#ofc i would quote your fic !! again :)

[invisiblue]

Ghostly Kisses, The city holds my heart || Vilhelm Hammershøi, Strandgade 30 || Christina Marie Brown, My body is a haunted house || Ghostly Kisses, The city holds my heart || House of the Dragon, S1E9 || House of the Dragon, S1E9 || Ghostly Kisses, The city holds my heart || House of the Dragon, S2E6 || House of the Dragon, S2E7 || Lately i've been crying (like a tall child) by ao3 user noheteroexplanation || House of the Dragon, S2E7

A 3-part web weaving for Alicent Hightower

Marriage, Motherhood, Childhood x

Castle, Prison, Ghost x

Solitude, Grief, Silence x

[eunandonly]

contemplating : love, friendships and theories of time

୨୧ ; fate is a strange concept, isn’t it? because park sunghoon was the last person you had expected to see in your philosophy lecture in uni

pairing! philosophymajor!sunghoon x philosophymajor!reader | wc. 0.8k | warnings: wrong philosophy info, prob cringe EN-

🖇️ : philosophy major sunghoon SKDKDKSK. also, to the girly who asked for a uni fic for the science and maths girls, i hope you’re looking forward to my sunoo uni fic ~

you and sunghoon go WAYYYY back

he was your neighbour in that little picturesque town you both lived in, your mum's friend's annoying son who always seemed to be loitering around at your house

you thought your mum adopted him or smth bc why was he at your house more than his own?? — more under cut!!

you used to tease him about being homeless back in the days

but yk you two were best friends

but you and sunghoon kind of just drifted apart in high school after he moved during his freshman year at high school

you see his instagram posts sometimes, pictures of him out with his friends, jawline still jawlining

you sometimes even scroll down to his older posts where you are present in his photos, smiling next to him with a wide braces smile

but you never thought you would cross paths with park sunghoon again

that is, until university.

you walk into your first philosophy lecture and oh look there he is

park sunghoon sitting in one of the corners with his notebook looking like the exact definition of brooding intellectual

what is that guy doing here WHY IS HE HERE?

you two recognise each other instantly but there's this moment of awkwardness

like "oh, do you remember when we used to steal each other's snacks in 5th grade?"

except now he's all grown up, wearing wireframe glasses and quoting descartes during class discussions

you just try to focus on your lecture but you can't really forget about sunghoon being in your philosophy lecture

oh yeah, and he looks x100 hotter than you remember WHAT'S GOING ON

puberty hit him hard

after the lecture, you're about to pack your stuff and leave as soon as you can but he just strides up to you with his obnoxiously long legs

you always hated his stupid long legs you always had to run to catch up

you're certain he walked faster on purpose to leave you behind

ANYWAYS sunghoon just says long time no see in that smooth voice of his.

he's polite, maybe a bit shy, but there's a hint of a smile on his face and it's almost like the years of not seeing each other disappears

you two start hanging out more- grabbing coffee together before 8AM morning lectures designed to kill university students, studying together in the library

your mum is also really happy to hear that you've met sunghoon

you always knew she liked him better than you.

but you guys only get closer on a fateful thursday morning as you’re making your way to your morning lecture

because sunghoon is standing in the courtyard with a baby kitten in his arms whilst panicking

“y/n this cat keeps following me and she doesn’t have a mum.”

ofc you need to take it in SHE’S SO CUTE

you end up skipping lectures and spending the entire day with sunghoon to bring the cat to the vet and buy food

sunghoon wants to name the cat descartes but you veto that immediately

by the day is over, you have a kitten named mochi with sunghoon as a co-parent

now you’re seeing him all the time bc guess who has joint custody over mochi??

ok but spending time with sunghoon isn't as hard as you thought it would be

like yes he moved without a word and practically ghosted you in highschool

but it all feels really natural WHO CHEERED??

but between kitten playdates and philosophy study sessions stuff start feeling kinda different HMMM

which you didn’t think was possible btw sunghoon’s hobby is literally talking about existentialism and calligraphy

yeah and you knew him since he was five

ok but he looks really hot whilst talking about sartre NDJDKDKSKS

who knew you would start feeling all warm inside from sunghoon

not the 14 years old you in the past

but now everytime you touch in any way, you feel yourself flush pink

and you can’t ignore how sunghoon tries to act all nonchalant about it but his ears are turning red

how cute.

“you ever heard about hegel’s theory of love?”

“if you’re about to lecture me, i’m leaving.”

“no- listen, it’s about how love is this push and pull that makes you grow and stuff, and i don’t think i’m just studying it anymore. i think i’m feeling it, with you.”

ok that sounded a lot better in my head please don’t come for me

but yeah

aristotle believed everyone has a purpose they’re meant to fulfill. perhaps you didn’t know it back than, but losing touch with sunghoon and finding him again… it feels like you two were meant to meet in the future. perhaps it’s fate

✉️ : @icyy-hoon

[woozisguitar]

my loooove congrats on your milestone omgg 🤧❤ also i'd lay my soul down on the road for a jun fic from you sjksjk. i still think about the way you put ttpd for jun in your svt as ttpd songs IT SUITS HIM SO WELL. so maybe something inspired by that? a fic, a drabble, or just even how you think he fits the elements of the song in general. honestly, you can do anything you like you have the full freedom to be creative ofc <3

congrats againnn i'm so happy for you 😭💕 also feel free to ditch the fic if you're not up for it, it's totally okay ml <333

esa my loveee 💕💕💕💕💕 thank you so much!! the fact you remember I put ttpd for jun I rlly hope you like it!! sorry it took a while jshdlj love you and thank you again 😭😭 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

requests for 200 celebration post: open (but slow updates!)

warning: kinda angsty and long, sorry 😞 BUT its a happy ending dw

You left your typewriter at my apartment Straight from the Tortured Poets Department I think some things I never say Like, "Who uses typewriters anyway?"

when you first met junhui, you found him to be a little… weird. there was no better way to put it other than this, and he was not weird in a bad way. sort of eccentric rather? or maybe reserved? this was in the third year of university, in a creative writing class. with no other seat remaining, you took one next to him. you tried to smile and make pleasantries, an attempt to make a friend in the literature department as this was your only english class. now that you think about it, perhaps it wasn't just junhui, because the professor decided to call this class of 30-some students “the tortured poets department,” and assigned the semester project, which was writing a short book of poems about the person next to you, who was also your now-assigned partner. that was the first time junhui spoke to you. a simple hello and introduction, an attempt to make acquaintance with the person he was going to spend the next few months writing about. over time, you found that junhui had rather a … peculiar sense of humor. he liked cats and often resorted to using only cat memes in conversations. he liked spicy food, albeit his tolerance was not that high. oh! and he owned a typewriter and his only explanation ever was ‘i'm a writer and this is the most efficient tool,’ with an expression as blank as the paper he was writing on. you teased him ever so often, asking the rhetorical question, ‘who uses typewriters anyways?’ throwing a small teasing smile in his direction which he bashfully returned.

But you're in self-sabotage mode Throwing spikes down on the road But I've seen this episode and still loved the show Who else decodes you?

during a discussion lecture about franz kafka, you discovered junhui might have more underlying layers compared to what he tells people. he would often point at a self-criticizing quote or excerpt and joke that it was about him. but his eyes often told a different story. he also had… days when he’d disappear and his only answer was he had to get the inspiration out of his head and on paper. over time, you got used to this, the sudden disappearance, the sometimes concerning jokes, all of it. and you still stayed by his side as a friend. it wasn't uncommon for the professors and class members to ask you about junhui’s absence and what surprised you more was that you knew exactly where he’d be.. 

And who's gonna hold you like me? And who's gonna know you, if not me? I laughed in your face and said "You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith This ain't the Chelsea Hotel, we're modern idiots"

this friendship with junhui eventually blurred into something more. it wasn’t lovers, not yet, but it also wasn’t just friends. you’d discuss philosophies and arts beyond the confines of the project and class. no, he was slowly taking the place of the closest person in your life, your best friend. and you liked to believe you did for him too. junhui would often talk about making it big as a writer, meeting big names at even bigger venues. you’d often laugh at his dramatics and found them endearing. 

but now, years after not hearing from him, you knew he made it big. you read all his books, hell, you even have copies in your library but you’d always deny if asked. ‘we aren’t who we want to be. nor are we in a place where we should be. we’re modern idiots, that’s all,’ is what he said before he left your apartment and that was the last you heard from him. none of your tears, crying, begging could stop him at that moment. looking back, the only trace of his existence, apart from the wounds on your heart, was the stupid typewriter snow globe he got you.

And who's gonna hold you like me? Nobody No-fucking-body Nobody

so you let him go. despite your hurt, you knew you had to let him go. that was the only way he'd realize no one could love him, hold him, know him like you. you went to class the next day and found that junhui had shifted to finishing his semester online. he already had the credits to graduate, all he had to do was sit through the last week of this semester. your professor asked if you’d like to submit your part of the book and present alone, to which you agreed. this set of poems was, after all, evidence that what you felt for him was real. the junhui you knew was real.

You smoked, then ate seven bars of chocolate We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist I scratch your head, you fall asleep Like a tattooed golden retriever

the absence of his presence haunted you like the echo of a poem you never wrote. you tried to live your life normally, walking past the old shops and stores, allowing yourself to indulge in the memories of junhui once in a while. like the convenience store outside which you dared him to eat seven bars of chocolate in one go, or the alleyway where you and him tried your first cigarette, and immediately regretting it, making you giggle quietly to yourself in the dead of night. you adopted a cat, sylvie, in hopes to distract yourself, but that ended up being a terrible plan because she reminded you of him in every possible way. she would fall asleep the same way junhui would in your lap. petting her was the closest new equivalent of scratching his head as he slept.

But you awaken with dread Pounding nails in your head But I've read this one where you come undone I chose this cyclone with you

things weren't working out for junhui either. ever since he left you, he convinced himself it was for the best. he knew about his tendencies, his weird habits and attributes, and he also knew you'd accept him, flaws and all. and while he had made peace with the idea of sabotaging himself, he would rather die than let anything hurt you, even himself. he convinced himself, in a true poetic fashion, that leaving you meant he would never be able to hurt you ever again and you won’t have to deal with any of his tendencies. ever since then, he would often wake up in sweat, remnants of a nightmare and faint outlines of your figure still prominent when he’d close his eyes. he would see his books, his poems, come to life in these dreams starring you as the main character. on some nights, the memories with you would plague his mind and feel like nails pounding in the forefront of his skull. but junhui’s conviction and love for you outweighed everything else. even if he knew this would kill him, this heartbreak, he would still endure it because it had you written all over it.

And who's gonna hold you like me? (Who's gonna hold you? Who's gonna hold you?) And who's gonna know you like me? (Who's gonna know you?)

so he wrote. and he wrote. till his brain was filled with letters and every waking moment felt the need to be penned down in his diary. he thought that maybe if he made it big, he would go back to you and tell you proudly that he did it. he would finally be able to confess his feelings and emotions rather than using words as camouflage. he wouldn't be a modern idiot trying to find his place in this world. he would be your idiot. just yours. he knew, in the back of his mind, the chances of you still feeling the same as him were slim to none, but he still convinced himself that he had to do this for you. during his first book release, he spent the entire tour and interview, looking for you in every face. when questioned about his dedication, ‘to the one I’d always leave my typewriter with,’ he would simply laugh and say it was an inside joke and the person he’s dedicating this book to would know. 

but years passed and you never reached out. when junhui tried to visit you at your old university, he found that you moved after graduation and severed contact with everyone. he tried calling, texting, letters to your parent’s home, all of it but you never responded. he visited every single place in this world that could have a tie to you and searched, but alas he could not find you. when he returned, he was about to give up hope to ever find you again and accept his fate. that’s when he saw you, standing against the railing overlooking the park lake. you looked exactly as he remembered you, and for a second he was transported back to your apartment. you hadn't noticed him looking at you yet, and he basked in your presence from afar for a moment. but you looked up and your eyes met his.

I laughed in your face and said "You're not Dylan Thomas, I'm not Patti Smith This ain't the Chelsea Hotel, we're modern idiots" And who's gonna hold you like me? (Who's gonna hold you? Who's gonna hold you?)

for the first time in years, junhui braved up, put on his smile, and walked towards you. with each step, he could feel his heart pounding so hard he could hear it in his ears. when he reached you his first thought was that he was wrong. he should never have left. he had everything he could've asked for but he didn’t have you and everything else felt like dust without you. and that you were much, much more beautiful than when he left. when he met your eyes, he saw swirls of sadness, anger, but he also liked to believe he saw hints of love.

“hi,” he squeaked out, “i’ve been looking for you.”

“i know. my parents called to tell me about the letters,” you said, guarding your face devoid of any expression, crossing your arms in front of you, “why reach out now junhui?”

“i was wrong. all those years ago, i was wrong. i shouldn’t have left. ever. you were the only person in this entire fucking world who saw me, my bestest friend. and… and i just left you,” he finished, breathless.

No-fucking-body (Who's gonna hold you? Who's gonna hold you?) Nobody (Who's gonna hold you? Gonna know you? Gonna troll you?) Nobody

“yeah you did. you left me all alone for years junhui. who exactly do you think you are? you’re not franz kafka and i’m not milena jesenská. i don’t care what messed up idea of love you have in your mind, but i am willing to love you. i will always be willing to love you. i don’t care how much it will ruin me in the process, i know you’ll save me in the end, because we are y/n and junhui. we make our own story. let me rescue you this time, junhui,” you ended with the quote, tears brimming your eyes.

“letters to milena,” he breathed out, “you read kafka? you hated his works. always complained that they were too sad and depressing.”

“you liked them though. i did everything i could to feel closer to you. i even have that stupid typewriter snowglobe you got me,” you giggled, wiping the corner of your eyes.

junhui wiped his own eyes, smiling at you fondly.

“so, mr. writer, do you want to follow the steps of the ones who came before you or are we writing our own story where i finally get to hold you forever? there’s also space for a new typewriter in my apartment, you know.”

junhui laughed, wiping his tears and nodded, “yeah, fuck the poets. let’s be modern idiots and write our own story.” junhui kissed you for the first time that night, against the lake with the moon shining bright above you, in a true poetic fashion.

Sometimes, I wonder if you're gonna screw this up with me But you told Lucy you'd kill yourself if I ever leave And I had said that to Jack about you, so I felt seen Everyone we know understands why it's meant to be, ‘cause we're crazy So tell me, who else is gonna know me? At dinner, you take my ring off my middle finger And put it on the one people put wedding rings on And that's the closest I've come to my heart exploding Who's gonna hold you? (Who?) Me Who's gonna know you? (Who?)Me

“i know it’s too early to say this now,” junhui started as the two of you lay wrapped up in bed in the comfort of your apartment, his fingers drawing patterns on the ring finger of your left hand, “but i will put a ring on this finger someday. i think i’ll die if you leave again.” you giggled at his promise and kissed his nose. “i think i would die too, so i guess it’s a good thing i don’t ever plan on leaving,” you wrapped your arms around his frame, snuggling closer to him. junhui hummed, his heart content for once in his life.

Who's gonna hold you? Who's gonna hold you? Who's gonna hold you? Who's gonna hold you? Who's gonna hold you? Who's gonna hold you? Gonna know you? Gonna troll you?

“everyone probably thinks we’re crazy,” you said after a moment of silence.

“i guess but they don’t know us like us, so there’s that,” he said, his voice drifting off, “as long as i’m holding you, i don’t really care about the people now.”

You left your typewriter at my apartment Straight from the Tortured Poets Department Who else decodes you?

with his typewriter sitting in the corner of your living room, you knew your life with him was now for the better. he was still a tortured poet for the world, but at the end of the day, it was still you who could decode him. no one else.

a/n: the cat being called slyvie is a reference to Sylvia Plath (sorry im a nerd like that ����)

[sufferu]

Y'know re zero reminds a lot of umineko and higurashi. Stories where the protags are dying and resetting over and over again to fight against fate. For a chance that is "infinitely close to zero"(yes literal quote---thats how unlikely victory was) or that one dude from toaru that died 100 billion times, resetting through horrific worlds.

What do they have in common? The protags save/forgive/pity their torturers. WHDAA cast has every right to beat some sense into Subaru damn. I get the whole "understanding the heart of others" theme. I love it, but like--there should be a line somewhere that got lost in the corpses of previous loops. Especially, since most of the time they are redeemed because they have a tragic backstory. Like "ofc I forgive you for torturing me for 100 years because your parents are dead"

Penny for your thoughts?

God I need to watch Higurashi. Too bad I cant FIND THE DAMN SERIES ANYWHERE— also I’ve heard of Umineko but I have no idea what it is lol. Maybe I’ll check it out. Same with A Certain Magical Index.

And — honestly, to an extent I agree with you lol, cause even if I haven’t watched any of those series I am very familiar with the “all is forgiven” trope that tends to happen in anime a lot. I think it often tends to feel a little unbalanced, ESPECIALLY if the perpetrator is some sort of waifu character. Like — okay, there’s this anime that came out a few years ago called Ranking of Kings that I actually really liked for the most part, except the way they handled the main villain (a woman named Miranjo) was just BAFFLING. She did all this horrible stuff in the first half, but then the second half was basically just — everyone bending over backwards to excuse/forgive her simply because…that’s what the author wanted to happen. And the thing is? I was one of like five viewers (judging by those comments :/) who would actually have totally been on board with her redemption if they hadn’t done that. I thought she was a fascinating character, possibly my favorite in the series, and I even saw the potential for her becoming a better person if they were to go that route. But then they hammered it in SO MUCH because the author wanted the audience to like her SO BADLY that — it just RUINED her.

That’s what I think the problem often is: the hand of the author becomes too obvious, and as their actions get excused by the narrative practically bending over backwards to get the audience to like the characters, the characters get flattened down and all their edges sanded off. To be entirely honest it’s the main issue I have with how Rem is often portrayed in this fanbase, because — a really large subset of fans seems to have looked at that HOT MESS of a person and decided that taking her “perfect waifu” facade at face value was the more appealing option, lol.

—It totally makes sense for Subaru, though. As a character this is, it makes SOO much sense that he’s like this. And…I’m actually holding out hope that it’s gonna be addressed as an issue in-universe at some point, due to 1) some very choice descriptors on his part of all those horrible things being “good memories” that are VERY worrying and 2) post-amnesia!Rem very explicitly ending up in antagonistic role to her old self regarding how they each want Subaru to develop going forward.

As for my own react fic…yeah. Rem is. Rem is gonna be in some SERIOUS hot water. If I may: I think that a lot of react fics tend to gloss over her behavior a little too much for my liking, due to her being a popular character (or even a favorite of the author lol) and as such the fic goes out of its way to make sure that the conversation leads to everyone forgiving her one way or another. …I, personally, do not plan on pulling my punches one single bit.

;)

[dw19791967]

That Feeling Part 2

Pairing: Dean x reader (eventual), OFC Tyler

Warnings: language, unrequited love, angst, unwanted kissing, depression, anxiety, and feelings.

Trigger Warning: This fic contains discussions of depression and anxiety and feelings that go along with those. If that could be triggering for you I would skip out on this one. It is based on some experiences I have had in real life.

*All mistakes are my own!

I apologize for this taking forever!! I have had some things come up plus been busy with work. I think there will two more parts after this one. Make sure to read part 1 to understand this part!

-Layla

*I do not own this gif.

I had finally made my way back to my room a little after 11 that night. Dean had held me and tried to calm me down the best he could. I told him I needed some space and he understood. 

I slept like crap. Kept replaying the event in my head over and over again. How could I be so dumb. How could I let this happen? Why did I have to react like that? 

I woke up around 8 the following morning. My eyes were still puffy when I looked in the mirror. I washed my face and brushed my teeth. I decided it was time to get dressed. I changed into a pair of leggings and an oversized t-shirt. I made my way to the kitchen to get something to drink. 

“Hey Y/N. Dean and I went and grabbed your car from that bar earlier this morning.” Sammy greeted me with a slight smile. I figured that meant Dean had told him what had happened. 

“Hi Sammy, thank you. I appreciate it. ” I looked at him. I’m sure he could tell I had been crying. I brushed it off. I went to the fridge to pour myself a glass of tea. I warmed it up in the microwave. Hopefully this would help calm my nerves. 

“Where’s Dean?” I moved to sit down across from him at the table. 

“He went out, should be back soon.” He paused. “Do you want to talk about it? I’m here to listen, you know, you don’t have to handle this on your own.”

“Not right now Sam. I kinda just want to forget for a bit ya know? I slept like ass.” I placed my hand on his. “I do appreciate it though.”

I grabbed my glass and stood. “I think I’m going to lay back down for a bit, have a migraine.” 

“Y/N….” Sam moved to stand as well.

“I’ll be ok Sammy, promise.” I looked at him with a sad smile.

God I hope I will be. 

________________________________

Dean’s POV:

I ran to get some of Y/N’s favorite things. Tea, chocolate, ingredients to make tacos, bubble bath stuff, and her fruity girl drinks. It always amused me that she hated beer. To quote her “who wants to drink something that tastes like warm piss?”. 

I carried the stuff into the kitchen. 

