#no serious shades to you dears for liking the things I draw

[oshimaoshimaoshima]

If you genuinely like my art I feel bad for you and questioning your taste.

[promisedclan]

Can we learn more about the cat's personalities? So we can also know what to expect from them, or have a general idea? :D

The babies don’t get posts yet because personalities change between kit -> apprenticehood and apprenticehood -> adulthood

Extended Ramblings beneath the Cut!

The following ramblings have spoilers for: Character arcs, general lore, behind the scenes stuff. If you would prefer to experience Promiseclan blind, this post is NOT for you.

Firstly, to pull back the curtain a bit, I do plan to play the file Promiseclan lives on in 12 moon intervals. This is for my own sanity’s sake. As having an idea of point A and the rough point B these cats need to be in by moon 12 makes things infinitely easier lmao.

“But what of the choices you promise!” You say.

Well, As mentioned, the save file is moreso of a *guide*.

If you get a cat severely injured//in a relationship/killed/banished never to be seen again I’ll just. Retroactively edit the file.

The wonderful thing about being a human artist is I can look at what the game file says happens vs what I believe would happen because your choices put Shadedstar in the pear wiggler and simply. Draw the latter.

Secondly, the Founder Arc of Promiseclan is very much about individual tragedies and collective hopes and determinations existing in spite of said horrors. Take that as you will.

Preamble over, here are my extended and in-depth personality notes.

Shadedstar is essentially being held together by nine rapidly fraying threads, and those threads all coincidentally share names with her fellow founders. I’ll be completely honest with you, dear readers. She’s only going to get worse. After a certain event happens to her a few moons from now, she begins to go from “I don’t know what I got into but I’m trying to stay strong and moral” to Jimmy Mouthwashing levels of delusional.

It’s very:

“I’m the hero!! Me!!! Look at what I do and give up to save the rest of you!!! Aren’t I such a martyr? Aren’t I such a good leader?”

(She is not only actively making things worse, but she is causing problems that didn’t need to happen to begin with)

Unlike Jimmy Mouthwashing, Shadedstar unfortunately has a very enabling benevolent(?) voice whispering in her ear that she’s doing a great job and everyone should love her. So when someone like Twigstripe goes “You’re delusional. Stop.” She can just turn to her spiritual yes-man and ignore the ugly truth ❤️

As an additional note: For those of you who are on the path to becoming Shadedstar enjoyers, here are my Nuance Notes you can cling to when she inevitably starts REALLY losing it:

- The Fell Star targeted her during a period of raw grief, and actively preys on doubts she has had for a looong while. Said grief is bad enough that first thing after getting loaded into the Promiseclan savefile, I went and manually gave her the lasting grief condition.

- The note in her less-spoilery personality introduction about her not sleeping much wasn’t just some “Haha funny she’s overworked” note. I draw her with perpetual eye bags for a reason. As anyone who’s been sleep deprived can tell you, you don’t exactly think straight when you’re running on low and inconsistent amounts of sleep.

- I will also say there is a HEAVY correlation between number of Founders dead and how off the rails Shaded is being. Will you see that in effect this year? Perhaps.

Anyway!! Onto Brownspot.

(I’m just going to call her Brownie. As weird as the name is out of context, her housefolk named her after the dessert and I think that’s cute.)

Brownie’s kind of a weird one? She and Fallenspeckle are the most mentally stable out of the cats who start the story as adults. Brownie’s issues are less crazy delusions and more a very unwavering “I can fix this” mentality.

Briar’s sick? She can fix this. Her former apprentice is depressed and kinda losing it after [REDACTED] happens? She can fix this. Twigstripe and Shadedstar are at each other’s throats for vague yet clearly serious reasons? She can fix this. She doesn’t know how to ask for help, and she doesn’t understand when she should back down and let things take their course.

To Shadedstar, that kinda made her a no-brainer for the deputy pick because her other options were:

- Guy who is already the doctor of the group

- Guy who is terrified of his own shadow

- Girl who could not care less about responsibility. Fuck it we ball and fuck it we find out!!

As another note:

Brownie and Twig’s dynamic is planned to ultimately be left kinda ambiguous. As Moon 0 indirectly stated, she’s been traveling around with him for a few years at least. I personally think they’re cute as a couple and would work really well together, but Twig has a lot of baggage and Brownie would rather choke on her own feelings than add to it. For now she is his best friend in the whole wide world, and that’s enough for her.

Twigstripe.. Twiggy boy.. Oh god, there’s a lot to talk about with him. Twig also suffers from crippling responsibility complex. He’s 134 moons old as of Moon 1 and is NOT getting any younger. The constant references to him flipping off Shadedstar and wanting to retire are only half a joke, because Twigstripe is TIRED. He never really got over Briar dying in the way she did for reasons. Which I’m not elaborating on now because they WILL be pretty explicitly explored in Moon 8 at the absolute latest.

He does care a lot. Brownie was right about that, those apprentices are his not-biological babies, dammit. (Conifer is both his favorite and least favorite child for. Reasons. One of which the observant reader might already be able to piece together. But we’ll get there.)

Unfortunately he’s really bad at saying he cares. Mostly because everyone he does that to. Dies. So he’ll kinda just unnervingly stare at you until you get the point instead.

Leafshimmer is the oldest of the clan’s actual warriors and is honestly just not having a good time. He’s not party rocking, his mental soundtrack at any given time is Jhariah’s “PRESSURE BOMB 3?!?!?!”. He and Shadedstar both sit on the “Keeping you all alive makes me stressed as fuck” reaction spectrum, but at opposite ends. Shaded is in a crucible, Leaf is just on fire. Save for the training he has to do with Ripplepaw, Brownie tries to keep him assigned to tasks in and around the actual camp to help his nerves. He needs a weighted blanket and some kitty weed and he’d be. More Functional than he is right now at least.

Anxiety aside, he’s actually very clever. He likes working with his paws and doing den maintenance. He also LOVES telling riddles.

(The answer to the one he poses in his personality intro is “Your Heartbeat” by the way.)

I don’t have much else to say on him besides the fact he is ALWAYS beefing with Fallenspeckle. All their relationship events seem to be stuff like “They have an argument over who gets a pretty feather and destroy it” “They disagree on something trivial” “Fallenspeckle thinks Leafshimmer is a fucking moron”. In my humble (correct) opinion, it’s moreso of a one sided beef Fallenspeckle has and Leafshimmer is just like “Waugh. Uh. Okay 👍👍”

Speaking of which. Fallenspeckle!! She is the only cat in Promiseclan who shouldn’t be in the retirement home or middle school. For a long while she was effectively the Young Cat Wrangler™️ because she could keep up with them better than the rest of the group could. Fallen.. kinda copes with all of this with a “I’m here for a good time, not a long time” mentality. She likes games, avoiding responsibility, and not thinking about the horrors ❤️

I label her and Brownie as the most stable because out of everyone, they change the least. She knows what she’s about and honestly? I support her.

Palepaw!! The oldest of the baby gang. He kinda sees himself as the de facto leader, and being Shaded’s apprentice does NOT help this mentality. Depending on how you want to look at it, him wanting to imitate Shadedstar is either very cute! (He looks up to her!) Or very scary! (Noooo little German cat!! Don’t imitate your warlock clan leader!!!) He’s very Fred Scooby Doo to me. Smart, but also a golden retriever of a guy.

I’ll say this much. Coniferpaw gets protagonist rights for a reason. She undergoes a LOOOT of change in this first year. Trauma makes a girlie grow up too fast, I’m afraid. Up until that point, she’s probably the most optimistic of the baby squad. She loves life and her clan. It would be very sad if anything happened to them. ❤️

Vinepaw Is just a sassy little lady who is too smart for her own good, and her mentor enables the hell out of that. She eventually has a very interesting dynamic with a cat I can’t talk about just yet. But know I have plans for her. She’s also one of two Promiseclan founders that can eventually canonically understand/work basic human technology. Now she just needs to figure out how to change batteries 😔

Ripplepaw. Pathetic little man. He is VERY pathetic. Super DUPER pathetic. Having Leafshimmer as a mentor doesn’t help this in the slightest since that guy has a negative backbone himself. Ripple has the worst nest in the den and usually gets stuck with Vinepaw’s chores she doesn’t want to do.

Bluekit was honestly raised more by the Apprentice squad and Fallenspeckle then a Rational Adult and it shows 💀 He’s trying to be a good kid, but it’s a little hard when most of your influences are menaces to polite cat society or going through horrific trauma. I don’t have much to say about him until he gets into his apprentice moons. Which considering what happens. I’ll just let speak for themselves.

[starsandauras]

Entry 30: Two Heads Are Better Than One

FFXIV 30 Day Writing Challenge Prompt 30: Two Heads Are Better Than One

Brigid sipped at her tea as William stood at the hunt mark board, deep in thought as he looked over the bills. She lowered her cup and perched her chin in her hand, laughing to herself as he frowned firmly enough to create deep furrows in his brows. Her dear twin, so often so very serious about matters.

Finally he took out a graphite stick and a small pad of paper and started taking notes. Once done he made his way back to her, dropping heavily in the chair across from her, taking a deep pull from his own drink.

“You were writin’ them all down, werenae you~?” she teased, and she smiled widely as he glared flatly at her.

“Loch ye’d be lettin’ me leave any ‘hind,” he grumbled, only for her smile to grow even wider.

“Nay ‘tall, mo chroí~” she sang lightly, laughing and jerking away from William’s playful swipe at her arm. But it was enough impetus for her to unroll her map of Tural and pull out her map pins. “Aye, well, shall we be startin’ in Urqopacha or Kozama'uka?”

William leaned in, picking up a map pin. “Best tae be startin’ in Urqopacha, tha’ goat sucker B rank’s there, shuld be takin’ it out early loch.” He checked his list and stuck a pin near the agave fields. Brigid nodded and added one near Icuvlo's Inn.

Between the two of them they worked out the most efficient path for each mark, including areas to check for the Chupacabra.

————

“Man,” Araki said as he handed Matsu his pack, “I’m glad Ajisai warned us about Eorzea wanting surnames.”

“A shame she didn’t warn us sooner,” Matsu agreed, setting his pack down next to his chair, tapping the hand holding his pen on the small table they had between them (one of Araki’s early carpentry attempts, one of the legs was slightly too short and the whole thing wobbled). “We could have been thinking this over long before now.”

Araki shrugged, crossing his arms behind his head. “It’s not like it matters, right? Just for the paperwork, we’ll likely be the only Araki and Matsu over there.”

Matsu sighed. He loved his brother, he did, but sometimes… “I’m sure someone will try to call us by surnames, Eorzea can be…”

“Weird?”

“…yes, weird. Not the word I was looking for, admittedly, though you’re not wrong.”

Another shrug as Araki kicked his feet up on the table. “Then let’s just pick something, dude. Something we at least don’t hate the sound of.”

“Where do you come up with these words?”

“Doesn’t matter. Name, pick one.”

Matsu sighed and started going down the list, the both of them considering and marking off various names.

Finally Araki lowered his feet and rubbed his face. “What about Ryuzaki? That old clan, they’re dead now right? No one to contest it?”

Matsu blinked and looked down at his list. “That’s… not a terrible idea.”

“Great, we’re good, let’s fill out the paperwork and get going.”

————

Once upon a time, when the Leveilleur twins were very young, and more prone to getting along, sometimes they could be found in their nursery. Free to be the young children they were, and not the prodigies their family knew they could be.

Alphinaud had not yet shown his talent in art, and so the children were joined in crayon drawings, the two of them sprawled on their bellies on the floor, Alisaie’s feet kicked up and swaying happily back and forth.

“Alisaie, that’s not the color of grass!”

“It is here.”

“But it isn’t!”

“I’m pretending, Alphinaud.”

Alphinaud pouted as his sister colored the ground in teal, but couldn’t come up with an argument he thought she would listen to. So he continued coloring the sky, in the correct shade of blue.

They shifted slightly to make more room for each other, Alisaie’s feet still kicked up, as they drew themselves, holding their grandfather’s hands. The three were little more than blobs of blue, red, and brown and white, but they could tell who they were and that was what mattered to the twins.

Suddenly they heard a door open in the hallway, and Alisaie’s head snapped up. “Grandfather!” she called out, all but snatching the drawing out from under Alphinaud’s yellow crayon (and Alphinaud was relieved that the crayon wasn’t actually in contact with paper at the time) and dashed out of the room.

Alphinaud followed a little slower (honestly, how did Alisaie move so fast?), but soon caught up in time to see Louisoix kneel and wrap his arms tightly around his granddaughter, laughing all the while. “Hello to you as well, my dear,” he greeted warmly, and extended his arm to invite Alphinaud in. “There’s my grandson,” he added, as Alphinaud easily joined them.

“Grandfather! Look what Alphinaud and I made!” Alisaie all but shoved the drawing in Louisoix’s face, but the older man easily moved back with the experience of both father and grandfather. He smiled and released the twins in order to take the picture in hand, giving the picture its due.

“Well look at this,” he said, grinning at them both. “A perfect picture of the three of us.” He stood, with only a little difficulty, ruffling both twins’ hair. “I shall put this in a place of honor in my office.”

Louisoix smiled down at them, warmly enough that suddenly, Alphinaud didn’t mind what color Alisaie had used for the grass, because it was good enough for their grandfather.

[corvidamned]

What a serious young woman. Kira pieced bits together out of her clues. Her abilities had to do with attraction. And she had to meet people on a regular basis. Had to, as a means of survival. And her current obsession was yours truly. And she didn't want to hurt people she liked… But, if there were pheromones in the air, Kira didn't feel much different outside of an intense infatuation. She still had her mind, and her will done. Her hand confidently came up to hold her waist, while the other guided her chin to tilt up at her. "You can't hurt me." She confessed at last. "Because I regenerate. The only thing I must warn you, my dear, if you draw blood — do not drink. Or you will be poisoned, destined to die and rise again a hungrier and brutal fiend." She lowered her hand, looking down to close her eyes briefly. They opened a shade of deep red behind thick lashes. "A creature bound to the night." She gazed up at her slowly with glowing cat eyes.

Seeing as they were in the confines of a private area, the rabbit didn't feel the need to whisper. Perhaps her longing admiration for the female wasn't something that when said sounded all too special, or she simply hadn't the personality to pull off being sauve.

" What I need is never a clear and direct matter. As for calling me out on the metahuman business, you'd be correct. It isn't entirely something I care to draw attention to, so I travel to large cities in order to cover that part of me up. That and larger populations tend to welcome oddities.

I don't entirely have problems making friends... genetics offer me the edge on that front. It's just ... you don't know if they would be attracted to you otherwise if it wasn't for your abilities. Also, there is a matter of hurting someone. If I don't care for them... no worries, if I care it is hard to live with. Not entirely the best way to start relations. But that in itself is another bag of issues I'd have to work out. You... you seem different. Resilient, Strong, Captivating, and I am not really the only one that notices."

[promenadewithme]

May I please have prompt 62 with Simon Basset x female!reader?

Of course! Thank you for requesting!

Pairing: Simon Basset x Fem!Reader

Prompt: 62 (”She doesn’t belong with him” “Than who does she belong with?” “...with me.”)

Warnings: very slight angst with a happy ending. I'm sorry, but I just had to include him saying "I burn for you".

Word count: 1.7 k

Tell me if you want to join my tag list!

Oblivious

__________________________________________

Dearest Readers,

it has come to this author’s attention that Lady (y/n) (y/l/n) and Lord Benedict Bridgerton were seen promenading earlier this week. We all know Miss (y/l/n) to be a close friend to the Bridgertons, but will she officially become part of the family? Rest assured, if there is an engagement this author will find out.

Your’s Truly,

Lady Whistledown.

__________________________________________

YOUR P.O.V.

“This is absurd!” you exclaimed. “We were seen walking and now we’re to be married?”

“Calm down, (y/n). You know Whistledown is just a gossip, no one will remember this in a week.” said Benedict, putting down his sketchbook to look at you. 

As soon as you woke, your lady’s maid showed the infamous society papers and you all but ran to the Bridgerton estate. Benedict was, as always, in the drawing room sketching away. He had already read the paper, but thought nothing of it. He was calm, so calm it irritated you.

“Ben, you don’t understand! If people think I’m engaged to you, they will stop courting me and, unless you plan on marrying me, that is a disaster! I have to marry this season!” at this point Benedict stood up and caressed your arm in an attempt of calming you down. To anyone else, this scene would be scandalous and incredibly improper, but you and Ben have known eachother since infancy and were the best of friends, so there was nothing romantic about the gesture.

“(y/n), my dear, what is this rush? We are still young, you can see so many more seasons before being considered a spinster. You are beautiful, smart, accomplished and any man in the ton would be more that lucky to have you as his wife. If they don’t see it, it’s their loss. As for the rumors chasing them away, I believe it will do quite the opposite.” he said with a smirk.

“Whatever do you mean? If they believe I am to be married, how would it attract them?” you asked, incredulous.

“Well, not to brag, but I am a Bridgerton. If they think you caught my eye, they’d be curious to know what’s so special about you. So, don’t fret. All will be well.” With one last reassuring squeeze, he turned around and sat back down. “Now, are you going to Lady Danbury’s ball this evening?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at his sketch, not quite contempt with the shading.

“Of course I am, it’s the biggest ball of the season!” you exclaimed, sitting down on the sofa in front of him.

“Thank the heavens! If my mother tries to push eligible ladies my way, I’ll run in your direction.” he said, still sketching. Benedict stopped for a second and looked up at you “I heard a certain Duke will be there.” he stated with a smirk. You rolled your eyes and said “We all know he is bewitched by Daphne, it does not matter if he will be there.” 

“Of course it matters, you are in love with the man! And, to be completely honest, I don’t believe it is my sister who his heart belongs to. I’ve seen the way he looks at you, it’s the same way Colin looks at maps or Eloise looks at books.” He was leaning forward now, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped.

“Like I’m an object?” you said, kidding of course and dying to change the subject. You had the tendency to get your hopes up and the last thing you wanted was to believe your friend and end up with a broken heart.

“Like you hung the moon and the stars.” he had a serious expression and your heart skipped a beat with the thought that Simon would ever look at you that way, but you knew it would never happen. So you waved your hand, smiled and said “I think all the charcoal and paint is going straight to your brain, Mr. Bridgerton. I expect to see your hands all clean if you are to dance with me to trick your poor mama.” Standing up, you curtsied mockingly and said your goodbyes before walking out the door. 

SIMON'S P.O.V.

Simon woke with news from Lady Whistledown. He was never one to believe in gossip, but Daphne was always talking about the society papers during their fake courting, so his curiosity got the best of him. What he did not expect was to read (y/n)'s name.

He had sworn to himself that he would never marry, but arriving at the beginning of the season he couldn't help but be smitten by you. He tried to fight it, but every time you smiled he saw himself smiling along, every time you wore his favourite colour he forgot how to breathe, and every time he saw you with Benedict Bridgerton he couldn't control his jealousy.

He confided in Daphne about it and she guaranteed (y/n) and the second Bridgerton son were just close friends, but Lady Whistledown seems to think differently. To be married? Was this true? If so, he knew it was for the best. He would be able to keep his promise to himself, but he could not help the ache in his heart as he dressed for the day.

(Y/N)'S P.O.V.

You looked at yourself in the mirror, pleased with the outcome. Your lady's maid had weaved delicate flowers in your hair, that was pulled up loosely and you wore your newest dress, long white gloves and the family diamonds. Madame Delacroix really outdid herself this time. It was your favourite colour, with princess sleeves, only slightly puffed, and had embroidered tulle at the hem and bottom part of the skirt. You looked truly beautiful.

"(y/n), it's time to-" your mother paused at the door and looked at you. She smiled softly at your reflection. "You look so beautiful, my dear... Do you think a certain Lord might like it too?" she said smiling softly.

"It is not the Lord's attention I want, mama. You know Ben is just a friend" you said, playing with the skirt of your dress.

