your chest, pins and needles pricking across the skin of your tits, lancing through the swollen buds of your nipples.

You tremble, the relief bringing tears to your eyes as tears the heaviness releases in a warm flood, your milk letting down to flow into the Ghoul’s eagerly pulling mouth.

“Fuckin’ finally,” he moans, chasing after the taste by nuzzling into your chest. His cock ruts against you. “Took you’re sweet damn time, didn’t you, darlin’?”

Your head spins, hazy thoughts scattering like confetti.

Endorphins simmer through your veins as you float on a cloud of cotton softness. Reality seems worlds away, your vision blurry as you focus on the points of contact between your bodies. The stretch of his fingers plunging into your pussy to stroke over the front wall.

Mouth slack, your hands creep up the Ghoul’s arms to trace over the sides of his neck, watch the dance of your fingers over his skin. “It feels s’good,” you slur. “Please don’t stop - wanna cum just like this.”

“Heh, wouldn’t dream of it.”

[choccy-milky]

ok settle down anon cw: my face🗿

😍😍😍JUMPSCARE😍😍😍 this pic of me cracks me up so much because i look like that creature from aoi oni LMFAOO ok but heres a non crackhead pic of me i took today upon waking up at 5pm and before washing my face like the nocturnal disaster that i am

u can tell that i cut my own hair bc look at that stray piece hanging down and how uneven it is LMAOOO i aint payin someone like 70 bucks for a haircut THEYRE A SCAM!! I CAN DO IT MYSELF🤺🤺🤺

also since we're on the topic i posted these on twitter but if u dont have twitter and didnt see them I WANNA SHOW THEM OFF AGAIN BC THIS DRESS IS SO CUTE

its from miss patina if anyone is curious😩 i have so many of their dresses which i highly recommend and UGH....the feminine urge to draw clora in every single one of them is SO STRONG....im also a hermit and barely ever go outside so fully expect one day that im just gonna post ALL my dresses just so that i can show them off to someone LMAOO🥰🥰

[wumblr]

the way house of leaves has been revived for a cult following is so funny. it's completely backwards! it was a music industry book. the singer poe, who made waves with her debut for having a few tracks produced by j dilla and then if i remember correctly doing a 500+ show tour, essentially tanked her career to promote the book (written by her brother)

not like on purpose but it was supposed to be a paired project and there was a remix with a book excerpt read by mark (the kyrie bmw sex scene) and like, i don't know, a tie-in website -- but then her label got sold or merged or acquired and the project was eventually cancelled after languishing in limbo for a few years. there's also an aspect of this where like, a texas oil executive posed as a friend of her late father (possibly true) in order to manipulate legal proceedings (?) to ultimately own her writing and recording copyrights post-acquisition (dubious allegation, which also relies on her having signed away both types of copyright to her label in the first place, arguably a larger problem spanning the whole industry, even today, still coming up in legal proceedings from kesha and taylor swift and so on)

anyway the album (haunted) and the book were both inspired by the same event (death of their father, tad danielewsky -- as an aside, a professor of theater at brigham young university). the album features samples from a box of cassette tape recordings of his voice. and also some fake samples from a couple of guys pretending to be tad danielewski with an obviously ridiculous accent and a couple of kids pretending to be her as a kid. and it takes place inside the house. the growl is there and everything i swear

it really was one of the top tier 90s concept albums (it was released in 2000 actually) but it is usually FAR too much to handle for casual listening and a lot of it comes across difficult for being so sincere and so unfocused (it is a love letter to her dead father where one of the songs is a list of places she's gotten fucked, because, uh, this is a conversation she wanted to have with him. shrug). and yet it's hard not to take it as it is because it's so consistently well produced

so i know nobody's computer comes with a cd player anymore but to read the book without listening to the paired album implicitly packed in the back of the book jacket is kind of like missing the whole point. there's a whole second act of rashomon you guys are missing. and a third act hello the etsy teleplays. ANYWAY the point i wanted to make is that there are a couple of things about the album sticking to the roof of my mouth as being somehow prescient. there's a distorted "why (are you) so serious" sample that would have come across VERY differently post-joker, but there's also "tell me something dangerous and true," a far more interesting variation on the theme currently circulating. and i'm speaking to an empty room here because it's only the celibate 60% of this website who is reading the book because it allows them a patina of literary validity and several nested unreliable narrators to distance themselves from the sex scenes, but haunted is very authentically, directly and exclusively written in first person and to be honest it fucks too hard for you guys. i'm sorry

[bookofthegear]

Grandma didn’t raise a quitter. You go back to square one of the hopscotch course and start again. Sure enough, a little over halfway through, you find yourself watching yourself from above.