“Hey she got up to get some tea but headed back to her room. She said she didn't feel like talking.” Sam moved to help me put the stuff away.

“I figured. She told me last night she needed some space but I also know that's code for "I will need you to remind me you care at some point.” I’ll check on her after I put this stuff up.” 

“Go ahead, I got it.” 

I moved down the hallway towards her room. I hated that this happened to her. She’s told me about her past and it wasn’t pretty. It scares the crap out of me that sometimes humans are the worst type of monsters. I wanted to beat the shit out of every son of a bitch that had hurt her but she said it wouldn’t be worth it. It kills me inside that she thinks she isn’t worth it. She is beautiful, a badass, says what she thinks and doesn’t give a damn if it offends you, and has a heart of gold and would do anything for anyone. She has saved me more times than I can count in the short time I’ve known her. I couldn’t imagine my life without her. I can’t tell her this especially right now. I know she needs to get her head on straight. 

I reached her door. “Sweetheart?” I knocked gently.

___________________________

Y/N’s POV:

I had laid back down but of course couldn’t sleep. I laid there for an hour tossing and turning. Then I took some meds for my head. I guess crying and lack of sleep equals a huge ass headache. I couldn’t stop my mind from reeling. Maybe I deserve to feel like this? I mean I’m not perfect. I have made mistakes in my life, maybe this is my punishment? I have always struggled with depression and anxiety. Of course it got worse as time went on, especially being a hunter. I had managed to keep it under wraps pretty well until now. Now all the bad times are brought back to the surface. The boys don’t deserve to have to deal with my broken ass. Maybe it would be better if I left and spent some time on my own.

I felt my phone buzz below me. It was a text.

Tyler:  

Hey Y/N just wanted to check on you. I’m really sorry about how last night went down. I just thought that was what you wanted, especially since I had mentioned stuff before and you didn’t say anything. Anyway I am heading out tonight, want to meet up again? Maybe we could have a redo of last night and talk things out ;).

Shock was the polite way of describing how I felt reading his message. I needed to end this.

Y/N:

Tyler, I have thought things over and now realize I should have stopped talking to you sooner. Making lewd comments about my body, discussing being naked, telling me we were strictly friends, ignoring me when I needed a friend. There were a lot of mixed signals on your part. I guess me telling you that we could see where our friendship takes implied I wanted more and for that I apologize. This whole situation has made me realize that  I need to work on myself and put myself first. So this will be the last message you receive from me. Do not contact me again and please lose my number. 

I deleted the messages and blocked his number. I wanted a clean slate. 

“Sweetheart?” Dean was knocking on my door softly. 

“You can come in.” I moved to sit up slightly.

He made his way into the room. Seeing his face made me feel a little better. 

He sat down at the end of the bed by my feet. 

“I’m not going to ask how you are doing because I already know the answer. I went to the store and got some of your favorites. Is there anything you would like to do today?”

“I appreciate that De, you didn’t have to do that.”

“I know” he said with a smile.

“I would really like to sleep, I’m still exhausted but can’t get my mind to turn off. He messaged me, tried to apologize and get me to meet up with him again. I told him no and that I needed to put myself first. I told him I didn’t want to hear from him again.” I played with a string on my quilt to distract me from his inevitable reaction. I knew he would be pissed. Pissed that the idiot had the balls to message me, pissed that I didn’t tell him to take a flying leap.

“I’m proud of you for setting the boundary Y/N, that is a huge step.” He reached for my hand. 

Wait, he wasn’t pissed? Who is he and what has he done with my Dean?

“I figured you would be pissed at me for messaging him back.” 

“I mean does it piss me off that he thought it would be a good idea to message you? Of course. But I also know you needed to tell him the effect this had on you. You need to be able to move on, I would never be mad at you for doing that.” He moved his thumb back and forth across my hand. He always knew how to comfort me. 

“I appreciate that you have done more for me in the last 24 hours than I could have ever expected or asked of you. You don’t have to keep doing things for me ya know?” I looked up at him now. God, those eyes. He could ask me to rob a bank for him and I probably would. 

“I’m doing these things because I want to. You are my best friend, my girl. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you. I’m here because I want to be.” He looked into my eyes and smiled. 

“So you didn’t answer my question, what do you want to do?”

“I’m not really sure, I know I’m not up for being around a lot of people. I kinda just want to go for a drive and listen to music, try to get my mind to think of something else ya know?” I said. 

“If that’s what you want to do then that is what we will do. Get your shoes on Sweetheart, let’s go.” Dean smiled.

[geralt-of-baevia]

Call It What You Want: Chapter One

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine

pairing: nobreakout!joel x f!ofc (Violet Fletcher)

rating: explicit, MDNI 18+

word count: 2.1k

summary: Seeking solace from a painful breakup, Violet relocates to a tranquil town, purchasing a neglected house to renovate. In her new neighborhood, she befriends Harlow, who introduces her to Joel, a gruff and seasoned contractor with a heart of gold. Despite Joel's initial grumpiness, Violet finds herself drawn to his expertise and hidden kindness.

As Violet immerses herself in home renovations alongside Joel, their dynamic begins to shift, with Joel unexpectedly opening himself up to the possibility of love. Their budding relationship faces challenges as shadows from their pasts emerge, testing their newfound connection.

warnings/tags: nothing for now! just lots of light and airy fluff and a meet-cute! but don't worry, it's gonna get dirty 😈! oh, I guess age gap? yeah, that one.

a/n: alright, i've had MAJOR writer's block for a couple years now. I tried to write a Ted Lasso fic last year, but quickly lost steam. But somehow Pedge worked his magic on me and I'm already nine chapters in on this story and 25k words and I'm just now posting it! I hope y'all enjoy. This story means the world to me rn. <3

My keys jingled in the door, and I couldn’t help but let out an aggravated sigh. This was at least the third time this week that the front door was sticking. I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed again, knowing my fate: I would have to crawl through the kitchen window. 

Again. 

As I walked around the back to go in through the kitchen window, I heard a voice calling my name. I looked across the street and saw my neighbor Harlow. She was standing on the last step of her front porch. One of her hands was held up to her brow as a temporary visor, blocking her eyes from the sun. She was shaking her head at me with a big, stupid grin. 

“Girl, is that front door stuck again?” she asked, humor dripping from her faint southern drawl. 

I sighed, crossing my arms in defeat and shifting my weight to one hip. 

“Is there any use in lying to you at this point?” I called back in response. 

She let out a loud laugh. “At least this time I caught you before you god forbid get stuck in that damn kitchen window again, ass up and legs flailing.” 

I laughed at her comment and placed a hand awkwardly over my face in embarrassment. Two days prior I had gotten stuck climbing through the kitchen window when the front door had been jammed again, Harlow coming to my rescue. 

“And I thought you had “finally fixed” anyway?” she asked, doing air quotes with her hands.

“I did!” 

“And how is that working out for you?”

I shook my head with a laugh and flipped her the bird.

“Well, why don’t you come over and I’ll make us some breakfast?” she said, motioning me to come over to her, “and then you are going to let me call my friend who will come and fix your door. And I’m not letting you tell me no this time.”

I knew there was no saying no to her.

----

“Wait, so you’re telling me you just sautee mushrooms and onions, and then put it between puff pastry and a slab of beef?” 

I nodded with a giggle. “Mmhmm. And then you brush the meat with mustard as well.” 

Harlow’s mouth dropped open. 

“I’ll make it for you sometime!” I told her excitedly, “I haven’t made it since culinary school, but I loved it.” 

The doorbell rang and interrupted us. Harlow shot up from her seat excitedly.  

“He’s here!” she said as she made her way towards the front door. She paused for a minute and turned to face me.

“Okay, just a warning real quick. Don’t be put off by the fact that he might be a bit of a curmudgeon,” she giggled. 

“A curmudgeon? That’s such a specific brand of grump,” I said with a chuckle. She shrugged her shoulders before turning back around to get the door. 

The doorbell rang a second time and I heard Harlow shout, “I’m coming! Be patient, Jesus…” 

I giggled to myself and took a long drink of my coffee. Before I was able to set my mug down on the table, I looked up to see Harlow walk back into the kitchen, a tall man following behind her. 

“Do you want some coffee Joel?” she asked him. I watched as he crossed his arms and leaned against the frame of the doorway. 

“Yes, please,” he replied, emphasizing the please. 

I started to stand up to introduce myself, but he caught my eye and put a hand up to stop me.

“Oh, no need to get up on my behalf,” he said, stopping me. I sat back down as he walked the few steps between us and held his hand out to me. 

I took his hand in mine and he gave me a firm handshake. I almost missed him introducing himself to me. I was too focused on how the pads of his hand and fingers were callused, and how it felt against my smooth skin. 

“I’m Joel.”

“Hi, I’m Violet,” I replied, thankful that at least the autopilot in my head was paying attention. A big smile spread on his face, causing his eyes to squint and get crinkly in the corners. 

“As in the Violet that lives across the street in the 1940s fixer-upper?” He had the same faded southern accent that Harlow did. They had known each other for a long time. 

“I feel bad that you seem to know more about me than I know about you,” I said, trying to not come across awkwardly. Joel took a seat and let out an airy chuckle. 

“Oh don’t worry, there’s not much to know about me,” he said sincerely. 

“We both know that’s not true,” Harlow interjected. She sat down at the end of the table between Joel and me, handing him his coffee. 

“Thank you,” he said almost in relief. 

I tried my hardest not to stare at Joel, but I caught myself looking him up and down more than once as we sat at the table and talked. 

“Wait, so what’s goin’ on?” he asked, setting his now empty coffee mug down on the table. I sighed before tucking my hair behind my ear. 

“Okay, so the original door knob kept catching and jamming. Something having to do with the original door knob not lining up correctly when it's closed. I thought putting a new door knob and re-aligning it would work. But then I tried to open my door when I got open, and it was stuck again,” I explained, “so I think it’s past me just YouTubing answers.” 

“Well it’s a good thing that Joel here is a carpenter,” Harlow said, patting him on the shoulder. He smiled another crinkled smile at her. 

“Retired carpenter, but yes,” he said, giving her a friendly wink, “but I can fix that. I bet you anything your doorway is slackin’ and need a new door. Either way, I’m sure I can fix it.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to be a bother-”

“If it was going to be a bother to me, I wouldn’t have come here in the first place,” he said with a knowing smirk. I tried my hardest to keep my blushing to a minimum, but my cheeks still grew warm. 

Joel stood up and clapped his hands, rubbing them together excitedly. “Alright ladies, let's get up and go look at this door.” We all got up and exited the house, making our way across the street to mine. 

I smiled up at the house as we made our way to the front door. Sometimes I still couldn’t believe it was mine. The house had been barely used for almost a decade. Each one of the five bedrooms needed to be redone. And the two bathrooms. And the sitting rooms. It was a lot of work, but worth it. Not to mention a dilapidated house was cheaper to buy than a ready-to-move-in one. I saw it as a way that I get to make the house exactly how I wanted it. 

Once we were at the door, Joel held his hand out to me. 

“Key please,” he said, locking eyes with me as he did. I fumbled into my pocket, pulled the key out, and placed it in his hand. “Thanks.” 

He put the key in the keyhole and tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t budge. He tried turning it the other way, but it still didn’t move. I sighed. 

“How badly did I fuck it up?” I asked. He let out a chuckle. 

“You didn’t fuck it up, the house did,” he said, giving me a reassuring look. I watched as he pointed out areas around the frame on the wall, “I guarantee you it’s like I said, slacking in these places and putting the door off balance.”

“So what's the fix?” I asked, “Is it going to be intense?”

“Not at all. It’s a project I could do and get done by this afternoon. I just need to go get some things for it,” he said, still looking at the wall and assessing. “But I need to look at it from the inside before I can tell. Is there a way to get in?”

Harlow giggled. “Through the kitchen window. I had to help rescue her the other day, though.” 

"I’ll give you a boost this time then,” he said with a smirk. 

The three of us made our way around the back of the house, and I shimmied open the window just enough for me to fit through. Joel squatted down, laced his fingers together, and looked up at me. 

“Ready?” he asked. I nodded in response. I took a deep breath, placed my hands on Joel’s shoulders, and then my foot in his hands. 

“Three, two, one, up.” On ‘up’ I jumped with my foot on the ground as he simultaneously lifted me. I was taken aback a little by how effortlessly he did so, and how I could feel muscles through his shirt. 

I grabbed onto the bottom of the windowsill and pulled myself up as Joel continued to push. He led the foot that was in his hands to his shoulder, where I was able to give myself a final boost and get through the window. I grabbed onto the edge of the counter inside and pulled myself the rest of the way in, accidentally landing in a thud on the black and white kitchen floor. 

“You okay?” Joel and Harlow shouted in unison. 

“I’m fine!” I called back as I got myself to my feet. I peeked out of the window to look at them. “I’m going to go find an easier window for you two to climb through and get it ready.”

I ran towards the front of the house, looking for a window that was lower and easier to get through. I decided on one of the windows that lined the porch. I haphazardly ripped the screen from the window and unlocked it. After opened it I stuck my head out and shouted, “Over here, you two!”

Once Harlow and Joel crawled into the house, Joel immediately headed for the front door. 

“Have you decided on a paint color for this room yet?” Harlow asked me, looking around the room we were in. I shook my head. 

“I’ve decided to keep the wallpaper. I’m just going to clean it and touch up the trim,” I told her with a big smile. She looked around the room at the wallpaper in question, wincing a little at the bold gold pattern on the walls. 

“So, I was right,” Joel said, peeking his head around into the room. He nudged his head for me to come see. I swallowed the butterflies down into my stomach and went into the foyer. He nudged his head again before crouching down by the door knob. I closed the space between us and followed suit, crouching down so that I was at eye level with Joel and the doorknob.

Joel pointed his finger at where the door and the frame joined. “See how it’s not lining up, it's just a little too low.”

I watched as he stood up and grabbed onto the knob with both hands. With a grunt, he lifted the door and turned it at the same time. To my happy surprise, the door opened with no problem. Joe took a step back and placed his hands on his hips, looking at the door with a sense of accomplishment. 

“So, a new doorframe?” I asked as I got to my feet. He replied with a “mmhmm.” 

“Yep. I just need to take some measurements of the door and the frame. I know I have enough spare wood at my place, but I’ll need a new door. Did you say you have the original hardware?”

I nodded. “How much is a new door going to cost? I can get you the money for it.”

He shook his head. “Nah, don’t worry. I know a guy where I can get a good door for cheap. Consider it a housewarming gift.”

Harlow and I sat on my front porch as we watched Joel drive off in the direction of the woodshop. 

“So, I thought you said he was a curmudgeon?” I said, keeping my gaze ahead. 

“He is. Usually.”

She nudged my shoulder with hers, causing me to sway to the side. I straightened up and finally looked over at her just in time to nudge her back, biting at my bottom lip. 

Usually. We’ll have to see what that means. 

[ghoultrifle]

Your post with Jimothy was just a little inspiring to me.

How do you feel about Phantom wetting himself on Rains lap while Rain is sat on the floor (below eyeline just felt more subtle than the couch or armchair) because Rain wont let him up during pack movie night? Stop wiggling will you? You don't want us to miss the good part do you? While Rain plays the good, helpful partner. Whispering in Phantoms ear to keep quiet as he feels it happen, then still not letting him up until the movie ends "so that the rest of the pack doesn't find out what he did and tease him or WORSE punish him for making a mess" (in quotes bc ofc they are in on the shenanigans as consent from all parties is always key)

HELLO ANON THIS IS THE BIGGEST BRAIN PROMPT AND IT WAS A PLEASURE TO WRITE!!!! (this is the post anon is talking about) Once again, it's a piss fic, read the prompt for the contents - don't like, don't read. I'd also like to point out that I have never seen Twilight so please ignore if any references sound out of touch, it's because they are ajghalhkdg. It slightly devolved into the entire pack getting in on the action because I couldn't resist!!

Read HERE on AO3 or below the cut!

After Twilight was rudely interrupted by Mountain and Cirrus’ fiendish games last week, the whole pack held a proper movie night to show the cult classic. Earlier in the day, however, Rain had accidentally spilled his iced coffee all over one of the common room’s beanbags, leaving only enough room for eight of the nine ghouls to sit. 

Cirrus immediately made her way to the remaining beanbag, popcorn in hand, ready to subject the others to the film. Next to her, Aurora was already fast asleep in the other beanbag, she’d been curled up all afternoon. Cumulus was wedged between the resident big boys, Mount and Aether, already making biscuits on Mountain’s thigh as she settled in for the night.

Swiss and Dew were left to find their seats, Rain having sent them out of the kitchen with drinks and snacks for everyone, keeping Phantom behind. Dewdrop ran at the remaining sofa, launching himself onto it, no doubt breaking something in the process. Swiss followed, placing the food on the table before laying his head in Dew’s lap, staring at the screensaver on the TV.

Everyone was right where Rain wanted them. Including Phantom, who was bitterly arguing with the water ghoul about who gets the last seat on the sofa next to Swiss and Dewdrop.

“Alright Bug, calm your tits. How about we both sit on the floor, hmm?” Rain enquired, praying to Satan below his careful planning would pay off, “I’ll even let you sit on my lap and I can braid your hair.”

“Mmm okay but I call dibs on the beanbag next time!” Phantom pouted, resigning himself to Rain’s lap, sat on the floor in front of Swiss and Dew. 

The water ghoul was sat cross-legged, the space between his thighs a welcoming nook for Phantom to nuzzle into, resting his head on the bend of Rain’s neck. It’s as if they were made for each other, an enzyme and substrate locked together for eternity.

Rain offered a blanket to the younger ghoul, knowing his own tendency to run cold. Phantom happily declined, his brand new bat ‘oodie’ covering most of him, and a large pair of fluffy socks keeping the rest of him warm.

An absorbent choice of clothes, Rain thought to himself, pleased the young ghoul had picked the oodie up on the way to the den.

Cirrus happily clicked play on the remote as the film started. The lights were out, only the glow from the TV and Phantom’s bat-themed fairy lights illuminating the den. Rain had his arms around the quintessence ghoul, embracing him in a warm hug, well warm for a water ghoul.

That afternoon, Phantom had been out in the greenhouse, helping Mountain move the delivery of new pots for the earth ghoul’s ever-expanding collection. It was hard work, Mountain ensured Phantom wasn’t getting dehydrated as he knew the young ghoul found it hard to listen to his body (and he’d be lying if it didn’t make him think back to their quiz night, Phantom drenching Cirrus as he writhed in her lap).

But Phantom didn’t use the bathroom once. In fact he seemed quite content labouring away without a care for his bladder. Mountain certainly took note, a new summon like Phantom couldn’t hold his bladder for more than a few hours, let alone when he was pounding back drinks at the rate Mountain had been offering them.

What the earth ghoul was unaware of was Rain. Rain who suggested Mountain take the young ghoul outside for some good old fashioned manual labour. Rain who sat at the dockside watching the quintessence ghoul all afternoon. Rain who kept Phantom’s bladder from sending any signals to that poor brain of his. Rain who dragged the ghouls back inside for movie night, handing them a clean set of clothes as he led them directly to the common room, “It’s starting now, guys, Cirrus would be really disappointed if you missed the actual showing of Twilight!” And Rain who, midway through the film, let down the barriers between Phantom’s brain and bladder.

Shit, Phantom thought, a sudden, intense pang twitching in his lower belly, What the fuck? He looked behind him, only to be met with a set of cerulean eyes already staring back at him. Looking down, Rain’s fangs were poking out, a smirk adorning his face. Still unsure of exactly the game Rain was playing, the quintessence ghoul went to stand and make his way to the bathroom. The water ghoul clamped his hands down on Phantom’s twig-like arms, it was no trouble to keep the smaller ghoul from moving, he could do it in his sleep.

“Colour, baby bat?” he whispered sweetly, as if he wasn’t suggesting Phantom piss himself in front of the pack.

Phantom hesitated. He knew Rain would release him if he just said the word, but part of him loved being forced into these situations, forced to go through the humiliation of getting himself, and others, soaked.

“G-green,” he choked out, trying to be discreet about both his words and the growing desperation. He thought the initial twinge was bad, but Rain seemed to be letting the need grow with every second.

“Good boy, now stay right here, I’ll be the judge of when you can leave, okay?”

Rain phrased it as a question, however they both knew it was anything but. The only way Phantom was getting out of this dry was by calling the scene, and that was exactly how he liked it.

Phantom was now cursing his past self for not taking the blanket, his bladder on the verge of leaking as he writhed under Rain’s vice grip; both ghouls’ hands now in the main compartment of the jumper. Phantom had removed his hands from the arms of the oodie to subtly clench his dick. Rain’s deft fingers, on the other hand, snuck their way under the woolly fabric to still the squirming ghoul’s arms more firmly.

“Stop wiggling will you?” Rain whispered into Phantom’s ears, barely audible over the swell of the film’s music. Unlike the swell of the quintessence ghoul’s bladder, the slosh of the day’s drinks audible as if it had been injected directly into his eardrums. 

Damn water ghoul magick, he thought.

He wondered if the others could hear it or if Rain had spared him the humiliation of letting the pack in on his desperation.