"I know, sweetheart, I just don't want you do get hurt. All I want is for you to be happy and what better than to marry your best friend?" she hugged you from behind and kissed your cheek, still looking at your reflection.

"To marry the one you love..."

SIMON'S P.O.V.

"You really have outdone yourself, Lady Danbury." Simon said, looking down at the woman who practically raised him. She was wearing a white gown, a tiara and long white gloves, radiant as always, leaning on her cane.

"I always do, my boy. Now, look at that! Your beloved has arrived." she declared with a small smirk.

"I have already spoken to Daphne" he said, nodding in the Bridgerton family direction, however his heart was beating out of his chest as he turned to look at (y/n). It seemed impossible, but she was even more beautiful than the last time he saw her. Simon looked away before he was caught staring.

"We both know I'm not speaking of the Bridgerton girl. You are not as discreet in your brooding as you like to think." he looked at you again, but you were already speaking to Benedict, who was leading you to the dance floor. "What is bothering you, boy?"

Simon stared at the pair dancing for a moment before responding. "She does not belong with him."

"Than who does she belong with?" (y/n) was laughing at something Benedict said and Simon could not bare the view anymore.

"...With me." he mumbled before heading to the gardens.

(Y/N)'S P.O.V.

The song finished and you curtsied, smiling at your best friend. The smile slowly turned into a frown as you saw Simon walking out, into the gardens.

"Go after him." Benedict whispered.

"What? We would be unchaperoned, it would be scandalous!" you answered, only loud enough for him to hear.

"I'll stand at the door and make sure no one sees. Go!" you smiled and wished you could hug you best friend. "Thank you, Ben." you said as you went into the garden after the man you love. The weather was pleasant and the garden was completely empty, with only the Duke passing back and forth close to the bushes.

"Simon?" he stopped in his tracks, looking surprised as he gazed back at you and stepped closer.

"What are you doing here, if we were to be caught unchaperoned yo-" you stopped the nervous man by saying "Benedict is at the door, no one will see."

"Of course he is." he mumbled, but you heard.

"What does that mean?" you asked, not understanding his sudden dislike for the lord.

"It means he is always around, always with you." he spat out.

"Well, he is my best friend." you could not believe what he was saying. "What do you have against him?" you questioned.

"Are you truly to be married?" he demanded, ignoring your question.

"What?" you replied, completely incredulous.

"Please don't." he murmured.

"Simon, I-" you tried to answer but he cut you off.

"Before you say anything, please listen to me. Don't marry him, please." he paused for a second, adjusting his posture. "I love you. You..." he shook his head. "You don't even know what you do to me. Ever since I can remember, I have promised myself I would never fall victim to love, would never marry, would not let my family name carry on. Then came you."

Simon took a step closer and continued to speak. "You changed my plans, awoke desires I never knew I had, you have stolen my heart and my soul... I burn for you." he took your gloved hands in his, caressing them softly. "Don't marry him, marry me." he gazed into your eyes, waiting your answer.

"Simon... It was never my plan to marry Benedict, I was completely honest when I said he is nothing but a friend." you smiled up at him before saying "you are the one I love, always have been."

Simon grinned before pulling you into a passionate kiss, one hand on your back and the other behind your neck. It was a good thing Benedict was at the door, if anyone saw this scene and the rumours reached Lady Whistledown... You didn't even want to think about the ruin it would bring upon your family.

When you and Simon finally parted you managed to mumble "We truly have been oblivious, haven't we? I thought you were in love with Daphne." he chuckled.

"And I thought you to be with Benedict. Good thing you followed me out here, my love." he said, tucking a stray hair behind your ear.

"From now on, it's all I'll ever do."

[lowkeyclueless5137]

Cuz I lost EBG

And still I don't want to tarnish the program ;-; cuz me is a lazyass....

I present to you! Chibis!

Again, the SD picrew said 'suffer <3' so I went in manually (again)

Mammon the magicless student au chibs!

I am really asking for the OM fandom to cut my head, don't I? Nonetheless... I have small sheets for them so I'll share them along my thoughts on each one of them regarding the process of changing... (+mishaps)

Small note!

My process of making chibis is to make them in the picrew and then go in and draw over them... It takes a bit and this ones were before the RSA uniform update...

So let's start this!

He was surprisingly easy to make... Actually, if I'm honest, the only things I did to this bby is to add him a smol fang, accentuate the eye color(at all of them I did it) and also give a bit more color to the bandage...

His coffin icon was more of a thinking process... I wanted to portray the Mammon that heis in here ✨magicless✨... I won't elaborate in here though :)

Another easy one... although for the eyes I literally picked from the og SD the color... the actual difference is the gloves... It took a bit to center the finger line (and pick the color), but he was actually a relaxing process...

Still a bit salty about the fact that I couldn't move the suit mark... But after a bit I said fuck it and moved on... I even found a valid motive for it so it's too late now... (I completely forgot then that I could redraw it)

*inhales* he had pink hair before... I'm serious... HOT PINK HAIR

So I turned it to orange through my pallete picking and the whole tracing and recoloring... Then I showed my friend @kurokiesimping and they said that the eyes are too big... so I looked and realized that the eyes changed shape so I just screamed into the void cuz I already did the hair and I didn't want to re-center and recolor them completely... so I tried to cut them 🙃

But if it wasn't for them, Beel would be less accurate(not that he is entirely) than now... So a big thanks to them!

HE LITERALLY HAD NOTHING TO CHANGE

Except accentuating the eye color and making longer gloves... but it's like... bearly a change... they were last minute cuz ye...

The coffin icon was more of a challenge color wise... I still don't know if I got it right...

He really said he has to be perfect on the first try huh?

THIS MF

He was blonde at first... then I said to torture myself... the og SD hair color looked bad on the chibi so it took me 30 DAMN MINUTES to just pick the main color.

But I'm the proudest about Asmo... he looks really nice and just dramatic... Which considering my trash art skills... ye...

Just... just look at this pretty boi!

Haha.... crappy hair shape go brrrr

Levi... dear, baby, precious Otaku....

WHY THE FUCK DID YOU HAVE THAT HELMET HAIR?!

Like... I initially wanted him to have like some spaghetti like hair... but the picrew didn't have that option (note it down pls: curly hair and afro options) So I said fuck it again and decided to go with the steel helmet...

Then I realized that the purple wasn't beating with the cannon... :/ you know where this is going...

I accidentally deleted the main color layer and blew a whole casket cuz it didn't save... (courtesy of my lil sis)

THIS MF(2)

He looks crappy... but I legit stood a whole day over this one...

The hair, the colors, the shades... Belphegor gave me a FIELD TRIP...

Ye there so much to elaborate over this and lament... but it's here... there could be room for improvement, but I do not want to go and do it over again... ;-;

This is all!

I hope you enjoy them...

And I hope I was accurate enough...

Again a big thanks to my friend for helping me out with Beel! ✨

Until next time! Bye!

[mysmemissme]

Up the Rabbit Hole

Summary: You have a problem- you can't stop thinking about how good Barbatos looked in that bunny costume. It's interfering with your studies, duties, and even your friendship with him. With no clue what to do, you begin to avoid him.

Barbatos, however, is not fond of this fix, and when his patience runs thin, he offers you a more unorthodox solution.

Pairing: Barbatos/ Reader

Rating: Explicit

CW: Prostate massage, anal fingering, collars, slight master/pet

Read below the cut or on AO3 

A gift for my friend for Barbatos’ birthday! Enjoy!

It was all that bunny suit’s fault.

Ever since everyone was forced to don those dumb bunny costumes, you had been an utter wreck. You couldn’t focus on your studies, earning you an earful from Lucifer. You couldn’t focus when you were cooking, earning complaints about the pitiful state of dinner from everyone but Lucifer. You couldn’t focus on Mammon’s schemes, or Levi’s games, or Satan’s recommended books, or Asmo’s fashion advice, or Lucifer’s lectures, or Beel’s workouts, or even something as simple as napping with Belphie. You couldn’t focus on anything.

Except for the mental image of Barbatos in that bunny outfit.

Why it had enchanted you so much was a mystery. Maybe it was the change in wardrobe; the way the vest highlighted his slender waist and broad shoulders, the lime green tie bringing out the same shade in his eyes. Maybe it was the ears themselves and the charming tail that accompanied them; the ears revealing a cutesier side to the ever-serious butler, and the fluffy tail drawing attention to his rounded behind. Maybe it was watching him work in the suit, catering to guests as serious, as dedicated, as always, despite the circumstances. Maybe it was the way he wore it all with no shame, not embarrassed in the slightest at the large ears, rounded tail, and odd situation, retaining his confidence through it all…

Maybe it wasn’t a mystery why you liked it so much after all.

Either way, your thoughts and preoccupation with the memories of Bunny Barbatos were providing you with issues- the biggest of which being that you couldn’t even talk with Barbatos anymore. You couldn’t make eye contact with him without thinking about floppy ears and a firm build. You couldn’t listen to him speak without the deep timbre of his voice igniting fantasies mid-conversation that left you a stuttering mess. Even simply being near him caused your brain to derail, hands to sweat, and heart to pound.

In one moment of weakness, you bought a dark green collar you saw while browsing the web, one you knew would look amazing on Barbatos, especially paired with the cursed ears and tail. You hid it in your bedside table, refusing to acknowledge just how far gone you were, refusing to acknowledge the new images, fantasies, and dreams it sparked.

You, in embarrassment and for your sanity, started to avoid him.

You weren’t dumb enough to think this would solve the problem, especially with how sharp Barbatos was. What you had hoped was that Barbatos would tolerate your finicky behavior without prying just long enough for you to get this problem under wraps.

For a while, it worked- Barbatos allowed you to make your escape, sending any messages he needed to tell you through the brothers. He left sweets wrapped with notes attached on them for you to enjoy on your bed. If you ended up in the same hallway, he kindly ducked into a nearby corridor in order for you to pass unhindered.

This game continued for two weeks- you avoiding him, and Barbatos letting you. His patience was commendable, and it was just another thing you admired about him. He let you go, again and again, in an unusual game of cat and mouse.

But everyone’s patience runs out eventually.

It was on the fifteenth day of this arrangement that Lucifer handed you a note. It read:

                 Dear,

Meet me in your bedroom tonight at eight ‘o’clock sharp. There is something we must discuss. No more running from me.

                               Sincerely,

                               Your faithful servant, Barbatos

 You read over the note again with trepidation and glanced at the time on your D.D.D.- 4:01. You had four hours to prepare yourself for the inevitable conversation you knew was to come. Four hours to get yourself under control. Your stomach tied itself in knots.

Stupid bunny outfit.

               -----

Time flew, and before you knew it, eight was upon you.

You paced outside your door, fidgeting with your hands and hair. Your nerves were getting the best of you. What if he rejected you? What if he no longer even wanted to be friends with you? What if he called you a kinky freak and exposed you? What if he convinced Diavolo to send you back to the human world?

‘What if’ upon ‘what if’ piled up in your mind, each one more ridiculous and implausible than the last. It was agonizing, not knowing what was going to happen when you stepped through the door and faced Barbatos. You felt the seconds tick away, each pressing down on you more and more.

Finally, you couldn’t stand the pressure and anxiety anymore. You flung the door open and stepped into the dimly lit room. There, on your bed he sat with-

With bunny ears on and the suit to match. Suddenly, you felt like passing out.

When he saw you enter, he moved to stand, and a flash of light from his neck caught your eye. The bunny ears had distracted you from the rich, dark green velvet adorning his slender neck, the gold chain attached matching the golden detailing and swirls on the green.

It was the collar you had bought. He was wearing the collar you had bought and hid.

“That- that’s the- But I- How’d you- Why’re you-,” you stuttered. Your thoughts were a jumbled mess, and they all came rushing out in an incomprehensible mess you continued to stumble through, even as Barbatos glided towards you. He raised a gloved hand and caressed your face when he was near enough to. He shushed you.

“A few days ago, I came in here to drop off a slice of Devil food cake, and I intended to leave a note. However, I seemed to have forgotten a pen. I didn’t mean to pry, but I figured that one such as yourself would keep a pen near your bed, so I looked in your bedside table. While I certainly did find a pen to write with, I also found this charming collar hidden away. It seemed to match perfectly with a certain outfit I wore not too long ago. Care to explain?”

His facial expression never changed, but his eyes shown with a mischievous sheen, his voice filled with amusement, and there was a slight self-satisfied quirk to his smile. You could try and lie your way out of this one, but it was clear he had figured you out long ago. You sighed.

“I think you already know everything, jerk,” you grumbled, before continuing louder. “Fine. You were really hot in that bunny outfit, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I bought that collar because I thought it would look good on you, and I was right. I’ve been having inappropriate fantasies about you, which is why I’ve been avoiding you. There, happy?”

He chuckled. “Quite. Hearing such flattering words come from you is always welcomed. Since you were so honest with me, I believe you deserve a special treat.”

“What do you mean by ‘special treat?’ Like dessert?” He hummed, obviously amused.

“No, I believe something else is in order. You mentioned certain… fantasies pertaining to me, did you not?” You nodded dumbly. His lips twitched, and he reached for his tie, slowly loosening it. “Well then, since you were honest about having them, as a reward I’ll allow you to fulfill them.”

Your brain was running a mile a minute but still couldn’t seem to catch up. “Fulfill my fantasies?” you questioned.

He fully removed his tie, moving to lay it on the bed. He then began to undo the buttons on his vest and shirt, revealing inch-by-inch more of his pale skin. “Yes, fulfill your wishes. Touch me as you wish, direct me as you want. Command me, your humble servant.”

It was like his words had cast a spell on you, because suddenly all the desire and lust you had been repressing for the past weeks welled to the surface. Your hands itched to touch, your tongue to taste, and your eyes to look upon him below you.

“Lay down on the bed.”

He did as told, and you closed the distance in a second, straddling his body. His dark hair fanned out against the pillows, bunny ears tapping the headboard. His eyes practically glowed with a mix of satisfaction and interest. His shirt and vest were completely undone, hanging open. You swallowed.

You pushed the shirt and vest down his arms, and with his help, you removed them completely. Now that his upper body was completely visible, you couldn’t stop your hands from dancing along his shoulders, collarbones, and chest with frantic energy.

“You know,” you started, voice thick, “In my fantasies, I like to spoil the always-composed butler with attention and pleasure till he so overwhelmed that his mask breaks, and I get to see him beg. Spoiling someone who always works so hard, like they are my pet who did a good job, and this is their reward.”

“Then by all means, Master, reward me, your humble bunny.”

You didn’t need to be told twice. You leaned down, pressing kisses along his flawless skin from his partially exposed neck, to his collarbones, to his nipples. Your lips latched onto one, sucking and tugging lightly with your teeth, while the other one was pinched with your eager hand. You heard him sigh, but that wasn’t enough- you wanted to hear him lose his composure completely.

You move to the other nipple, laving it with attention as well, till both nipples were hard and perky. Once you were satisfied with that, you continued your path downwards. You alternated dotting his skin with kisses and light nips, stopping to suck here and there. When you passed his belly button, getting ever so close to the waistband of his pants, you felt his stomach tighten in anticipation.

You reached for the button on his pants, undoing it and shoving them down to his ankles, stopping to admire the bulge in his boxer briefs before shoving those down, too. His cock now free and hard, it stood proudly towards his stomach, leaking precum.

You wrapped your hands around it, looking up at Barbatos’ face for any sign of change, but his expression was as placid as always. Using the precum dripping from the tip, you wet your hands, before setting a steady pace of jerking him off, slowing at the tip to rub your thumb against it.

You looked up at his face, yet his expression had not changed despite the pleasure.

You were going to have to up your game if you wanted him to melt beneath you.

You stopped your ministrations, leaning over Barbatos to reach into your beside table. You pulled out the lube you had stashed there, closing the drawer, and moving back down Barbatos’ body. You spread his legs and settled between them, popping the lube open. You poured a sizable amount onto your palm, then began rubbing your hands together to warm the liquid.

“This okay?” you asked, circling your middle finger around his tight hole, but not entering.

“Touch me as much as you want, wherever you want,” he said, voice husky. You rolled your eyes.

“Is that a yes? I need a clear one.”

“Then, yes.” He spread his legs even wider, giving you ample access.

Now that that was out of the way, you tentatively pushed your finger into his tight hole. With your free hand, you grabbed his cock once more, stroking it to make sure he felt good even while you stretched him.

You began to thrust your finger in and out, letting Barbatos adjust to the sensation. When you felt him relax and loosen slightly around you, you added a second finger. He hissed at the additional digit, and when you checked to make sure he was okay, his eyes were closed, eyebrows raised and furrowed.

You stopped moving. “Is this-,”

“Yes, it’s okay. Keep going,” he grunted out, wiggling his hips. You started thrusting your fingers again, and he sighed.

Oh, okay.

So, he was feeling it, but you still wanted more.

You replaced your random thrusting with rubbing against his inner walls, searching for what you knew would cause him to crumble. It took a few moments, but you knew the second you felt the bump that that was what you had been looking for.

You began to circle the small bump, applying steady pressure, causing Barbatos to arch off the bed. Proud that you had gotten such an obvious reaction out of him, you doubled down, circling faster and tightening your grip on his cock as you continued to jerk him off.

You then alternated between circling, tapping the bump, and rubbing it in a ‘come hither’ motion. Barbatos’ legs began to quiver, and when you glanced up, you saw he had become a mess- panting with his mouth open, sweat beading on his brow, and cheeks flushed pink. You stared in wonder, adoring his reactions.

And yet, it still wasn’t enough- he still hadn’t made any noise.

Desperate for him to moan or gasp or anything, you replaced your hand on his leaking cock with your lips, circling the tip with your tongue and licking the underside, before taking him in your mouth.

“Ah!” he gasped, bucking his hips, pushing his cock further into your mouth, the taste of his salty precum and his smell overwhelming your senses. As you took him deeper, you applied more pressure on his prostate, all while keeping your motions random.

It was then that Barbatos’ poise began to collapse completely. He started wiggling his hips, thrusting forward and backward like he was chasing both the warm heat of your mouth and the shocks of pleasure your hand was providing with his prostate. One of his gloved hands came down to rest on the back of your head, fingers wrapping your hair and holding you in place as he used your mouth. He moaned as he fucked your mouth roughly, cock touching the back of your throat.

Then, a loud moan he released caused you to look up once more, only to meet his hazy gaze as he stared down on you pleasuring him. Your eye contact seemed to add fuel to the fire as the grip on your hair tightened, and his thrusts became faster. From how he was biting his lips and arching his back, you could tell he was close, so you ground your fingers against his prostate, harder than before, right as his cock was fully sheathed in your mouth.

With the simultaneous overpowering sensations, he came, sighing long and low as he filled your throat with his cum. You managed to swallow most of it, though some slid down your chin. After a few seconds, when he was done basking in the afterglow of his orgasm, he pulled his softening cock from your mouth, and you moved back from between his legs so he could pull his pants up.

Once he was tucked back in and pants buttoned, you figured you were done and went to stand, only to end up flat on your back on the bed, Barbatos straddling you in a surprising role reversal of earlier. You gaped up at him. His face was already back to normalcy, but his lips were shiny with spit and his hair tousled.

He reached up, taking off his bunny ears and putting them on you. He leaned down, licking the cum off your chin before whispering against your ear.

“Now, it’s my turn.”