It is surprisingly difficult to hop in the third person. You flail your arms and stagger and you miss the jump on square 89 twice, but now you’re committed, dammit. You start over and finally, finally get to 108.

Something happens in your brain that smells like THWONNNNG and sounds like pickle brine, or maybe the other way around. For a second there’s two of you (Shouldn’t there be more? Where are the rest?) and one of you walks into the room with the peeling wallpaper and the other one walks out and shuts the door and you thought you were the one going in but apparently not and now you’re standing on the walkway (which you?) looking down and Jimmy comes flying out of the dark calling “Boss? Boss?”

“I’m here,” you say. You feel very weird, as if you were having a migraine with someone else’s head. You take a few deep breaths until the metaphysical nausea passes.

Jimmy lands on your shoulder. “Are you okay, boss?”

You reassure him that you’re fine-ish. Mostly.

The walkway is metal and unlike most of the metal in this place, there is only a faint patina of rust on the railings. It runs east-west, though the eastern wall has a closed door on it.

The railings are solid enough to anchor a rope so you could climb back down to the room below, though you wouldn’t get your rope back if you did.

[fannyrosie]

Apple picking in early October 🍎

Outfit rundown: Apron-skirt: second-hand Pink House; Cardigan: Fint; Blouse: old Miss Patina; Beret: thrifted; House brooch and nut earrings: handmade by a friend; Pretzel brooch: Design Festa; Boots: old Sperry Topsider

[dulcidyne]

On the Care and Grooming of Gentleman Necromancers

Rook x Emmrich Volkarin/ /Rating: T/ / Spoilers: None

“Manfred has remarkably fine motor control in many things, but his skill with a straight razor leaves much to be desired for those who wish to remain among the living.” Emmrich reached up for the hand towel tucked protectively around his collar, accepting defeat, but before he could loosen it, Rook strode forward and plucked up said razor from the desktop. “Well then, allow me to do the honors,” she offered, unfolding the blade with a decisive flick of her wrist. “Just…try not to fidget. I’m not used to shaving people who can move.” (Emmrich’s straight razor shave gets surprisingly intimate. Feelings ensue.)

Featherlight fingertips brushed over his lathered jaw before flitting away again. She inhaled, sharp and sudden, as if startled.

“Sorry,” she said, and the word was shallow too, syllables breathy and catching on that near-gasp like petals tossed into the breeze. “I’m not…it’s so much different than I’d thought it’d be.”

Her skin was flushing all the way down to her neck in splotches of feverish red and her eyebrows knit together furiously, dark slashes against the riot of color. ”You’re—well, warm for one and—”

She sucked in another audible inhale, this one long and slow, as she flattened her unsteady palm against her stomach with a tremulous smile. “It’s just different, is all.”

Before he could move or assure her she needn’t push herself, needn’t continue, Rook squared her shoulders and reached forward to press her trembling fingertips to his jawline. Visibly gathering her bearings, a no-nonsense, well-worn patina of professionalism settled into place. She swallowed and fit her thumb more firmly to the underside of his jaw to tip it back for her expert examination. Then she reached for the razor.

Emmrich could only go utterly still, not daring to speak, not daring to breathe. Rook maneuvered his jaw left and right and up and down, thumb and forefinger skimming up over the soapy line of his mandible towards his stubbled cheeks, stretching the skin taut. He was acutely aware of her gaze following in their wake, feeling it as surely as he felt her touch—gentle and skilled, with eyes that missed no details. 

And then he felt the blade. A quick, even stroke with the grain. 