He wasn’t sure which option he would prefer, both ideas leaving his cock twitching for different reasons. Had the pack been unaware, it would have been him and Rain’s dirty little secret, something shared between them, a sinful pleasure. Had the pack been in on it, part of Rain’s master plan, he would revel in the knowledge that their eyes are on him, it’s not all in his mind; they’d watch him let go as Rain hushed him to be quiet under the guise of secrecy.

Rain, the ever helpful partner, offered Phantom a drink, “Wouldn’t want you to get dehydrated, baby, you’ve been working outside all day.”

The smaller ghoul grimaced as he took a sip from the shark-adorned straw, not wanting to alert the others to his somewhat distressed state. There was no doubt that refusing a drink from Rain would prick ears and invite watching eyes. The other ghouls had all fallen victim to Rain at one point or another, Phantom included.

His efforts were futile as Rain held the tumbler to his mouth for far longer than expected, forcing Phantom to continue gulping the water. He wasn’t sure he could physically hold any more liquid in that slight body of his. Dew and Swiss exchanged a knowing look, Rain having made the pack well aware of his intentions for tonight. 

With each gulp, the quintessence ghoul’s bladder longed for release, and his brain became fuzzier, a haze pulling over him. His belly was throbbing, an unhelpful, nimble hand massaging his abdomen. Cuddles, the water ghoul would claim if questioned. Not that anyone would, the pack were under strict instruction not to let on, and Phantom was flushing a deep purple at the idea of being found out.

Quintessence ghouls had an odd connection with the colour purple. When a ghoul turned that hue, it was indistinct, it could be any number of emotions; excitement, shyness, embarrassment, or unfortunately for Phantom, turned on. The young ghoul prayed the room wasn’t too dim for his glowing veins to be displayed. Even if it was, the distinct smell of ozone wafting around the room was all the pack needed to know exactly what was happening between the two ghouls.

In the interest of dragging the scene out, Rain removed his teasing hands and began to softly braid Phantom’s hair, gently raking his nails along the ghoul’s scalp as he whispered into his ear.

You don’t want us to miss the good part do you?

Such a good boy holding it in for me.

Gonna feel so good when you leak, getting the both of us all wet in front of the others.

Phantom shivered as he let out a barely audible whine accompanied with a plea, “Rainy, please, needa go!” He was rocking slightly now, thighs clenching in time with his movements, Rain struggling to keep a hold on his hair. It was a lost cause, the water ghoul decided, snaking his hands back under the oodie to still his desperate, whimpering ghoul.

At the sensation of Rain’s cold fingers resting just above his neatly trimmed curls, the quintessence ghoul could also feel another odd prodding sensation. Of course he’s getting off on this, Phantom thought as he ground discreetly against the water ghoul’s filled out cock; he was nothing if not passionate about pleasing his partners. At least Rain’s dick was leaking from arousal and not about to burst from the insistent pressure barraging his bladder.

Phantom would be lying if he said his cock wasn’t attempting to get hard, the incoming tsunami hampering its efforts. He got off on the humiliation of it all, the shame of wetting himself, losing- nay giving control to Rain, and oh the feeling of drenching himself in his own piss. The way it floods, saturating clothes as the stream hits too fast for the fibres to absorb it. The warmth, like basking in the heat of a thousand suns, slowly running down your legs, dripping beneath like sand from an hourglass of passion.

Phantom’s eyes rolled back both in desperation and in the heat of his own thoughts. He was close now, a weak dam holding back the torrent, due to collapse any minute. It was obvious even to a passer-by that the quintessence ghoul was aching for release of every kind. Small breathy moans, supposedly muffled by the soundtrack, eyes screwed shut, tail quietly thumping on the rug, and hands conspicuously hidden beneath his clothing, no doubt grabbing his dick like the end of a hose, letting the pressure build before spraying.

He could feel his body giving in, it feld like he’d been holding on for hours at the brink of spilling. He felt the stream making its way from his belly to his dick, leaking just a few drops. He whined, louder now, with abandon. Rain’s probing fingers froze, before settling over the ever-growing damp spot on Phantom’s sage green boxer briefs.

Quiet, my darling, we can’t have the pack finding out what a dirty boy you are…

Shh baby, you’re such a naughty little boy, you’ll let the whole ministry know you’re wetting yourself at this rate!

Phantom quiets down, a low purr in his chest, only for Rain’s ears. It was the water ghoul’s turn to breathe out a cut off whine, almost forgetting the game he was playing with the younger ghoul.

Phantom sat there, placed helplessly in Rain’s lap as he drenched the both of them in his piss, torrent in full flow now. His oodie sagging as the stream continued, warm humiliation coursing over him and through his veins. His boxers now a dark shade of the once autumnal colour, the overflow seeping slowly through his layers and onto Rain.

The water ghoul was rock hard, revelling in the way Phantom was leaking all over the two of them. The warmth flooded around his dick first, making it kick in interest, a small bead of pre soaking into his already wet underwear. His jeans were no match for a day’s worth of quintessence ghoul piss, quickly soaking through the layers, engulfing Rain’s ass and upper thighs in the hot liquid. He could feel it dribbling beneath him and onto the rug beneath, a pretty pattern forming in the tufts of the fabric, no doubt.

The flood came to an abrupt stop, Phantom sighing in relief, unsure how he held it for that long. Perhaps Rain helped a little, his magick was always subtle - you’d only ever notice it in hindsight, that’s what made it even hotter. Either way the shame hit Phantom like a truck, there was no way the pack didn’t see his spectacle. No way they didn’t hear the hiss as he relieved himself, fully clothed, in the common room, ruining Cirrus’ movie night.

They both sat there, unmoving for what felt like hours. Rain finally piped up, “Such a good boy for me, ah feel so wet, my perfect little piss boy,” he mouthed at Phantom’s neck.

Phantom took that as the end of the scene, Rain was done with him. He went to excuse himself, to clean up the mess he’d created at the hands of the water ghoul. It was embarrassing, sure, but it would be far more humiliating if the pack noticed when the lights came up and they all filtered out the common room, eyes not even needing to strain to see the puddle on the sky blue rug.

“Oh no, bug, you’re not going anywhere,” Rain whispered into his ear, faux concern in his voice, “they’ll see the way your clothes sag and drip all over the floor, a little trail of shame. You wouldn’t want them to find out, would you? To see your little accident? To see you can’t even hold it in during a film? How embarrassing,” he tutted. Phantom only winced in reply.

“Or worse, Ant, they might punish you for making such a mess of Cumulus’ new rug. I’m sure Swiss is vying for a chance to get you over his knees, all soggy and dripping, to show you what happens to naughty boys who break the rules.”

The cock beneath Rain’s sodden fingers gave an undeniable twitch at the comments, interest piqued at the idea of being found out; Rain knew the younger ghoul loved public play. 

Two long fingers found themselves tracing a slick line from where the piss had pooled in the bottom of Phantom’s underwear, grazing over his taint, gently teasing his balls, before drawing up over the length of his cock, at full attention now.

“Colour?” he asked almost silently, still keeping the guise of stealth.

“As green as the mountains, Rainy, fuck, please, so hard” he whined softly back, craning his head to keep their conversation somewhat private.

Rain chuckled as he began to stroke Phantom through the fabric, gliding smoothly over his dick, a mix of piss and pre lubricating the underwear. The quintessence ghoul threw his head back into the crook of Rain’s neck, his nerves were on fire, and if he wasn’t glowing purple before, he definitely was now. All he could hope was that the pack were too engrossed in the movie to notice.

The squelch of the movements was barely audible but it was crystal clear to Phantom, music to his ears. The product of his shameful accident being used to get him off? He nearly came at the sound alone. Phantom bucked his hips into Rain’s gentle touch, not quite enough to send him over the edge. 

“You either keep still or I stop touching you, baby boy,” Rain demanded, maintaining the pack are still unaware, despite the very obvious handjob he’s giving the whining ghoul on his lap. Rain would never admit it, but he was teetering on the edge with the heady combination of Phantom’s unintentional grinding and the gloriously wet puddle he was sitting in; he was going to blow his load right into the mix with Phantom’s piss if the younger ghoul didn’t stop.

Hips stilled and whines were cut off at the water ghoul’s insistent voice. Rain’s hand gave no reprieve, however, reaching below the damp material to grasp Phantom’s slick cock and start stroking him in earnest, smirking as the quintessence ghoul desperately tried to keep a straight face, fangs piercing his lips ever so slightly, purple blood aglow at the surface.

He tried to pay attention to the film, for the first time since Edward brought Bella to the Cullen home. Although, he doesn’t remember Twilight looking like this… there was a laugh track, and completely new characters, and-

“Oh- fuck, Rain, shit, ah, don’t stop!”

Rain leaned in to give a playful bite at Phantom’s neck, as he sent him over the edge, despite his confusion about the film. The quintessence ghoul hissed as Rain’s hand sped up, stroking him through his explosive release, cum further ruining the oodie and spurting onto his happy trail.

Once the water ghoul was sure Phantom’s dick was spent, milked dry, he released his hand, wiping it on a somewhat-dry part of Phantom’s clothing. Mourning the loss of contact, Phantom came to his senses, looking back up at the TV. It definitely wasn’t Twilight, perhaps it was that friends show Aurora kept talking about. Had he really been on the edge for so long that the film finished? Looking around, nobody was watching it. Every single pair of eyes was looking squarely at Phantom, hungry.

Looking up at the sofa behind him, Dew and Swiss grinned in unison.

“Heard you wanted to see what happened to naughty boys that broke the rules,” Dew growled, the scent of burnt wood and cinnamon assaulting the quintessence ghoul’s nose.

Phantom gulped as the whole pack stood up, Swiss offering his hand to the small ghoul. Phantom squelched as he rose, only briefly getting the chance to appreciate the mess he made of Rain’s lap before he was being dragged out of the common room.

Swiss didn’t stop until the quintessence ghoul was laid, in all his soggy glory, on the dining room table, the rest of the pack eagerly perching on the wooden chairs beneath.

“Are you going to be a good boy this time?”

[otomiyaa]

Hiii Ginny! I just re-read your "Lyney's trick" fanfiction and it was honestly a masterpiece! You crafted the story very well... but I'm curious... how would you imagine "childe, itto, thoma, kaveh, aether" if they were actually being choosen... will the scenario be the exact same with the gaming one? or different? because the gaming one really relates to his personality and that what makes it special (this is definitely not a fic request though, just wanna hear your thought/headcanon as the author, about how you'll imagine each scenario if the subject chosen were different) Have a nice day by the way! You're a true inspiration!

Hi hi!!! ^^ Aww I'm honored you would re-read my fic! And thank you for asking. My 2-part fics are actually all written in a way that I really see different outcomes depending on the winning option, so not just same plot different lee, or same scenario but with a different quote.

So in this case with the Lyney's Trick fic, I think what I had slightly in mind for each option was:

Childe: Ofc I don't know their exact canon relationship yet and if it's gonna be revealed in the new update (have yet to play) but since they're both fatui I imagined them more to have a brotherly rivalry, so Lyney would've been very smug while getting Childe in the trick position, and maybe they would've been able to tickle him a little until Childe breaks free and just... retaliates. So it would've probably been more lee Lyney and very much Lyney VS Childe focused with the happy ending that Lyney's predicament equally cheered up his siblings.

Itto: Could've been a really fun one with Ayato making some funny remarks while Itto is screeching. I pictured Itto to be as naive and fun as Gaming but then in a sillier way, shamelessly enjoying himself and making funny remarks.

Thoma: Also in this case Ayato (and Itto) would've gotten involved since I grouped them together. Knowing myself I'd have thrown in some flirty thomato stuff, as well as some very cute remarks about how gentle and humble Thoma is even when he's getting tricked into a tickly situation like that. He would've been very blushy, very confused, very cute hehe, getting tickled like that in front of the eyes of Ayato.

Kaveh: Since Kaveh was at the Sumeru table this would've gotten Alhaitham, Cyno and Tighnari involved as well (more than in the eventual outcome where Fontaine gang- Neuvillette and Wriothesley were the main audience). Kaveh would've been a little harder to break, and also to convince in the first place for cooperating, but with some motivation from the others he's more like okay sure why not. And I definitely wouldn't have missed the chance to throw in some bad bad Cyno-jokes.

Aether: Aether would've been a lovely lovely looovely lee, but as the premise already hinted, it was Aether's party with many of his friends there after all. So even if Aether would've been the winning option, I still would've juggled 2 options: his friends either all love to tease and bully him so they help Lyney inc. to wreck him, OR I would've let it turn out into a scenario where they come to Aether's aid which would've turned Lyney into the main lee again. Depending on my mood I would've picked a few main characters to involve, probably Childe, Kaeya and Venti.

Gaming:

That wasn't all btw.

It was already hard to pick between all the lovely characters to put in the poll for this fic. Others I had in mind were:

Chongyun: ofc with some Xingqiu, duuuhh, also involving Xiangling, Gaming and maybe even Shenhe as audience/side characters and maybe even fellow ticklers and teasers. Ending with yang Chongyun ofc and a very confused and surprised Lyney & siblings like omfg what have we done to him.

Xiao: Precious Xiao would've been the perfect person to ask, sitting awkwardly to the side. Might have needed some Aether influence to be convinced into joining. His own polearm could've been used to spread his arms and *wiggle fingers* poor thing. I would've let Venti join in for sure.

Tighnari: Very curious to try the trick. Definitely a lot of Cyno in it as well. Also very flustered and having some adorable reactions.

Scaramouche: What trick? He is above this. This would've been very funny now that I recall this option, oof.

Bennett: Unlucky boy would've been a great target. Razor would've been in this version.

Albedo: Would also have been curious but a little sceptical. Still cooperative. Aether and Kaeya would've been some others to be mainly involved.

[notasapleasure]

Fait prosperer qui n'est à croire vain please?? Tell me everything!! I forgot abt this but it sounds AMAZING (I’m partial to the Marthe/Güzel but ofc would love the Jerott/Lymond too!)

Oh it's all my end of PiF feelings again, about Marthe and sacrifice, Lymond and depression/recovery (or lack thereof) and Jerott and 'kindness'. Also i think Marthe deserves to rule Russia with a fist of iron and have a blazingly hot strategician girlfriend.

Uhhhhhh so this starts as a good fic and then gets utterly bogged down in me trying to make Jerott and Francis fuck. Sometimes a fic is better when there is no smut, Jo. Also paging @oughtaagh because there's Jerott, there's Francis, there's water, there's recklessness and rescue.

I'll write a bit about how I would have continued it/ended it at the end, but first

I'm just gonna post it.

It's LONG, so if you're struggling to read it all here on tumblr and really want to read it let me know and I'll stick it in a doc or something.

[Peak Lymond draft problems: googling a Latin quote you stuck in there because you have no idea what it meant, and learning that it's from Cicero, but still not knowing what it meant. Truly, it is just like dealing with Francis Crawford himself. Or lunchtime in the undergrad common room as the only dunce who didn't do the Latin module. Anyway I did find rough translations in the end but I'm leaving the quotes untranslated so you all get the authentic Dunnett experience]

---

The wagon slowed to a halt beside the figure among the trees.

Men at arms, moving with no anticipation of a threat, approached with open hands and a foreign greeting.

Taking their assistance, with golden head bowed and covered by a soft cap, the weary traveller got on board. Among cushions and furs, long limbs settled with grace. Cornflower blue eyes held mischief, and wide pink lips smirked satisfaction.

Kiaya Khatun's own eyes widened.

"You."

-

The straw in the stable had been piled up to cover worn buckram, silks and cottons. The boot prints around it were narrow and had scuffed the stone floor in their haste.

Only one pony remained.

Lymond ran a hand, already trembling with effort, down the thick fur on the animal's neck.

It was dawn, and it was cold in the mountains behind Volos. The pony's fur was sprinkled with a fine glitter of dew and its breath coiled in the air beside him.

He had it saddled, but the girth hung loose and unbuckled as he leaned against the animal's warm flank. He was certain he could travel, but the longer he stood in the damp morning air the less willing his body was to collude in this belief.

Marthe had gone early, and she had worn men's clothing, changing her outfit in the stable.

She had taken his place, asking no leave, contradicting her sanguine words about Camille de Doubtance's wishes.

All she had left was the discarded dress and a ghazal written on a scrap of paper, crumpled and stained, as though she had regretted it and nearly destroyed it:

"A friend is the one who beheads you.

A swindler puts a hat on your head.

A host who pampers you becomes your burden.

The Friend deprives you of yourself."

-

Inside the main building one person still slept. Jerott Blyth lay oblivious to the competition to leave him behind.

-

No voices were raised: raised voices travelled.

"Silly girl," Kiaya Khatun said softly.

The fates would be displeased; the planets misaligned; the old woman would not take this news kindly.

"She is dead."

"As she predicted she would be. So it is up to us to continue her work."

Lymond's sister raised a cynical brow. "It is very easy to predict one's own death, if one is willing to play a part in it."

This brash effrontery made the courtesan laugh.

She would allow Marthe the morning to talk to her of fantasies. At first stop, the girl would be returned, and Kiaya would send a man to retrieve her intended companion.

Russia needed warriors, not soothsayers.

-

Lymond crouched by the embers of the hearth.

He picked up the packet he had left. It was addressed to his sister: letters to make arrangements for her inheritance. A request that she uphold her promise. A warning that he should not be followed when he left.

He had returned to the building to ensure that these details were not left for the wrong eyes.

If Jerott read it in the absence of both Marthe and Lymond there would be recklessness, and Lymond could not afford to leave recklessness in his wake.

He had returned to the building to protect his exit.

It should have been clean. It should have been quiet. It should have been easy.

Following the sound of shuffling feet, the door opposite the fireplace began to open and Lymond breathed a curse.

On impulse, he tossed the paper packet into the orange bed of coals. Its edges blackened, and a smoky eclipse rushed over its surface before flames kindled and crackled, smacking their lips on the dry words.

-

"It's early."

Lymond stood - too quickly. His head swam.

The other man paused in the doorway of his room, rubbing rough-skinned hands over tired eyes and morning stubble.

"Was it a bad night? Are you ok?"

"I am fine," Lymond answered.

Jerott peered at him with a dubious expression.

In the trees up the slope a woodpecker hammered out its breakfast rhythms.

"Have you been outside?"

Lymond let his arms open in a sort of shrug.

Droplets of mist had caught in his hair, turning its ends to darkened twists. His boots had straw stuck in the mud on their soles and his riding cloak hung from his shoulders.

Glancing at the hearth, Jerott took in the tongues of flame that were already dying down, and the grey rectangle of ash sheaves from which they had sprung: the ghost of the letter packet.

The cot beside the fire was empty, its curtain drawn back and bedclothes rumpled.

Marthe had few belongings, but none remained in their accustomed places.

Jerott looked at Lymond with sharp new panic.

"Where is she?"

Jerott was outside, halfway to the stable block even as Lymond called the answer Jerott already knew: "She's gone."

-

Standing within the stable, Jerott picked up the dress. He pressed it, unhesitatingly, to his face. He breathed in the smell of her body, mingled now with the dry scent of fresh straw.

His eyes opened to the sight of the saddled pony and it added insult to injury.

Jerott stormed back to the other building and tossed Lymond's packed satchel on the stone flags before the hearth. Combined with the hurt in his eyes, no accusation needed to be spoken.

In response, Lymond's expression was closed and wary, but his body language was resigned.

She had taken his place. That was all.

He did not know how long she would survive in it if he did not reclaim his position at Kiaya Khatun's side.

"Russia?" Jerott exploded. "Why would she go to Russia?"

Because, Lymond thought to himself, she had chosen to ignore Camille de Doubtance's plans. She had elected to claim her birth right: the adventure that should have been hers without question had she been born a man. She had intended to set her brother free of the webs that had been woven for him. To take up their severed bonds and turn them to a bridle for her own destiny.

"She is looking for a new station."

Jerott looked at the ash fluttering on top of the embers.

"But I was going to marry her."

-

It took little enough time for Iphis to have her way.

Among furs a sea-weathered cupid rolled with the movement of the cart. A gift and a promise; ambition and proof; the cupid had changed hands in Djerba, and ridden as the strange confidant of Kiaya Khatun since then.

She drew the lithe body of Lymond's sister into the cushions beside her. The blonde head rested against her shoulder and Marthe sighed with pleasure.

Kiaya Khatun had always been too curious.

Ambition was a virtue, but without restraint it was dangerous. Curiosity ignored boundaries and left ambitious women seeking more.

No need to be a warrior when you can be a shapeshifter. No need to be a soothsayer when you can forge your own fate.

-

"You don't understand."

Jerott had been stung by multiple barbs. He nursed the knowledge that Lymond had meant to leave him. He wondered about the future with Marthe that might have been - he contrasted her placid sweetness in recent memory with her old cruelty. Had she been kind because she knew it would come to an end before it came to marriage? Had that been an act to appease Lymond as much as Jerott?

Because it was always Lymond who stood between them. Always Lymond, in the corner of Jerott's eye, in the back of his mind, like a conscience double-checking all of his actions.

Lymond, who stood now in inscrutable stillness with his back to the wall. Beneath heavy lids and golden lashes, he regarded Jerott with an expression of weary patience.

"I understand." Lymond spoke softly but firmly.