[ambroslal]

the commentary draws an easy giggle from domitila. "do you prefer them young, then?" age gap marriages were nothing unusual in the capitol, especially if the younger part was of a lower social caste, as was the case with sage — domitila never gave it much thought, but the arrangement between the keene was seen as mutually beneficial, for sage gained freedom from the districts for good, while her husband got a shiny little thing to show off. in the end, a marriage was just a business transaction that was long standing, with its perks and its downsides, wasn't it? that's why domitila preferred to stay away from it altogether. "you can be frank. it's common for tributes to do so even without permission — a last indulgence of sorts." domitila did not care for morbid talk, but it slips before she can command her tongue to still. she bites it nevertheless, before her face morphs into a pitiful expression that was all too honest; maize would die soon, there was no doubt about it, but domitila did not think she would enjoy it, even if that meant thea's boy would be crowned and glory would return to district two. "we all think it is a pity." we, the capitolites, that had once lapped up the sight of the twins from district nine. "you must tell me if there is anything i can do to make your stay more bearable. i'm often around the tribute center, for my own, so you know where to find me, if not here." the stylist assures.

her lips part lightly at the mention of her tributes, but as her mouth closes, domitila doesn't try to conceal the way it forms a smile. of course the tributes from two would gather attention during training — along with the tributes from one and perhaps four, they were the best prepared, this year even more than others. "did they show off? oh dear." she feigns bashfulness, as if it was wrong. it was not. striking fear in the competition's hearts could make it fun, especially if the underdogs tried (hopelessly) to fight back. "thea? how do you know her?" the mentor was hardly the most sociable, and she can not exactly recall a friendship with sage; for the mention alone, her curiosity is piqued. it dims with the talk of the other tribute — named after food, how charming — but her mind catches on again as she imagines maize in something green. a dark shade would fit her, perhaps in silk, but domitila did not think it was the best color for her. but again, in her situation, she could choose, couldn't she? "did you girls always have different tastes? funny." being twins, you'd expect they'd have the same opinions, or similar at least. did maize purposefully want to stray from the shadow of her sister? that makes sense, she supposes. sometimes, a shadow is a refuge, and anothers, it only makes bitterness lingers (she tried not to take serious the comparisons between her and the creed scion, because she was much older, and she couldn't allow herself to think how much more she would be able to do had she been born within that gilded lineage).

the question surprises her, but domitila doesn’t let it transpire. it wasn't often that tributes cared about who cattered to them, but she was always excited to talk about the games, and her role in them, after all; it did not matter this was a lamb walking to the slaughter in the very institution. “not always, not as a stylist, anyways. i had an uncle who was a gamemaker, and it was very thrilling to see what they would come up with every year. but then i realized i wanted to work with fashion, and i did think it would one day be my calling, and my honor, to work with the games, and make it better, to get to know the tributes and to make them shine. you know, some people don’t even try to do that, like it’s not the very least to prop up your tribute! yours, as an example — not to slander my colleague, of course — can’t tell they need to highlight your frame. you’re tall, with that elegant neck. a v neck,” she makes a motion with a finger to a line down from her clavicles to her sternum. “would bring all eyes to you. or your hair — have you considered cutting it?”

she'll take a brief comfort in the jest. her empathy for mister keene had never been vast. " i can't say i've ever seen him spry, " maize shrugs. when she was younger, she wondered what her twin had seen in the old man. she sang praises of love, but it couldn't be that deep. her sister must be a stability chaser, which explains every action that the tribute condemned her for. " he's thirty years sage's senior, he bitches like it's fifty. " that unbridled wealth provided a cushion for it ; one day in the fields, and her brother-in-law would simply keel over. if only it could be that easy. there's no apologies spoken for the crass nature of her words. ( do capitolites expect any different from the citizens they view no differently than circus monkeys ? )

sage spoke so fondly of the stylist. the older twin never struggled with getting people to like her. maize's own directness might not buy her easy favor of those from the city, but back home some found maize delightful. with the pain-inducing labor all in nine endured, being soft only led to disappointment. being realistic never led maize astray. " honestly only hurts if you allow it. and if you'll afford me the chance of being frank, i didn't expect to be here a week ago. " teeth are not bared, domitila holds no responsibility in the tribute being reaped. this was more tolerable than batting eyelashes at sleazy men and women. make them feel special so they throw their hard-earned money at you, that devasting advice rolled off her sister's tongue too easily.

" the pair from two seemed to handle it better than the rest. " so many of those who were reaped this year were older, some even grandparents. her youth and continued physicality are two positives in her corner. though she'd rather die than succumb to this for the rest of her existence. the capitol had a field day with the twins back in the day ; if both of them became victors, the spectacle would become never-ending. she takes a seat at the decadence filled table, before continuing. " i'm sure they've provided quite the handful for you and thea. " and while she was unfamiliar with the stylist, her feelings for mentor were fond given the circumstances. she wonders what that dynamic must be like. were the two women fond of each other ?

" i haven't had much time to explore, but it hasn't been too difficult. sage knows her way. flax took an unintentional detour last night, but he made it back in time for training. " the man from nine had maybe gotten two hours of sleep before breakfast. his reflexes paid the price. the woman from one threw an axe his way ; a gentle joke, she exclaimed. ( she doesn't entirely believe it. ) " it's more sage's color ironically enough. i much prefer a green. " though when she's her sister's spitting image, yellow suffices too. they wore so much yellow after sage's victory. two little canaries with panem's hands around their necks, the line between adoration and danger blurred so casually. " did you always want to become a stylist for the hunger games ? "

[knifefather]

Jasper my beloved, we always send you our horny thoughts but what are YOUR horny thoughts today?

Awww 💓 Why, thank you for asking, my dear anon. My horny thoughts today are about my F/Os being mean to me but like...in a sexy way. I kinda have a kink for being ignored while being pleasured?? Or having a super nonchalant partner? Maybe it’s a degradation thing, idk. But I’m thinking about one of my meaner F/Os like Rohan doing that to me.

Rohan just ignores me while he’s knuckle-deep inside me. Drawing with one hand, fingering me with the other. I’m moaning and squirming next to him, rubbing against him, begging to get fucked. And like. His art is just worlds more interesting than the needy slut sitting beside him.

“A bit more shading here,” he says aloud, working his pencil. At the same time, he presses up roughly against my g-spot and makes me squeal. He shoots me a dirty look for being loud.

“Keep it down. Can’t you see I’m working on something?” I almost think he’s serious until I see a little grin tug on his lips, making me swoon and want him even more.

Or like. This is cursed, buuut Kokichi fingering me and cranking up his sadism to 11. He would be super mean and tease a bunch. “Awww, is it really that good? Huh? Use your words for your King,” he teases nastily, knowing damn well I can’t articulate anything.

“Poor thing. I almost feel bad for you,” he whispers in my ear, adding another finger. It’s more than I can take now, and I start wriggling in my spot.

“That’s a lie, by the way.” He darkly and keeps me stuffed. He’d start scrolling through his phone, laughing at videos and ignoring the fact that I’m nearly squirting all over on his fingers.

Ya know, just lil Jas things LMAO.

[teacup-set]

Paperhearted

Summary: ‘Tch. Who says ‘I love you’ to someone they just met?’ he thinks, frowning all the way home. ‘Annoying.’

But his heart feels caught in quicksand, slowly sinking to his stomach.

She never did tell him her name.

[ModernAU, for @disquieted]

Read on: FFN, AO3

x

A chill cuts through the autumn air as Sasuke waits for his brother to pick him up. The kindergarten playground is quiet except for the creaking of the swing that he sits on as he waits. With every passing second his mood grows sour. All the other kids had already been picked up long ago, he is the only one still waiting. He wonders if Itachi nii-san will make up for his delay by playing with him when they get home, and suddenly perks up at the thought. In his mind he devises how he will pout and look disappointed to really drive home the guilt, when the silence of the playground is interrupted by a scream.

Startled, Sasuke whips in the direction of the sound. It came from the adjacent woods, and nii-san had told him strictly to never leave the kindergarten campus. Besides, he is only a kid. He will just get in the way, he reasons.

‘Then why am I doing it?’ he wonders as his legs move on their own accord, tugging him across some invisible string to where the sound came from.

As he draws closer, he regains enough control to slow down, and quietly pulls to a stop behind a tree. In the clearing ahead he sees two boys snickering, peering down at something obscured from his view, and he vaguely registers seeing them before around town. They look a year or two older and seem to wear the same school uniform Itachi wears, though mother would throw a fit if she ever saw Itachi’s clothes so rumpled and untucked.

“Boo-hoo, look at little strawberry shortcake crying.” one of them mocks.

“Ooh! Leave the cat alone!” the other squeals in a high-pitched imitation, “Well how do you like being in its place then?” he finishes in his normal voice, aiming a kick forwards.

He sees her then, as she falls sideways from the blow, into his line of sight.

Pink hair (pink! ) falling out from her red ribbon, teeth biting her lower lip to keep from crying out, and the brightest green eyes he has ever seen brimming with tears and the determination to not let them fall.

The first boy, egged on, aims another kick at her stomach. She closes her eyes shut tightly and gasps when his foot connects. Sasuke feels his heart clench. He wants to help, but there are two of them and only one of him. They’re older too. It would be stupid to engage.

‘I’m not stupid.’ he thinks. ‘I’m not stupid!’ he repeats.

Her eyes open and they are glassy and unfocussed. He watches as her gaze travels dimly across the landscape around her till she spots him and stills. All of a sudden the clarity of the world around him shifts, and Sasuke feels like he is waking into a dream. She holds his gaze, and then a single tear falls down her swollen cheek.

“I’m not stupid!” his mind echoes again. Only this time he isn’t thinking it, he is screaming it from his lungs as he charges across the clearing into one of the bullies.

By the time he has regained his sense of time and place, his fist has already connected with the face of the boy who kicked her the second time. Sasuke isn’t sure where he mustered the strength because the boy flies back a full two feet, planting face first into the ground. Around him, the boy’s accomplice and the girl both stare at the scene that just unfolded in shocked silence. Then the stillness of the moment is shattered as both the bullies scream, and scramble to get away.

Sasuke is heaving from the rush of what has just transpired, and watches as the boys make their escape. Behind him, the girl lifts herself off the ground and sits up. He turns to face her.

She is looking at him quizzically and he can’t say he blames her, he himself is unsure of what possessed him. But looking at her, eyes and cheeks swollen, hair and clothes in disarray, a tear-trail cutting across a muddied cheek, he can’t bring himself to regret it.

“Your hand...it’s bleeding.” she says, softly.

Sasuke frowns and looks down, and indeed she is right. There is a gash across his knuckles, angry and red.

Slowly she gets up, and limps towards him. Reaching out, she gingerly takes his bleeding hand into her own and looks at it thoughtfully. Then she retreats one hand to pull out the ribbon in her hair, and ties it around his knuckles. She releases his hand and immediately he feels bereft, though he isn’t sure why.

“Um, thank you.” she says shyly.

Before he can open his mouth to respond, they hear commotion in the distance.

They turn towards the sound to see the two boys from earlier staggering back towards them...with three other friends in tow. Sasuke doesn’t know where his strength came from earlier, but he is doubtful he can summon it again. Especially against five older opponents.

They look at each other. There is an understanding.

And then they run.

They race through the woods with reckless abandon, hair flying in the wind. Beside him he hears her laugh as they are running, and he has half a mind to ask her what exactly she finds funny about this, but he is laughing along too. There is something so freeing and young about the whole situation. They run without thinking, giggling every time they glance back at the group giving chase. Every few moments they are drenched in sunlight breaking past the canopy, before plunging into the shade again. Despite her beating, the girl manages to keep up pace, never falling more than two steps behind him. From the corner of his eye, Sasuke spots the kindergarten playground in the distance, and a lone figure standing in the center.

‘Nii-san!’

Swiftly he grabs her hand and breaks perpendicular to their trajectory, pulling her along with him. They run until they make it out of the woods, and Sasuke grins at the sight of Itachi looking confused to see his brother racing out of the woods with a girl in tow. The boys chasing them exit the woods not long after, hot in pursuit, before halting at the sight of Itachi.

Sasuke pulls the girl with him to stand behind his brother. Itachi glances at the pair, then at the pursuers, and quickly catches on. He stares at the boys and quirks an eyebrow, and that is enough. Itachi may be a gentle soul, but everyone knows better than to mess with him. In an instant they are scrambling to disperse from the playground, mumbling hurried apologies to Itachi. From behind him, Sasuke and the girl look at each other, and then break into full-bellied laughter.

Amused, Itachi bends down on his knee, “Care to explain what’s going on, little brother?”

Sasuke turns to him to answer but notices Itachi is looking downwards. He follows his brother’s gaze to where his hand is still wrapped around the girl’s.

Immediately he drops it and jumps a foot away.

Blushing and embarrassed, he explains to his brother what happened. Itachi listens patiently and then turns his attention to the grl. “Are you okay?” He asks. Mutely, she nods.

Before anything else can be said and done, a woman bursts onto the playground.

“Oh my god, there you are!” she exclaims, and runs to take the girl in her arms, “We’ve been looking all over for you!”

Moving back from the hug to take a look at her state, the woman gasps. “Sweetie, what happened?”

“Some boys were picking on me. He helped.” she says in a small voice, pointing her finger at Sasuke.

“Oh dear, thank you so much.” says the older woman as she pats him on the head. “She just wandered off. We were worried sick!”

“Come along now, sweetheart, we have to be on our way.” says the woman that Sasuke assumes is her mother, as she gently tugs her along in the direction of a car waiting by the roadside, a man standing by its side and waving.

“Wait!” the girl cries, and then turns to him, “What’s your name?” she asks, a desperate urgency ringing in her voice.

Sasuke knows because he feels it too.

“Sasuke!” he yells after her, because she is already halfway across the playground, “What’s yours?”

She breaks into the widest grin.

“Thank you, Sasuke-kun!” she yells back, “I love you!”

Her mother laughs loudly, and beside him Itachi huffs in amusement too. Sasuke is stunned, and can only stare as she gets into the car and drives away.

She has already disappeared over the horizon before his senses return.

‘Tch. Who says ‘I love you’ to someone they just met?’ he thinks, frowning all the way home. ‘Annoying.’

But his heart feels caught in quicksand, slowly sinking to his stomach.

She never did tell him her name.

x

There is a rumor spreading across their middle school that Sasuke likes girls with long hair, and he knows exactly what prompted it.

He jogs back from the track to the sidelines, breathing heavily, and then runs through his stretches. A brief cool-down later, he returns to the locker-room, trading in his sweaty track clothes for his standard school uniform. He finishes buttoning up his shirt, puts on his tie, and then reaches into his locker for one last thing.

He pulls out a red ribbon, and ties it around his hand.

Beside him, Naruto quips—

“Are you ever going to tell me why you wear that thing?” he asks, gesturing to the ribbon.

“Hn.” Sasuke grunts in the way of an answer.

“You know all your fangirls think that ribbon is reserved for your one true love , and if they make you fall in love with them you will tie that ribbon to their hair?” he questions, clasping his hands together in a decidedly feminine gesture for dramatic effect.

Sasuke rolls his eyes as he strolls out of the locker-room, with Naruto following behind him.

“I’m serious!” he insists, “I’ve seen them role-playing it after school!”

They settle into their seats for their next class, and Naruto pesters him again.

“Well? Is it true?” he wiggles his eyebrows, “Is this about a girl?”

Sasuke lets the question slide as he turns his attention out of the window. The horizon is endlessly far and there is a pang in his chest. If it’s about a girl, then it’s a girl he has never met again.

He never saw her again after that day, and figured she had only been visiting. As distinctive as her hair was, he was only a kid and the world was just too big to go looking. He doesn’t even know why he is looking, why even after all this time there is a feeling that something has been lost.

‘I’m a fool.’ he thinks, staring off into the distance.

“Or maybe it’s auntie Mikoto’s? Does leedul Sasu-cakes miss his mwommy?” Naruto continues to speculate.

Sasuke promptly smacks his best friend’s face into his desk.

x

Sakura watches Ito walk out from the classroom. He pauses briefly at the door, and turns around to flash her a forced smile that she returns with just as much strain. As soon as he is gone, she sinks into her seat. The love letter he wrote sits unopened in front of her. She is grateful, at the very least, that he chose to approach her after class when they had been alone. Others had not been so courteous, and her heart had lurched with each shake of her head in front of an audience of merciless classmates.

Not long after he is gone, Ino pokes her head into the room. Finding it bereft of anyone except her friend, she invites herself in.

“Well? What did he say? Actually nevermind that, what did you say?” her best friend interrogates her, and Sakura has no doubt she had been lurking just outside the classroom. She simply looks at the blonde and frowns.

“Seriously, forehead? Again?” exasperated, Ino plops down on the chair in front of her. “How many hearts do you intend to break, huh?”

“Why don’t you at least give someone a shot? What are you waiting for?” she eggs on.

Heaving a deep sigh, Sakura stares up at the ceiling. ‘What am I waiting for?’

“Earth to forehead? Hello? Anyway, since you’ve declined everyone who asked, you can be my date to the festival. Sai-kun will understand, he doesn’t care much for this stuff anyway.” Ino declares while inspecting her nails.

Sakura smiles at her friend.

“No, pig, you and Sai should go,” Sakura says, “I don’t think I am going anyway, I have to prepare for the university entrance exams.”

“Are you kidding me? Sakura, this is our final year of school. How can you miss the spring festival?” Ino is appalled.

Leaning back on her chair, Sakura scoffs. “It’s our final year, that’s why we need to study. We’ll have fun in college, okay?”

“You take this way too seriously, forehead. Are you that eager to leave us and run away to some big city?”

Sakura falters. A memory resurfaces. Being five years old, visiting her aunt in Tokyo, running through the woods, and then leaving much, much too soon.

To her relief, Ino isn’t waiting for a response.

“Well, let’s at least get some ice-cream on the way home.” she says, getting up. Smiling, Sakura joins her as they walk out of the empty classroom. “Just be careful Sak, the rate at which you’re going, you’ll end up passing right by your soulmate.” Ino says jokingly.

Sakura laughs along and tries to smother the voice inside her that says she might already have.

x

Sasuke finishes his last class for the day and unhurriedly strolls to his academic supervisor's office. He pauses in front of the office door and glances down at his watch. Two minutes late, not that it made a difference considering his supervisor. He knocks.

“Come in,” a lazy drawl beckons.

Sasuke walks into the office. “You asked to see me?” he inquires.

Hatake Kakashi leans back in his chair. “I did, have a seat.” he motions, “So Sasuke, have you given any thought to what you want to do after university?”

Sasuke shrugs.

Kakashi sighs and leans forward, resting his elbows on his desk. “Sasuke. You’re an excellent student, your grades are flawless, and you have so much potential. But all of that is lost if you have no ambition.” Kakashi looks at him with the slightest hint of frustration in his bored eyes, “You have a year of university left. Give it some thought. Ask yourself what gives you purpose.”

Sasuke nods, agreeing simply to end the meeting faster. Anticipating that he won’t get through to him, Kakashi dismisses him, promising to have another catch up after his mid-terms.

Sasuke walks out of the office, his book bag slung carelessly over one shoulder. Despite himself, he is pondering over the brief lecture he just received.

Ask yourself what gives you purpose.

“Tch.” Sasuke scowls in annoyance, and then halts his stride.

Though the scene itself plays in his mind like a vignette, blurry and faded at the seams, he still remembers the feeling of throwing his body forward on instinct, pushing off the bully from the girl fallen on the ground. He remembers standing between them and knowing with unflinching clarity that he had done the right thing. He sighs in disbelief at himself, even after all these years, living his life based on a stupid childhood memory.

On the way back to his dorm, he picks up a form for the police academy.

x

The announcer’s voice calls over the PA system, alerting the passengers on the train of the upcoming station.

Closing her book and stashing it in her bag, Sakura prepares to disembark. She glances at the door nearest to her, but finds it already packed with the rush-hour crowd, each one eager to be the first one out the doors when they open.

Instead of swimming through the hoard of people, she chooses to cross over to the only slightly less crowded adjacent compartment, hoping to deboard from there. Rubbing shoulders with the others that had the same idea, she traverses the narrow section that bridged the two coaches. Instantly, she feels a shift.

Anticipation coils in her stomach and all her nerve endings are firing in an urgent panic. It feels like crossing into a different world. ‘What is it?’ she thinks, trying to pinpoint the cause of her alarm. And then she spots it. On the far end of the compartment, peering into his phone, eighteen years older than the last time she saw him but nonetheless unmistakable, him .