Read on AO3

[dear-mrs-otome]

Chapter One - Ansare

Pairing: Silvio Ricci x Emma...eventually Word Count: 2.1k+/??? Author's Note: If Cybird won't give me a proper Beauty and the Beast story, I'll write it myself. This is a slowburn fairytale AU that hews closely to canon, but veers when needed.

Summary: A curse, of sorts. A rose, of sorts. And one prince's long, tangled journey to answer an eternal question...What separates man from beast?

It all began, as so many things do, with a love poem.

Emma lifted the top off of a crate, and was greeted by the rich waft of old books. Leather and glue and that indescribable patina that only the echo of many long years could leave behind. Wisdom crowning wisdom.

“There’s so many,” she said with amazement as she dug through the first layer of packing straw and pulled a title free. Running careful hands and a practiced eye over the condition of the bindings and the gilt lettering that traipsed up their spines, she began sorting them into loose categories. Histories, the classics, poetry and novels, geography and the sciences. She paused long enough to linger over a detailed map of the continent in one of the gorgeously illustrated atlases, a wistful sigh escaping her.

The bookstore was her life - she knew every nook and cranny of this shop like the back of her hand. Had skinned her knees tripping over the single uneven floorboard in its stacks as a coltish child, had stained the pages of more than one romance with tears while nursing the first tender bruises of young love curled up in the nearby battered armchair. She’d scrimped and saved and squirreled away every penny she could pinch, ever since Akatsuki had handed her the first of her wages, determined to buy it from him one day when he retired. She knew that would make her the happiest woman in the world.

But some days, it was hard not to wonder what was over the jagged rooftops of town, crowded and gnashing the skyline like snaggled teeth. What mysteries might lay just beyond the hills that cradled their city so gently, rolling away towards the horizon as she imagined waves upon the sea must. In her dreams some nights she tasted the salt spray of the ocean, only to awaken, baffled to find it was tears on her tongue.

Some days, it was hard not to wonder if she was settling her future comfortably…or merely settling.

Putting the atlas and those maudlin thoughts aside, a delighted grin stole over her face as she plucked the next book from the box, a slim volume of poetry with an aging, cracked cover and worn edges. The obscure missing volume in her exhaustive collection of Benitoitian sonnets. She flipped eagerly through the pages, her gaze devouring the metered lines upon them, lingering over one poem in particular that was redolent with the bittersweetness of longing. “You found it! You actually found it! Is that what took you so long this time?”

“Partly. I didn’t want to disappoint you, not when you’ve been looking to round out that collection for so long.” Akatsuki’s ever-stoic face thawed with the first hint of a smile as he wove a far defter path through the piles she was creating than one would expect from a man of his years. But then again, the passing of time never seemed to touch him, she’d noticed, beyond kissing a few more strands of silver into his dark head of hair. He still moved as spryly as men a third his age, and had never in all of her years of working for him ever taken a single day off ill. “And partly I was busy with business meetings.”

“Business meetings?” She slipped a bookmark at the page with the poem that had caught her eye and looked up, wrinkling her nose at the implications of that. “Oh, no. No. Don’t tell me that means-”

The rest of her sentence was robbed by a resounding crash, the deafening clatter of a door thrown open - or rather, kicked open, as she knew better than to believe otherwise of the man who sauntered in. The violence of his entrance setting one of her nearby newly built towers of books swaying precariously. 

“-Him,” she finished flatly, before plastering on a smile even more obviously fake than the forgotten vase of forlorn silk orchids gathering dust in a nearby corner. “Welcome in, Your Highness. Thank you for testing the resilience of our hinges. Again.”

His Highness in question - Silvio Ricci, the crown prince of Benitoite - drew to a halt and spared her a scathing look, shaking his fur-lined cloak back imperiously. “I’d start charging for the service, but there’s no way in hell this dump could afford me.”

“Strange. For being such a ‘dump’, it sure seems to keep you coming back,” she returned fire, cloyingly sweet, before forcing herself to take a deep breath. She would not let this goblin masquerading as royalty get under her skin and ruin the high of a delivery day. Not this time.

He snorted. “It’s the impeccable customer service, clearly.”

She ground her teeth together and shot Akatsuki a pleading look, noticing the amusement that clung to the wrinkles fanned around his eyes as his attention bounced between the two of them. Spectating his favorite sport. 