"No," Jerott slapped an open palm on the door jamb. He stared at it, disappointed that the shock of pain caused by the gesture was already fading.

Lymond's jaw tensed.

"I love her. How can you, you, possibly understand?"

Lymond's fingers flexed against the stone wall to either side of him. His posture remained defensive, an animal backed into a corner. "I am not immune to the feeling, Jerott, despite what you seem to believe of me."

Jerott scoffed and looked at him with the kind of tolerance he might show a particularly stupid child. "Really. When you intended today to make for Russia on the touring bed of a Turkish courtesan."

Lymond did not flinch. "Kiaya Khatun is Greek."

"Clearly I am mistaken, and your profound connection with her runs deeper than I realised," Jerott said bitterly.

He missed the hot, blue flicker of irritation in Lymond's eyes.

"And I should learn about the profundity of love from you, I suppose?"

Jerott flushed red, though the firelight camouflaged it.

"Do not sully this by claiming you have encountered its like in the debauchment of the French court," he muttered. His ears prickled with heat.

Lymond sighed: "Ah."

He leaned his head back against the stone. "You think that such things occur in the absence of sentiment."

Lymond considered, in turn, the joy that Thady Boy Ballaght had brought men and women alike. The meeting of experience he had had with Oonagh O'Dwyer. The broken heart of the archer Robin Stewart.

"I find that, all too often, it is a surfeit of feeling that makes court such as it is."

Jerott's hands curled into fists, propped above his head on the jambs to each side of the door. He shifted the weight of his hips and feet, glaring at the swept stone floor. "It is hardly the same thing."

Lymond, tiring, conceded a final justification of his words. "I will not claim to have felt as you feel for Marthe. But I have seen more of life than exists in an Auberge on a small island, Jerott. Allow me some understanding of its rhythms."

Finally, Jerott raised his black head and met Lymond's eyes. He shivered visibly when he looked into that fine, Della Robbia face. All its foundations were etched sharply in the firelight and what daylight entered through the door around Jerott's blocking form: the elegant sweep of cheekbones and jawline, the plaintive sockets and the translucent, gem-like glitter of blue in their depths.

Jerott's lip curled, but he did not quite manage to keep his voice steady. "Then thank you. For your understanding."

In angry silence, Jerott was left with a familiar discomfort: the idea that each of them, Lymond and Marthe, had all these months been occupied with plans they had never shared - would never share - with him. It was now joined by the unhappy knowledge that both had tried to leave him behind in secret - whether abandoning Jerott to the arsenal of their sibling, or perhaps abandoning their sibling to Jerott's uncultured company.

The worst of it was that Jerott thought back over all that had happened since Philippa Somerville had insisted on pursuing the seemingly sanguine Crawford of Lymond -  keeper of armies, uncaring father to a lost bastard - across the continent, and Jerott could barely recall the moments he would not choose to live again. His thoughts dwelt only on the thrill of the horse show, the pounding of his heart as he raced across Moorish rooftops and powered through the warm Mediterranean with a body in his arms - precious salvage from the wreckage of Zuara. He held to the memory of a single, longed-for look of pride and the dangerous glamour of gold hair and white linen beneath the African moon.

-

Lymond retrieved his pack wordlessly and eyed Jerott, who remained in the doorway.

"I will take the pony and catch up to them. If Kiaya Khatun has not already sent her on her way back here, I will tell her you are waiting."

Jerott did not move. His arms tensed as he grasped the wooden jambs and he raised his chin in defiance. "No."

This was precisely what Lymond had feared.

"I am losing time," he said warningly.

Ironically, given his present position, Lymond thought about how Jerott was like a door that would not stay shut. He could exhaust one's energies on an impossible task. And for a man used to a lifestyle of discipline and regiment, Jerott had shed the obedience demanded by the Order with a speed that left one reeling.

Attempting to shake him off was like negotiating with quicksand.

"They won't be travelling quickly." Jerott reasoned. "You said she would be bringing a train. We can catch them up with the pony - they won't make it to Larissa in a single day, even on the old road."

Lymond had to grit his teeth against the pain that was rising in volume in his head.

He lacked the strength to stop Jerott from snatching the pack away again.

"Besides, you are not in a fit state to stop me," Jerott muttered. "So you are not fit to travel alone."

Had all gone according to plan, Lymond had feared that Jerott would try to follow him. Why should it be a surprise, now, to find that Jerott would not leave him?

He watched Jerott through the doorway, thinking of St Mary's and every instance since in which Jerott had simply remained.

Once, Lymond had asked Jerott not to let himself be driven away.

To that one order, Jerott had remained faithfully compliant.

-

At first stop, Kiaya Khatun laughed beneath pear trees still laden with browning, over-ripe fruit. She sat on a bench covered by woven rugs, steaming kahveh set between her and her lover.

She was patron of the young champion in practical brown hose and doublet: a peacock dining with her graceful hen.

With a dagger on her belt and her hair braided tight beneath her cap, Marthe was not quite comfortable. She was not quite Lymond. But she rode the thrill of Kiaya's smile and placed olives into her mouth, and they made new plans. They drew up their own charts, for the planets they had pushed off course.

Russia needed warriors. Most of all it needed strategists. And what was running a household, navigating a seraglio, buying and selling ancient artefacts, but being a strategist?

A storm was rolling in from Mount Pelion, and Kiaya Khatun watched Marthe learn the vocabulary of command needed to arrange the vast train accompanying them.

Although she lacked Lymond's confidence, Marthe compensated with a ruthless assumption that none would choose to do as she asked without the threat of misery held over them. This tone made the men hurry to prove themselves capable, and Marthe stood back, astonished and pleased, as mules and servants, tents and shelters, arranged themselves in regimented practice to construct a small village of cloth and leather, enough to barrack them all through the heaviest of snows.

There was pride in Kiaya Khatun's eyes as she said "Khorosho."

Marthe's heart ran like Ottoman cavalry across the plain. Not once in her life had anyone looked at her in that way.

-

Time passed in a slow descent through the mists that left Lymond furious at their pace - and exhausted in every muscle. They wove through the thin trees silently, droplets of cold water clinging to their hair and cuffs and the pony's thick fur.

Even had he been alone he would have made slow progress. The soil was slick with streamlets of groundwater that began to crunch and crackle as the earth cooled, and the rock beneath them juddered down from the mountain in uneven steps, laced throughout with treacherous, snaking roots.

The pony, sturdy and gallant though it was, followed Jerott's lead, its heavy hoof-falls striking hollow sound from root and rock.

When the mist left them - quite suddenly, and well before they reached the Thessalian plain - it was replaced by a thin, warning breeze. Lymond pulled the woollen collar of his cloak up around his neck and set his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering.

Still they could see no further through the leaning boughs of conifers. Colour was absent beneath the white spotlight of the high clouds: trees were the shade of iron, their needles and the cobwebs that hung on them were bleached and silver-gilt by dew.

Walking at the bridle, Jerott did not attempt to make conversation. His black hair clung in damp runnels to the edges of his face, to his head and neck. Water beaded and pooled in the folds of the pack on his shoulders but his pace did not tire.

He would be thinking over what had almost happened and, perhaps, trying to distinguish between his anger at Lymond and his anger at Marthe.

Lymond regretted it, but he remained silent.

He had thought that his sister had reached an understanding with him - and with Jerott.

Marthe had professed a prophecy of kindness for a man adequate to his fate and then - in an act of hubris - she had changed her mind and stolen away in the crepuscular light.

Lymond considered all that had proved true since it had been foretold in Lyons, and all that could have been proven true even then. Information was not art magique; an understanding of the past was not the same as a vision of destiny. Whatever she had been, or was meant to be, to Camille de Doubtance, Marthe must have recognised this and preferred some other path.

Perhaps, when they caught up to her, she could explain how she had broken free of the framework of fate, and explain to Jerott how he might do the same.

For his part, Lymond would inform Marthe that she had jeopardised not some nebulous destiny or chart dictating his future; not some unsolicited vision of lives conducted by an old woman in a Saxon wig; but a decision made by a rational and lucid mind. A decision of his own making, that he had every intention of holding to.

-

Large, feathery flakes of snow were beginning to penetrate the thinning tree cover. The slope was no longer as steep, and they could now glimpse the pale expanse of the Thessalian plains beyond.

Lymond pressed the pony to a faster pace, taking over the lead, and Jerott's stride lengthened to compensate, his cheeks bright with colour.

On the plains, the snow had been blowing down from the uplands, and it smudged grass and river and track and building into indistinct grey. Only the black water of Lake Karla stood out, its surface stippled like old metal beneath the wind and the precipitation.

Jerott broke into a jog to keep pace with Lymond's descent towards the edge of the lake. He glanced up between footfalls, searching what could still be seen of the horizon for Kiaya Khatun's encampment. It was where Marthe would be, and he sent his heart out into the weather, thinking of the pricking of his skin when he was in her presence, of the dragging ache in the pit of his stomach and the way she made his arms feel like they would always be empty.

Without her, he did not know what he would do. All he could imagine, that was not in proximity to her, was the endlessly occupying struggle of following the rider ahead.

Now Lymond was directing the pony into the marshy land at the lake's edge. He was making for a shallow-bottomed fishing dory, Jerott saw, and not the reed-thatched shelter nearby.

Wet ground tugged at Jerott's boots as he plunged after Lymond. He had begun to worry that the other man would not wait, and tried to close the distance between them when Lymond drew to a halt.

"Francis! Do you see them?" Jerott called, hoping that, in giving an answer, Lymond would think to allow Jerott to catch up.

Lymond swung his feet from the stirrups and paused for a moment, both of his hands resting on the pommel. Like a bird tucking its head into its own neck feathers, he glanced back at Jerott over the cloak bundled around his shoulder.

His face looked as grey as the whirling snow over the lake, and Jerott recognised, at last, the frailty Lymond had tried so fiercely to hide all morning.

Jerott did not take the time to drop his heavy pack but flung himself forwards through the freezing mire, swinging arms and pumping hot, tired legs to reach Lymond before he fell.

He got to the pony's side too late to stop Lymond from dismounting, but in enough time to support him where he landed, clinging to the saddle in limp desperation. Lymond's legs seemed beyond his control, liquid and powerless beneath the pressure of some unseen agony.

"The boat," Lymond ordered through pressed lips.

"No. In God's name no," Jerott swore. He heaved Lymond's weight, his hands hard and unforgiving against the trembling body of the other man, wedged into armpits and scrabbling at wet clothing. Lymond clearly wanted to protest, but his white fingers could not maintain their furious, stubborn grip on the saddle. His throat released a sound of mingled pain and rage when Jerott kept him upright and forcibly rearranged Lymond's hold in order to boost him, unwilling, back into the saddle.

He went, in a cascade of cold muddy water, spurs catching on cloth and skin as his legs struggled against the air. Back onboard, Lymond curled over the pommel with hands hooked in pain. His eyes were screwed shut, his body shook from exertion, and his breathing howled in him like the wind on the mountains. But he did not attempt to dismount again, and he gave no further orders.

Jerott took the pony's bridle and turned towards the little hut on the lake's edge. He wiped the drizzle of blood on his chin with the back of one soaking, frozen hand and sighed at the new rip in his weather-worn jerkin.

-

Dreams now were too full of the familiar. Lymond longed for the bewildering terror of early withdrawal: the howling, bleeding, unknown of those visions.

In sleep he saw a child, scared and uncertain. The dress that Marthe had left in the straw turned to straw in a dress, stuffed unevenly, imperfect seams covered by black curls of hair.

Green eyes shaded by the holes of a sequined mask; then empty sockets, misshapen under leathery skin, their depths tangled with straw.

He heard a lisping voice beg in many-accented English; an Irish lullaby; it segued into raucous singing, the whispered promises of the court, the babbling of a demigod pinned down by mutes on the corner of a chessboard.

He turned from the scene, blood on his doublet, though he did not know where it came from. Through a door he saw Sibylla smile and beckon him to her, he heard Richard's merry laughter mingle with that of his wife and the child he dandled on his sturdy knee. Lymond hurried forwards, but only in order to heave one side of the heavy double door shut. Across the entrance, where they should have been helping him by closing the other door, Marthe and Philippa watched him toil and Marthe murmured: "A friend deprives you of yourself."

-

Inside the small fishing hut, some terrible battles were being fought.

"Mother, it is me." - "But I cannot come home." - "Mo chridh..." - "Do not make me promise it. Do not make me." - "I cannot go home. I have no brother. I have no home." - "I beg of you. You know not what you ask." - "Mother, mother I am tired..."

Already tormented by questions that arrived in pursuit of words he should never have heard, Jerott could stand no more. He arranged his aching legs and crossed the room in two strides to crouch by Lymond and shake his shoulder roughly.

"Francis! Francis wake up."

"I am tired," Lymond repeated, a frown troubling his alabaster brow. From beneath the darkened, matted gold lashes, tears had spilled.

Somehow seeing them was more troubling than all of the physical suffering, and Jerott shook him harder.

At last, Lymond's eyes opened with fury. One hand flew, sharp-nailed, to Jerott’s wrist.

Jerott stilled, waiting for consciousness to catch up with instinct.

The hand that clawed at him loosened slowly, and Jerott felt the wet chill of broken skin revealed beneath one nail.

Breathing heavily, silently, Lymond folded his hands over his abdomen. He became an uncomfortable jumble of slackness and fraught tension, blue eyes wide and teeth minutely bared.

"The dreams. You were shouting," Jerott explained, and found his own voice hoarse and unsteady on his lips.

"And what is it that you would like me to clarify about my situation?" Lymond put as much acid as he could muster into the words. "What sordid detail piqued your interest?"

The glitter of saltwater remained on the shadows beneath his eyes, but Lymond did not move to wipe the tears away. He seemed half submerged in dream still, barely conscious of where he was.

The antagonistic tone unbalanced Jerott just as it always did, and he sat down hard next to where Lymond lay, confusion mingled with exasperation on his features. He shook his head at Lymond's venomous stare.

"Are you in pain?"

Lymond's eyes glinted as though he had been provoked. "What did I say?"

Jerott sighed and let his shoulders fall into an aspect of defeat. His eyes were hot with misery. "All sorts of things. I don't know. You said you can't go home."

One of the loosely folded hands flinched and began to shake before Lymond regained control of it. He swallowed drily.

"I see. Well that much you already knew."

Lymond's eyes closed and his expression was subsumed by nausea. On one temple a muscle tightened, and a purplish vein showed through translucent skin. He struggled with the weight of one arm, moving it so as to lie his fingers across his lowered eyelids.

Jerott reached for a leather flask with water in it, and softly determined to move Lymond's hand and help him to sit up against the wall.

Instead, Lymond made himself an intractable dead weight. Resistance set itself in Lymond's jaw, and Jerott felt something give, like a worn cord breaking with a twang inside himself.

"For God's sake, Francis, I don't care what family secrets you feel the need to keep from me! I no longer wish to know any more than I do about Marthe's parentage or yours. You are clearly related - " Jerott glanced away with regret. "The heavens would never play such a cruel trick twice otherwise. But that is not why I am here."

Lymond lay deep among the bedding, recoiled and withdrawn like a threatened predator. His breathing was laboured and some unseen agony twisted each joint and tendon. The shape of his skull was more clearly defined than usual, his pallid skin drawn tight up to his hairline, where sweat began to darken the coils of blond hair. Enmeshed in pain, he would speak only of pain; he would inflict only pain; he would embody the thing that was consuming him because no other care would suffice to dull it.

In this context, Jerott's words offered to lay a responsibility of explanation in his hands that Lymond could only thrust away from himself viciously.

"Then why are you here? I see no wayward teenagers twisting your conscience; no innocents left to save, no need for vengeance gone unaddressed. You would not even press on to find the woman you profess to love - have you any idea of the danger she has likely put herself and Kiaya Khatun in?"

It wasn't enough. In Stamboul he had thrown a knife, lashing out like he might at a stray dog, and that had not been enough either.

His expression grim, resigned, Jerott replaced the flask on the floor and - Lymond's heartbeat sharpened with fear - looked momentarily as though he might stand and leave Lymond to stew in his discomfort.

Instead, he pried Lymond's unwilling shoulders from the nest of blankets on the floor with ungentle fingers.

Lymond hung back, a weight that acted against the strength drawing him into Jerott's hold. But when the balance of his body shifted and he fell forwards against the other man's chest, all the weight with which he had pulled away now collapsed into the waiting embrace.

Lymond was submerged in Jerott's arms, which were a tourniquet around the torrent of pain in his body. His head dropped into the shape of Jerott's neck, his raw nerves scuffing against the cotton ruff of his collar. His body shook and Jerott's hold tightened; Lymond's fists balled as though to fight off this imprisonment, but he brought them to rest against Jerott's back. He did not embrace him in return, his palms felt like they had on the galleys: flayed and exposed, bloodied and ruined. But his arms took strength where they lay alongside Jerott's rib cage, and he gasped in the hot air trapped between their bodies, inhaling the scents of fire smoke and damp wood that were imprinted on Jerott's clothing.

Jerott's was not a gentle gesture, but a fierce onslaught of care that fastened as stubbornly to Lymond's being as the ache of withdrawal did. He did not release him, even when the shivering slowed and became intermittent. He did not release him even when Lymond's eyes drooped and fell closed in the dark of Jerott's shoulder. Lymond's breathing steadied and still Jerott could not let him go.

Jerott stared at the wall with unfocused, fearful eyes. The blond hair that tickled and stuck to his cheek was familiar and yet not; the thin shoulders and bony, hard-muscled back was like Marthe's but different. The need with which Lymond had, at last, drawn on Jerott's care was wholly new, and intoxicating.

With stilted, stiff movement, Lymond's fists loosened and unfurled. He lay his palms on the plains of Jerott's shoulder-blades and slowly, cautiously, wrapped himself closer to the source of respite and relief.

Jerott leaned his jaw against Lymond's head, and wondered whether Lymond could hear his blood thunder like floodwaters in his veins.

-

It was rare that the expressive features ever lay so still.

It was rarer yet that Jerott Blyth paused to examine anything with such care.

Lymond's body had sunken against him, true sleep imposing its peace at last. Jerott guided him carefully back to the floor and arranged the covers around him, unconsciously tweaking at folds and ripples of wool until Lymond lay neatly beneath an even covering, protected from the many draughts in the little hut.

Moving on the way to tidying Lymond's unruly waves of hair, Jerott caught himself, his hand poised by the curve of Lymond's brow and the elegant line of his temple.

When he had looked at Marthe he had drunk in all that he could about her appearance, wide-eyed and unashamed, letting his longing gaze caress each and every quadrant of skin and shape. He could enumerate and bring to mind all the tones of her hair - lemon flesh, saffron and sand, ochre and brass - all so unique to her - and all the gradients of her sun-basted skin. He had imagined what it would be like to hold Marthe before he had held her; he had sought frantically to recall the taste of her lips that time in the tekke he thought he had made her endure his kiss (all that he recalled, though, was the subtle fire of the raki on his own tongue).

He did not look at anyone else in such a way.

He did not look.

He did not let himself look.

But here were those familiar features, softened in sleep, their edges chiselled and bevelled into something stronger, perhaps even more striking. All those colours that he had told himself were hers alone, flagrantly sported by another.

As though he had placed an ember from the fireplace on his tongue and swallowed it in one gulp, Jerott felt heat slash a line deep into his body. His heart twisted: a resistant, bucking animal. He could not explain whether it was the same feeling that was kindled when he thought of Lymond's sister. That had been a need, a demand that his every fibre clamoured for without shame. This - this made his pulse quicken in a new way. A furtive, hopeful way that left him feeling physically bruised.

He murmured a prayer and it rebounded on him. His mind offered only a mocking rejoinder:

Stay me.

Refresh me.

I am sick with love.

As though his fingers belonged to another person, Jerott watched his own hand descend to stroke sweat-streaked golden coils off Lymond's skin. The hair at his temple was softer and finer than Eastern silk, the feeling of it beneath the sensitive pads of Jerott's fingers something that he wanted to experience again and again.

Shyly, he smoothed its satin strands with short strokes of touch. His thumb moved out to compare the feeling of one perfectly shaped brow, and it was only when Lymond uttered a sigh in his sleep that Jerott withdrew. He flexed his fingers, feeling their skin changed as though burned.

For a time, he sat wondering at himself and at the newly peaceful body curled among the covers. He had contributed to the rest that Lymond now enjoyed: it was an act of construction the likes of which he had never thought he would experience outside the spiritual ceremonies of the Order.

This was a fearful new discovery that made his pulse run in feverish haste. Where faith and protectiveness and the sweetness of touch eddied together.

Shaken, Jerott returned to the other end of the shelter and wrapped himself as well as he could in a leftover blanket. He listened to the storm, and did not intend to sleep, but the strange emotions of the already-long day left him wrung out and exhausted. His chin smarted and he was at last beginning to feel the chill of his damp clothes and hair.

His mind blundered in pained desperation against all the choices of the previous year. He covered his face with his hands and asked himself how it had come to this, so soon after Gabriel's betrayal, so soon after he had made a promise to keep his love in check. And yet - he could not imagine choosing differently. His memories shone with the gilt adornment of Lymond's sanction, also: he had needed Jerott, as much as Jerott had needed to be there.