She feels the urge to scream, but his name is caught somewhere between her lungs and her mouth. In the background, the speakers announce the opening of the doors.

Sakura feels the push from the people around her, and she feels like she is caught in the current of the sea, being sucked under again and again with nothing to hold on to, the water swallowing her voice. All of a sudden time slows to a standstill, and she watches as he lifts his head and looks in her direction. Their eyes meet.

There is a quiet murmur in her heart that she has carried with her most of her life. The one that piques up each time she thinks of him. The one that tells her it is all in her head, that he has already forgotten, that she has been building castles in the air all along. She feels that voice surface again, but then she sees his eyes widen, mirroring the alarm in her own.

He lifts his hand, and she catches a glimpse of an old familiar ribbon. The treacherous voice in her heart is silenced.

But the current around her persists, and she feels the tug of the crowd pull her along through the doors. One again she is five years old, watching helplessly as the distance between them grows.

She watches as he tries to wade through the crowd to reach her, but she has one foot on the train and one foot on the platform, and she knows he won’t make it. So, she decides to take this chance to answer a question she left unanswered many years ago.

She cups her hands around her mouth and yells, “Sakura!”

In the next moment, she is on the platform and the doors are closing. Rooted in place, she watches as the train begins to move and another chance slips away. An overwhelming sense of grief washes over her, but in the midst of her heartache is a small bud beginning to bloom.

‘He remembers.’

x

The day has not been going well for Sasuke. It started with being roped into attending a celebration with his batchmates to commemorate their passing out from the police academy. His social battery had long since run out, but the day wasn’t over. His parents had invited him to their home to celebrate his graduation with their extended family. Unfortunately, the celebration with his classmates dragged on longer than anticipated, and he had ended up missing the train that would have taken him to his parents home. Now he was forced to board a different train instead, one that required him to deboard and connect to a different line midway, and he had to do it during the evening rush hour.

‘Just great.’

Standing cramped against the back of the compartment, Sasuke distracts himself on his phone and hopes for the journey to end as quickly as possible. Twenty minutes into the ride, he has drowned out all the nearby chatter, the announcements over the speakers, the screech of the train wheels slowing down to a stop. Then he feels it, the shift in the air.

As if his body already knows what his mind is yet to discover, his gaze lifts from his phone to the other end of the compartment where the people planning to deboard are crowding. And there she is, bright green eyes, looking at him.

He hears his heart thumping in his ears.

He sees the surprise in her eyes, along with the slightest tinge of hesitation. On instinct, Sasuke lifts his hand over the bobbing heads in the crowd, to show her the faded red fabric that he has held on to for the last eighteen years, and watches as the doubt in her eyes dissolves. But all too soon the crowd begins to move, pulling her along. He sees the panic building in her eyes, and he is already pushing through the crowd to reach her. The divide between them is just too wide though, and he can feel time slipping through his fingers like sand. He has felt this feeling before, though he was too young then to understand its gravity. The weight of watching the course of your life change before your very eyes, like a train shifting tracks, moving away from what could have been.

She must know he wasn’t going to make it too, because just as she is being swept through the doors, she turns around and shouts—

“Sakura!” —the answer to a question long unforgotten.

In the next moment, she has bled out with the crowd, the doors have closed, and all the air in the cabin has left with her.

Sasuke watches in agony as she gets further and further away, unmindful of the people around him staring at his crazed state. He races out of the train at the following stop and catches the next one headed in the opposite direction back to where he lost her. He steps foot on the platform and is overwhelmed with the desire to run in every direction at once, but despite all his searching, he doesn’t find her.

Exhausted, he plops down on a station bench. Despite everything, in his defeat there is a sliver of redemption.

‘She remembers.’

x

A chill cuts through the autumn air as Sasuke crouches behind the boxes piled in the warehouse, waiting for backup. What started as a low-stakes inspection of a tip-off evolved into a drug bust gone very wrong. Beside him, Juugo coordinated with the en-route backup while Sasuke kept lookout, monitoring the movements of the cartel as well as searching for Suigetsu and Karin, their two other officers who had splintered off early into their inspection.

"Ten minutes." Juugo confirms the status of the backup's arrival and Sasuke nods.

Just then there is a commotion, and Sasuke feels a chill run down his spine as one of the cartel members drags Karin out to the center of the room.

"Found her hiding behind the loading dock!" he announces. There is a brief pause of contemplation before a man, that Sasuke assumes is the kingpin, announces—

"Pack everything up, we're clearing out."

There is a flurry of activity as the men follow what they have been instructed. Sasuke grinds his teeth, but keeps his eyes trained on Karin.

"What do we do with her?" asks the man who dragged her in and is still keeping her arms pinned behind her.

The leader gestures to the man on his right, "Kill her. Put the body in one of the crates."

'Shit.'

The man nods, and Sasuke stiffens at the sound of the gun cocking.

He watches as tears stream down Karin’s face as she looks into the barrel of the gun. This time around, his feet want to remain rooted to the ground. There is no tug, no reckless abandon from his youth. But there is a sense of duty, and so, Sasuke leaves the sanctuary of his hiding spot and tackles the armed man to the ground. In no time at all, the entire warehouse springs into action, and multiple men launch themselves at him. Sasuke parries a blow from one, and maneuvers to throw the goon over his shoulder, while Juugo provides cover by firing from his spot behind the crates. In the distance, Sasuke can hear the sirens of police cars nearby, but each passing moment has slowed down to be an eternity long. From the corner of his eye, he sees Suigetsu use the cover of the chaos to pull Karin away from the action and he breathes a sigh of relief.

In the next instant there is a searing pain in his side, and whatever little relief he felt is replaced by agony. Though he is aware of exactly what has conspired, Sasuke doesn’t look down, because seeing where the bullet went through him would make everything a little too permanent. His knees hit the floor just as the warehouse fills up with an influx of police officers. The call of duty that pushed him this far finally eases up, and Sasuke ceases his struggle against his body and mind. Lying on the cold concrete floor, Sasuke offers a quiet apology to his family for the pain he is going to cause them, and in the final moments of his consciousness, he wonders if the afterlife will be small enough to go searching for green eyes.

x

“Paging all Emergency Medicine staff. Please report immediately to Trauma Bay One, I repeat—”

Sakura pauses mid-signature as the announcement blares over the speakers, right as her pager begins to beep. Quickly closing the chart she was working on, she sprints off in the direction of the trauma department.

Arriving on the scene, she runs up to the attending surgeon, “What’s going on?” she asks, out of breath.

“There was an encounter between the police and a drug cartel downtown. We are receiving multiple gunshot victims.” answers Tsunade, “Kenji take the first one, Sakura you’re in charge of the second, I’ll take the third.” she orders, just as the paramedics pull up to the bay.

The first gurney rolls in carrying a man bleeding from his leg, with his hand tied to the side of the stretcher with handcuffs. Sakura guesses he is one of the cartel members as Kenji breaks off to inspect his patient. The second gurney brings in Sakura’s patient, also in handcuffs, with a bullet in his shoulder and a deep gash across his forehead. Sakura runs to his side as they roll him towards the operating theater. Behind her she hears the third patient being rolled in.

“He is one of ours, he was shot during the encounter.” an accompanying police officer tells Tsunade.

She feels a familiar tug at her heart.

Turning around, she catches the briefest glimpse as the nurses roll him away, but it is enough. She is always looking for that face, after all.

Her heart sinks to her stomach.

x

As wakefulness slowly seeps into his consciousness, Sasuke struggles to remember where he is and what happened. Then the pain kicks in and all his memories resurface. Slowly blinking his eyes open, he takes in the harsh, clinical white of his hospital room ceiling, tethered to consciousness by the routine beeping of the machines he is hooked up to.

Near his abdomen is a lopsided sensation. On the side he was shot is a searing pain, the sensation of an open wound replaced by that of his skin being uncomfortably stretched and sown. On the other side is a dull, weighted pressure.

He looks down to see a figure in blue scrubs sitting by his bedside, head resting on his side, and a waterfall of pink across his middle. The pace of the heart monitor picks up.

Slowly, the slumbering form rouses, awakened by the broken rhythm of the beeping. Sasuke watches as her brows furrow, trying to hang on to the fading traces of sleep. Her eyelids take their time to open, and the wait as they flutter is utter agony. Then she glances up at him, and her eyes widen as realization dawns upon her. There it is, he thinks, that brilliant green.

“You’re awake.” she says, breathlessly.

Without waiting for a response, she lifts her head from his side and immediately he misses the pressure. She pushes back the chair she has been sitting in and jogs out of the room. His heart panics like a caged animal and he wants to call after her, but his throat is parched and no sound comes out. In a few moments she returns, and in her hands is a familiar red ribbon.

“They had to cut you out of your clothes to operate, but I thought you might want this back so I kept it.” she tells him as she places the ribbon at his bedside table and pours a glass of water. She brings it up to his lips and he hungrily drinks it up, relishing how it drowned the thorns in his throat.

“Thank you.” he says, voice still hoarse. She smiles lightly in response as she sets the glass back on the table, then settles back into the chair she had been occupying before.

There is a pause.

Much of him is still suspended in disbelief. All these years he spent looking, only to wake up to her suddenly by his side. He can see the turmoil in her eyes too, as she stares at him with a frown, biting her lip as she searches for something to say. What do you even say to someone you have spent your whole life searching for but know nothing about, he wonders.

“I waited,” she says abruptly, and then shrinks just a little, like she surprised herself by the confession, “at the train station, I mean” she adds, as if trying to lighten the intensity of what she said. They are still strangers after all. In his mind, the memory of an ‘Iloveyou’ screamed across a playground echoes back.

“Aa.” he nods in agreement, “I did too.”

‘At the station, at the playground, at every turn and intersection, in every crowd’ , but he leaves that part out.

She smiles the sweetest, softest smile, and he decides it was all worth it for this alone.

“I should go now, I have rounds.” she glances at the door, “I’ll let Tsunade know you’re awake, she’ll want to check on you.”

“But after my shift I could swing by with some dinner, if you’d like?” she asks bashfully, “It’s only hospital food, but I have some seasoning packets I keep in my locker that make it a little bearable. But if you want to rest instead that’s totally okay, you’ve been through a lot and—”

“Sakura” he interrupts her rambling, “Dinner sounds good.”

She beams, and it’s a brand new start.

x

“Who says ‘I love you’ to someone they just met?” he asks out of the blue.

They’re on the couch in the living room, in the apartment they’ve been sharing for the past two years. He is turned towards the TV while she is deep into a book, sitting with her back pressed into his side, legs thrown over the arm of the sofa.

She scoffs at his question.

“What kind of a battle-cry is ‘I’m not stupid’?” she challenges back.

When he doesn’t respond to her jab she cranes her neck to look back at him, and finds there is no mischief in his eyes, only a solemn intensity. She closes her book and sits up, turning around to face him fully.

“Hm.” she says as she ponders, “I’m not sure.”

“I just...felt something big.” she says, “It felt like you were slipping away before I even had a chance to hold on and I was desperate to make you understand what I was feeling— and love was the only thing that seemed big enough.”

He nods like he knows exactly what she means, and she smiles.

“Besides,” she says, throwing her arms around his neck and leaning in close enough to brush her nose against his, “I was right, wasn’t I?”

“Hn.” he gives her a sideways smile, and closes the distance between them.

Fin.

AN: A mediocre execution of the extraordinary @disquieted‘s beautiful story idea. Thanks my love! And happy SS month to everyone! I love this community so much and I am so excited to see what’s in store.

[shattersstar]

evergreen

and if the devil was to ever see you, he’d kiss your eyes and repent (part four)

pairing: adrian tepes x reader

excerpt: You were grinning, running through all the most beautiful, fullest, dreamiest of adjectives to capture the face of your love. You tilted your head to the left, and he followed, the two of you grinning at each other with soft, soundless laughs. You closed your eyes for a moment, inhaling and blinking at him with a new found clarity, the words flowing effortlessly.

warning(s): brief injury mention, fluff, this is so,,hopelessly romantic, heart shape lockets making a reappearance

a/n: sorry ive only been writing for adrian my brain has been in alucard lockdown and it wont end (although this might be my favourite thing ive ever written so i’m..less sorry)

—

It was quiet, the distant din of the forest brushed over the two of you. It was a reminder of the life surrounding the desolate place you called home. Your eyes were closed as you focused on the sound, the breathing of trees and humming of streams. You supposed Adrian heard it all so clearly, the animals and plants alike all alive in the surrounding forest. You strained to hear the crunch of fallen leaves by foxes or snap of fallen branches by deers.

It was autumn and the world was alive with harvest. Animals prepared for winter, plants returned to the soil and tree lines morphed into flame. It was one of the last warm days, the sun high in the cloudy sky, shining onto the picnic you two had set up. You were laying down, letting the sun soak over your while Adrian sat cross legged behind you. Your head was in his lap, the book you were reading was resting on his thigh above your head, opened onto the page you were on. Adrian had brought a book as well, but discarded it after a few minutes of reading. It was out of date, he explained, the science was false and he decided to draw over the useless words instead.

You assumed there was some value in its history, but didn’t question it as he silently sketched. Adrian was always such an artist, often drawing you, or other’s he cared for. He could sketch Sypha and Trevor from memory, yet often butchered some detail of the latter for his own amusement you supposed. He drew his parents often too, but was quick to erase such images, as if even seeing their face was still too painful.

He had begun painting more recently. You liked sitting and working on something while he painted, catching occasionally glimpses at his work. Adrian was never shy about what he created, often showing you without prompting, and never dismissing your request to see his art. He had agreed he was good at it, the technical precision was there, but the heart was not. You were quick to disagree with such sentiment, and yes you could see it within the landscapes and dull memories he created on paper or canvas, but the love was there in the faces of those he cared for.

Each line he added to you, each bit of shading and highlight showcased you in a way that held more adoration than any words could supply. You liked seeing yourself from Adrian’s eyes, seeing your beauty as he perceived it. It was more flattering than anything anyone before him had said to you, not like Adrian would want to hear such things.

You weren’t sure how you knew he was watching, sketching you as you laid in his lap, but you knew he did. You even remained still, forgoing reading to be his muse for the last moments of fall. You didn’t mind getting to lay in the lap of the one you loved, a soft blanket underneath while the sun started to arch towards the west. You could’ve fallen asleep there, nature washing over you and Adrian watching over you. It was a place of peace, a moment you’d engrain into your mind and have a memento—a piece of art to show for it.

You only opened your eyes when Adrian let out an uncharacteristically loud sigh, he didn’t need to breathe, he only did so on his own volition. You peered up at him, sun dancing in his dark lashes. “What is plaguing you so beloved?” You hummed, tilting your head back more as you spoke.

"My chest, it aches.” He admitted with a soft voice. You sat up as his words registered in your ears, worry lacing your features as you moved to sit on your knees, beckoning him closer.

“Still? Why?” He turned his head to the side as your hand smoothed down his slender neck, brushing his collar aside and revealing the tip of the scar that cut diagonal through his torso. You kept your fingers off the injury, but untied the front of his shirt to reveal more of it.

“I am unsure, it just does some days.”

“This has happened before?”

“A few times, yes.” He sighed again, you felt it under your palm that rested next to the pink, raised skin.

“I wished you told me.”

“I did not wish to worry you.”

“And yet I am worried.” Adrian turned towards your other hand, resting on his shoulder and dipped his head down to kiss your wrist. It was a gesture of apology and you accepted it was you let your hand cup his face, lips pressing a kiss to your palm. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I don’t think so.” You frowned, shifting your knees against the blanket. “And somehow I’m not surprised you aren’t pleased with that answer.”

“How can I be pleased when you, my dear, are living in pain?”

“Don’t be pleased then, be appeased.” Adrian shrugged, still speaking into your palm. You let your fingertips graze the edge of his scar before dropping both hands from him.

“If I must.” He chuckled at that, low and warm as your hands found his knees. You gave them a squeeze, almost to check if he still existed before turning, and placing yourself into his lap. You were careful not to lean into his chest, but Adrian eased you against it, his forearm wrapping around your stomach while his other hand brushed your book from his leg. “Now show me what you were drawing.”

“Of course beloved.” He hummed from behind you, picking up his green covered book and letting you flip through the drawings now masking the words. And you were right, many—most were of you.

A few trees, a tired outline of the castle, faces you didn’t know, but still somehow, every few pages was you, lounging in his lap, or from some other memory he stored away. They made you smile, less worried as warmth overtook you.

“Do you ever draw yourself?” You asked once you reached the last sketch, lingering on it.

“No, the image of myself in my mind changes far too often.”

“Oh?” You were surprised by Adrian’s answer, you expected something darker you supposed.

“I see myself one way, and then...I do not. I cannot draw what constantly changes.”

“Why does it change?”

“You.”

One syllable was more breathtaking than a single drawing he had ever done of you.

“Oh.” You found yourself on repeat, closing the book and letting out a slow breath.

“And I supposed other’s I’ve met, but mostly you.” It’s always you, he does not say despite how well it sits in his mouth.

You knew you had impacted Adrian, only a fool would say they didn’t, but to know that the way he constructed himself in his brain, how he felt when he thought of it, how he saw himself in his dreams, how he saw himself with you were all changed by you and how you loved him felt like a deeper proclamation than i love you.

“I still wish you would though, what am I supposed to put in this locket?” Your voice held an air of teasing, but a current of seriousness laced it as well.

“I could try, if you could like.”

You were silent for a moment, you didn’t want him to settle on a version of himself to etch into existence. Not when he was ever changing in his mind's eyes. “What if—“ You twisted carefully to look at him, noses brushing as you did. “What if you drew yourself from how I saw you?” You asked, wanting his art to convey his beauty as it did yours.

Adrian pondered it for a moment, before tilting his head and surprising your lips with his. “Yes.” He whispered against your mouth before finding his book yet again.

You slipped from his lap to give him space and studied him for a long moment. He didn’t shift under your gaze, or look away, but instead studied your back. You were grinning, running through all the most beautiful, fullest, dreamiest of adjectives to capture the face of your love. You tilted your head to the left, and he followed, the two of you grinning at each other with soft, soundless laughs. You closed your eyes for a moment, inhaling and blinking at him with a new found clarity, the words flowing effortlessly.

Serious mouth, something that hides smiles and fangs. Lips that slope into something heartbreaking—a smile like no other.

He grinned at that, eyes dropping to the page as he began drawing.

Soft eyes, set deep, but still shining. Sharp like daggers and holding handfuls of sunrays in them. Not cold with sadness, but heavy with it.

“Heavy with love too.” He hummed, earning a kiss on his forehead before you settled back to describing him.

Nose…

You paused your words, letting Adrian catch up to your lovely description, while you pondered on it too. You knew this was much for him, so much love filling his ears, outward and heedy. Yet it didn’t feel like enough, like it captured how much his appearances enraptured you, but as his heart did too. You wanted him to see your love through your eyes.

It was a daunting task, and yet you carried on. You reached out, brushing over his nose with your index finger, as if the words lived in your fingertips and could only be released by touch. You furrowed your brows, lips parting before you took Adrian’s hand, the one holding the book. He kept his gaze on you as you brought his slender fingers to his nose, tracing it as you did. You loved all Adrian’s features, but his nose especially, and no words could describe the beautiful feature that pulled his whole face together.

My favourite thing.

He let his attention fall back to the drawing, a bloodless blush could’ve warmed his face with the kind descriptions you imparted onto him. He knew you loved him, you proclaimed it enough, but the sweet words that overtook this dimming autumn day were even more dizzying than he expected. And you weren’t done yet, unrelenting in your words and adoration for him.

Sharp contours—jaw, cheekbones—with an underlying kindness, youthful softness to the angular curves.

Beautiful forehead, my favourite place to kiss. And press myself to.

Brows low, very precise—too serious most of the time.

Hairline like the ocean, framing the sand and sometimes sweeping over it.

You twirled the forever loose curl that hung forward, always draping against his smooth skin. He wanted to lean into your touch, but his attention was on the page.