“Prince Silvio,” Akatsuki said at last, wading into the fray.

Dismissing her, the prince turned a dauntless, charming grin on the man who owned the shop, and she did her best to ignore the nip of envy that inspired. 

He’d never smiled once at her like that. But then, why did she possibly care?

“Signore.” Prince Silvio inclined his head ever-so-slightly in the older man’s direction. “I trust you found the details of the documents I had couriered to you acceptable?”

“Well, yes. But I…” He broke off, and his gaze bounced off Emma before landing back on Silvio. “Wasn’t expecting you quite this soon. I had hoped for a bit more time to explain things.”

“Explain what?” Emma interjected, unease a cool hand curling fingers around her stomach.

Akatsuki seemed at a loss a moment, gathering his thoughts. “Circumstances being what they are and all…”

 Silvio made an exasperated sound that bordered on rude. “This bookstore is the second-most profitable one in the city. I could make it number one.” He paused a moment, and lifted his chin imperiously. “I will make it number one.”

Emma shook her head. “We don’t need any advice from the likes of you. I’m certain.”

“You may not want it, but you’re getting it. And it won’t be advice…it’ll be orders.”

“Says who?” she countered, eyes narrowed in challenge.

“Me. The soon-to-be owner of this enormous heap of paper.”

She’d heard the words, but they rang hollow, refusing to make sense. She whirled towards Akatsuki as if he might somehow be able to translate. 

He had the good grace to wince. “Emma, this isn’t how I wanted you to find out. But I’m not getting any younger, and the traveling of a merchant’s life gets harder and harder every year.”

“So you sold the store to Prince Silvio? Of all people, him? But…” She’d never felt betrayal before, but this nausea that clawed acrid at the back of her throat couldn’t be anything else. “I was going to buy it.” 

The forlorn admission slipped free before she had time to snatch it back, falling helplessly to the ground. A fledgling taken to wing too soon.

Silvio blinked, and chortled. “You? You were going to buy the shop?" 

Her cheeks stung pink at the slap of his incredulous laugh. “Yes, me.”

“You wouldn’t know the first thing about running a business like this,” he scoffed.

She shook her head fiercely. “No, you wouldn’t know the first thing about running a business like this. Could you recognize an incunable if you saw one? Do you have the faintest idea what an octavo is? Or who Madame Rochefort’s favorite author is? What genre you can sell Monsieur Martin on without fail when he comes by every Tuesday afternoon? All you see is coin to be made. Numbers in a ledger. Profit and loss. Not people. And certainly not their stories.”

“This ain’t a library, lady. It’s right there in the name - bookstore.” He paused, as if considering something. “Although, if you’re so eager to make sure things are done in a certain way, I suppose I could let you keep your job.”

“Let me…” A logjam of words crowded her throat for a moment, indignities all clamoring for space at once until one finally jostled free. “You want me to work for you?”

A petty smile slanted his lips. “Ask me nicely and I’ll consider it.”

That expression of his was like a door being thrown open on a smoldering fire. Rage exploded through her in a backdraft, a mindless wave of fire and fury that vaporized the calm logic she prided herself on. “Listen to me, you tacky, tasteless, tawdry, tinsel-clad affront to the eyes. I wouldn’t work for you if you were the last thing standing between me and utter destitution.”

Answering sparks flew from a blue gaze turned flinty, as the blood drained from his face. “That could be arranged. One word from me, and I could make it so that you never work in this city again.”

Her mouth fell open, eyes stinging from the salt he had just rubbed into every last one of her open wounds. “And now you think you can threaten me into keeping the job that I already have? All while you buy the shop I already planned to?”

“Oh, I don’t think I can.” His grin was more a macabre baring of teeth than any thing of mirth. The snarl of a hound treeing its quarry. “I know I can.”

“Forget it. You can own this shop, you can own this city. You can own this whole damn country. But you will never, ever own me.” The world had gone strange around her, red and wavering, like water spilled through wet paint. It took her three tries to see through it well enough to snatch up her book of poems from the top of the pile. “I quit.”