He moved his fingers apart, like fretwork over his eyes, so that when he blinked rapidly at Lymond's resting form, he felt his lashes flutter against skin. […]

[…]

His eyelids grew heavy as he looked across the fire at the peaceful hills of Lymond's form beneath covers. Jerott drifted out of consciousness wondering what it would be like to bury his face in the back of blond curls; to touch his cheek to the fine-muscled neck and shoulder; to press his mouth to skin as smooth and beautifully freckled as a goldfinch egg.

[…]

-

Lymond awoke with a sense of lack. He was wound round in a plethora of blankets and covers but felt exposed. The blankness of thought that followed a deep sleep lingered, and he struggled to grasp the context of where he had slept and what time of day it was. Memory and pain repelled one another, like oil and water.

All he could discern was that it was cold and it was dark.

He blinked rapidly, squeezed his eyes shut and opened them wide. The darkness endured, but he moved his head and was able to identify the embers of a low burning fire. Relief prickled his scalp at the sight, at the confirmation of sight, and the clue as to where he had found himself.

It was a small room - no, a small building - thin-walled, thatch-roofed, sparsely furnished with details he could not quite identify. Pots and herbs hung from beams that criss-crossed the space beneath the sloping roof, biding, draped in spider webs, cloaked by winter disuse. The air was heavy with the smell of wood smoke and wet cloth and the only sound he noticed was the occasional hiss of protest from the embers as meltwater dripped through the narrow vents in the ceiling.

He was not in Volos any longer and he was not in a travelling tent or wagon. Even as consciousness surged, he could not say where this building was or how he had come to be there.

Without having done more than crane his head from the covers, Lymond felt his heart pound with exertion. A reflexive sweat of panic chilled his temples and his body, and the throbbing of his veins was like the warning of distant thunder. He rolled onto his back and made his hands into fists within the blankets.

His thoughts were like moth-eaten silk, unravelling as he grasped for them.

He had left the monastery at Volos. He had ridden downhill, through forest and mist, through thinning trees and cooling air, dogged all the way by regret. He had to cross the lake, though he did not want to - but it was the only way back onto the path he had lost. And the harder he pushed to reach it the more hopeless it seemed, the further behind he appeared to have been left, the more he understood and sorrowed for how much he had let them all down.

That thought finally snagged on something: he flinched, his eyes closed, throat tight, as though he could look away from the recollection of that silent knife and the blood, staining purple satin to wet black. He began to shake, and his dreams started to seep into his mind again like the snow dripping from the chimney vents. All of those he would never see again: doors closing, closing.

Among the dead and the distant who haunted his thoughts were Marthe and Güzel, who he had seen together at Djerba, even as he made his own plans. Pride with pride, a pursuit of power that forged onwards with inexorable need, loosed from a divine grasp like the apple of Eris. The ear of the Tsar would be bent to new fortune tellers, those who were unafraid to answer back to the heavens and tell them to speak their predictions anew.

He understood the compulsion, he supposed, but he had to stop it, else they would become just another sphere within his nightmares.

It was also, he acknowledged, out of a selfish fear that he recoiled from giving up Russia to them. If they kept him from his intended work he must face his present position: depleted of all resources, robbed of family twice over, and, by necessity, a sword for hire and a pair of strong rowing arms as he had once been before.

Lymond turned to his side again and curled, animal-like, about his knees. Deep in the muddle of blankets and clothes he picked up the scent of another body: something difficult to define, sweaty and damp like he was himself, but of a different source. Leather where Lymond wore velvet; woollens where he wore silk. He inhaled deeply, but the smell of the other was elusive and soon lost in his own miasma. It made him lie still with concentration though, and in stillness he found another memory: the salvation of warmth and an embrace that had gathered together all the fraying parts of Francis Crawford's being, fusing his shattered person like a smith might melt down old silver to forge it anew.

He sighed into that memory because it did not hurt like all other thoughts hurt. It was fresh and simple, familiar and yet long awaited, as though he had been able to find comfort in his pocket when he needed it most, where once he had placed it and forgotten about it. Demanding nothing, promising nothing - Lymond's mouth twisted wryly against the blankets - understanding nothing. Just the memory of an embrace, like a dogged presence he could not shake free of.

Almost wary of breathing lest he disturb the recollection, he imagined the shadow of touch steadying, tethering him. A hard jaw against his trembling head and flexed muscle across his shivering back.

There had, after all, been one person absent from his nightmares. One who did not need to be mourned and who countered regret with stubborn continuity. One who - Lymond opened his eyes and stared with resignation into the darkness - was yet to be freed of his thankless task, but who needed, like all the others, to be shown why he must leave Lymond to his own lonely path.

If only Jerott had not woken at Volos. There would be no new act to bring to mind previous occasions in which Jerott's utility could not be denied. No need for Lymond to resent his own weary body for clamouring in hope of peace and rest, for its treacherous nostalgia for a firm, warm embrace standing between Lymond and the beckoning road.

Just a night, his flesh seemed to beg him, quaking more at the idea of cold than at its actual penetration of the covers. A night to sleep and be warm and to let another shoulder the burden of his needs. Just to sustain him through whatever lay beyond here, his skin pleaded, tightening and puckering like a plucked fowl along the backs of his arms and his neck.

Lymond pressed his short nails into his palms and regretted their bluntness. He thrust himself up to a sitting position and threw back the blankets to make his body aware of the cold properly and fully. He would master this childish longing more easily than he had mastered the withdrawal from the drug. He must do so, for he feared stopping now, feared the war within himself: continue or - cease. He saw no way to navigate a path in between.

He forced himself to stand and waited for a moment as the darkness wavered murkily and a tide of nausea grasped at him.

Stiff-legged, aware with each movement of the aches of riding and of sleeping on a hard floor, and more besides, Lymond shuffled to the area where a jumble of packs and shoes, old fishing rods and reed woven receptacles lay. On the opposite side of the grey lines of light that edged the doorway, he saw Jerott's sleeping form.

His body crumpled awkwardly against the wall in the draught from the entrance, his head to the wooden panels, knees drawn up and arms tight across his body. He had positioned himself as far as he could be from Lymond in the small building.

Lymond approached with trepidation and was assaulted by the stench of wet horse: the only blanket Jerott had kept for himself was the saddle blanket, beneath which he snored lightly. His hair was still damp from outdoors, clinging to his forehead and cheek in dark lines. On his chin was a separate stain, rising from the shadow of his throat, a strand of newly dried blood, smudged carelessly, neither deep nor long, but enough to make Lymond frown.

He did not remember causing it, but the guilt he felt was adamant. It was further confirmation that Jerott Blyth would be much better off without him.

Lymond shuddered and turned away to pull on his boots and cloak. He ensured that Jerott was left with all he would need on the road, and hauled the pack to the door with shivering, unsteady determination.

Gently, Lymond pulled open the door of the fishing hut and the gust of fresh oxygen made the embers behind him glow brighter.

He glanced back, but Jerott continued to sleep, caught now between the firelight and the cool blue of the evening. On impulse, Lymond left the pack and retrieved one of the blankets he had had for his own bed. It was dry and still warm, and he tucked it around Jerott's legs carefully, ensuring that he did not wake.

Outside, snow had met the edges of the building in arrested drifts, packed thick and undulating over treacherous marshy ground. The sky above the mountains was the colour of mallow flowers, and it was impossible to tell cloud from the deepening of night. All had the heavy, expectant stillness of winter, when the world took a deep breath between snowfalls and adjusted thoughtfully to its new mantle.

The pony was nowhere to be seen. Jerott must have turned it loose to let it find its own way through the storm. It would have discovered shelter in the woods or it would have provided a boon for the hungry winter wolves. It had not waited by the hut with any misguided sense of attachment. No trace of it remained: the snow was pristine, untouched even by the birds chattering in the trees or the squirrels that shook the occasional dusting of white loose from the branches.

Lymond gazed at the scene, and as he did he began to piece together the journey there. He glanced down at the heel of his boots and saw the trace of crimson glint on the wheel of his spur. He grimaced and left the pack for the moment, taking instead one of the oars and beginning, methodically, to clear a path to the lake's edge.

-

[... about this point in the fic there's overlap between chapters because I couldn't decide on the perspective etc, and I kept going back to rewrite the build-up/add more in]

-

-

"Are you leaving?"

Lymond paused in the act of shouldering on the pack. He hid the way his face pulled in a wince at the weight of it and turned to the door. "I told you, I am going to Russia alone."

Jerott's body pushed him to stand, leaning against the wall, even though sleep still lay heavily on his mind and his face. "But I thought - If Marthe does not want - If she no longer -" Jerott rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and shook his head. They had already had this talk, hadn't they?

Things had seemed to simple, for a few days at Volos. Now that tenuous bond he thought he had forged with Marthe had been swept away like a fine veil of cobweb, and he no longer knew where he should turn.

"Would you not have use of me there?"

Lymond's shoulders moved a fraction, and he sighed. "It is not that, Jerott."

For a moment it seemed that Lymond might offer more, unbidden, but when he looked up the gem-like glitter of his eyes was resolute. "This is something I must undertake myself."

Jerott's voice came, impulsive as ever, from the shadow where he stood, beyond the reach of the dying fire. "But I would serve under you."

Lymond smiled. "Up to a point, I have no doubt that you would. But as the proverb says: bonum esse, habere amicos: sed miseros esse, qui his uti cogantur."

He arranged his gloves and put his hand on the latch.

Jerott moved forward with a frown, his sluggish mind picking at the Latin. "There is no compulsion when friendship is offered freely. You barely have the strength to carry that pack. How will you make it even as far as Güzel's camp?"

The low red embers now illuminated Jerott from beneath, light picking out the worried angle of his brows, his flared nostrils and bow-curved lip. And - Lymond's eyes alighted on it instantly - the fresh wound on his jaw.

"I will manage. I have a great deal of experience with rowing through discomfort," he said sourly.

Jerott, seeing before him only a long and lonely journey West, spoke with exasperation. "You don't have to always do this alone."

The cornflower blue eyes, muddied by the red light, widened a fraction. "Alle þinges er maad of one alloon substance of one alloon ordinance. I will not involve those who do not need to become involved. I have allowed it to happen too often, and it has not been myself who has paid the price."

Jerott noticed the other man's gaze rest on his chin and touched his fingers to the injury. "This was an accident."

Lymond said nothing more. He reached for the oars that leaned in a corner of the hut with the fishing tackle, and Jerott felt panic, like drowning, push him another step closer.

"For God's sake, you don't always have to be the martyr!"

"I thought that martyrdom was done entirely for God's sake?"

Jerott made a noise of frustration and grabbed for his travelling cloak, its wool still damp from the earlier journey. Lymond flung the door of the fishing hut open and the gust of fresh oxygen made the embers glow brighter.

Snow had met the edges of the building in arrested drifts, packed thick and undulating over treacherous marshy ground. The sky above the mountains was the colour of mallow flowers, and it was impossible to tell cloud from the deepening of night. All had the heavy, expectant stillness of winter, when precipitation had ceased and the world adjusted thoughtfully to its new mantle.

Lymond paused for a moment and then stabbed the oars into the knee-high drift at the empty doorway and began the task of forging a path.

Jerott surged forwards but stopped, stunned, when Lymond flipped his cloak back to lay a hand on the decorated pommel knop of his dagger.

"I will write word to you at Lyons. Go back to Volos and then to France. If I can send Marthe to you I shall."

"It seems a poor kind of charity," Jerott told him bitterly, but he stayed back on the limen, his hands braced in each side of the entrance as he watched Lymond toil at the snow.

Lymond made good pace, but Jerott saw the forced control of his movement, the uneasy line of his shoulders. Occasionally he had to stop and release a single, shuddering breath before he continued his work, and then Jerott would take a few steps along the path behind him, reluctant to simply turn away and let him go.

When he reached the water's edge and hooked the dory close to land, the slush of ice in the surrounding water hissed and chattered at the disturbance. A family of rooks started up a raucous chorus in the trees at the foot of the mountain, and above the lake a v of waterfowl coursed its way across the sky.

Lymond pulled the frozen oilskin from the boat and clambered in, his movements catching and stiff, and Jerott approached the edge only a little too late to step on board.

As the boat drifted and Lymond settled himself and his pack and oars, he called back once: "I need someone I can trust outside of Muscovy, Jerott. I need you to be my guide to the ongoing world." He looked up at Jerott, over the oars, and his face was shrouded and dark like the sky, his eyes hidden beneath the shadow of his unruly hair.

Jerott clenched his fists and breathed heavily. His fingers were frozen and his lungs ached; his boots and stockings were still damp from earlier, and now damp again anew, and the crisp air made the smell of wet wool a cloying distraction.

Once, the slender arms extended, willow-straight, and once, the oars dipped smoothly into the thick water before Lymond's arms were pulled back, close to his chest.

Then the mechanism that drove his perfect movements seemed to fail: a cog with worn teeth, an unoiled thread. The oars burst from the water roughly, with uneven angles. They wavered in the air and the arms shook and strained as they extended. Lymond bowed his head, his shoulders shaking, and he might have made a small sound of pain or frustration.

Jerott did not hear it. He did not take the time to steel himself, but plunged into the soupy water at the lake's edge, slipping down hidden, muddy banks, weighted and steadied only by the cold lakewater that poured mercilessly into his boots. The chill of it enclosed his skin instantly, dragging at his movements and travelling up his body like a fever. He pushed through it. He had to. Lymond had not travelled far, and Jerott had faith that the lake was not yet that deep.

It reached the tops of his thighs when he waded at last to the prow of the boat.

Lymond's head had raised, his eyes searching the darkness blankly as Jerott splashed closer. His mouth was locked shut and there was unmistakable fear in his expression.

Jerott spoke to him as calmly as he could through chattering teeth, tugging at the oars and removing them from Lymond's hands and the waters. "It's me, Francis. Let's go back." He laid the oars in the boat and turned to pull the shallow vessel back in among the frozen knees of the reeds.

"I did not ask..." Lymond whispered hoarsely.

Jerott swallowed a gulp of cold air and considered his speech between each slow, lapping footstep. "You never do," he finally grunted.

He fell to his knees once in getting to land, but his legs already burned with cold and he got to his feet methodically, tying the dory back to its mooring and extending a hand to Lymond, who could not see it.

"Francis, get up," Jerott tried to speak softly. He leaned and took a fistful of Lymond's brocaded cloak, and at last prompted the other man to unfurl, wobbling on the rocking dory.

Lymond insisted on taking the pack, fumbling for its straps, and levered himself unsteadily onto land with aid of the oars as well as Jerott's hold.

They struggled slowly back along the path in the snow, stepping up to the raised deck of the fishing hut and stumbling into a room no longer so well warmed by its neglected fire.

Jerott did not release his grip on Lymond, but he stopped, his legs freezing, burning, and his chest aching still more with a regret and a guilt that he did not understand.

"Francis..."

Lymond's eyes, dark and dilated, looked wild, but they did, at last, look at him. Then he tugged his arm free and Jerott realised how bruisingly tight he had been holding it.

"Oh, Christ," Jerott breathed. "I'm sorry." He stepped back, his palms placatory.

Lymond swayed like a birch sapling and reached a hand out - not for the wall, but for Jerott's fingers, which his icy grasp closed on as he stumbled to his knees.

-

Jerott's cold hands tried to capture Lymond's focus, to make his questions intelligible to the mind trapped within its brittle husk of agony. He cupped Lymond's face, he clasped his temples, and the coolness of Jerott's palms against the pulsing heat in Lymond's head made Lymond's eyes flutter closed in a moment's bliss.

Pain made his head feel light, but Jerott's hold seemed to tether him to the stuff of reality.

He had no answers for the questions he was bombarded with and he grasped, instead, at the cloth of Jerott's clothing.

Continue his journey or simply cease to be. Those had been the choices he had allowed himself.

Instead he was, once more, at the mercy of another's care. Not the impersonal, professional touch of Archie, not the unconditional sweetness of family, nor even the resentful acidity he had received from Oonagh. Jerott kneeled before him, his hands on Lymond's face, his eyes dark and wide and full of concern. Lymond's gloved hands pawed and clutched at his cloak and jerkin like a cat settling, unable to speak his need but seeking, in desperation, the respite that seemed to be on offer.

It was his body, he thought to himself between the strikes of pain in his head. His body that demanded Jerott's nearness when his mind could not rule with sense and articulation.

But he could not make his shaking fingers withdraw their plea, and Jerott drew him close against his chest.

Lymond's breath heaved, once more contained within the safety of Jerott's hold. His head was in Jerott's neck again - such an easy place to rest - and he gnashed his teeth in the darkness against Jerott's cold cloak, wishing, fervently for it all to be at an end.

Amid the agony in his head, Lymond forced a rough laugh out from his aching throat, determined that he should not have comfort if he could not have autonomy. "Well, Jerott. Twice have you held me and twice have you prevented me from leaving. I suppose now, like Proteus, I am to reveal my true form and grant you all that you wish."

He felt the results of his words instantly: Jerott flinched and let out a breath like he had been dealt a blow. Lymond felt the pressure of Jerott's Adam's apple move against his head when the other man swallowed.

"I ought to have left you in that boat to freeze?"

"Yes."

He did not even think about the answer, it had been on his lips before Jerott's sentence finished. Lymond clutched icy fists in wet gloves to his chest, leaning on Jerott with body alone, forcing Jerott to take his weight in his arms.

"No," Jerott returned, the single syllable wavering with horror. "No."

Lymond's laughter was devoid of joy: a hacking sound, the noise of a fox chewing its way out of a trap. "As you say. Then you have won me. The price salbe presentit til thaim that best has disseruyt."

Jerott tried to lift Lymond's body from him, to hold his juddering arms and torso at a distance and meet his eyes.

Sullenly, Lymond kept his head down. He felt trapped by the pain, trapped by inaction, trapped by a slow recovery and a fate that he thought he had learned to be more resigned to. The rich care in his gaoler's expression did not ease his frustration. The tight grip on his upper arms pinched just enough that he bared his teeth and leaned into it, fighting Jerott's hold with his bodyweight.

"Christ, what do you think I want?" Jerott breathed in a horrified whisper.

From Lymond's throat emerged another rasp of sound that mocked the very idea of humour.

He finally raised his head to bestow a withering look on Jerott.

"I don't begrudge you it."

Jerott's face was very close, and Lymond leaned towards him, his body still tripping with spasms of pain even as his eyes delivered a challenge.

Confusion and disgust were all he was met with. Jerott jerked his chin away pointedly as he let Lymond fall against Jerott's shoulder again.

Lymond's forehead furrowed uselessly against the thick wool of Jerott's cloak. Its weave was abrasive against his screwed-up eyelids and it felt nothing of the furious struggle of Lymond's features in response to the pain. He rocked his head against the curve of Jerott's body, and he realised, with despair, that to be held against linen or skin would provide a far better distraction from the discomfort of his own corporeal prison.

His body's conflicting demands seemed to tear at his sinews and joints: pain and pleasure, cruelty and comfort. Care always came at a cost, did it not?

At last, a blankness, like a snowed-in landscape, followed his fury. The flames of frustration that had been fanned were reduced to white embers, cooling, crumbling as they settled into ashen byproduct.

He subsided against Jerott, breathing against the skin of his neck, and heard Jerott's rueful murmur as though through water.

"If you knew what you offered."

-

Jerott had dropped to his own knees in stunned recognition of the plea in Lymond's gesture. The gloved hand grasping his fingers had been an admission of need that Jerott fumbled to answer, shuffling close to Lymond like they were children sharing secrets beneath the kitchen table.

Jerott laid his touch on Lymond's shoulders as Lymond's fingers coiled and bunched in Jerott's cloak. He was able to see his surroundings now, Jerott was almost certain, but the pain made his expression into a death mask, rictus tight, the blue eyes bulging uncomfortably wide.

The embrace had seemed to calm Lymond, to stymy his frustration and anger, and it had given Jerott a sense of a contribution made. Lymond's form, even with the racking sobs of pain pulling through it over and over, felt right in his arms. It felt neat and compact, strong and graceful. When his face nuzzled Jerott's collarbone and his hands pulled at his clothes, when Jerott leaned his jaw on Lymond's head and let flaxen strands adhere, tickling, to his dark stubble, it felt as natural and as proper as anything else he used his body for.

So when, spitting venom, the creature in his arms had attempted laughter, Jerott was struck cold anew at the implication of Lymond's words. What had he won? His arms tightened reflexively on Lymond's body and then he made them loosen, trying to disentangle himself, to see Lymond's face and to understand the despair in that voice.

Lymond's body was limp, doll-like in Jerott's struggling grip, but the blue eyes glimmered from behind blond curls, mocking and hungry as he tried to absorb pain and turn it into a weapon of his own.

Jerott shook his head, not really wanting to hear a response to the question drawn from him. "Christ, what do you think I want?"

His arms folded across his body like an funereal effigy, Lymond shivered and made a sound, and looked at Jerott with something that perhaps was intended as a seduction.

"I don't begrudge you it."