Hair long, softer than any silk. Golden—not like honey, but wheat fields blowing in the breeze. And thick, with lazy waves throughout it.

You stayed quiet after that, hoping it was enough. You were all warm throughout now, despite how the evening had fallen over you two. You wanted to climb back into Adrian’s lap, but instead you moved to sit cross legged, toying with a loose thread on his pants, twisting the string from the seam by his knee around your finger until his shoulders dropped and the pen stopped moving.

You let your hands rest in your lap, and you watched him study it for a long moment. You wanted to ask if it was okay—some version of him he could agree with, yet he brought the pen back, scrawling something in his tight, professional handwriting and tearing the page from the book with precision.

The drawing took up one corner, the words printed in the background barely noticeable to the bust drawn over them. He folded the piece of paper, once, then twice. A tiny square sitting in his palm, before Adrian finally met your gaze. He reached out, cool fingertips grazing over your neck as he brought your heart shaped locket to sit in his other palm. He used his thumb to open it, placing the piece of paper inside and closing it again.

He kissed the smooth metal before letting it fall back against your sternum, smiling with a haziness that made you feel drunk of love as well. You took his hand in yours, Adrian quick to intertwine fingers before you could settle your palm to his. He urged you closer, uncrossing his legs and letting you take up space between them. “Do you feel better?” You hummed, the pain that had overcome him before not leaving your mind.

It wasn’t like you to forget so easily.

“Hm, better? Yes.” He nodded, pressing a kiss to the side of your nose.

“Are you just saying that?”

“No, of course not.”

“I find that hard to believe, you often dwell in pain my dear. Especially alone.”

“I know,” He sighed yet again, bringing his free hand to your chin and drawing your attention to him. “If you’d like, I believe I have found a way that you can help, make me feel better.”

“Yes, what is it?”

He smiled—heartbreakingly. “Marry me?”

For a quiet beat, you paused, the words reaching your ears, settling in your short term memory before they processed into something that rang forever in your head. You and Adrian had talked about marriage, he had settled on the notion it was a frivolous display and he had everything he needed with you. And you agreed. He was everything you needed.

And now, he needed to be your husband.

You tucked some of his hair behind his ear, leaning in with a low voice, “My love, don’t you know?” You asked, blinking up with a slanted grin, “I’ve been married to you from the moment we met.” He breathed out a chuckle, reedy and low.

“Then,” His palms cupped your cheeks, forehead pressing into yours. “Let me marry you.”

“Yes,” You breathed into him, “Yes you can marry me.”

-

It was the first day of winter when you finally opened your locket. You unfolded his drawing carefully, the likeness you wanted to convey hung in every inked line. Your fiancé existed in both your hearts now.

Your fingers brushed over the words, creased from the folding, but still clear.

It’s always you, my betrothed.

[edith-moonshadow]

Dear Heart Part Two Billy’s POV

Part One (with tags)

Billy grimaced as he shaded around the fox’s eye. He had only done one tattoo on himself before this and it hadn’t been this intricate or important. As the needle bit into his skin, he only kept two things on his mind, Steve Harrington and destruction.

Billy’s mom had always loved his art especially when he’d been younger and it had only been them when Neil was at work. Billy had loved sitting in the corner of their kitchen by the window drawing on the pages that his mom gave him as she dealt with her clients. Neil kept all the money under lock and key but wouldn’t let her get a job. She had fought against these constraints at first until she finally decided that she could work from home providing people with a service that they would pay a lot for. People who wanted help in their lives, those who wanted to give fate a helping hand.

For a lot of people, it was help finding the right job, the right path to success in their lives. Some people wanted a little comeuppance for someone who had wronged them. Nothing too serious maybe they missed an important job interview or had a bad day. Then there were the people who had fallen for someone. With those particular clients the thing that he always remembered the most was their faces, that slightly guilty look in their eyes. When these particular clients came to their house his mom’s tone of voice changed becoming hushed and saddened.

“You shouldn’t tempt fate.”

“I thought you could help me?”

“I can but these results will only be temporary so use your time wisely.”

With a sigh, she would pick up the worn leather-bound book that had belonged to her grandmother and walk back to them. Then she would hand them a piece of paper.

“I need you to draw the person you’re thinking of, hold them in your mind and draw them.”

Most people would protest that they weren’t artists but his mom would reassure them that they just need to manifest them in their minds while committing them to the page.

“It’s not art, it’s magic.”

She would then produce a small jar filled with a thick clear balm. She had shown him how to make it, how to care for the herbs and flowers that had to be used. It was a complicated ritual to prepare it but his mom always called it Moondust, as it had to be created by the light of the moon and had a faint glow to it. She would take this balm and get the person to rub it on their picture before it was burned.

“Only through destruction can we bend fate to our will but only for a short while.”

Once the paper was ash they would pay her and be on their way. Even from a young age, Billy had been fascinated by the whole process and he would ask her so many questions about it but the most pressing was always why wasn’t it permanent. Maybe if they could make it permeant they could get away from Neil and have it just be the two of them. His mom would sigh sadly.

“No baby you can’t change fate only play with it for a while.”

“Why?”

She would pull him close.

“Changing fate demands a sacrifice, something has to be destroyed for it to work but the paper is a small sacrifice. A safe sacrifice.”

Billy didn’t want to believe it, there had to be a way but soon everything changed and he didn’t get to ask any more questions. When his mom left it felt as though she took all the loose pages that Billy used to draw on with her. He didn’t draw seriously for several years until he found his love again through school where it became an escape. A long lost connection to her.

It was only when everything went wrong in California that he discovered some of his old art from when he’d been a child. His mom’s book had been filled with beautiful illustrations and spells that sounded like poetry. When he’d been younger he had copied entire pages from the book while his mom had been beside him encouraging him. He had shoved them into a bag, a burning in his throat but he couldn’t bear to throw them away.

Hawkins was worse than he’d been imagining and he could feel his rage burning through him, he felt anger at everyone, especially Neil. He poured his anger into his art, his frustration and pain becoming something beautiful on the page. He hated Hawkins, everything felt so backwards and ordinary. He was sure that nothing ever happened there. When he’d first arrived he thought it would be a tedious wait until he was finished with high school so that he could finally leave but fate had another plan in mind for him.

From the moment that he’d first laid eyes on Steve Harrington Billy had felt completely disoriented. He had done his best to appear unaffected but his heart had been racing, a strange burning in his chest as he watched him dancing with Wheeler. Steve had been so dismissive of him that it made him burn inside as Steve was constantly on his mind but when they ran into each other Steve treated him like he wasn’t there. For the first time in his life art couldn’t calm his mind.

He tried to forget about him by hanging out with the other members of the basketball team who under Tommy’s influence had a lot to say about Steve and little of it was good. To Billy, it sounded like a lot of bitter jealousy but at least he got to learn some things about Steve. Yet it only made him ache more so he tried to lose himself in other people but it only left him cold. Soon the only thing he looked forward to each day was riling Steve up in the halls of Hawkins high. Until they graduated.

Billy had taken a job at the local pool, it gave him something to do, a little extra money and took his mind off what he couldn’t have. Then Steve got a job at Scoops Ahoy and Billy’s summer became a lot more frustrating. Soon he found himself by the pool sketching as the air grew cooler and fewer people came to the pool. Billy mind appeared on the page, his rage, his pain and the one thing he ached for above everything else.

He was so lost that when he heard someone’s voice he almost dropped his work.

“They’re really good, are you an artist?”

He turned to see a petite girl with long black hair smiling at him.

“No.”

“You’re really good.”

“Thanks.”

“Want a job?”

“Doing what?”

“Well I just opened a tattoo parlour near Starcourt and by the looks of things you’ll need another job soon and you’re art is really impressive.”

Billy shrugged.

“Drawing on paper is going to be different than on people.”

“True but we could work out an apprenticeship.”

Billy looked down at the picture in his hands, it was Steve’s face but without his eyes, he hadn’t perfected them yet even though he thought of them often. He thought why not do something that gave him a creative outlet, it was true that soon the pool would close and he’d have to find some way to stay out of the house.

“Why not?”

By the end of the week, he was spending all his days at On A Dead Man’s Chest learning everything he could from Betty and before he knew it he had his first customer. It took everything in him to hold the needle steady, he could feel the tremors under his skin but he did his best to work through it. He soon found himself with a steady client base and he found himself gravitating towards traditional tattoos. He could also do more realistic tattoos but so far only a handful of people in Hawkins had requested them. Betty told him often how impressed with his work she was and Billy couldn’t help[ but absorb her praise. He enjoyed her company she had been a tattoo artist for around ten years and she had great stories about the strange tattoos people wanted and their reactions to getting tattooed.

Being near Starcourt also allowed him to indulge in his other obsession and he would walk to the rail opposite Scoops Ahoy so that he could watch Steve. He could feel the ache within him grow as Steve moved around oblivious in the sailor outfit that was his uniform. He didn’t know if he wanted to find the person who had designed it unsure if he wanted to thank or threaten them. The only upside seemed to be that Billy was the only person affected by the uniform in the way that he was. He had seen Steve’s eyes harden as old classmates jeered or ignored him altogether.

The only people who seemed to spend any time with him was the girl who worked with him and Henderson and occasionally the other kids. The kids seemed to view him as some kind of older sibling but he couldn’t be sure about the girl. They had easy energy about them that made Billy clench his jaw so hard he got headaches. He’d never seen anything outwardly romantic between them and if what he’d witnessed with Wheeler was anything to go by he knew Steve wouldn’t be able to contain himself. Also to his chagrin he knew that he was still with Wheeler. He knew they probably referred to themselves as high school sweethearts, had inside jokes and had a whole future planned out.

Even though he knew it was pathetic he couldn’t stop watching Steve on his break, he felt so powerless. Steve had never accepted him and he wished he’d been able to approach him differently but when he got within arm's length something inside Billy always took over and he couldn’t help but push. Steve didn’t like that and now he had to watch him from afar like a lovesick schoolgirl.

After a while of being at the tattoo parlour, he decided he wanted to expand his art a little, give people something unique. He wasn’t sure if anyone in Hawkins would be interested but he hoped to expand and become good enough for somewhere bigger. He still had dreams of returning to California one day.

There wasn’t much inspiration in Hawkins and he still hid his sketches of Steve fear in his heart that Betty would recognise him or worse still that Max would see them. He knew that he had some old sketches from California in the top of his closet so he had got them down. He had a box filled with the drawing he used to do with his mom and the ones that he’d done under the tutelage of his old art teacher. Looking at them brought a bittersweet smile to his face as his mind was transported back to better times in his past. He was searching through them when he found an old sketch with writing on it and he remembered when he’d dabbled in calligraphy with his mom’s help. He closed his eyes letting the memory of her fill his mind. He could feel her arms around him, her hand gently guiding his on the page, the sweet smell of her perfume as her warm voice spoke softly.

“That’s it, just up and then back down and there you go all finished.”

He looked down at the slightly shaky scrawl in front of him and then back up into her proud eyes.

“It’s beautiful but once it’s dry you have to put it away where no one will see it, ok Baby.”

“Why?”

Her eyes softened.

“Some people won’t understand what this is but they will still fear it and they will use that fear against you.”

“Like dad?”

She pulled him close as she whispered against his skin.

“Yeah Baby.”

Billy looked down at the words now and even though he hadn’t seen them in years he knew what it was, the recipe for Moondust. It felt like all the air had been forced from his lungs as he collapsed back on the bed behind him. He couldn’t believe that all this time he’d had the answer to all his problems right here. Then he remembered his mom’s words to the desperate people who came to her with guilt in their eyes.

‘Only through destruction can we bend fate to our will but only for a short while.’

Billy didn’t want Steve for only a short while, he wanted it to be forever. He knew that he could draw him over and over, keep rubbing the balm until the lines of the picture smudged and then throw it into the flames and keep Steve at the forefront of his mind. He would do it until Steve didn’t need him to anymore and came to him of his own free will. Billy knew that they were destined to be. Yet there was a nervousness under his skin when he remembered that his mom would only perform this particular spell once no matter how much a person beg or threatened her when the person they loved walked away from them. She never disclosed why it could only be done once but nothing could ever persuade her to repeat it.

No, a simple drawing would never be enough, he needed to figure out a way to make it permanent so that he only had to do it once and Steve would be his. Soon it occupied his every thought fuelled by the growing jealousy he felt as he watched Steve grow closer to the girl he worked with but the final straw was when he moved out of his parent's house and in with Wheeler.

Billy knew he was running out of time, his jealousy burning through him until he felt as though his heart was on fire. He drew Wheeler, he knew it wasn't a perfect recreation of her face because he'd never paid her much attention. He knew that it wasn't important to get every detail of her correct, he just needed something that resembled her to destroy as he kept her firmly in his mind. He had waited on the full moon to create some of the balm. He'd found himself mesmerized with how it caught the light as it seemed to glow.

He couldn't figure out what to do with Wheeler until he remembered Tommy telling him with a sneer in his voice about how the freak was so sweet on her. Byers.

It felt like the perfect solution so he searched for a yearbook then drew Byers beside her, his eyes firmly on her with a familiar light burning them up from within. He thought about them together as Byers' feelings grew and Wheeler finally realised how perfect he was. He held onto the slow burn romance in his mind, that they spend so much time together, realise how much they have in common, how perfect they are for one another until they couldn't deny it anymore. As he kept it firmly in his mind he dipped his fingers into the balm rubbing it over the lines until they bled together smudging the lines between reality and fantasy. Then he opened his lighter and watched with satisfaction as it burned to ash.

Even though he wasn’t sure if the spell had worked he continued to think about them together hoping that it would become reality while he figured out how to capture Steve’s heart. He continued to try and capture Steve in his art but there was always something not quite right. He couldn’t fully capture his eyes even though he’d seen them up close so many times and they haunted his dreams he couldn’t get them right on paper.

Over the next week, he felt his desperation grow as he didn’t know how much time he had on the spell between Wheeler and Byers and he wasn’t even sure if it was working. There had to be a way to make the spell permanent but his mom had been practising magic since she was young and had learned everything she knew from her mom and grandmother so if there was a way surely they would have known. His desperation grew so strong that in his weakest moments he thought that a short amount of time with Steve was better than nothing. Yet he knew when his time was up he wouldn’t be able to go back to the way things were before and he knew how much it would hurt for Steve to return to ignoring him. He would be just like those people who used to come to his mom with pain or anger in their voice as they did everything they could for just a little more time.

There was a distinct chill in the air, his breath misting before him as he listened carefully. He moved slowly through the forest led by his instincts something else was here. He moved around a tree and there it was a beautiful deer, it was silently eating some leaves nearby but even though he didn’t make a sound it startled and looked in his direction. When its large doe eyes met his it turned and ran. With his heart beating rapidly in his chest he ran towards it, his hunger grew until he couldn't help licking over his teeth. The chase made him feel alive, it was more than his hunger it was a deep need within him that needed to be sated. Finally, he caught it, he looked down into its wide eyes as he sunk his teeth deep into its chest until he could taste its beating heart.

Billy awoke with his heart hammering in his chest but the final image of his dream was imprinted in his mind. A fox with its teeth sinking into a deer’s heart.

He couldn’t shake the image for days, the large doe eyes of the deer and how the sharp teeth of the fox sunk so easily into its heart taking it for its own. It felt as though his mind had been enchanted by the dream for days until he finally committed it to paper. As he stared at it he couldn’t help thinking about Steve’s eyes and all the times when they’d been in school together and he had cornered him and got to see them up close. That twist in his stomach, the thrill under his skin as Steve became flustered and Billy’s hunger grew.

Slowly the idea formed in his mind and he couldn’t believe he hadn't thought of it sooner, a tattoo. He would take the image from his dream and tattoo it onto his skin, the needle scarring him would be the destruction and he’d think about Steve’s devotion for him so that he could finally ensnare his heart.

It took several hours after work in the tattoo parlour when it was locked up for the night for Billy to complete the tattoo. The time was filled with pain as he tattooed the image from his dreams onto his chest while keeping Steve’s devotion firmly in his mind. When it was completed he took a freshly prepared jar of the balm and rubbed it carefully over his chest while continuing to keep Steve in mind. A searing pain spread out across his skin making his breath catch as he fell heavily to his knees, the skin around his tattoo becoming hot and tight as sweat broke out across his face. He dug his fingers into the ground so hard that he thought his nails would split as he took several deep breaths trying to control his pain before it slowly started to subside. He collapsed fully onto the cold floor of the tattoo parlour his heart beating erratically as he continued to think about Steve and the moment when he’d give his heart to him.

He watched Steve from across the mall for several days with a burning desire for him to finally notice him but nothing significant seemed to have changed and he remained unnoticed. He wanted so desperately to just walk casually into Scoops and gauge Steve’s reaction to him but he couldn’t bear it if it hadn’t worked. He had never seen the interactions between the people who came to his mom and the people they chose but he had always assumed it was instantaneous but maybe it took more time than he knew. He was still in high demand back at the tattoo parlour so he tried to get lost in work.

“Hey, Billy you’re not going to believe who just walked in?”

“Who?”

Betty smiled.

“A sailor and he wants a traditional heart tattoo.”

Billy’s heart started to race as he walked to the corner so he could look and see who was in the shop and to his delight there stood Steve Harington. Betty came to stand beside him.

“I think it might be his first tattoo and I think he wants to put someone’s name on it.”

She sighed as they watched Steve walk around the shop looking at examples of their work.

“Do you want to talk to him?”

“No, I have a client coming in first thing this morning but tell him to come back at six.”

“At six?”

“Yeah, I can talk to him about it then.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah I’m booked pretty solid for the next few weeks but I can fit him in later, it’s a pretty simple tattoo.”

Betty shrugged before she walked back to Steve and he retreated to the back. The rest of the day he couldn’t believe that Steve had finally come to him. That the spell had worked. He was so preoccupied with his excitement that he forgot to visit Scoops that day and instead spent his time preparing for Steve’s arrival.

The little bell ringing above the door into the shop alerted Billy to the fact that Steve had finally arrived. He quickly checked his station and realised that somehow in all his preparations for Steve getting here he’d forgotten to get more red ink. He walked out into the hall on his way to the stock room when he heard his voice.

“Hello?”

“Close the door tight and come back here.”

He listened for the door being closed then headed in the direction of the stockroom. He found the red ink quickly and returned to the room finding Steve sitting on the bed. He jumped up with wild eyes and Billy was transported to his dream for a moment.

“What are you doing here?”

Billy laughed raising his arms in front of him.

“I’m the tattoo artist.”

“What?”

“I was just getting some more red ink because I was told you wanted a traditional heart style tattoo. So you want to be a real sailor then.”

“Did you know it was me?”

Billy shook his head, Steve didn’t need to know that he’d been dreaming of this moment since he rubbed the Moondust on his chest.

“This is serious Hargrove I don’t want you fucking this up just to get at me.”

Billy moved closer he could feel the fox under his skin.

“Why would I do a shitty job and tank my own reputation as an artist just to piss you off? Trust me Princess I’m going to do a good job as I do for all my clients.”

Steve looked away with his shoulders slumped.

“Maybe this was a bad idea…”

“Why did you want a tattoo?”

Steve looked back at him with a searching look.

“You’ll only laugh at me.”

Billy could feel the excitement building under his skin, it couldn’t be a coincidence that Steve was here.

“You don’t have to tell me but trust me I’ve seen it all at this point.”

Steve bit his lip as he gathered the courage to tell Billy what he wanted and Billy felt his teeth ache.

“I wanted a heart tattoo…for Nancy.”

A strange mixture of disappointment and rage rose through him and he walked over to his station and threw down the red ink. Could the spell have worked but the message wasn’t clear and now he’d just reinforced his love for her? He wanted to bite his tongue in half but made himself continue to talk to Steve, maybe he could still salvage this.

“Why would I laugh at that?”

“I dunno we’ve never really…seen eye to eye…”

“Where do you want it?”

There was a pause before Steve spoke again.