It occurred to her, as she took her first wobbly step towards the door, that it might have hurt less to have simply driven her paper-knife into her own heart. She clutched the book tightly to her chest, as if it could staunch the blood she swore poured from some wretched wound, though her blouse remained as pristine as ever.

“Where do you think you’re going?” His snarl stopped her in her tracks, but she didn’t do him the courtesy of turning around to reply. Etiquette when dealing with royalty be damned.

“I’m leaving. Like I said, I quit. Have a nice life, Your Highness.”

He lunged forward, snatching at the book she held. “You can’t just walk out. That’s store property. Which means it’s my property now.” They tussled over the tome, wrestling, neither willing to back down - until finally it fumbled from their grasp and fell to the ground, open to the page she’d slipped her bookmark in.

They both dove for it at the same time, the childish squabble continuing until they were brought up short by the harsh sound of tearing paper, freezing where they stood.

Emma forced herself to look down, dread a swallowed lump of lead sitting queasy in her stomach. Gaze shifting from the book in her hands to the page now crumpled in Silvio’s fist, a forlorn flap of ragged paper still standing accusatory in the spine she held. 

“Look what you’ve done,” she managed, through lips gone stiff and numb.

“What I’ve done? You started this. If you’d just handed over the book - or better yet, not thrown a tantrum and tried storming out - this wouldn’t have happened at all,” he retorted fiercely. But when she found herself at a loss for any sort of response, and the silence drew out long and stilted and awful, he thrust the rumpled page at her abruptly. Refusing to meet her eyes. “Here.”

She glanced down at it, and let out a humorless laugh. It was the only reaction she could muster when she saw familiar words of poetry between his fingers. The exact one that had warranted a bookmark from her in the first place.

Would I could come, O lovely one, to you just in a thief’s disguise, unknown to all!

It figured that he'd manage to ruin even this for her, too.

“I bought this book. It belongs to me. Akatsuki’s been looking for it for me for almost five years now. But you know what? Keep the page, and the poem. My parting gift to you,” she told him, no longer trying to keep the bitterness coating her tongue from seeping into her words. She was too sick with it, choking on the wretched feast as she ever-so-carefully closed the book. Ever-so-carefully tucked it under her arm, before flinging a razor edged glare at him like a flechette. “It’s the closest to love you’ll ever get, Your Highness.”

He flinched, as if struck, but made no reply. Made no other movement at all, as she left him holding those words and walked out.

Next Chapter >>

If you’d like to be tagged for future chapters, let me know!

(Dividers courtesy of @/cafekitsune, header image commissioned from @/sbeep)

[spaghettificationandpretzels]

Sinus Rhythm

This is the last part of my Sean Wallace childhood friends to lovers anthology series.

No obligation to read tags: @darklydeliciousdesires @lovemissyhoneybee @daydreaming-belle

Contains: Injury, medical inaccuracies, fluff.

1.4K words

There are some things Sean can't forget.

They didn't know if the car accident was a planned hit or really just wrong place, wrong time; all they knew was that Sean's ribs were broken so badly they needed to be set with plates and screws, that he missed shredded lungs by the miracles of millimetres and that he had a concussion that would require serious monitoring.

There was an anxiety you couldn't name, and the smell of disinfectant and sickness blended together to form a thick patina on the walls that made your skin crawl. The doctor wouldn't let you into his room to wait with him, that was for immediate family only, Billy told you he get you the moment Sean opened his eyes. The ticking clock in the waiting room seemed to mock you, the seconds passing into minutes, which eventually bled into hours until you took off your jacket to use as a pillow and curled into a ball to get some sleep on the rock hard chair; it was going to be a long day.

****

When Sean awoke, he only had a vague idea of what was happening, all he really knew was that he was in a hospital and that his side ached like he had done ten rounds with an ogre. There was a man sitting by his bed he almost knew, like his identity was dangling too far away to reach but then again, everything felt like that right now.

He must have been someone because the second Sean asked who he was, the man paled and rushed to get a doctor. The doctors told him it was post-traumatic amnesia, that in twenty-four hours, he should be back to normal, then there was a click from one of the machines attached to him, and a pleasant warmness lulled him back to sleep.

When he woke again, the name he now knew was his brother was still with him, sipping on a coffee as he read the paper. "Your brain still all empty?"