His alabaster skin was clammy and the hollows of his eyes were purple and uneven. His lips were drawn into a thin white blade across his mouth and the fine, neat hairs of his brows were dishevelled from contact with Jerott's cloak. He leaned towards Jerott with the inevitability of a tree falling, and Jerott raised his chin aside to make his disinterest in the offer clear.

Lymond's face was against his shoulder again, pressing for comfort like a nesting animal. He would not unfold his arms to hold Jerott, but he would not let Jerott move away.

Jerott wrapped himself around that fragile form again and suppressed his own shivers. His legs were soaking wet and the cloth on them clung. The fire was perilously close to going out and the winter's night had enclosed the fishing hut and its surroundings.

But, now wordless, unable to speak or act upon the easement and solace he required, Lymond had stilled in Jerott's hold. He wished, it seemed, to be close, though he hated to acknowledge it, and Jerott would not drive him away in order to arrange his own comforts.

Jerott had seen Francis Crawford endure a great deal in the past years: fire and water, the blade and the thonged whip. Nothing had penetrated the marble-poised, expertly composed demeanour like this withdrawal though. External forces could be rebuffed or managed, met with raised chin and accepting defiance. But this was a pain from within: Lymond's own body turning against itself, matching and outwitting his defenses because the pain was a mirror of himself, accustomed to all of Lymond's tricks already. Jerott had never heard such misery as that contained in a single, unthinking word when he had asked if he ought to have left Lymond to perish on Lake Karla.

Yes.

Jerott knew how to handle wounds: sword, arrow, broken bones. He knew how to calm and control his own fears, how to push through pain and tap into the rush of aroused senses to keep on fighting. To keep on living. But he did not understand the sickness that ravaged Lymond in these intermittent raids. He did not understand the darkness or the desire for darkness.

He knew only that he would not leave a wounded man to travel alone unless the need was dire. And he clung to that principle, which he recognised and welcomed, and he understood that the impulse to stop Lymond from going was separate from the impulse to hold him close. The two needs may have joined in felicitous convenience when Francis had reached for his hand, but Jerott reassured himself that he could tell the difference, even if, in his pain, Lymond apparently could not.

The episode had passed, and Lymond lay unmoving against him. Jerott at last let his chin lower to rub against Lymond's hair again, let his eyes close as he re-examined what had passed.

He did not want a reward, or a prize. He had seen how Lymond deflected pain with his body - from himself and from others.

What do you think I want?

Jerott sighed and shifted his shoulder so that Lymond's breath warmed his neck. Lymond lay as heavily on him as before, and Jerott turned his cheek against the thickets of blond curls.

"If you knew what you offered..." he trailed off, imagination failing him.

-

[I think the next bit was written earlier than the above chapters - emotions are running higher, and as often happens with F/J I feel I have to go back and cool them down, and then they cool too much and inertia sets in. I was definitely overthinking this. It then turns into really fluffy smut that probably belongs with a totally different fic, but it's sweet and I like the headcanon that Jerott might know something about massage, so I'm plonking it here with everything else for anyone who's interested.

Just imagine I took a screenshot of that post saying 'all Jerott/Francis fic reads like it was written by Jerott as wish-fulfillment' and pasted it here. It is a post that has haunted me since I first went tag diving, and I will never escape the sense that it mocks every J/F fic I write.]

-

-

Shakily, Lymond drew the cocoon of blankets about his shoulders and plucked at the toe of one damp stocking. The fire was regaining warmth, but Jerott continued to fuss around it, prodding wood and kindling into rigid formation and judiciously failing to meet Francis's eyes.

"The attacks affect your memory also?"

"They do."

Finally, he looked up and scanned Lymond's expression. A frown scored his brow, but Lymond could not tell what source Jerott's temper drew on. He sighed and sat back, staring at Lymond over the rising flames and the thin breath of smoke winding its way towards the roof.

"What do you remember?" he asked grudgingly.

"Enough to surmise that I have been unjust."

Jerott shook his head and looked away.

Lymond wrapped his arms around his knees and tried to summon warmth from within his own body. "My intention was to leave, and yet I am still here. Will you resent me for that, when it was not my own choice?"

That struck a chord, hammer to string, and a shudder ran through Jerott's shoulders.

"You dream. And you speak when you do." He looked up, and trouble and care mingled in his eyes. "You feel you let them down. The child, your mistress. Philippa. God knows who else. Your family. I think. You miss them, but you say you cannot see them. I don't understand it, when it seems to bring you no relief to be away."

Lymond made himself hold Jerott's gaze, though his throat closed with hard tension and his eyes stung from the smoke.

"You have - twice - intended to take the dory out onto the lake, alone by preference, when it should have been as evident to you as the weather in the sky or the lateness of the day that you lack the strength."

Where he rested it against the floor, Jerott's hand formed a balled fist. His legs shivered and he moved them, sitting on the side of his thigh to hide his body's nerves. "You are not a prisoner here. I am not your keeper. But you would have - I couldn't leave you like that."

Silent, Lymond measured Jerott's hurt and confusion.

[…]

There was more he had said. Lymond could see it, he could practically taste the other words in his mouth, and in Jerott's miserable expression he saw their confirmation. In Lymond's mind was a store of language, a magpie's hoard of treasure gleaned from books and papers and people. Where his own wits failed him, he always had recourse to the prepared cleverness of others.

"The price salbe presentit til thaim that best has disseruyt."

Jerott's eyes closed and he turned his head to the shadows, nausea crawling over his features.

Lymond watched him, very still and very wide of eye, conscious of the renewal of bodily charge that he felt in the wake of the migraines. Suddenly there was heat in his blood again, and he was like a clepsydra filling, drop by drop: it pooled in his belly, accompanied by the sensation of having come upon his own sentiments unexpectedly.

In rashness and in the desperation of pain, he must have offered himself: the prize for Jerott's loyalty. It had been a crass gesture, diminishing to both of them, but rooted, sure as a weed, in something real.

The idea of his offer being taken up produced an honest quickening of his pulse.

[…]

Once I loved a girl and wished to make her my wife, and once I loved a man and wished to make him my leader.

[…]

He caressed the stubborn bloom with his mind, wondering when its seed had settled. Gratitude may have nourished it, but probably it had rather thrived on neglect - Lymond did not recall its cultivation at any point between St Mary's and the Mediterranean.

It was not amor de profundis, of that he could be fairly certain, but it was within him, unlovely desire, scrabbling for purchase among the rubble of his being. It was selfish and heedless of all the others who had been hurt before, of all who had left their hurt on him in turn. Perhaps it was some state of bestial default, an insensible need, to which his parched self had turned when all others had fallen by the wayside: left behind, snatched away, driven from him for their own betterment and protection.

Lymond's lips twisted. As an invitation, it seemed that what he had said was akin to the death he had given the delly on the road to Volos. Nothing else had driven Jerott away - but that lack of finesse had probably done more than anything else Lymond might have tried.

"I have shown you improper thanks," Lymond said quietly. "But I once more owe you my life, it seems."

"You owe me nothing," Jerott snapped, getting to his feet.

He stormed two short, absurd paces to the edge of the small room and stood facing the wall, his breathing heavy. Jerott snuck a single glance over his shoulder.

"My clothes are soaked," he muttered.

Being a man of spiritual rather than physical shame, he began to remove each item with violent haste, loosening ties and freeing clinging cloth from skin that looked blue with cold even in the firelight.

Lymond, whose cloak, gloves and boots had been taken from him with care and the utmost gentleness, allowed a shiver of interest to run through his body.

Jerott laid his clothes over the rack he had created by the fire and stooped smoothly to pick up a blanket, one dry enough to be capable of warmth. He swung it over his shoulders and was momentarily displayed against its red pattern: lean and toned, the skin of his chest still swarthy even where it had not been exposed to the sun, fine black hair gathering in a line down his centre to draw the eye.

He met Lymond's interest with a glare and an astonished blush and wrapped the blanket about his torso loosely. It fell to the tops of his thighs, leaving stocky, muscled legs exposed and lit by the flames. His knees were scuffed and red, the colour of his mouth.

A pace away.

He might be at Lymond's side before either of them could catch breath, but Lymond had ruined any chance of that. Logic said that this was for the best - the depths of Jerott's attachments were notoriously abyssal. But loneliness had found a way to raise its grizzled head, loosed by the migraines, slipping free while the pain distracted Lymond. He wondered what Jerott's hold would feel like to a body not savaged by pain, what his embrace could do for a man who found himself all too sober and aware of what he had lost - as well as of the value of what remained.

"Francis. You're shaking."

Jerott frowned, and the distance between them drifted away like fire smoke. His hands reached for Lymond's wrists, his eyes studied Lymond's own. "Is it happening again? Already?"

Lymond blinked rapidly and shook his head. He tucked himself deeper into his own wrappings and dusted off a wan smile.

"No, no. I am just cold." He had not in fact noticed until asked, but although his core retained heat, his back and his feet had begun to feel like ice.

"You should take the wet stockings off," Jerott advised.

Lymond stared at him: guileless, impulsive, loyal to a fault. Unable to leave and unable to admit why he remained.

Oblivious to Lymond's grim resignation, Jerott sighed and his fingers shifted to the ties at the knees of Lymond's britches. He loosened them so as to reach the ribboned stockings beneath. He worked brusquely, but the feeling of his hot hands sliding silk down Lymond's calves was enough to make the air shudder in Lymond's throat and blood drop to the pit of his stomach.

Jerott froze at the sound and looked up. His head was bowed and his expression was difficult to read, but he let his fingers remain where they were on the folds of knitted silk.

"Are you all right?"

-

It was not an expression he could remember seeing on Lymond's face before.

It was not an expression he recalled seeing on anyone's face in recent times. Unless there had, perhaps, been a mirror in the tekke.

Jerott's fingers lay heavy on wrinkled silk, and he pressed them into the fabric, sliding it against Lymond's skin once more.

The heavy-lidded eyes widened minutely; the dark flourishes of Lymond's nostrils flared with another intake of air. The result seemed to be the same whichever stockinged leg Jerott stroked, so - he told himself prosaically - it was probably not a response garnered by bruise or injury.

He wrapped each hand around the athletic calves and their coverings, his weight on his own grazed knees, the blanket he wore hanging to either side of his naked body. Lymond's golden lashes moved quickly, like the wings of a small bird or a moth, and his lips parted as Jerott drew touch and silk together down to Lymond's two fine ankles. The golden hair on his milk-white skin glittered like embellished thread in the firelight. Jerott let one warm palm travel down the bare front of Lymond's shin, smoothing the soft texture beneath his touch, ostensibly trying to warm, but savouring the meeting of flesh.

Pleasurable sensation was somewhat spoiled by the sodden chill of the knitted feet, but Jerott pulled each stocking away quickly then, and sat back with a small, triumphant smile.

Lymond's breathing was noticeably rapid. Two spots of colour has risen to his cheeks and he held both covering and knees protectively close to his body.

As though the realisation of what he had done only now caught up to him, Jerott felt his own skin glow with heat. He blinked and his smile faded and he remembered to close the blanket around his body once more. Touch had stirred his flesh, and he gritted his teeth, trying to battle his bodily response with a regimen of thought and prayer from a lifestyle that was no longer his.

He looked down at Lymond's bare toes in penitence, overlaying the memory of warm, smooth skin with the sight of Lymond's damp-puckered feet, bloated and patterned and blued from their enclosure in damp cloth.

But he could not silence the need to know what Lymond's own response was. While Lymond had slept, Jerott had admitted to himself the existence of a feeling that he thought could never truly be reciprocated, and to feed it with hope was only to increase the inevitable disappointment.

But - there was nothing in existence like being looked on with pride and pleasure, those perfect, clever features appraising him and finding him worthy of trust.

The feeling that caused him to blush built in intensity: were Lymond's eyes on him, hungry and questing? Or had he looked away in shame and repulsion?

Jerott made himself raise his head to face Lymond, and found him staring back, closer than Jerott had thought he was, blonde curls in tousled disarray. He looked neither feral nor afeared, but his expression was not edited to fine control, and its openness made Jerott flinch - like he would flinch from staring direct into sunlight.

It took him a moment to notice that one of Lymond's hands had emerged from the blankets. Fingers as delicate as the petals of orange blossom extended an invitation to him: one that Jerott took before even considering what it could be. He laid his own hand across Lymond's, fingers wrapping around fingers.

I am sick with love.

With reserves of strength that surprised Jerott, Lymond held him and drew him close by the hand. Jerott approached, moving his knees against the hard floor, his eyes caught by hypnotic blue, until he was close enough, between Lymond's legs, for Lymond's other hand to touch his cheek.

Comfort me.

His eyes closed and he leaned into the contact. Gabriel had been free with such gestures, offering brotherly comfort and affection that did not need to be earned so dearly as Lymond's wary friendship. Hard breathing, after battle, a fond hand on his face; a calloused touch raising his chin when Gabriel saw Jerott look away doubtfully from the words of another Knight.

Stay me.

He swallowed and jerked his head away, squeezing his eyes tight shut. The cool backs of Lymond's knuckles tried again, brushing his jaw, sweeping around his chin until exploratory touch found the cut left by Lymond's spurs. It was not a brotherly touch: the crook of one finger bracketed the wound while Lymond's thumb extended upwards to Jerott's lower lip. The slight pressure of the thumb pad made Jerott's mouth open with a gasp and he tried, with all his fervour, to remember kissing Marthe in the tekke. He had kissed her, hadn't he?

Jerott opened his eyes tentatively and looked across Lymond's knees to his face. His eyes were wide and quite dark, but the blue rim of his irises was like a secret only Jerott knew how to read. His mouth was set with determination - or regret? - and the firelight showed a divot between his brows where he frowned.

Jerott swallowed, but his throat was dry. "You told me you'd rather I had left you in the boat to freeze."

Lymond's frown deepened. His eyes watched his thumb as it continued to play along the underside of Jerott's lip.

The touch was an overstimulation of sensitive skin, and it began to feel to Jerott as though his lip has been numbed by caresses. He bit it to try and regain feeling.

"Having been provided with the time to reflect, I think I would choose to be here instead," Lymond murmured.

It seemed a familiar sort of deflection, and Jerott's smile was hard. "In preference to death."

Lymond's expression turned sharp and he withdrew the hand on Jerott's face, though his grip remained firm on Jerott's fingers. "That is not quite what I meant."

The heat of the fire made the exposed soles of Jerott's feet tingle. Its light moved over Lymond's changeable features, cycling through almost-expressions that played directly into Jerott's fears.

He wanted, very much, for the offer to be real. He wanted to surge into Lymond's arms, to feel that touch on his lips again and more. He wanted completion, connection, a revelation of contact that would change him utterly.

But he had been told to strip his altars. To let go of heroes, to let go of love.

"Then what do you mean?" Jerott asked bitterly.

Lymond sighed. "Militat omnis amans, Jerott." He looked tired, the shadows deep and richly coloured on his face.

"I want peace. I want to think of pleasure, not of pain or punishment. And - I fear that I am no longer able to."

As he spoke, Jerott's hold on Francis's hand tightened. He let go of the edges of blanket that he had clasped together and, falteringly, reached for Francis's cheek. His fingers brushed the barley-fine tips of curls, and he crushed them beneath his palm, feeling Francis's hair as a handful of foliage between their separate skins. His thumb smoothed the silken line of Francis's temple and he leaned close, testing his feeling, testing Lymond's assurances.

He could not remember kissing Marthe in the tekke. He began to believe he had never done so. Jerott's mind filled instead with the memories of gemstones and signet rings held beneath his lips, of relics and swords, brotherhood and penitence.

He wavered close to Francis's face but found that he could not make himself do what he had in mind. With a gasp and a shudder he touched his forehead to Lymond's temple instead, then rolled his cheek against the other man's, breathing hard into the fine little ringlets that coiled around Lymond's ear.

"Yes," Jerott made himself say, the syllable a half-swallowed whisper. "I want to. To help you."

Francis clasped the back of his head and kept him close, but did not try and turn Jerott's face.

He had been a boy when he joked that the site of his home was in reality The Ostrich Inn. Still a boy when his father had arranged for them to stop there on the road to Solway, and Blyth the elder had been struck to rowdy laughter as he learned that every lady of the house already knew his son quite well.

If he had been just a boy then, what had he been before that, hunting kisses from the kitchen maids, making eyes at his father's well-dressed guests over the rim of his ale cup?

Elizabeth, he had never touched. She had died unblemished, a vessel filled with mystery and reverence. And for her sake, the boy he had been vowed to forgo all others. Guilt for breaking this vow should have compelled him to pull away, it should have stopped him from wanting the heat of Lymond's skin against his and the feeling of the other man's breath on his body. It should have been enough but it no longer was.

Jerott pressed his face into Francis's cheek, his ear, his hair, his neck. He threw both arms around Francis's thin shoulders and let himself be drawn forward, his hips between Francis's thighs, Francis's hands carefully, gently, keeping the blanket enfolded across Jerott's shoulders.

-

It was not, all told, the response he had intended to elicit. Thoughts of pain and punishment certainly ran alongside any thought of pleasure in Jerott Blyth's mind at that moment.

As though he had to wrestle himself into conviction,  Jerott squirmed his body against Lymond's, his face pressed into the open collar of Lymond's doublet, his hips seeking a comfortable position against the cloth of Lymond's breeches.

Lymond shut his jaw tight and felt his bodily response begin to press against the inside of that material. Heat, single-minded and insistent, was driven to that one part of him, pricking awareness of the naked body on top of him, of the tantalising closeness of Jerott's mouth to his skin.

The feeling of Jerott's own erection on the other side of his clothing was enough to convince him to seek more. Francis released the blanket that covered Jerott's shoulders and scooped his face from Francis's throat, raising it to his own.

He kissed him without preamble, not waiting for Jerott to imagine what was to happen. Francis pressed his mouth over Jerott's lips before they shut against him. He licked their bitten surface with his enquiring tongue. Jerott made a sound of surprise: pleased but uncertain, his lips vibrating with it beneath Francis's kiss.

A flush of desire leapt through Francis at this sensation and he pressed his mouth again to Jerott's closed mouth, seeking still for a response.

Jerott's hands fumbled to his shoulders and pushed Francis away slowly, though his grip was tight. While close enough, Francis's lips lingered on Jerott's, following up with kisses that brushed softly against hot skin, but he was repelled with inevitable force and had to look up into Jerott's wide-eyed expression.

Seeing something of Lymond's exasperation, Jerott managed a shaky smile - Francis wanted, savagely, to obliterate it with his kisses. He wanted, he supposed, to be deprived of himself as promised: in the physick of touch and taste it was possible to forget recent history and the foreboding future, and to live, momentarily, with no demands but those of his body.

But evidently, Jerott retained some reservations about this approach.

He sighed, breath cooling the saliva on his lips, his dark eyes round and black and astonished.

"Might we wait?" Jerott swallowed. His throat moved as though he wanted to laugh, but nerves stole the sound. "It has been...some time since I -"

Lymond had to bite his tongue to contain a rash comment on the proclivities of monks, but he did so, for the sake of the colour in Jerott's face.

Still Jerott frowned and looked again at Lymond's expression. "My God. When did anyone last say no to you?"

Francis scoffed and bit out a sharp crack of laughter. He tossed his eyes ceilingwards to avoid Jerott's earnest gaze, but he did not answer. By the time one was in another's bed chamber, or holding a naked body in one's arms, the time for saying no had usually long passed.

"You are saying no now, then?"

Jerott licked his lower lip. "For now. But I would like," his glance turned bashful again. "To bring you comfort."

He raised his hand to Lymond's hairline again and swept fingers through his curls. "If I might."

Francis shivered and wished it did not show. He closed his eyes and wondered what Jerott could intend - comfort was for children and the dying.

-

There were enough blankets to cover the hard floor as well as the two persons who lay down to sleep by the light of the fire. Lymond wore his linen shift and undershorts and was warm and still in the cupped form of Jerott's body. His breathing was steady, quiet, untroubled by the stresses and pains of consciousness.

Jerott's forehead touched the smooth skin of his shoulder where Lymond's shift had slipped, the collar stretched across the top of his back. His left arm curled around Lymond's small ribcage, held in place by Lymond's left arm. The cold soles of Lymond's feet pressed against Jerott's shins and the warm curve of Lymond's arse sat against Jerott's thighs.

Jerott's eyes were closed but he did not sleep. His knees prickled where ice had grazed them, his jaw tingled from the cut, and his muscles throbbed with heat from the exertion of the day. His thoughts grew ragged with protest and justification, with hallucinations of the smell of spikenard and the sound of Gabriel's voice.

He flattened his nose to Francis's skin and drew the deepest breath he could. He wondered if he would still smell the Aga Morat's perfume, stained into Francis's body.

But Francis smelled only of himself, and that was something Jerott was still new to: linen and leather, spice and incense lingering in his pores, the earthen, shoreside scent of exertion. He touched his lips then to the surface of Francis's body, covering the dark spots of his moles one by one with honest abstraction of thought. It was easier, knowing that Francis was asleep - that Jerott's curiosity was not about to be confronted by a sharp and worldly scrutiny.

He could not say why he had needed to postpone the consummation he knew he wanted. Tiredness, perhaps, fear of Francis's tiredness and the possibility of another migraine - perhaps, if Jerott wished to persuade himself of unselfish motives. But a deeper fear lingered in him, tangled and knotted up in the memory of Lymond's first offer. His body as a prize, to be collected by the last man standing, a cynical gesture of resignation when he found himself unable to choose for himself when and how to leave.