“I wanted it over my heart.”

Billy took a deep breath as he tried to control his emotions. Of course, Steve would want to make a grand romantic gesture and place it directly over his heart. He turned towards him.

“Ok take off your shirt.”

Steve’s eyes widened as Billy’s heart thudded in his chest.

“You promise me you’ll take this seriously.”

He extended his index finger and crossed his heart which seemed to work as Steve pulled off the top of his uniform exposing his smooth soft skin. His need to touch Steve became too great and he walked closer running his fingers fleeting over the space above his heart enjoying his small shiver.

“How big is it?”

Steve’s timid question made Billy think about the fox watching the deer’s eyes before it unveiled its sharp teeth. He ran his finger over his skin in accrued heart shape. Steve followed his finger intently with his eyes before he laughed nervously.

“That big huh?”

“It has to be a bit bigger to fit the name on it.”

Steve bit his lip as he contemplated what to do and Billy wanted to chase the sting of his teeth with his tongue. He moved back and motioned towards the bed and with a deep breath, Steve climbed up onto it and lay back. Billy moved closer and ran his fingers over his skin again. He couldn’t wait until he could touch Steve without pretence, just because he wanted to.

“Here?”

Steve nodded.

“So you want a classic heart with a banner?”

“Y-yeah with Nancy’s name in the banner.”

“That’s a very big commitment are you sure?”

Steve’s eyes got a faraway look as he considered the tattoo. Billy watched him wondering if he was thinking about her. He could feel a burning in his chest when he considered the tattoo one more and had an epiphany.

“Yes.”

Billy nodded then reached behind him for the vaseline that he would use to help the needle glide more easily over Steve’s skin before he grabbed his tattoo pen. Usually, he would use a stencil but he wanted Steve’s tattoo to be unique and created completely from Billy’s hand. He needed it to be if this was going to work. He drew the heart over where Steve’s heart was as he thought about Steve’s devotion to him. That after this he would be his always. He finished the design leaving the banner blank. For now.

“Where’s her name?”

“Don’t worry Pretty Boy, I’ll write in the name once I’ve got the heart finished.”

Steve lay back down and Billy got everything ready before moving close once more.

“I’m going to do the outline first then I’ll fill in the heart and banner then we can do the name and you’re finished.”

Steve nodded and Billy started the tattoo. He felt him flinch slightly before he closed his eyes taking small calming breaths. Billy concentrated on his work as he tried to keep Steve’s devotion in mind. By the time he was filling in the colour, Steve’s face had a rosy glow as he tried and failed to suppress breathless little moans. When people were in pain they made all different kinds of noises as they tried not to squirm but for Billy hearing, Steve make these little whimpers were driving him to distraction. He licked his teeth thinking of the day when they would be because of him and not his needle.

“Uhhhhhh….”

Billy had to take a steadying breath before he did something stupid that would derail the whole spell but he couldn’t resist moving his lips close to his ear just to feel him squirm.

“You ok, Princess?”

Steve let out a slow breath.

“Yeah, I just didn't know it was going to hurt so much.”

“You didn't know that having a needle stab into your skin over and over was going to hurt?”

“I knew it was going to hurt asshole just not this much.”

Billy ran his fingers over the tattoo relishing Steve’s small flinch.

“Want to take a break?”

“No, just keep going.”

While Steve was distracted he brought his lips close to his ear, the urge to bite was strong but he resisted.

“You’re doing so good.”

Steve settled back onto the bed and Billy returned to the tattoo. Soon he was finished with the colour portion and he started on the lettering. He didn’t write it out beforehand as he’d written it so many times in his life. He bit his lip in concentration as he slowly wrote the letters into the banner letting the idea of Steve’s devotion fill his mind. When this was over Steve would willingly offer his heart to Billy. When it was complete he moved back to admire it feeling something settle within him at the sight before him. He reached over and lifted the small jar that he had used on himself and carefully started to rub it into Steve’s skin. He put some on his finger and ran it over it each letter making sure that it was completely covered before he covered the heart. Steve shivered slightly then his breath escaped on a soft moan as his body slowly relaxed. Billy covered the tattoo completely in the balm then bandaged it up.

“Still with me Princess?”

Billy watched him carefully for any change as Steve slowly opened his eyes.

“Are we done?”

“Yeah.”

Steve looked down at the tattoo.

“You didn’t let me see it?”

“You’d fallen asleep and I needed to get it bandaged up to protect it but don’t worry you’ll see it in a couple of days.”

“A couple of days?”

“Yeah, I need you to come back and see me, Friday at six. Don’t take off the bandage or get it wet before then.”

“Why can’t I take it off?”

“Because you’ll ruin the tattoo that’s why just come back to me. I know the proper way to take off the bandages so that it doesn’t destroy the tattoo.”

“How much do I owe you?”

“We can discuss it when you come in on Friday.”

Billy hoped the spell would have taken effect by then.

The following day he awoke to the feeling of a million tiny ants dancing under the skin of his tattoo. It had never itched before but now it was unbearable even having his clothes touching it made him have to grit his teeth. An uneasy feeling crept under his skin as he worried that this was a bad sign for the spell. For the first time in a long time, he wished his mom was there was so he could ask for her guidance.

His day at work passed so slowly as he couldn’t keep his eyes off the clock or his mind of Steve. It was maddening to know he was only a short distance away and Billy didn’t know if the spell was working. When he break came along he practically rushed the client out the door even though the girl seemed pretty determined to stay and talk to him about tattoos but Billy was more determined to get rid of her. He didn’t even grab a coat or tell Betty that he was leaving he just walked quickly towards Scoops.

He took up his usual place across the mall but after a few minutes both Steve and the girl moved into the back and Billy was too impatient. He walked across the mall and in through the door, he had denied himself long enough. He could hear movement in the back of the shop and just walked around and into the back where he found Steve alone. He had his back to him and was getting a large tub of ice cream out of a freezer. He heard Billy approach and laughed.

“That was fast, he must be getting sweet on…”

Steve turned towards him with a smile, his eyes widening as he realised Billy was there. Billy watched him carefully for a moment to see if anything had changed but Steve just stared at him like a deer caught in headlights so he thought fuck it there was a sure-fire way to check and see if the spell was working. He walked quickly over to him backing him up against the freezer with the ice cream in between them. He leaned forward capturing Steve’s lips in a brutal kiss delighted when Steve gasped as he dropped the ice cream at their feet. Billy finally gave into temptation biting down hard on Steve’s plump lower lip causing him to open his mouth. He wasted no time licking into his mouth. He pressed his chest up against Steve’s and when they were fully against each other it seemed to ignite something in Steve causing him to moan and pull Billy closer. He quickly became enthralled by Steve, how he whimpered into his mouth and gave himself over to Billy. He slid his hands down onto his hips squeezing them in his hands so he could relish Steve’s gasp.

“Steve?”

The shocked voice echoed through the room and to Billy’s disappointment Steve pulled away from him. He wanted to press in harder and keep him there but he knew now that there was plenty of time for that. The spell wasn’t fully in effect yet but it was working on Steve and soon he would be his. He grabbed Steve’s arm pulling him close just so he could relish his shiver as he whispered into his ear.

“See you Friday, Princess.”

With difficulty, he pulled away from Steve and walked from the shop. He couldn’t wait until he got him all alone on Friday.

Billy was practically vibrating in his skin as closing time approached. He had spent the whole day fantasizing about Steve again but this time there was anticipation too because he knew the spell was working. He didn’t have any clients from five so he had spent his last hour at work getting everything ready.

Around six he heard the bell above the door ring out and then the door closing firmly. When he heard Steve arrive at his room he turned towards him. His eyes widened slightly as he took in Billy’s chest and he couldn’t help preening under his attention especially as he looked at the tattoo. He could almost feel the fox beneath his skin as it tracked Steve as he crossed the room. He looked like the frightened deer from his dream as though at any moment he would sprint from the room. Billy motioned towards the bed then as soon as Steve had sat down he boxed him in with his body and grabbed the bottom of his uniform shirt. Steve looked up at him with wide eyes and he could feel the fox’s mouth start to water as he pulled it up and off. Steve lay down and Billy moved over him, his eyes zeroed in on the bandage. His fingers itched to remove it to finally see what he knew was there, a brand across Steve’s skin. Proof that he belonged to him.

“Ready Princess?”

He let his fingers dance over the edge of the bandage, letting the sweet anticipation bubble under his skin as he slowly started to peel it away. He couldn’t resist watching Steve to see his reaction as he knew this would be the first time that he would see the tattoo. He watched Steve’s eyes as he watched as it was slowly revealed until he saw it in its entirety. A blood-red heart with Billy’s name in the middle. Steve’s eyes locked with his own and all he saw was Steve’s anticipation for what would happen next, no fear, no anger only desire. He couldn’t hold the fox’s hunger back any longer so he struck.

He climbed up onto the bed so that he was on top of Steve then leaned down so that he could capture his lips in a hungry kiss. Steve sighed against him as though he had been waiting with bated breath for Billy to finally claim him then he kissed back with equal hunger. He could feel Steve’s fingers tentatively stroking over his chest and he pulled back. Steve looked up at him with a delicate flush on his cheeks before his eyes fell to his chest once more. Billy pulled his shirt away so that Steve could see everything. He leaned up slightly so that he could run his fingers over the design. His fingers lingered on the heart and Billy felt something within him settle.

“Do you like it?”

“It’s beautiful. What’s it from?”

“A dream.”

Steve looked at him and something passed through his mind, an understanding. Billy pulled him into another kiss before he covered Steve completely with his body. Steve wrapped his arms around him pulling him closer.

Billy let himself get lost in Steve for a while but soon he needed more so he started to kiss his way down Steve’s body He licked over his skin relishing his small shivers until the urge to mark became too strong. He sank his teeth into the side of Steve’s neck pleased when he made a similar sound to the anguished pleasurable noises he’d made when Billy had tattooed him. He moved down leaving a trail of bright red marks in Steve’s skin until he reached the tattoo.

He placed a soft kiss in the centre before he licked slowly over his name tracing each letter with his tongue delighted when he felt Steve’s fingers dig hard into his shoulders with his name breathlessly on his lips.

“Billy…”

He slid further down until he reached the top of Steve’s shorts. As he undid them he thought about how much they had occupied his mind since he had started in Scoops. He had appreciated them for a long time but also hated that other people got to see Steve in them. He slid them and his underwear down and off as he was growing impatient. He took a moment to admire Steve’s body, his pale skin dotted with beauty marks and the heart tattoo stark against it. He pulled Steve’s thighs apart so that he could push his way in between them. He licked over the sensitive skin of his inner thigh enjoying the little jump he could feel under his skin. He slid his fingers into his jeans pocket so that he could retrieve the lube he’d brought with him just for this.

He concentrated on a spot that he selfishly knew would still be visible when Steve had his shorts on and bit down hard before soothing it with his tongue then he licked an inch up and repeated the process all over again. Steve squirmed under him, his skin becoming heated and clammy under Billy’s ministrations. Steve whimpered something that sounded like his name and Billy opened the lube pouring it generously over his fingers. He moved up towards Steve’s hip biting down into the bone as he pressed a finger up against Steve’s hole. With a little pressure, he was able to push it inside as it fluttered around it. Billy licked over the indents he’d left in Steve’s hip before he moved over towards his hard cock.

Steve cried out when he sucked the head into his mouth, he ran his tongue over it as he pushed his finger in further. Steve shuddered under him as he pulled his cock further into his mouth while messaging the underside with his tongue. He pulled his finger back then pressed in another alongside it feeling Steve’s thighs tensing. Billy worked hard to make sure that Steve was becoming overwhelmed in pleasure as he’d dreamed about this moment for so long and he wanted it to be perfect. He knew that the spell was working but he wanted to make it permanent, for Steve to only ever want him. He wanted him to associate Billy with pleasure. He wanted to fully ensnare his heart so that he would be his always.

He crooked his fingers pleased when Steve jumped and his cock throbbed in Billy’s mouth. He pulled back until only the head remained then pressed against that spot again. Steve moaned as pre-come dribbled into Billy’s waiting mouth. He had to shift slightly to accommodate his hard cock in his jeans. He licked over Steve a little longer just to draw out the agony then he pulled back and away. Steve looked down at him, his lips were swollen and red from his teeth, his face flushed and sweaty.

“Billy?”

“Don’t worry Sweetheart, I’m just getting myself ready.”

He moved back so that he could undo his jeans and pull his hard cock out. He poured more lube onto his hand and coated himself with it while Steve watched him with wide doe eyes. Billy’s hunger knew no bounds as he slid back up Steve’s body to capture his bitten lips once more. He positioned himself and pushed forward enjoying Steve’s whimper into his mouth as his body fluttered around him. Once he bottomed out Billy started a steady rhythm. He kissed his way down Steve’s throat.

“Fuck Princess you feel so good.”

Billy was already addicted to this feeling, of how perfectly Steve’s body squeezed around him, his slightly pained whimpers every time he pulled back only to be followed by a soft moan every time he pushed forward. How beautiful he was in this moment as he surrendered willingly to Billy’s hunger. How they felt like two halves finally coming together. He didn’t think he would survive a separation if Steve decided he didn’t want him anymore and left to give his love to someone else. The idea of someone else getting to see Steve like this. That someone else would touch him like this made a boiling rage rise within him. He sunk his teeth hard into Steve’s skin, he wanted to do it so hard that it would become a permanent brand, a little destruction to strengthen the spell.

His need pushed him to increase his pace as he continued to lick and bite his way down Steve’s body. The word mine blazed across his mind as he thought about the fox, how it ripped the heart from the deer’s chest until it became its own. It didn’t belong to the deer anymore it was his heart. He wanted to devour Steve’s heart so that no one else could ever lay claim to it. He growled into Steve’s heated skin.

“Mine.”

“Yes, Billy…”

Steve’s body became tighter and tighter as he pushed harder and harder until his lips danced over the edge of the tattoo. He licked his way into the centre. His name. His heart. He sunk his teeth in hard until he tasted sweet coppery blood. Steve cried out as his body clamped down hard on Billy until he felt him come in between their bodies.

“Billy…Billy…”

His name on Steve’s lips and the taste of his blood in his mouth caused Billy to follow him as he came deep inside him. He lost track of time as his mind became full of nothing but Steve.

When he came to his face as pressed up against Steve’s chest with Steve’s fingers running softly through his hair. He listened closely but all he could hear was Steve heart beating gently in his ear. He pulled back to look up at him and Steve smiled lovingly down at him. He glanced at the tattoo seeing his bloody teeth marks in Steve’s heart before he moved up and caught him in a passionate kiss. Steve moaned at the taste of his blood and Billy remembered his mom’s words.

‘Only through destruction can we bend fate to our will.’

Billy understood destruction. He was good at it. His mom had taught him a lot but the most important was that love was fleeting. She had taken her love and given it to someone else with barely a backward glance. Steve was different and so was Billy. There was something deep and hungry inside him and the only thing that would satisfy it was Steve. Billy knew for Steve he wouldn’t only bend fate, he would push it until it snapped. Steve’s heart was his.

[thedistantdusk]

Expectations

For the Hinny Christmas Fest, so kindly organized by @fightfortherightsofhouseelves​! Got this one in just under the wire! :D Thanks to @floreatcastellumposts​ and @kmi-kmi​ for giving it a look over for me! Rated a soft T for references to sex. On AO3. 

________

Molly Weasley is a lot of things. But she’s not an idiot. 

Even if she hadn’t once been a teen in the throes of a serious relationship on the heels of a war (which, incidentally, she was), she did raise seven children. Seven Gryffindor children. Seven Gryffindor children who, by default, have each thought themselves far more competent at sneaking around than they truly are.

As such, she’s fairly certain of when Harry and Ginny became... intimate... this summer. Not that she wants the details. Her interest is limited to ensuring that her daughter — that all of her children, Harry and Hermione most definitely included — are well-informed on the inherent risks of what they’re doing. The knowledge of their intimacy was just one of those things that even the most oblivious of parents would have found impossible to ignore. In the span of two days, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny went from “taking long walks in the garden” to feigning yawns and calling it an early night at 7 PM. Besides, Ron and Hermione had already been to Australia by themselves; only a moron would truly believe their nights were strictly filled with knitting caps for house elves. 

And as has been said before, Molly is a lot of things... but she’s not a bloody idiot. She knows some might expect her to maintain a puritanical stance on sex (as if she hadn’t birthed seven children of her own). She knows some might have disagreed with her stance on letting things unfold as they did. But as she’s learned over the past year, happiness — true happiness — is hard to find. 

After months of thinking she’d never see happiness on her children’s faces again, she first spotted it in Ginny’s eyes last May. Back then, it was a creeping, hesitant sort of look... the type that dipped its toes in the waters of joy for a split-second before retreating like a frightened doe. 

But as the weeks progress, she sees it more and more often — and not just in Ginny’s eyes. She sees happiness in the lazy quirk of Harry’s lips as Ginny takes his hand beneath the table. She sees it in the bobbing of Ron’s Adam’s Apple as Hermione descends the stairs in a sundress. She sees it in the way Hermione let a sandal dangle from her toe as she tilts her chin towards the sun.

By now, the four of them have coupled up properly, just as she suspected they would. It was in equal parts charming and bittersweet, but Molly knows better than anyone that there’s nothing quite like a war to rearrange one’s priorities. 

And when she considers all of that, plus the fact that certain fractals of darkness will never truly leave them (just as they’ll never truly leave her)... who would she have been, really, to snatch such joy away?

So, yes, Molly spends the summer fully aware they’re intimate beneath her roof. But after the plague of chaos and confusion and uncertainty and fear that followed their family for close to a year, she honestly prefers them beneath her roof then in a tent somewhere, filled with cat piss and loneliness. 

However — and Molly admits this part makes her a bit cheeky — she does enjoy the unnecessary pageantry they go to over the summer to conceal what they’re doing. The four of them actually think they’re good at hiding it, even as Harry rakes his eyes over Ginny’s... erm... back. Even as she Hermione parades around the kitchen in Ron’s old jumper. Even as she hears, each night, as Ginny’s feet land in the attic as Ron’s land in Ginny’s room. Alas, the whole thing is too hilarious and contrived for her to spoil, so she simply doesn’t. 

But then the girls return to school after a summer that’s both agonizingly long and tenderly fleeting. Harry and Ron find a flat together and enter training. What remains of their lives returns to normal, even though Molly feels she’ll always be picking up the piece of a puzzle that can’t be solved. 

She keeps herself busy as fall turns to winter, though. She volunteers with Ministry relief efforts. She writes to Ginny often. She makes an effort to try harder with Fleur, to rebuild her relationship with Percy, to assist George if she can, to stay close with her husband. She knows her life will forever be separated into two parts: before and after. She knows that the remainder of her days will contain a deep-seated longing that tinges her world with shades of gray. This is a unique type of pain, she knows… the sort of pain only a mother can feel. The sort of pain that takes her breath away if she lets it. 

But she also knows the best way to keep moving is to maintain the traditions that made them a family in the first place. 

So she sticks to holiday routines as Christmas approaches. Waking early. Cleaning the house. Decorating with tinsel and paper chains. Preparing for everyone’s arrival. Christmas will never be the same… not without him. But if only for George’s sake, Molly knows she needs to try. 

She suggests that Harry spend the night on Christmas Eve, just so he isn’t alone; she assumes (correctly) that they haven’t quite got the nerve to ask if Ginny can spend the night at the flat instead. By now, Harry is essentially an overnight Christmas fixture anyway; even when they do get up the nerve to ask, Molly expects he’ll continue to stay over. Or so she hopes so, anyway. The alternative still makes her feel a bit broken, but she’ll cross that bridge when it comes. 

So when Harry, Ron, and Ginny head upstairs after a night of festivities on Christmas Eve, Molly assumes they’ll be back to their old tricks. Hermione’s spending the night with her parents, but it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising if she apparates in. After all, they think they’ve got a foolproof plan that’ll last through everyone’s departure from school. Announcing she’s been aware of this plan the whole time would only spoil things… and Molly doesn’t want to be the bearer of bad news. Not this year. 