He shrugged. "Mostly." He looked around, it was a nice room, one only the wealthy could afford. He could see people passing by through the window along one wall, the mix of nurses and doctors growing boring, that was until a woman walked by in civilian clothes, and his heart rate monitor beeped just a bit faster. "Who is that?"

Billy looked up from his newspaper at his tone and chuckled when he saw your tired face. "That's y/n. You don't remember her?"

Sean shook his head. "No, but she's the most exquisite creature I've ever laid my eyes on. Please don't tell me she's your girlfriend?"

He held back a laugh, an evil idea forming in his mind. "No mate, I'll go get her, try not to pop a stitch."

He watched through the window as Billy talked to you, your face awash with so many emotions and he was overcome with the urge to wipe away the wetness that was gathering in your eyes. He did his best to straighten up as you walked in, the doctors had his bed in the raised position to take pressure off his ribs, and he was grateful that it meant you weren't looking down at him when you sat on the edge of the bed. "Billy said you can't remember shit."

His brain was screaming at him to say something, but he was so struck by your beauty that he found himself rendered mute. "Sean."

He blinked. "Yes, but as I'm sure my brother told you, I'll be back to normal by tomorrow. Now who are you?"

You nodded. "Billy didn't…" A glance at his brother showed he was barely holding back a smile. "Who do you think I am?" You didn't want to say it was payback for the fright he gave you, but it was.

He grinned. "Well, you must be my girlfriend." You had to be, there was no other reason for this strange feeling in his chest.

You shook your head, and a lump formed in his throat. "We've been best friends since we were six." No, that couldn't be right, there had to be something more, especially when your hand linked in his and it made him feel like the whole world was sucked away. "You're stone off your gourd and hurt. You'll remember everything in the morning then you can go back to giving me shit for my taste in men."

You turned to Billy and raised your eyebrows. "Can I speak to you outside for a moment?"

He stood up and left but as you went to do the same, Sean stopped you, grabbing your hand and holding on for dear life. "Please don't go, I don't want you to leave."

You squeezed his hand and smiled. "I'll be back in five minutes."

He let you go with a frown and you went outside to talk to Billy. "I get it, but really dude?"

He grinned. "He almost died, now's a good a time as any."

You sighed. "We were just happy being cowards, why do you need to interfere?"

He shrugged. "Because I don't want sister in law I can't stand. Mother's going to push him to marry sooner or later, better it be to the woman he's been in love with since he was a teenager."

Your eyes went wide. "It's really been that long? I thought…." It grew obvious Sean had feelings for you months ago, but you had both been dancing around it, for what reason it was hard to say.

He slapped a hand on your shoulder. "Yep, now get back in there before he hobbles out to get you. I'll go home and get you a change of clothes so you can freshen up."

He raced away before you could say more, and you returned to Sean's bedside with a sigh. "What do you want to know?"

He grinned as best he could. "Everything."

****

Things came back in slowly, fading through the fogginess of his mind until the memories felt real. But Sean didn't stop you from retelling all your favourite stories from your friendship if only to hear them from your perspective. The heart rate monitor's beeping was infuriating, the flash of sound letting the whole world know each time he had a rush of emotion. It went on for hours, Billy sitting guard outside to make sure no one walked in to interrupt, he even shooed away their mother.

But the more the amnesia wore off, the more it became clear to him how close he was to dying. He wasn't a man to take things for granted, not after everything he had to do to get his London back in his family's hands and yet, you still remained unaware of his feelings, even though he caught you looking at him when you thought he wasn't paying attention. He took a deep breath, unwilling to betray his nervousness with the audible untick of his heart. "Y/n, I have to tell you something."

You knew it was coming, the way he was looking at you made that much clear. "Yeah?"

He took your hand in his, his thumb drifting over the backs of your fingers as he gathered himself. "I have been lying to you." He took another deep breath. "The last thing I thought about before I passed out was that I was never going to get to tell you the truth and I must remedy that now."

You held up a hand to stop him, placing your hand on his cheek before leaning down to kiss him. He accepted, his lips soft as he linked his fingers in yours. "You don't need to say anything, I know, I love you too."