For ten years, Jerott had followed a man who had, in the end, discarded faith and loyalty and brotherhood without a second thought. Jerott had been a strut for Gabriel's vanity, a trophy of sorts himself: proof of Gabriel's leadership and worthiness, proof of Gabriel's persuasiveness and skill.

Jerott did not want, only, to be yet further proof of Francis Crawford's charisma.

It finally made sense to him, poised on the blurred edge of sleep, that there was one very simple way by which he could ensure that Francis wanted him. That he wanted Jerott from affection and not from some twisted notion of duty or reciprocity. Jerott had earned the rare coin of Lymond's gratitude before. He would simply have to do so again, in new ways. Timorously, his nerves jangling with anticipation, Jerott smiled against Francis's shoulder and the fingers of his left hand tangled around Francis's fingers.

He slept without dreaming.

-

Morning light meant nothing inside the snow-insulated hut. Jerott's skin was russet toned in the glow from the fire's embers, his dark eyes sparkling with interest.

Beneath strata of blankets - wool and cotton, waxed and frayed, stained and creased - Lymond's body shivered with involuntary glee at the expression in Jerott's black eyes. He lay in Jerott's loose embrace, the edges of his hands pressed against the hot skin of the other man's chest. For once, he was not cold; did not know for what or who he had gotten into this nest other than himself, from his own selfish desire. And now he simply waited, thrilled with curiosity.

First, with a slow care that made Lymond's eyes close as his body anticipated a grasping, hard touch, Jerott loosed a hand and it settled on Lymond's cheek. The meeting of flesh was soft, far softer than Lymond expected, and Jerott's fingers pressed against the hair above his ear, smoothing the strands back against his skull.

Jerott watched the motion of his own hand, his lips parted, wondering, and then he looked into Lymond's blue eyes.

The answer was there, risen to the lapis surface, but Lymond's mouth moved anyway: "Yes," he told Jerott.

Jerott's face flushed with colour and his hand settled, a form fitted to Lymond's jaw, and he raised his head from their shared pillow. He kept his eyes open until the last minute; his lips planting, pursed, against Lymond's own.

Lymond responded as he could, carefully, feeling a tremor of unfamiliar nervousness run through Jerott's body. Lymond's lips pressed against Jerott's closed mouth in return, his tongue raised against the back of his own teeth impatiently. He wanted, very much, to taste Jerott's flavour, to seek out the contours of his mouth with all the senses he had been given. To share the joy of touch given freely.

But he waited, allowing the first kiss of the morning to remain chaste, allowing Jerott the absorption of sensation, the experience of closeness, the long-unfamiliar reciprocity of affection.

A strand of Jerott's hair fell down to tickle Lymond's brow and he smiled within the kiss and fumbled a hand free of the covers to comb his fingers through smooth black locks, pushing Jerott's hair back with gentle insistence.

At last Jerott's mouth parted to release a gasp, and he let his eyes fall closed for a moment despite his curiosity. He ran his teeth over his lower lip.

When he looked again for confirmation in Francis's eyes, there was a renewed, fortified certainty in his steady breath and his firm touch on Lymond's cheek. It made Lymond shiver, the fierceness that glinted in Jerott's dark eye and the wordless depth of the colour that spread across his chest and neck.

Jerott bowed to him again and his tongue quested against Lymond's mouth, and Lymond opened and let him in.

Jerott's hand tightened against his jaw, feeling Lymond's response as taste encountered taste.

Lymond's confident movements sidled around Jerott's exploratory forays, guiding him, intercepting him, encouraging Jerott's pressure. Jerott covered Lymond's mouth with his own, savouring each meeting, his kisses learning precision, mapping out each new piece of flesh uncovered.

Lymond's fist closed in his hair, knowing Jerott's strength and impulsiveness, his body wondering when this methodical introduction would give way to something less ordered. The pressure of Lymond's grip elicited a moan, sound that he lapped up greedily with his own mouth, and there was an echo of response, Jerott sighed again, and again Lymond captured the expression of feeling.

When he drew back, Jerott's hand was shivering against him, and Lymond let his own eyes stay closed, his mouth curving into a grin at the simple honesty of Jerott's body.

-

For his part, Jerott let his fingers plough deeper into the corn silk curls, felt his heart hammer, too much for his chest as he lay cramped and gasping on his side. Francis was smiling, at or despite what he had done.  It seemed genuine, not mocking, and Jerott wondered what it felt like beneath his own hot mouth. He kissed the dimple at its edge and felt muscle and flesh respond as Lymond's smile deepened. He kissed the corner of his lips, then the centre, and let want drive him, opening his mouth and pushing his tongue between Lymond's smiling lips.

Lymond gripped him back, one hand around his jaw, the other sending smooth fingers over the skin of Jerott's collarbone and shoulder.

-

Caught up in his own eagerness, Francis coiled like a serpent and rose from the pillow of blankets. He pushed Jerott back and leaned his face and chest over him, pressing into the kiss, one hand holding Jerott's jaw, the other propped against the floor.

Jerott ruffled the loose sleeves of Lymond's shift, feathering touch and texture as he swept his hands up Lymond's arms. His fingers clasped at the base of Lymond's skull, and he pulled his chin free of Lymond's hold to stretch into the kiss.

Lymond used his empty hand to feel out the anatomy of the body beneath him. His fingers started in the hot groove beneath Jerott's jaw and followed the beating of his jugular to the sharp definition of his collarbone. The pads of his fingers spread across Jerott's sternum and stroked along the hair of his chest before his thumb swerved away to the side and pressed and flickered over one brown nipple.

Jerott bucked beneath him, his hips thrusting his hardened cock against Lymond's side. Francis gasped and laughed into his mouth, then pinched the tip of Jerott's nipple with calculated mischief.

Jerott swore and surged up from the covers, his hands on either side of Francis's face, his abdomen tightening as Francis let his roving hand drop to tease touch over his stomach and thighs.

His more customary violence of passion awoken, Jerott was not shy in manoeuvring Francis's body so he could get his hands beneath the edges of Francis's shift. He pulled at the cords of the linen undershorts and Francis heard stitches rip.

Another torrent of impatient language fell from Jerott's mouth as he leaned away to see what he was doing. Francis’s grin was delighted, and he could not help but remark upon Jerott's hurry after a decade's waiting.

He received a furious, heated glare in return and Jerott abandoned the tie to bend Lymond's body against him in another deep kiss. On their knees, swaying with imperfect balance, they tangled together until Jerott felt he had made his point and slid his hands once more to the waistband of Francis's underclothes. His fingers dipped inside the cloth, his knuckles on the skin to either side of Francis's navel and he pinned Francis with a look of warning and a small, subversive smirk.

Francis's eyes widened and he was on the cusp of protesting a shortage of spare clothes, but the breath he drew was obscured by the dry cough of linen tearing and his words did not get past Jerott's kiss.

The underclothes dropped down his arse but remained caught and tented on the shaft of his cock.

Francis smiled toothily into Jerott's kiss and nipped until the other man let him speak. "Very well then. Stronge in his despoylle, wel armed in the batayll."

Jerott's groan of amusement - or exasperation - buzzed against Francis's lips and his hands smoothed a path from the base of Francis's spine to the crease between arse and thigh. He gripped flesh and jerked Francis towards him, trapping body against body, rolling his hips to press himself fully against the folds of Francis's half-fallen underclothes.

They kissed until touch was sloppy, the skin surrounding Francis's mouth stinging from the roughness of Jerott's stubbled jaw. Jerott disproved Francis's apprehension that, once aroused to it, all his movements would be as full of bruising force as he could make them. Jerott's hands were gentle in the waves of Francis's hair, his fingers quested in the short ringlets at the nape of his neck. Soft down the hollow of his spine and around his hips, carefully plucking the cloth of Francis's undershorts away at last and rocking his body against Francis's with hot, pulsing regularity.

It was obvious that he would try to pull the shift up over Francis's body next - but it was more difficult to explain why Francis resisted.

Lymond clamped his elbows to the sides of his ribcage and said "No," with automatic firmness. His torso was marked with the mistakes of his past: cut and branded and flayed. It was a source of fascination to some and pity to others, and he did not want it to distract - to come, now, between himself and the unexpected pleasures of Jerott's touch, to encourage the doubt and dread that remained, ever-ready, on the edges of his mind.

Jerott's brows raised, his expression poised and worried. "I've seen it before, Francis."

"Not since it healed," Lymond snapped and shut his eyes, regretting the words and the tone. It was the reminder he could not resist giving: Jerott had ordered the most recent whipping experienced by Francis Crawford's ruined back. He had watched it all happen. Close enough to feel the mist of spattered blood.

Jerott's hands had ceased their exploration at the sharp protrusions of Lymond's hips. His thumbs moved over the sensitive place where bone came close to skin and he touched his lips to Francis's again, his mouth soft, open, lingering. It wasn't an apology, but it felt like one. Jerott did not try to raise the shift again.

His acquiescence did more to settle Francis's tightened nerves than any other persuasive words might have. The room was dark after all, and he had surely been in more compromising states around Jerott.

Francis banished the ticklish memory of Robin Stewart's gaze on his scars, steeled himself, and pulled the shift up in one swift motion.

He had barely discarded it when Jerott caught him up in another tight folding embrace, one arm about the small of Lymond's back, the other at Jerott's favoured position on the side of Lymond's face, his fingers in the soft hair above Francis's ear. He pressed his skin to Francis's skin and kissed him as though he had been waiting for the opportunity his whole life. He didn't look for the scars on Lymond's torso with his eyes or his hands, he just sought a dizzying maximum of touch.

Francis let himself sigh, a slipping of control, and pulled Jerott back down to the covers with him, grunting as his body hit the blanketed floor side-on.

Jerott laughed, lying on his back, his hair a scattered mess of spilt ink around his face. Mirth made him seem younger, his eyes closed trustingly, with genuine humour, and one hand reflexively grasping for Lymond's skin.

Francis stared, remembering the wild young man from Solway, his heavy, earnest gaze and sharp questions. There was so little he had left from then, and Francis was barred from returning to those others that remained. A swell of gratitude seemed to tower over Francis as he looked down at Jerott, the feeling dredged from deep within, carrying with it the chill of authenticity.

He was glad not to be alone. Not to be with Kiaya Khatun and her imperious assumptions. But here, with a reminder that Francis Crawford's life was more than just a string of disconnected events pushing him from pillar to post. A reminder that some things endured.

He aimed to put all of that feeling into his kiss, leaning over Jerott and moving his tongue with languid, eloquent motion. Judging by the noise that emerged from Jerott's throat and the way his cock twitched under Francis's hand, something of his intended message seemed to have gotten through.

Francis splayed his fingers over the hot, smooth skin of Jerott's dick and slid them down over his balls, kneading the soft flesh with gentle, probing touch. The muffled moan between their mouths contorted into a curse and Jerott's hand joined Francis's, holding him still while Jerott breathed hard against his lips.

"Wait. I can't. It won't take long," he said grudgingly.

Francis smiled angelically and dropped a garland of kisses along Jerott's brow. His fingers tightened again on the sensitive, velveteen skin and Jerott's back arched a little as he gasped.

"It matters not. I believe you will rise to the occasion more than once."

Whether Jerott's frown was for the concentration he tried to summon or for Lymond's pun was unclear. But he shook his head, his eyes closed.

"I want you to...I want to," he swallowed and laid his hand over Francis's once more, though he no longer tried to stop the strokes Francis was making at the base of his shaft. Jerott opened his eyes, his expression plaintive. "I want you to enjoy this also."

"Believe me, Jerott, I already am. And we are in no hurry. There is plenty more to be done."

Jerott looked like he might make some clever comment about forging a path through the snow or rowing across a frozen lake, so Francis precluded these suggestions by tightening his grip a little and increasing the speed and length of his strokes.

Jerott's throat curved towards the thatched roof, his eyes closed reflexively and his heels dug into the folds of the blanket beneath him.

Francis rolled to a kneeling position and clambered over Jerott's closest leg. He bent to use his tongue in tandem with his hand, pushing into the base of Jerott's dick with the tip of his tongue and licking along the length of the shaft.

The first clear discharge was already on his hand and glistening on the reddened dome at the end of Jerott's cock. Francis gathered the taste of him with lips and tongue and at last enveloped him in his mouth.

Jerott made an appeal to a number of the manifestations of the Christian deity as well as to several saints, but not one of them offered him a reprieve from Lymond's touch.

Indeed - it did not take long at all. Lymond's lips tightened, his tongue swiped the sensitive folds of skin, and he felt a rush beneath his hand as Jerott's hips leapt from the floor with sudden urgency.

Momentarily, his own movements slowing just as Jerott's jerking thrusts slowed, Francis raised his head, removing his lips gradually like a man sucking the juice out of a peach.

He sat up and swiped his wet lip with one thumb. He reached for and swigged from the flask of water, kneeling between Jerott's legs, while Jerott lay splayed before him, his eyes barely open but regarding him with a fresh new awe.

Francis responded to Jerott's open-palmed, begging hand by moving to stretch himself alongside the other body again. He ran his fingers against the lay of Jerott's body hair, ruffling dark strands before smoothing them down again. He rested his head on his elbow and smiled at the wondering look in Jerott's eyes.

Jerott rolled to face him, and took Francis's chin in his hand. He tightened his grip for a moment, keeping Francis's face held still and at a distance. His eyes scanned Francis's expression like it was a code he needed to decipher, like he suspected and feared some imminent revelation of underlying motive.

The lovers Francis had lain with before tended not to seek answers like those Jerott searched for. The coin of those transactions was common currency, from border brothel to Ottoman palace, and Francis Crawford knew its rates and exchanges well.

Less familiar was the insistent need in Jerott's serious expression. It was not a need for Francis's touch, for more of what he had given or could give. It was a need to please and a need to prove, a need to make certain the freedom of what was offered.

-

Jerott bit his lip and looked at the steady blue gaze and the wet red mouth - he had to steel himself, but this he did, and then he kissed Francis carefully, tasting what remained of himself on the other man's mouth. He had swallowed enough of the Mediterranean in his life to find the hot, salty taste less than startling, and he soon forgot his reticence.

Francis's tongue was seasoned, his lips felt swollen and soft beneath Jerott's kisses. He shuffled closer across the blankets and hooked one leg over Jerott's calves.

The strange, unsettling idea of his own discharge between their kisses made Jerott think of the rites and rituals of the ancients. Mingling blood with blood to forge new ties, tasting one another's flesh to prove that they would to do anything to remain by each others' side.

Jerott, his eyes closed, his hand on the uppermost side of Francis's face, his nose touching the other man's nose still, murmured a half-formed question. It seemed to him that it was a query that would appeal to Francis's broad knowledge and omnivorous sensibilities.

"What is it that Lucian says of the bond of friendship?"

As he had hoped, delight rang clear in Francis's response. "Lucian! I did not expect you to know the texts of the barbarians, Jerott."

"Not his satires. One of More's translations. A discourse on friendship? It was a popular text in the Auberge."

"Toxaris. Now that does make sense," Francis said, smirking and moving his head so that their noses brushed together. "Sacrificamus inquam haud tamen deos esse arbitrati, sed viros bonos."

Jerott's reply was firm. "Not sacrifice. About loyalty."

Francis's smile was sharp like that of the fox preaching to the geese. "Etenum simulat que incisis digitis, sanguinem in calicem destilla verimus, sumus que instinctis gladiis, ambo pariter ad moventes biberimus, non est quicquae quod deinde nos quiat dirimere."

Jerott blinked at the vivid imagery. "Yes. I had forgotten about the swords."

Francis's lips stretched wide and he summoned a sound of amusement from deep in his throat. It made Jerott shift impulsively: in order to lay his lips on the source of that noise he pushed Francis to his back, unpeeling his arms from his curled body to kiss Francis's Adam's apple; the firm cords of the tendons in his neck; the convergence between his collarbones.

Pinned down to the far side of Francis's body, Francis's fingers twisted and knotted with Jerott's and he chuckled again at Jerott's kisses, adding to the cascading vibrations in his throat, creating more waves of sensation for Jerott's hungry mouth to chase over skin.

Much as Francis's body was strange machinery to him, Jerott was well trained to observe and to learn from what he discerned. The first thing he had understood was how hungry any touch could make Francis - if it were offered in the appropriate manner.

And, Jerott thought excitedly, if he could also engage that steel trap mind...

Jerott pushed himself away from Francis's skin to prop himself above him.

"Do you know of a man named Paré? A barber surgeon."

A frown crossed Francis's brow, but with it he wore a bemused smile. He shook his head wordlessly, then Jerott saw his eyes widen.

"The man with new-fangled techniques concerning the treatment of bullet wounds?" Francis ran his fingertips down Jerott's sternum and belly and smirked at the shiver he elicited. "I don't know what your idea of pleasure entails, Jerott, but I prefer the firearms to remain outside the bed chamber."

Jerott grinned and tossed his hair from his face before lifting a leg over Francis, to sit astride his narrow hips and feel Francis's cock move enquiringly against his thigh. "He also has ideas about providing physick through touch. Massa," Jerott said in Arabic. He held Francis's face between his hands, his thumbs beginning to roll in circular motions over Francis's temples. "Le massage," he added in French.

Francis's expression was one of polite patience, but as Jerott increased the pressure of his thumbs, moving the supple flesh beneath and occasionally stopping to push his fingers firm and hard in trailing lines against Francis's scalp, Francis's face began to relax, and his eyelids fluttered lower and lower as his smile unfurled.

"Jerott, where did you learn this?" he said, his voice emerging as a weary gasp.

"There were a couple of Knights who had fought for the French at Piédmont before realising the threat of the Turk. Paré demonstrated his techniques there."

As the cranial massage seemed more likely to relax Francis to sleep than arouse him to other activities, Jerott gently removed his hands from his head and smoothed his fingers across Francis's chest, watching the near-invisible golden hairs shimmer as his touch passed over them. "I understand that it is particularly beneficial for the shoulders," he said hopefully.

Francis swept his own hands through his hair, familiarising himself with the sensation of his aching skull having been remade. He glanced up at Jerott, his eyes dark like royal dye, his expression thoughtful. "I think I should like that," he admitted, quite quietly. Combined with his serious expression it felt like a covenant, and Jerott leaned down to seal it with a kiss, luxurious and slow.

They rearranged their bodies, Francis turning carefully onto his belly and elbows, all tension in his joints renewed before Jerott's eyes. His back shone with scar tissue, like an iced-over lake of old pain, white and scored, puckered and ridged. Many of the wounds had blended and pooled together, but at its edges, at its sloppy borders, lone strokes had ploughed silvery furrows into flesh, and Jerott, who had been expecting it, still had to bite the inside of his mouth and shake his head. He had seen such things often enough - he did not forget his own role in the creation of some of the landscape before him now - but never had they felt as much like a knife between his ribs as this sight did.

He laid his palms flat over Francis's shoulder blades and rubbed his thumbs against the groove of his spine. The scarred skin was softer than anything he had touched in his life, but it moved and stirred beneath Jerott's fingers just as any other flesh. He let out a sigh and swept his hands up to Francis's shoulders and neck. Jerott flexed his fists against the tightly bunched sinew and muscle and Francis let out a sound like air escaping from broken bellows.

Jerott blushed with immediate pride, and began to settle into his motions, watching his own brown fingers knead Francis's fair body. There was little covering on Francis's light bones, but Jerott's hands found the places where smudges and twists of hard pressure worked their effect nonetheless. Once he knew that the sensation was pleasurable to its recipient, Jerott found it easy to leave his hands to figure their way around Francis's body without conscious direction: the hands of an expert horseman, they knew the benefit of finesse and caution as well as the brutality of combat. Thumbs and knuckles ground out stiffness from the column of Francis's spine, around the sweeping curves of his ribs, ruffling nerves where scar tissue met healthy skin, pressing down into the softer parts of his back: the hollow dimples above his arse and the subtle curve of his flanks.

Francis arched his spine and raised his arse beneath Jerott's body, pushing back into his touch and trying to muffle his moan in the arms that he held crossed beneath his forehead.

Jerott was drawn to the sound by need though, and followed the trail of his hands back up Francis's body, leaning forward to nuzzle his face in the curls at the nape of Francis's neck. Jerott kissed the overspill of hairs that trickled down into an uneven v at the back of Francis's head. He dragged his teeth along pristine, freckled skin at the curve where Francis’s neck met his shoulders and he felt his cock grow lively once more against the flesh of Francis's lower back.

Beneath his body Francis twisted like an eel. Newly facing Jerott, their faces close enough to mingle breath, Jerott saw the expression he had been searching for. Undeniable points of emotion coloured the pinnacles of Francis's cheekbones. His gaze was steady but on edge, seemingly alarmed by his own response, but he took Jerott's face in his hands and kissed him deeply, and Jerott at last let himself believe that this was not a hidden bargain. It was not merely Francis's body offered in exchange for Jerott's acceptance of his onward journey - something further had been secured.