After a half-sleepless night, Molly rises early on Christmas Day. She continues to stick to routines, to never deviate from what she can control; today is a day that could be especially miserable, if she lets it. So when she emerges from the toilet at half past seven, she doesn’t expect to see anyone in the cold, dark corridor. From the amount everyone drank last night, she assumed their switching-bedrooms routine would be pushed back, just a bit. 

Then again, it’s not just anyone she sees in the corridor, his foot poised on the step leading to the attic. 

It’s Harry. 

Sleep-tousled, disheveled Harry — and as much as it makes her cringe to admit, he does look… more relaxed. 

At least until they make eye contact. 

For the life of her, Molly’s never seen anyone transform so quickly from chuffed to terrified. Any hint of relaxation slides from his face, his back going rigid. Harry freezes, stock-still, his white-socked foot still poised on the step, his eyes filled with the sort of blinding terror she hasn’t seen in seven months. If it weren’t for that, really, she’d find the whole thing humorous. But seeing as how she’d rather not see that look on his face again, she opts to take pity on him. 

After a bit of gentle prodding, that is. 

“Harry, dear,” Molly says softly; she’s certain Ginny’s still asleep, but it’s best not to chance it. “Wherever are you going so early in the morning?”

Harry swallows and awkwardly moves his jaw like he’s forgotten how to speak. “I’m, erm,” he starts, his voice torn between graveled with sleep and high-pitched with terror. “I’m… going to the toilet?”

Molly can’t help the smirk that crawls to her lips as she nods to her left. “You’ve just missed it, dear.”

Shit. 

Harry doesn’t say the word, but it’s written across his face, plain as day. He shifts his weight, his face blanching even more; she can almost see the wheels spin in his head as he thinks of another excuse. 

“I’ve… erm. Sleepwalked?” 

Molly’s smirk broadens to a full-on grin as she crosses her arms over her chest. Is that how he’s going to play it? In that case, she’ll keep up the ruse, too. 

“Oh? What an unfortunate affliction!” she exclaims, hoping she’s masking her amusement with feigned concern. “You’ll need to see a healer, Harry. How have you managed to make it down such steep steps in the first place? It’s remarkable you’ve stayed safe so far! In future, I really think—“

But when Harry cuts her off, it’s not with another excuse; it’s with a remark that’s hasty and blurted, but ringing with truth. He just blinks, sets his jaw, and gives her with an expression so endearing, so honest, that it makes her entire Christmas. 

“—I’m going to marry her, Mrs. Weasley,” he interrupts, removing his foot from the step as he turns to face her… and right in front of her face, the hollow fear in his eyes fades into sharp nobility. 

He draws a deep breath, running his hand through his hair, even as Molly’s head spins, even as her heart leaps to her throat, even as his words breathe more life into her soul than she’s felt in months. 

“So I’m sorry if this”— he gestures to Ginny’s room— “is weird. Really, I am. But please, believe me when I say I’ll do the right—”

But Molly has no idea if he says another word. She’s even too taken aback to correct him on the Mrs. Weasley bit. Because she can’t stand another bloody second of Harry having to justify himself… not when she’s thrilled that he’s in her life. That he’s in Ginny’s life. That he’s saved their lives. 

Not when he’s just confirmed what she’s always hoped and dreamed for: that he would truly, properly join their family. 

She’s not even aware of her feet running towards him, of the delighted squeal from her mouth as tears of joy stream down her face. All she feels is Harry relaxing against her shoulder, his arm awkwardly patting her on the back, even as she continues to jump and shriek.

“Not erm… anytime too soon?” he manages, through her hysterics. “I just didn’t want you to think—”

Oh, please! 

Molly pulls away from the hug with a sharp glare. “Harry,” she says firmly. “Of all the things I’ve thought about you, doing the wrong thing never even crossed my mind. So I’ll hear none of that. I just…” She trails off, wiping her eyes. “I didn’t know you’d be so serious so fast! But of course I’m happy, dear. So happy!”

Harry gives her a fervent nod and a smile… and unless she’s very much mistaken, she can see the hint of a tear in his eye too as she pulls him in for another hug.

Marry her.

He’s going to marry her! Harry Potter is going to marry her daughter! He’s going to stand at the altar, his green eyes brimming, the cause of his scar a distant memory. Molly can envision Ginny in white, her red hair gorgeous in contrast, her face split into a smile she can’t contain. Or maybe none of that will happen. Right now, Molly doesn’t really care. All she knows is that they’re to be married... and the thought alone is absolutely beautiful, isn’t it? That something so lovely could come from a year so dreadful?

In truth, Molly did expect this — eventually. After all, she spent months observing how Harry looks at Ginny. She’s seen the softness in his eyes and the protectiveness in his jaw. It’s clear he loves her; Molly just never expected she’d be given permission to properly call him her son in the same year she lost one. 

And as she cries and hugs him, Molly is happy for two things: that her family will soon be even bigger and happier than she’d ever hoped... and that her daughter (approximately ten meters away) has always been a very heavy sleeper.

[100hearteyes]

Part 2 of Clarke And Lexa Make a Porno, because why the fuck not.

Part 1.

"No. Absolutely not."

Anya's wolfish grin is no good omen. Lexa feels a sense of dread wash over her and tries in vain to assuage her nerves by holding her friend's gaze. Anya wouldn't look this sure if she didn't have some card up her sleeve.

Lexa throws a furtive glance around, checks that her co-workers are still focused on the German porn telenovela. It's only when she's sure that the action on-screen will keep them rooted for a while that she turns back to Anya, trying but failing to meet her eyes.

She overcompensates with another glance around the room and a low hiss. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but am I not too," she licks her lips, gathering the courage, "'vanilla' to do it?"

Anya shrugs like it's a no-brainer; crosses her arms and props her booted feet on Lexa's desk. "That's exactly the point. You're a lesbian Disney princess. Pretty sure if you started singing the whole fucking fauna of Capitola would follow you around."

Lexa levels Anya with a glare and tries to push her feet off the desk, to no avail.

(Seriously, what's it worth being editor if she can't even have her subjects' respect? She wishes this job was less about the headaches and more about the self-indulgent moments of microscopic tyranny.)

The feet might not budge, but Anya will. Lexa is sure of it. She draws herself taller and tucks on her most authoritative scowl. "I won't do it."

Anya plucks an imaginary cigarette from her mouth and throws it away without a care in the world. She reaches behind her and drags forth a heavy wooden box, filled to the brim with—

"My vinyls."

Lexa is in a daze.

She thought she'd lost all her vinyls to time and moving. She mourned each one of them for at least a year, cried many a night away clutching her record player to dear life, lamenting their shared loss.

They had a real connection.

But it turns out her vinyls weren't lost after all, and her tears were for naught. They were safe all along, albeit in different hands, and she'd known nothing of it, like a mother who lets her children wander about without aim nor authority.

How can she ever have kids if she can't even take care of her prized vinyls?

Lexa feels a prick of self-righteous indignation at the betrayal and puffs out her chest. "Why do you have all my vinyls?"

"I think you mean all my vinyls," Anya corrects with a lazy flurry of one hand towards the box.

"You don't even own a record player."

"How the fuck would you know?"

Lexa raises an eyebrow at her friend. "I come over all the time?"

"I could hide it while you're there."

"And then you'd never find it again, because that's what happens every time you try to hide something from me."

Anya shrugs and watches as Lexa picks one of the vinyls and turns it over in her hands, reading the track list on the back with the reverence one would a millennium-old parchment. Then she looks up at Anya with a stern glare.

"Over half of these were stolen from my house."

Anya shrugs again with infuriating nonchalance and Lexa wishes she had a pencil nearby just so she could snap it in two with one hand. Or stab one of Anya's eyes with it.

"Maybe I just rescued them from the actual malefactor," drawls Anya.

"We both know the real culprit sits across from me and has been wearing the same socks for the past three weeks."

Nailed it.

When she looks at her friend, however, all she sees is that same old resting bitch face that never seems to go away.

"Wow, Lexa," Anya deadpans. "Now you've really hurt my feelings."

Sometimes, Lexa wonders if Anya really has a rock where her heart should be. A supernatural, blood-pumping rock, of course, but a rock nonetheless. Or, maybe, Anya is a psychopath. Maybe the blood money theory wasn't so far-fetched after all. That would explain the brazen lack of empathy for everyone else's feelings, most of all Lexa's. What does it say about Lexa that her one true friend is someone who sneezes literally every time Lexa says 'I love you'?

Not that Lexa says it a lot. Only once or twice every few years.

Just enough to have noticed the pattern.

"Are you really trying to blackmail me with vinyls?"

Anya fakes an affronted gasp, laying a hand on her heart. "Would I ever. Think of it as... an incentive."

Lexa really does love Anya, despite her friend's... unique demeanor. Anya helps her come out of her shell — by taking up all the space and forcing her out of her own metaphorical home — and every once in a while she likes to make sure Anya is aware of her gratitude. Sometimes, though, things get really fucking weird.

Lexa would still do anything for her best friend.

"Let's imagine, hypothetically - very hypothetically," she stresses, although Anya's burgeoning smirk tells Lexa she isn't so easily fooled, "that I agreed. What would happen next?"

Anya takes her feet off Lexa's desk and sits up straighter, perhaps aware of the importance of this moment. This, Lexa decides, will determine her answer.

"Well first, I'd have to get you a costar. Then we'd sign some legally binding shit, find a crew, and make the damn movie. Simple as that."

Anya leans forward, looking into her eyes. In Anya's, she sees honesty and a pressing need to reassure. It takes some of the pressure off her shoulders right away.

"Look, Lexa, you can say no. But your name won't be on anything related to the movie and I promise no one in this shitty town will ever find out you did this."

This is why Anya is Lexa's best friend. And it's why Lexa would do anything for her.

Even star in a porno.

"Okay."

Anya's inner smile must be really, really big, because Lexa knows how hard she tries to tamper its outward expression — and still her lips manage to lift into a grotesque grimace. Coming from Anya, it's the equivalent of a blissful grin.

"Okay?"

Lexa nods and closes her eyes, bracing herself for a bone-crushing hug. It never comes. When she opens her eyes, Anya's resting bitch face is back on.

"What, did you want a fucking hug?"

It's a blessing to have her rude friend back, Lexa guesses, because seeing Anya almost smile is fifty shades of unsettling. So she rolls her eyes and rolls with it.

Her next question demands her full focus, lest she makes an even bigger fool of herself than usual.

Lexa breathes in, makes sure all her co-workers are still otherwise entertained, breathes out. Smooths out a non-existent wrinkle in her pants, wets her lips for courage.

"Anyway," she treads with caution, "do you have someone in mind for the other main role?"

It's fitting that Harper McIntyre's hit song One More Betyreyal (one of her less inspired titles, if Lexa may say so) starts playing in that moment, for the look in Anya's eyes speaks of nothing but danger. Lexa wonders how much planning went into this conversation, so Anya could plan all her gut punches in advance.

"Clarke Griffin."

No. No. Anyone but her.

Clarke Griffin is the new recruit, although Lexa hardly understands how there can be someone new considering the station is broke and they’re already overstaffed — and none of them make nearly enough money for how much they laze around all day.

Clarke came from out of town with a fancy degree and was directly hired as an editor. She voices the early afternoon newscasts and Lexa curses the one-hour period during which she's forced to cohabitate with Clarke every day.

Apparently, Clarke had taken a liking to unnerving her, be it by smirking at her every time she catches Lexa staring or by making all sorts of inappropriate comments — to her ear. Lexa hates how much it affects her, but how can she possibly focus on reporting about Lionel "Real Sight" Foster swallowing his own wooden eye or how Jasper Jordan rescued his own private parts from the jaws of two slats of an unassuming park bench if someone keeps doing everything in their power to distract her?

Lexa has a theory (an iron-clad theory, if she may say so herself), and it's that Clarke is trying to get her fired so she can take her shift. It's the best shift of the day. There is no other possible explanation.

"You know what, I take it back. Now you need to convince two people to star in your porno."

"Oh, there's no need." Anya waves her argument away with staggering nonchalance. "Clarke's already said yes."

Wait, what? "But you told me we'd need to get me a costar."

Anya shrugs and Lexa is now seriously considering revisiting her psychopath theory. "I lied."

"You conniving, lying b—"

"Careful," Anya cuts in with a raised eyebrow. "I am under protection of the Capitola Astrologers Union."

"Of which you are president, treasurer, and the only legal member," Lexa reminds her. "And I think any upstanding judge would love to know how exactly every other name on the list has joined said union posthumously."

"I am an astrologer, Lexa. I can communicate with the dead. It's in my job description."

"It scares me that you're not even aware you're describing an entirely different profession."

Lexa sits back, staring at the ceiling (and the chewing gum Murphy glued there a year ago — he could've been an Olympic jumper if he committed to work the way he does to being an asshole), trying to come to terms with a single, harrowing probability: she's going to star in a porno with Clarke Griffin.

"l don't understand why it has to be Clarke."

Anya leans forward, propping her elbows on her knees, expression serious and ready to talk shop. The last time Lexa saw her like this was— actually, Lexa doesn't think she's ever seen Anya like this.

"Look, I've done some market analysis and most girl on girl pairings are a blonde and a brunette." Anya raises both her hands and starts counting off fingers, "Brittana, Petramos, Holstein, Wayhaught, Supercorp, Joanarty, Choni, the inaptly named Shoni, Deanoru, Dana and Alice, Bette and Tina, Catradora, Villaneve, Clexa—"

"What's Clexa?"

"I don't know, some chicks from this fucking terrible CW show."

"Do you like it?"

"Do I like what?"

"Clexa."

"Dude, I don't even know their fucking names!" Anya exclaims, exasperated. As if she's the victim here. "The only Clexa I ship is you and Blondie. Naked. On my porno. Clarke and Lexa. Clexa. Havin' very hot sexa."

"Smart," Lexa deadpans.

"I know."

"Why can't it be Niylah? She's blonde, too."

Anya's smirk is five hundred shades of gross. "I know you'd love to get up close and personal with Niylah's knick-knacks, but no."

Lexa decides to let the comment fly for the sake of her own sanity.

"Why Clarke, though?"

"Because you two have chemistry, you fucking dimwit."

Lexa snorts. Chemistry. Lexa has never heard of something so absurd. She and Clarke have as much chemistry as Harper McIntyre and any semblance of originality.

Which is to say, none at all.

"She makes very inappropriate comments," she argues instead, knowing full well that pressing on the topic of chemistry will only open way for some trademark crass joke from Anya.

"Yeah," her friend agrees, like it's obvious. "Because she knows you love them."

She most certainly does not.

"I most certainly do not."

"You do. Your freakishly tiny ears go red whenever she flirts with you. Your step falters when she makes one of those comments, for fuck's sake," Anya observes, pointing in Lexa's general direction, before leaving forward and laying a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but you, my friend, are a walking lesbian cliché."

Lexa takes Anya's hand off her shoulder. "Can you please stop insulting my tragically conspicuous homosexuality?"

"Oh please," Anya scoffs. "I'm bisexual, I can say whatever I want."

"If my step actually faltered - which they don't - it would be because her comments are annoying, off-putting, unprofessional, inopportune, and... and inappropriate", she finishes lamely.

"And you fucking love them."

"I don't."

Anya leans back on her chair with an evil smirk, propping her feet on the table and crossing them at the ankles. Lexa tries to push them off to no avail.

"Legalities aside, it's very simple. Clarke has already said yes. I just recorded you saying yes."

Lexa sputters, "You what--"

"You're both legally bound now." Anya shrugs. "Look at it this way: it will be very educational. You'll finally learn how to make a girl come, and get paid for it. Sort of."

A beat of silence.

"Anya, are you aware that you say something at least vaguely criminal every five sentences? Something that could actually put you in prison?"

Anya clicks her tongue, sinking farther into her chair, and lowers her sunglasses to her eyes.

"I've got friends everywhere, Lex. Let's just say I've dipped more than my fingers in my fair share of pies, if you catch my drift." A second later, she lowers her sunglasses just enough to reveal her eyes. "That means my tongue. My tongue's been in a lot of pies, too."

Lexa doesn't doubt that for a second.

"What I need to know is," Anya adds, taking off her sunglasses and throwing them across the room, "will you dip your fingers in the porn pie?"

Like this conversation hasn't caused enough trauma for thirty lifetimes.

"If I say no, will you still give me back my vinyls?"

"Absolutely fucking not."

Lexa swallows, clenches her jaw, and thinks of all those lonely nights spent in the couch clutching her record player and sharing cookie dough ice cream with it, longing for long-gone times when she'd dance to the mellow voices of the likes Billy Ocean and Ella Fitzgerald.

"My answer is yes."

[storydays]

Season 1, Episode 1,P1

You snickered as you teased Oogie with an apple over his head, making him do a barrel roll in the air, startling the Airbender family into waking up. "Well, glad to see your awake, cause we're about thirty minutes out." "(Y/N), you haven't been up all night again, have you?" Pema asked, a frown on her lip as Tenzin took the reigns and gently blasted you in the back with your crazy cousins. "I-I couldn't sleep." You began handing out the dumplings you and Pema had made. Tenzin sighed as Meelo was suddenly biting his head, with a sudden burst of energy as Ikki began asking constant questions, making the 30 minutes seem even longer.

"Jinora, Ikki, mind helping me out?" You asked with a grin, at the girl's excitement. They loved doing your hair. You sighed softly, as they got to work fixing your hair so it was similar to a water tribe style, with braids placed here and there, before finally putting it in a low pony tail at the base of your neck. Finally, the village was in sight. And you know that waiting for you was your dear Grandmother. You grinned as you used your glider to reach her before your cousins, hearing your cousins cry out in annoyance. "Hey, no fair!" They cried indignantly. Your laughter echoed in their ears as you flew down where you sensed Gran-Gran's energy. Her blue eyes sparkled as she watched you land in front of her.

Gran-Gran laughed joyously as you brushed the snow off your body, flinching as the snow melted against your skin. "Aah! It's colder than a witches tit out here!" You cry out, dropping your glider, in exchange for getting the water out of your clothes, before smiling crookedly at your grinning grandmother. "Sorry for the language, Gran." She chuckled before engulfing you into a hug. "Your grandfather used to say much worse." You took a step back, sliding your glider into the holder on your back. She gently brushed your bangs back, smiling at your bright blue arrows. You had earned your arrows when you were 6 years old, due to your discovery of creating ice puppets out of drawings. 

You had also earned the title of Waterbending Master and Healer when you were eight. 

Making your family proud of you. 

 "Gran-gran, are you trying to make me face Ikki and Jinora's wrath?" You asked, hiding your arrows again. You didn't like the attention that your arrows brought you, and Korra wasn't aware of you gaining them either. You wanted to see how long until she realized it. Which surprised you, as you've been friends with her since you were a year old and she was just born. 

You snap to attention when your grandmother started to speak, "You've grown into a handsome young man, (Y/N). You're strong and goofy like your father, but agile and gentle like your mother." You smile, rubbing your thumb over your father's ring, and your other hand grasped your mother's pendent underneath your airbender robe. It was one of the material things you had left of your mom, but the memories you made with her, are things no one or anything can replace or change.

Your moment was ruined when Oogie landed with a grunt. You could hear Uncle Tenzin talking over Ikki's chipper voice. "Yes, Ikki. As I have been telling you for the last 15 minutes, we are finally here." The three kids cheered as the girls used air scooters to slide down the bison's tail to get off, following their father, who walked tiredly over to you two. "Hello, Mother. I can't tell you how happy I am to see you. Please help me." Tenzin glared at you as snickered. "Hmph, thanks for the help, (Y/N)." The older Waterbender chuckled, as she picked up her youngest grandson. "Unhand me, strange woman!" Meelo cried, flapping around, in Katara's grip.