He kissed you again, firmer this time, his teeth nipping at your lower lip as you fight the urge to grab at him. But the second he went to do more, his side lit up like someone had stuck his ribs on the stove. He did his best to hide it, but you pulled back with a smile. "We should stop."

He was positively miffed, like someone had yanked his favourite toy away. "The second I'm back in fighting shape we are going to.."

You shook your head to stop him. "I know."

He grinned and slowly shifted across the bed so you could sit next to him on his uninjured side. "You can stay here tonight, with that we're paying them they can't complain."

You pressed a kiss to his cheek. "I'd like that."

Fin

[commanderthalys]

I was tagged by the lovely @i-mybrunettelady for this ^^

-- B A S I C S

name: Thalyssera

nicknames: Choya, Thalys

birthday: May 28th

race: pale tree sylvari

gender: nonbinary (she/her)

orientation: bisexual

profession: pact commander, post EoD is semi retired and does various pact jobs after several months of vacation

-- P H Y S I C A L A S P E C T S

hair: patina, short length

eyes: sun

skin: green olive, succulent texture

tattoos/scars: missing her right leg below the knee, the remaining stump is covered in scorch marks. Also has several tattoos! The largest is a raptor skull decorated with flowers on her back. She has a small pact symbol tattoo on the right base of her neck. Her left arm is tattooed with vines, and on her left calf she has two cogs, I talked about them a little more here!

-- F A M I L Y

parents: The Pale Tree

siblings: Trahearne

grandparents: Does Mordremoth even count

in laws and others: Amelarius (romantic partner), Aurene (like her niece), Neil (friend), Caithe (romantic partner), Callum + Meera (friends), Tonn (friend), Tybalt Leftpaw (friend), Carys and Tegwen (friends), Taimi (friend), Braham (friend), The rest of DW (coworkers who she likes but isn't incredibly close to), Clementine (former pet turned friend, it's a long story)

pets: formerly Clementine, Streamline (old raptor, died during PoF)

-- S K I L L S

abilities: after the Clementine incident she inherited some iboga features and can spit acid from openings in her face. Good at close combat both unarmed and with daggers. Decent with guns as well, and can be stealthy when needed thanks to her whisper's training. Can soulbind with her pet if she has one.

hobbies: Training and generally working with raptors, sparring and working out, hiking, fishing with Neil. Overall any activity outdoors, she loves games as well as relaxing nature walks!

-- T R A I T S

most positive trait: Her optimism and determination! She works hard and plays hard, and refuses to give up fighting for what she believes in. She's incredibly devoted to her work and genuinely believes that the world is worth saving.

most negative trait: her ruthlessness. If she believes her goal is the right one she'll stop at nothing to get it, no matter who may ultimately stand in her way, and she's incredibly brutal when she feels that it's necessary.

-- L I K E S

colors: copper, turquoise, earth tones overall

smells: cooked meats, fresh grass, wood burning, ocean air

textures: rough, dry, bumpy, coarse

drinks: lemonade and fruit juices!

-- O T H E R D E T A I L S

smokes: no

drinks: not anymore, used to heavily at one point

drugs: no

been arrested: yes

taggin but no pressure!!! @baronvonscrufflebutt @manasurge @mystery-salad @brightwingedbat @wilsons-journey @ratasum @pyppyn @twilightdomain @commanderjuni @ancientkarka @the-desert-beast @sunsrefuge @s0urfangs @dotmander @aetherblooms @the-elven-star

and anyone else who sees this, feel free to hop on! that's right! You there!

[manupropriaindigo]

Nervous Tick

(Originally written December 15th, 2022.)

You check every component of the list. All ingredients accounted for. Mise en place. Perfect. As you are.

You check again. Perfection is expected. Demanded. You do not make mistakes. You cannot make a mistake.

Preparation of Miss's reagents requires your steady hand, your precise eye, your machine precision. You progress, carefully and diligently, through each step of the process. Every element is mixed according to the exact ratio as necessary, its time in the cauldron exactly as long as it should be, before the still-boiling mix is taken off heat and allowed to rest. All exactly as described.

You check your work again. You are incapable of making mistakes. Everything exactly to plan. Another check. No errors.