"That's our grandmother, Meelo." You chuckle as Meelo blush and flipped out of the Waterbending master's hands, and over to play with Ikki as Jinora ran over. "Gran-Gran, I've been reading all about your old adventures. I've been dying to ask you! What happened to Zuko's mom?" She asked clasping her hands together, looking at Katara expectantly. "Well, Jinora, it's an incredible tale--" You didn't even blink as Ikki suddenly hopped in front of Katara's view. "Gran-Gran, you look old! How old are you? And why is it so cold in the South Pole? Can we make a campfire and all huddle around it and tell scary stories and make snowmen? And then can we make the snowmen move with waterbending and chase us? Wouldn't that be fun? Huh, wouldn't it?" You patted Jinora, who was clearly disappointed and sadden she wouldn't get her question answered yet.

You then used waterbending to make an Ikki snowgirl and began moving her in a circle, before laughing loudly. "Sure was fun to me!" You mocked, before the airbender kids decided to chase you. "Wait! My bad!" You cry out as they began gaining on you. Tenzin chuckled before noting Pema slowly sliding down Oogie's back, before rushing over to her. "Pema, let me help you." He grabbed her hand in his, and braced her back against his hand. "Careful now, careful." "Stop doting on me. I'm not helpless, I'm just pregnant." She chided, looking down lovingly at her bump. She loved her husband, but this was her fourth pregnancy, you'd think he'd calmed down by now.

She smiled when her mother-in-law moved forward to hug her. Backing away slowly, Katara placed a hand on her bulging stomach. "The baby's strong. I see another airbender in your future. Pema frowned slightly, before speaking up, startling Katara and Tenzin. "All I want is one child like me. A nice non-bender, who doesn't blast wind in my face every five seconds." Katara chuckled knowingly, as Tenzin pulled at his beard thoughtfully. "Mommy, look!" Meelo called, making the adults look at them. 

Meelo was a snowman, Jinora was air-skating, and Ikki was building a misshapen snowman. "I'm a snowbender!" The child twirled around, sending snow onto Pema, who rose an eyebrow at her son's antics. Turning to the giggling Waterbender, she asked,"Were Tenzin and his siblings this crazy when they were kids?" Deeming it was safe, you landed next to your Gran-Gran, as your grandmother began speaking. "Kya and Bumi certainly were.But Tenzin has always been rather...serious." Katara winked at you and a giggling Pema."Mother..please." Tenzin stated monotone, before peeking behind you with a well hidden gin. 

You were well aware of the girl behind you, but didn't react until her feet left the ground, and your hands moved on their own. You created a snow beanbag chair that caught the surprised girl. You use airbending to hover over a pouting waterbender. "Heyy Korra. " You grinned at her pout. "Aw, how'd you know I was behind you?" She asked, as you gently let her down, and hugged her properly. "I could sense your movement in the air." You let go as she huffed jokingly. "Korra..look at you, so big and strong. You've grown into quiet the young Avatar." Tenzin placed his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her with a proud smile. "Master Tenzin, I'm so glad you're here!" She started, with an eager grin. 

You frown at your uncle's wince. "Yes, well..." He hesitated before looking at Pema, who pushed him forward. "You're going to have to tell her sooner or later." "Wait, tell me what?" Korra asked, her excitement gone. "You're not staying, are you?" Gran-Gran spoke up. Tenzin sighed sadly, as Korra wore an heartbroken expression."I'm afraid not, we're only staying the night. Then I must return to Republic City." "But no, you're supposed to move here..You're supposed to teach me!" "I'm sorry, Korra. Your Airbending training is going to have to wait." Tenzin said solemnly. 

--That night--

"So, how long until you're ready to teach me?" Korra asked at dinner. "A week, a month?" "It could be much longer." You popped a dumpling in your mouth as Korra continued to ask questions. "I don't understand. Why are you making me wait?" "I have a responsibility to Republic City. I'm one of its leaders, and the situation there is very unstable right now. "But you also have a responsibility to teach me. Believe me, I'd be happy to find another airbending tea-" Korra stopped, and looked at you. You were currently feeding your little companion hiding underneath the table. 

Sensing eyes on you, you looked up to find everyone looking at you. "What? Nevermore isn't hurting anyone." Everyone smiled at your bliss. "I didn't even know you brought Nevermore, (Y/N). Where was she hiding?" The baby dragon crawled into your lap, begging for more. "Wait, what if (Y/N) stays here and teaches me the basics of the spiritual side?" "Huh?" You question as your uncle shot the idea down quickly. "No, (Y/N) has his own responsibilities to handle. I wish there were another way." Frustrated, Korra stormed out into the cold, and you counted to 10 before following her with Nevermore, chirping on your shoulder. 

You found Korra talking to Naga angrily. "...don't understand it, Naga!" She didn't notice your presence until you cleared your throat, sensing she calmed down enough to listen to logic. "Oh, hey, (Y/N). How long have you been standing there?" She asked, sitting on a rock. "Long enough. I didn't come here to pick sides, but I do have a suggestion." You knelt in front of her, and gave a soft smile. "Sneak away, tomorrow morning after we leave. If you keep waiting for permission, you're never going to get anything done. You'll be known as Korra, the Safe Avatar." You smirked to yourself, knowing she was thinking over your words. "See ya in the morning,Korra." 

You left her, before walking to the edge of the water, closed your eyes and slowly began dancing, moving your arms and hips, imitating the waves. The ocean began glowing colors, matching your aura, turning different shades of purple. You were surprised to see this new color; whenever you did this, the water stayed the various shades of blue. "Your aura has changed, child." You smile, seeing your Gran Gran standing behind you with a smile. "Hey Gran, I was just--"(Y/N), you don't need to explain yourself to me." She sat down, and patted the snow next to her, and your curled into her side. 

She began stroking your nose with her pinky finger, and humming softly, just like your mother used to. "Rest now. You've got quiet an adventure ahead of you." You smile and listen and somehow find yourself in a dreamless sleep.

--The Next Morning--

You kissed your grandmother's cheek goodbye, and hopped onto Oogi as Tenzin gently commanded him. "Oogi, yip, yip." The bison groaned lowly, before taking off. Your cousins continued waving goodbye to the South Pole, but you caught Korra's eye.  You smirk, before quickly sending a note into her hand. She tilted her head, curious as to what you wrote, and there in your fancy neat handwriting, was a simple: 

'When you come to Republic City, look for the pro-bending gym, and find two guys named Mako and Bolin, and enjoy the show. 

                                                                                                              Catch ya later, (Y/N).'

[hotdamnhunnam]

Will Miller: Sex in Publix

A/N: FINALLY writing for Will Fucking “Ironhead” Miller from Triple Frontier!!! So excited, my dears!! Here’s some smut about you helping Will recover from his violent cereal aisle incident at Publix... which results in you two having shameless public sex.

Pairing: Will “Ironhead” Miller x F!Reader Warnings: smut, swearing, dirty talk, reference to traumatic experience, sex in public (obvs) Inspiration: WILL’S SPEECH from the opening scene of the movie. Serious big dick energy 🥵

Word Count: ~2.5k

** THE SPEECH **

Quoted from Triple Frontier’s opening scene

Parts that are referenced in this fic are in bold below – anyone who hasn’t seen it seriously needs to watch it tho...

About five years ago, when I was on leave... I found myself standing in the middle of the cereal aisle at the Publix... with my arm around some guy's throat. I was squeezing so hard he pissed himself.  My fiancée at the time had to climb on my back just so I didn’t actually kill the guy.  Do you know why I was doing this? Because he hadn’t moved his cart when I asked.  I was the best of the best, able to shut down, control, manipulate... all basic human instincts towards one goal: the completion of my mission. But the effects of committing extreme violence on other human beings are biological and physiological. That’s the price of being a warrior.

Fic begins after ‘Keep reading’ ...

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

A/N: Why yes, I just inserted the same gif again, so that you have the image right above, for purposes of the description of this mouthwatering motherfucker doing his GODDAMN CHEWING GUM LOWER LIP TONGUE THING in the third paragraph 😛

“We shouldn’t even be here...”

“Will, you say that every time,” you remind your fiancé as he strolls your cart through the aisles at Publix, slowly approaching Aisle 6. You can feel him tense up now as you’re drawing near. “It’s like I told you, babe—the best way to work through your shit is to come and revisit the scene of the crime.”

“Crime?” he rolls his tongue around the piece of gum he’s chewing, lets it slide along the inside of his full pink lower lip. He knows just what he’s doing: making it bulge in a way that looks fucking delicious. That action in itself is a crime calling for arrest. “You know the guy didn’t press charges.”

“That’s because you threatened to kill him if he did. Besides, the poor bastard had just pissed all over the floor; I’m pretty sure he wasn’t going wild to include that kind of detail if he filed a police report.”

He shrugs that off with a half-laugh. Tries to ignore how he had choked a total stranger with such brutal force... simply because he hadn’t moved his cart when Will had asked. “The fact stands that I’m criminally innocent.”

“Of course. The perfect model citizen,” you can’t help but indulge him in a playful little compliment. “With model good looks, too.”

Will rolls his eyes, those eyes you constantly effuse are the most gorgeous shade of blue. He never seems to think it’s true. “Butter me up, why don’t you.”

“Like I always do.”

He cracks a smile, which quickly vanishes as you reach Aisle 6. “Speaking of which, didn’t we just finish the butter in the fridge? I’ll go and grab some; maybe you can get the cereal, then meet me in the dairy aisle...”

“Nice try, big guy—not happening. Come on,” you urge, taking a soft yet firm hold of his muscular upper arm. “What, are you scared of Cap’n Crunch or something? Man up, Captain. Don’t be a pussy ass bitch.”

“Cap’n Crunch is creepy as shit. Freaked me out as a kid,” he says with an exaggerated cringe. “But seriously, babe—you know that going back there makes me... twitch.”

“And I’ll be there to hold your hand, and talk you through it, like I always am,” you reassure him. “Will, it’s gotten better every time we visit. We’ve made real progress; it’s a process, and to be honest, I think it’s almost finished.”

He bites that luscious lip of his. “What if it isn’t.”

“Then we’ll keep trying till it is, okay? You have to trust me. Either way, we’ll hurry home, soon as we’re done... so you can fuck me.”

His eyes light up at that, just as you knew they would, and he pushes the cart straight ahead. Not afraid to admit he’s been played. “Damn does my girl know how to control and manipulate...”

“I learned from the best of the best, as they say. My big strong ironhead fiancé.”

As it turns out today, the sex will happen long before you leave the store. Neither of you will be able to wait.

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

“So. How you feeling?” you ask him, standing by his side in the spot where it happened. As he stands still and stares, you reach up to comb your fingers through the soft golden spikes of his hair, hoping that the tender loving touch will help his healing.

Will chews his gum a little harder, with a firm clench of his jaw. Blue eyes a little darker. And good God—you shouldn’t be having these thoughts, but fuck, the smoldering look on his face right now is just about the hottest thing you ever saw...

You can see the scenes replay inside his mind. Not just the incident itself, choking a random guy in Publix half to death, squeezing so hard the bastard lost his breath and pissed himself—but more importantly, the underlying cause. Years of trauma, molding Will into a man that he himself feared and despised. So many years spent searching for the kind of peace he always craved but thought he’d never find. 

He tells you often how he found it in your arms; though you’re a sucker for his charms, you always brush the line aside. That shit’s just corny. And besides, he only says it when he’s horny... which is all the fucking time.

One of the many things that you two have in common. Ever since Will Miller claimed you as his woman, the two of you have been getting it on so fucking often that it’s probably a crime.

You try to stop your mind from wandering in that direction. Will needs to process heavy shit right now and you’re supposed to help him. Shouldn’t get distracted by your own lady erection, as you silently admire him in all his alpha male perfection... mind burning with questions—like, but how the hell can it even be possible to be so fucking beautiful...?

His hands aren’t twitching in the way that often happens when he’s here, but still, he’s awfully tense and quieter than usual. Maybe it’s time to head out of the cereal aisle; return some other time, after a little while. You hold him close to whisper in his ear, stroking his arm with a warmhearted smile. “Listen, babe—if you don’t want to talk... then let’s go home and crack open some beer, or a bottle of wine... I’ll suck your cock, and everything will be just fine. I’m proud of you for coming here today. Now let’s get out of here so you can come someplace better, okay?”

Now at that, Will at last has a few words to say. He snaps out of his self-hating haze and attacks you just with the sheer power of his deep blue gaze. “Mmm, you mean like deep inside my filthy little whore of a fiancée?”

You feign offense, reacting with a gasp, dealing his upper arm a playful little slap. “Captain Miller! What gives you the right to talk to me like that—in public, no less? Show some damn respect.”

He answers with a flirty, dirty laugh. “Respect my ass.”

“I do, and you know that. It’s perfect,” you remind him as you reach around to grab it through his pants, loving the way the sculpted muscle tenses up beneath your hands. “And I respect it even better when it’s naked, so let’s get—”

“Gimme a minute,” he interrupts you with a kiss on the top of your head. “You know, before you started talking all that frisky business... I was just about to tell you that I think we’re finally finished. Babe, you did it.”

You pause, dropping your jaw—does he mean what you think he does? Now that the tone is back to serious, you free his fine ass from the grasp of your horny claws. “...did it?”

Will smiles and nods. “I know my stubborn ass kept resisting these visits. But you were right, babe. Like always. I think I’ve finally gotten past this shit. I mean—not all my shit; that’s a serious beast. But the whole Publix incident, at least. I just... today I finally felt released. At peace with it.”

There are no words to capture how giddy you feel. You wrap your arms around his neck with an excited squeal, heartbeat happily racing. “Babe, that’s amazing! We did it. I may be the one with all the brilliant ideas, but you were smart enough to listen.”

He lets out a soft giggle, hugging you so hard it tickles. “I still say you get all the credit. Manipulating me with all those promises of sex the way you did. Straight up forcing me into submission.”

“Oh, don’t put it that way. Now let’s not forget who’s the dom in the bedroom. Promise you’ll always play Captain, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he chuckles. “Whatever you say.”

The one thing on your mind as you snuggle into his embrace is this man smells like actual heaven... hot damn. You pull back from the hug, desperate to get home and get fucked. But there’s still one more thing to get out of the way.

You make some effort to compose yourself before what’s coming next. “Oh, and before we go—there’s something else I wanted you to know. Now that your issue’s been addressed... well, I also have something to confess.”

After those words, you pause for longer than you should. Which isn’t good.

“Go on?” Will holds your hand and gives you an encouraging, heartwarming nod.

Ugh, he’s so cute when he’s all soft and full of love. Despite being so big and tough. All at once a sugar baby muffin and a savage fucking sex god.

You clear your throat, collecting your slightly embarrassing thoughts. “So, when the whole... incident happened, in the moments just before I climbed onto your back, to pull you off of that poor man, I was just—watching you attack... and... well, at first I didn’t even know how to react, because... uhhh...”

Those blue eyes of his blink, and you can barely even think. Apparently you have a goddamn golden eyelash kink?

Will tries to urge you to continue; though it’s clear he’s quite sincere, he’s also more than just a little bit amused. He always loves to see you bumbling like a fool and acting totally uncool. He says it’s super cute. “Because what?”

You re-clear your throat, though it’s all clear already. Try to stay somewhat calm and steady. Keep your hormones in control. You are in public after all; people can see you even if they’re out of earshot. “I don’t know, it’s just—watching you do that was... I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was fucked up, and yes I knew it had to stop—but it was also... you know... super fucking hot?”

He blinks again, brows arching up a bit. “You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Y/N, I... I was out of my damn mind. Completely out of line. Like, deadly dangerous.”

“Oh, you think I didn’t notice?”

“No, I know you did...”

Fucking hell. You pull your hand from his and turn toward the shelves, grabbing a random box of cereal to occupy yourself. “Now you’re kink-shaming me. Never done that before, but now the truth comes out that I’m a sick and twisted whore—”

“What? Y/N, come on,” he groans, wrapping his arms around you from behind, the kind of big bear hug that always feels like home. “You know that isn’t how I meant it...”

“No, forget it. Just forget I ever said it.”

“Can’t really do that, to be honest. Babe, I’m into all your kinks, I promise. I just need a sec to process this.”

“Seriously—Will, this whole cereal aisle shouldn’t be about me. Even just mentioning it like I did was selfish. So forget it.”

“I’m not gonna just...”

“Hey, I have an idea,” you interrupt, eager to change the subject, as you now notice that you’d just happened to pick a box of Cap’n Crunch. With the creepy cartoon captain’s face emblazoned on the front. “What if you need a final outlet? Just to let off any steam that might be lingering, to make sure that you’ve really gotten over the whole cereal aisle incident?”

Will purrs as he leans closer into your shoulder. You stupidly assume he’s also looking at the cereal box you’re holding, but he isn’t. “Hmmm, you thinking what I’m thinking...?”

As it happens, you’re totally oblivious to what he just implied, since you’re still trying to recover from embarrassment. You step off to the side, pulling away from his embrace so that you’re standing face to face. And hold the box in front of you like it’s a martial arts board made for him to break. “Here, if you need something to punch... why don’t you let it out on Cap’n Crunch.”

He blinks, again, apparently a little stunned. You’re too oblivious to even notice that he has a hard on.

You gesture toward the crunchy cap’n. “Go on. Clock him one.”

Will shifts uncomfortably in an attempt to hide the stiffness of his cock. “Punch a cereal box? Babe, this is fucking ridiculous...”

“This creepy bastard haunted you throughout your childhood,” you remind him. “Come on, do it, Will. Show him who’s captain. You know it’ll feel good.”

He tosses a quick glance behind him to make sure that no one’s around to witness. “Can’t believe I’m gonna do this, but if you insist...”

Balling his right hand up into a fist, he fucking launches it at the cartoon son of a bitch. You know he didn’t go full force—the blow would’ve thrust you and Cap’n both across the room, of course—but he went hard enough to cause the cardboard box serious damage.

Will looks down at the damage he caused to his childhood nemesis, more pleased with it than he’d like to admit. “Well, shit.”

You flash him a triumphant grin, glad for the win. “Felt great, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, it did,” he laughs at himself with a shake of his head. “But the box is all busted.”

“Well, we are model citizens, so we’re obviously going to take responsibility and pay for this,” you tell him. “And William—don’t even think about bitching that Cap’n Crunch isn’t a worthwhile purchase. The catharsis that he just provided was worth it.”

Your fiancé is fully in agreement with that sentiment. “Sounds perfect.”

Moving toward your shopping cart, you pause before throwing the box in, stopping to salute the captain with one hand over your heart. “We thank you, Cap’n, for your service.”

Will lets out one of his loud, loving laughs and hugs you from the back again. “My God, you’re such a fucking dork...”

You shrug, melting into the hug. “Well, my dorky ass just singlehandedly took care of your entire healing process. So don’t knock it if it worked.”

“Oh, I wasn’t gonna knock it,” Will replies, suddenly spinning you around with your back up against the shelves, so you can see and feel the feral fire in his eyes. You practically just wet yourself. Even more so upon the words he utters next. “I was just thinking that I really wanna fuck it.”

Holy hell. This man is living breathing sex. Your words come out all jumbled up and shit. “What—how... you mean right now? In public?”

Will grinds his hips into your crotch so you can finally feel the stiffness of his dick. God, it’s so big. His every word and action never fail to make your pussy twitch. “Hmm, what is that I’m hearing... judgment? Are you kink-shaming me, bitch?”

Hot damn, you love how playfully sadistic your fiancé is. “No, I wouldn’t fucking dream of it. I love it,” you respond, succumbing to the force of his cock and the heat of your cunt. For good measure before you both give yourselves over to such guilty pleasure, to everything both of you want, you glance nervously up and down Aisle 6. 

All is clear at the moment. And if that unexpectedly changes... you know there’s a risk, the constant threat of danger of onlooking strangers... well, fuck it. You and Will won’t let that stop you from indulging in some shameless sex in Publix.

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

... Continued in Part 2!

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