An error would be catastrophic. The scenario unfolds in your imagination, imagined injury to your pride eclipsed by what retribution may come. Cold loneliness, pain, squalor. Everything lost.

You do not make mistakes. You cannot make a mistake.

Your night at the alchemical station moves slowly. With each phial completed your key winds down, the time between each tick growing infinitesimally. You have not made a mistake all night. All week.

Dawn creeps through the forest line, casts its first shard of light past the window illuminating the spot on the wall to your right. Five more to go before you may rest.

This next one's portion of copper shavings is slightly more full than the others.

You stop. Reconsider every completed batch before you.

The ratio of copper shavings dramatically effects the production and efficacy of the entire reagent. Best case scenario, the completed product is inert. Worst case scenario, an outsized exothermic reaction could ignite the entire lab.

As is self-evident, your alchemical workstation is in good order. No exothermic reactions here. What about a dud? Were any of the other batches strange? You struggle to recall. One seemed to behave in a slightly more boisterous manner than the others, but you had thought nothing of it at the time. You fool.

Before preparing the next, you re-check your work on each completed phial. The gentle patina-green glow of each one reassures you of its proper production. Carefully and diligently, you inspect each one, just as you do right after brewing them. Just as good as they were when they came out the cauldron.

You do not make mistakes. You cannot make a mistake.

You made a mistake.

Your hand a little more tremulous than before, your eye a little less sure than before, you fix your error in the next batch. You prepare it, and its perfect subtly-glowing product sits next to the others from tonight's efforts.

Four more similarly-flawless phials soon grace the table, the completed set proof of a job well done. You allow a smile. Perfection.

Unless one is inert, and you could not detect it. You switch off the heat under the cauldron, retire to your quarters, and hope that your next waking moment is a peaceful one.

Your drift to oblivion is slow, painful. Images of Miss finding a mistake in your perfect batch plague you. Counter-arguments bat away the more obvious anxieties, but the more esoteric ones remain. Did you really inspect each phial for the proper glow? Are you certain the erel-ichor was fresh and not musty? Was the heater tuned properly? For every 10 questions you can answer, one "I don't know" bores through into your core. It's so difficult to wind down to true Stillness when you're so wound up.

You eventually find that peace. You even manage to hold onto it for a minute or two as consciousness slides back in. Nervous for what might be found. What will be found.

You attend to her at late morning, where She sits at the seat you occupied hours ago. Her slender, careful hands hold up phial after phial to the sunlight, Her wizened eye judging your work. As a test, She selects another at random and pours its contents into a small silver cup. Time slows as the thin, filmy contents reach down toward the bottom.

Contact with a holy metal would both destroy the reagent and prove its potency. An inert or diluted reagent would fill the vessel harmlessly. Imbalance would induce stress onto the cup itself, forcing it to warp and crack. Overheating would allow the mixture to eat through the metal like acid.

Steam and hiss rise from behind the walls of the silver cup. Evaporation upon contact. The genuine article.

Her curt "Well done" and flash of a smirk assured you of your perfection. As is expected. As is demanded. A sigh of relief reverberates through your body, inaudible.

The thousand pinpricks of fear sublimate. Your core relaxes. You can almost hear the spring inside you releasing your tension, and a paroxysm of contentment nearly forces your legs to bow. In that moment, you are as close to exultant as you may reach.

Before another passes, She demands another batch to be prepared by next dawn. Two if possible, though She is understanding that one doll may only produce so much at one alchemical workstation in one night.

Your spring tenses up again. That one was audible, though perhaps only to you.

You bow and smile. You will not make mistakes. You must not make a mistake.

"Your will be done, Miss."

[rosie-b]

Aaaand my first copper foil piece is done!! I was so excited that we had the right patina to stain the solder copper, I missed the foil’s color lol

[brieandpinotgris]

a repository, a reclamation, a regurgitation

a carnival mirror reflection of my urdhva dhanurasana may I offer up what's missing from that penumbral image:

garish buttons stolen to adorn my back pocket storing all those delicate moth wings

patinaed padlock on a chest & its untouched key in the hollow of my collarbone

gripped obsidian bead obscured by the black and blue knuckles of my right hand

bloodied-tongue simha pranayama