Francis rocked against Jerott in the kiss, his cock a hot pressure between Jerott's legs, pushing into sensitive, hidden parts of his flesh.

Unwilling to cede the initiative yet again, Jerott guided his knee between Francis's legs to push them apart. He ran his hand up the length of Francis's thigh, then began to squeeze handfuls of muscle and to rub his fingertips against the smooth skin on the inner part of his leg. He felt Francis adjust to the position, stretching from the floor to maintain contact with Jerott's mouth, to steady himself with his own sure grip on Jerott's shoulders.

Jerott's fingers trailed their way down the taut muscle at the back of Francis's leg and pried his arse cheek from the floor. He fed his hand into the space between Francis's body and the blankets, searching for the textured line of the perineum, hot and enclosed between curving flesh.

The unexpected pressure of Jerott's finger at his arsehole made Francis flinch at first, breaking from Jerott's kiss with a smacking sound, regarding him with heavy breathing and raised brows.

Jerott merely lifted his own eyebrows and pushed again at the opening, stroking across and around it until he felt Francis stop clenching his muscles warily tight.

He still regarded Jerott thoughtfully though, and murmured through gritted teeth, his breath scorching on the skin of Jerott's cheek and ear: "You are full of surprises, Jerott," before Francis captured Jerott's earlobe in his mouth and sucked on it vengefully.

Jerott could not hold his gasp, but he kept his confidence on all else. It did not seem like the opportune moment to point out his experience with the tricks of the women at The Ostrich Inn, nor was it they who he wished to occupy his thoughts.

Two joints of his finger made their way within Francis, and Jerott grunted at Francis's weight and the pressure on his digit, while Francis made his own sound as Jerott's finger twitched inside him.

"Go deeper," he instructed, grasping Jerott's own arse with one straining hand. Francis lay back on the blankets, seeking the purchase to push back against Jerott's finger, his body relaxing rapidly to accommodate the touch now that he had settled into it.

Jerott strove to do as he was ordered. He twisted his finger to nudge the wall of flesh and muscle and heard Francis release a sigh of air. Using the strength of his wrist and swordsman's hand, Jerott made his touch cramp against the spot that seemed to make Francis most likely to whimper and bite his lip and flex his body against the spread of cloth below them.

Jerott used his free hand tentatively at first, acclimatising himself to the strange feeling of another man's cock in his grasp, but found that he could hold himself alongside Francis. Jerott thrust against his palm and against Francis's shaft and his eyes fell closed in concentration as he tried to align the gestures of his two hands and their two sets of hips. Flesh jumbled with flesh, sensation with sensation, desperate and reckless, dry and hot.

The first he knew of his success was not the bitten-back sound Francis made - a shudder of relief like a collapsing building - but the sudden lubrication on his hand and his cock as Francis's ejaculate spilled over all. Jerott gasped and swore as the warmth of it hit him, triggering a jolt within his own body that he could do nothing to control.

His hips moved under the sway of no intent, his body surged with bliss for the second time that morning, and his could not avoid daubing Francis's firelit skin with fresh discharge.

That which carried more momentum missed Francis's face and hair by mere inches as he jerked his head to the side, laughing.

Jerott looked down at the two softening dicks in his hold and laid Francis's down with a dazed sort of reverence.

"God," he gulped, removing his finger from Francis's body less gently than he intended, and holding both of his ruined hands before him in bewilderment. Each one was stained with the ink of sin, slick and shining in the dim light, but he felt no guilt or shame - only their shadow, the sense that he ought to feel them. Instead, his mind was as blank and settled as the pristine snow outside, dazzling and dazzled.

Francis was shaking, his head rolling to one side on the pillow of covers, his own palms hanging uselessly in the air above the puddled mess on his belly.

He was still laughing, now in total silence, his eyes screwed shut and his teeth bared helplessly. His chest was blotched with colour and his cheeks were darkened by blood risen to the surface; his curls were clustered and dark with sweat; and the same salty sheen sparkled on the skin of his abdomen and thighs.

Jerott collapsed back on his heels, one of Francis's legs still trapped beneath him.

"Sorry," he managed to mutter, though it was a response made out of obligation.

Francis sat up as though stung and hastened to be close to Jerott, yet he still smiled. The pool of fluids on his skin dripped, catching on the golden hair around his navel. He took each of Jerott's hands in his own, shamelessly, palm to sticky palm so that Jerott was suddenly afraid they would be joined never to be parted, a punishment for what they had done. Francis gripped him more tightly as he tried to pull away, his eyes steady, inviting Jerott to look at him and find calm.

Francis murmured something - French; poetry; Jerott's swirling mind thought - and kissed him softly.

His lips already seemed so familiar, so much like a welcome, and the vague cloud of Jerott's unease started to dissipate. With their hands entwined to each side they leaned together, and Jerott only shuddered a little as the cold, wet stain on Francis's belly was shared with his own skin.

"Apology not accepted," Francis smiled against his mouth. His fine lashes brushed Jerott's cheek when he moved his face closer, and he let Jerott lean, exhausted, against him in turn.

-

Jerott's body shuddered against his bare skin. He kept his head and his eyes lowered, though he let Francis retain a grip on his hands.

"There is nothing to apologise for," Francis said against the swell of Jerott's mouth. His body was chilled with fresh sweat, his back felt frighteningly exposed, but there was no taking back how good it had felt to have Jerott's touch on him, how strangely content he had felt when he looked up and saw a familiar, trusted face lit by the furnace of passion.

Jerott's breath caught and he leaned his cheek against Francis's.

"Nothing we did was wrong, Jerott," Francis murmured. Their bodies rested close, their hands to their sides, Francis's thumbs working softly over Jerott's, though his grip was firm and he would not allow Jerott to pull away. Not like this. Not after that.

"Did any of it feel wrong, to you?"

Jerott's neck tensed and his head flinched back from Francis's, just far enough that he could meet his eyes. A series of muscles moved in his face, around wordless lips and wide, dark eyes.

Finally, "No - " he managed to answer.

Francis's expression cut off whatever caveat he might have been about to add. Jerott drew in a gasp and his colour deepened beyond the red blotches on the high points of his cheeks. He looked wonderingly at him, so that Francis could feel his own skin grow hot again, and Jerott kissed him.

His fingers shivered from the cleansing snow, and Francis wiped them on the shift he had replaced over his quickly cooling torso. He stood in the doorway to the hut, gazing out onto the painfully bright morning landscape. The tracks they had made the previous evening, on Francis's last attempt to divert their course, had been covered by fresh snow. Their meandering path to the lakeside and back again to the door - that which had been ice and mud and snow churned together - had turned now to soft white curves, like a line of small tumuli on the land.

Francis's eyes narrowed and his breath coiled in the air. Only the rooks stirred, and the sun was too low to do any more than skim across the glittering surface of winter's coat, like a pebble on a lake. He could smell no other fire smoke but their own, could hear nothing over the cawing of the rooks, and felt dizzy at the weight of snow that now lay between him and Kiaya Khatun's caravan.

But it was not the dizziness that sucked at his consciousness like a swamp, nor did the sun's brightness feel like hot daggers in his skull. Francis wrapped his arms about his body and loosed a held breath, steady and slow. He watched the air bloom with it, expanding petals of condensation that drifted away from him, glittering as they caught the sun. For perhaps the first time since he had boarded a ship provisioned by Onophrion Zitwitz, he felt good, clear: clear-headed, clear-sighted, clear of pain. His whole body hummed with the freshness of sensation like that experienced around a newly-healed wound, when spiking, tingling nerves begin to reach out again in exploration.

Shy at first, the hands that wrapped around his body smoothed his shift beneath their weight, and Francis blinked at his own response: he did flinch protectively, but hardly knew it through the roiling tide that crashed against the nerves below his stomach. He wanted the touch of those hands, then; it was not complicated, physically.

As for the rest - could he think of this existing beyond the little hut, and to what end? - Francis supposed that might wait. Waiting was all they had left for the present.

"It's cold," Jerott's reminder was spoken quietly, with a vein of uncertainty. As though he expected Francis to tell him it was as mylde as a mornyng of May. As though, if Francis told him so, he might try and make himself believe it was true.

Francis stepped back against Jerott's body and let him push the door closed, Jerott's arm reaching around them both. Francis twisted about and closed his eyes against the darkness inside the hut. Gentle, wondering fingers were at his hairline again, combing, teasing against his scalp in warm tracks. Jerott's mouth was at his, brushing querulously and catching on skin, his lips skimming close to Francis's spreading smile.

Francis, so used to playing to the melodrama of romance, so used to folding his lovers over his arm, pinning them in a deep kiss of passion that was calculated to undo the mortar of their knees, laughed at first as Jerott's body curved over him, into him. He almost thought that he simply would not be bent that way, half expected a snap, like an overstrung bow breaking. But instead, there was just Jerott's palm, splayed wide in the centre of his back, easing out his trust as they leaned into each other, as Jerott's other hand supported his head.

Jerott was still undressed, and Francis had to slide his arms up Jerott's bare body to find purchase, fingers clawing and grasping at smooth muscle and the submerged outline of his bones. Francis exchanged the long kiss for a series of gasping, nipping touches, mouth to mouth, untidy and competitive, each man striving for the final touch.

It was Jerott who, at last, pulled away, allowed Francis to take more of the balance of his own weight back, and looked at him with an expression far too serious for Francis's liking.

-

And that's it! For now, probably for ever? Though if anyone wants to write gap fillers or a conclusion that would be very sexy and I'm totally cool fwith that happening.

So, from what I remember of this, the lads catch up with Marthe and Kiaya on the other side of the lake. I think they plan to sneakily infiltrate the camp because they realise exposing Marthe will just create dangerous chaos, and I guess they (Francis) think they can reason with Kiaya.

I think I imagined some Mexican stand-offs, Marthe definitely has a gun, and she maybe even got to use it.

Details of the resolution are not a thing I recall at all, but the satisfactory conclusion is, I think, that all four of them go to Russia. Maybe Marthe still gets the chance to cosplay as voevoda now and again, and Kiaya Khatun doesn't have to threaten any small boys because Marthe is keeping her busy. She and Francis probably still think of Marthe and Jerott as place-holders of a sort, and I think Francis always regrets the vulnerability of letting Jerott in - there would be some absolutely blazing rows about some of his Ringed Castle behaviour, even if it was mellowed a little by changed circumstances, it's still pretty wild, and there's a lot he'll be keeping from Jerott about family circumstances.

I hadn't really thought through to ultimate resolutions, but left it so Francis/Philippa could still be a thing, ideally with Jerott having come to terms with enough about himself and about Francis to accept that they're probably not an optimal long-term match. He's always got Danny, who will have been making eyes at him from the ranks all winter long. I also think Kiaya's ambition should mellow, she and Marthe should have a Gabriel mummy bonfire/sell him for parts like the Egyptians did with their mummies, and then retire to Lyon together to be weird traders/fortune-tellers/coffee-sellers. CRAZY idea! Marthe/Kiaya coffee shop AU!!! Get your stars read when you buy ten cappuccinos! Sorry we're all out of caramel syrup but we can grate a little dessicated finger bone on top? I'm sorry we don't take payment in cloth sir, but if you can spare that antique relic we'll toss in a whole bag of our finest roast beans. No? Oh well, just keep your eyes on me, that's it. What, no, that's not my wife behind you with a dagger haha, what are you suggesting?

[knickknacksandallthat]

sorry to bother but do you have a plan of when part 4 will come out

ofc it’s perfectly fine if you’re not ready, from the looks of it this is a really big project

Hi anon!!

Oh my goodness, no it's no bother at all! Honestly, I would much rather be talking about fic writing than doing boring things like making a living (which consumed MY LIFE last week).

Ha! And you said it - this fic series has definitely been all-consuming. But I really love this particular AU, so let me tell you I've been working on it non-stop whenever I have time and have the following figured out so far:

My outline currently has the next fic at 12 chapters, though I have a sneaky suspicion that it'll become longer.

I have 53K written so far (but that's before editing😅).

It will have alternating POVs between Jean and Jeremy.

I wish I could give you a better sense of timing, but honestly it all comes down to my work schedule and what free time I have. At this point, I feel like I'm aiming toward April - but don't quote me.

And because I haven't posted something about Once in a Blue Moon on here for a while, here's a new snippet to chew over while I keep hustling as a thank you for your patience! 🥹

OIAB scene under the cut:

The LA airport is hot and muggy. It makes sweat bead down Jean’s neck and uncomfortably gather beneath his collar. Though he wears the lightest long-sleeve shirt he owns, the material still feels constricted and stifling, sticking to his skin. He has the insane urge to tear the garment off him and walk around bare-chested just to feel some relief.  Of course, he would never do so. In fact, the mere thought of it makes him pull his sleeves down farther, covering the backs of scar-ridden hands.  At least his head is cool.  He runs a hand over his buzzed scalp once more, the fuzzy feel of it still odd to him. Abby had suggested it so they could see his stitches better. And since so much of his hair had been pulled out anyway, it seemed to make sense.  Still, he hates how foreign the feeling is. He’s a stranger in his own skin. Has been, for some time he thinks.  He glances up anxiously at the clock on the wall, his knee bouncing as he waits. His flight landed ten minutes ago, and he thought his captain would be waiting here to greet him.  Apparently, he thought wrong.  Laughter erupts from behind him, and Jean jumps. He immediately spins around, only to find a family standing nearby, laughing at the antics of their two-year-old. He watches them for a moment before slowly turning back, clasping his hands in front of him and clutching them tight. Anxiety slowly begins to creep under his skin. Had he gotten the day wrong? Or the time? Did something happen between Palmetto and here that caused a delay? Should he call someone to ask?  He opens his phone and looks through the few contacts on his list.  Abby Winfield David Wymack Jeremy Knox Kevin Day Renee Walker Jean scowls.  His preference would likely be Abby or Renee, though he thinks the latter would have no information useful for this. Wymack, he would tolerate. He skims over the fourth name on the list because he’s never thinking of that fucker again in his entire life, if he can help it. Then he stares at the fifth name, the contact information for him uploaded without his knowledge into this new phone Abby got him. Jeremy Knox.  Starting Trojans Striker. #11. Played 52 games last season, scored 41 goals, and had 36 assists. Captain of the USC Trojans for three years straight. Fifth-best striker in the NCAA.  (Fourth, now that Riko is gone.)  Weaknesses: favors left side for goals, left knee injury in his sophomore year of high school, and overly attached to wellbeing of teammates. Jean scowls again.  If Knox is anything like the person who recommended him, he’s bound to be both a waste of Jean’s time and breath. After all, he can certainly strike punctual off the list.

Thanks again for the ask, anon!

[run2seob]

5 things you like about 5 of your moots?

turned from subtly fangirling to "i'm (not)subtly in love with u and your blog" but thank u for the ask bcs i have an excuse to >:)

@gyuletters

her ability to write a variety of genres without using cliches

her kindness ^^ she's always complimenting accounts and writng the best reblogs

her theme (it's soo pretty) and how well it represents her. star's personality is so sweet and i feel like her theme reflects that

she comes up with the best prompts too! like i'm envious of her brain

how comforting her fics are (and binge worthy~)

@junoswrlld

even before me and juno became close, they were so so kind to me T0T

her ability to pace herself and balance her fics and personal life (i genuinely could not do this like.. admirable, seriously)

her crack ficshehsh they're so good >< she makes chapters leave you with suspense every time

how many memes she finds. it's one of my fav things because how do i wake up to 40 cat and scrimbo memes 😭

how reliable she is!! i can trust her with my fics and spoilers and it's so nice :> she gives motivation and gained my trust so easily :')

@mazeinthemoon

i can't believe i only have to do five?? i need more space to write about how moon writes. the way emotion is captured into her writing is filled with suspense but also comfort? like, in between dialogue, there's those quotes that you replay in your mind over and over again because how could someone think of that?

^^ adding onto this, the way she incorporates figurative language into her text perfectly captures the moment. it's not blatant and keeps the sentence flow which is impressive. as a writer i respect moon even more because even i struggle with that T0T

i've said this for everyone but can you blame me? they're all kind, moon included! she's always answering asks in the kindest way

^^ additionally, the way she types is so cute. and by this i mean kaomojis and emoticons. i love emoji faces so much hehe

best for last ofc~ her fics in general! glitter and the goalie both had me hooked. like essay long notes and annotations. i might reread glitter because of how on the edge it had me and bcs of her recent post.. detective reader activated >:)

@hueningsloverr

RHIA'S ANGST. that's shakespeare's child now, seriously. the way she writes angst is beautiful.. but like beautiful in a way where it feels like a pretty statue of a little girl crying but it's beautiful. beautiful in the way where it hurts but is pretty... makes you cry tears bcs of how well it was written yk?

the way she views things is soo beautiful. like in her reblogs and how she views songs. (could write an essay) when she wrote txt x time in a bottle it fit with the boys perfect and was just so pretty. there's so many quotes i remmeber and trust i'm not forgetting

i'm gonna make these shorter but how many ideas she comes up with. i could never T0T

her themeee

i wished i talk to her more!! i'm always scared to talk to my moots but i love her pseonality i would be so happy to talk to her more but i'm too scared

@huenation

themethemetheme it's so cute

idk if this counts but i was reading their bf beomgyu texts and was listening to hea and read the "oh my god" as the same time as the song said it and can't forget about that 😭

ugh my top 5 comfort fic being soobin meeting yns parents like.. i love this fic so much and ik this isn't recs but they write so well 😭 the moment is always described in the best ways and i can visualize them so well

i don't talk to amor much but i love their posts/txt reblogs ><

and that i wish them happiness. i know a lot of people's posts and writings reflect their emotions, and i just hope they're doing well. everyone has bad times, but it really depends what mindset you approach them with, you know? i just hope they get to smile :)

[kiennilove]

Weekly Tag Wednesday

Tag this with Gallavich Tag so everyone can read your response

thanks @badassfetish for tagging me!!

✦ Name: miah (or opal)!!

✦ Zodiac sign: smol aquarius

✦ Favorite Ian quote: i, ian, take you, mickey…

✦ Favorite Mickey quote: i, mikhailo, take you, ian…

✦ Shameless quote that currently defines your life: this is it. this is you breaking up with me (there was another quote by mickey originally, but the break-up happened as i was writing this)

✦ Write in one phrase a gallavich scene you wanted to see on TV: their first walk to the bleachers in s2. how did they decided to meet? what were the talking about when walking?? did they meet at some specific place or one went to pick up another???

oh, and also gotta be sleepover. ofc there was probably a lot of sex, but imagine mickey being a bit shy because he wanted to kiss ian so bad but was still unsure of how exactly it’s done… i need to see it!!!

✦ Your top 3 celebrity crushes: noel fisher, emma kenney and ummm uhhh emma kenney again <333

✦ What's your biggest dream? not be fucked for life :(

✦ What would you do to the last person that hurt you if it was free of any consequence? nothing. what they did was hurtful but revenge won’t help

✦ Tell something daring you did once: blocked me ex i guess… very daring for me

✦ Fiction character that defines you: ian in s6 before the emt happened and debbie (but without a kid lol)

✦ Your biggest red flag: love bombers… this is how all the hurt starts

✦ Your biggest green flag: accepting that even if you are a close person, you still need to pay for what i do for living

✦ What fanfic would you turn into a movie or tv show? i don’t really know, i don’t read that many, but i write stuff myself, so they might have been some good extra episodes for gallavich :3

✦ Most dripping hot gallavich fic you've ever read: then again, some of my own fics xD wish i could’ve share them :(

✦ What's your job / what do you study? logistics for music events, but have an unfinished art major :(

✦ What part of your body is your pleasure spot: don’t have it, body feels numb all the time :(

✦ What's the one thing you're less proud about yourself? giving up on things very easily

✦ What's the one thing you're most proud about yourself? i make pretty good jokes or puns in my native language lol

✦ Do you have or had any mental illness? depression/anxiety. thought got it under control but for the past few weeks it got worse

✦ Do you still plan on achieving a goal this year? If so, what is it? don’t have any goals as for now :( just to make it to next year

✦ Favorite movie/tv show scene of all time: sorry i’m late

tags below the line :3

@atthedugouts @spookygingerr @transsexual-dandelions @iheartmoons

and @ everybody else who wants to join :)

[phesh-n-cheps]

HELLOOOOOO

My name's Alex! Your posts have started to grace my dash (probably courtesy to @arson-mushroom) and I just wanted to say that you seem like an incredibly cool person and I'm so glad I came across your blog. It's so great to find another Australian marauders fan as well omg!

Anyway I also saw your post about your typewriter - which by the way is like, possibly one of the coolest things you could ever own. You were asking for ideas of quotes, and I was thinking maybe you should pull some from any fics you've read, or you can always fall back on the classics like Shakespeare, Jane Austen, or poetry! ('Villian, I have done thy mother' and 'hell is empty and all the devils are here' are two of my favourite Shakespeare quotes, for example - although i do understand you likely have rather different tastes to me 😂. But either way, I'd love to see what you come up with!)

Also I wanted to ask permission for something. Earlier today I reblogged your art of Marlene on like a pier or something? And I really, really liked your art, so I was wondering if I could print it out to stick on my wall! I've just recently moved houses and are trying to fill my walls with things that make me happy, and I'm practically in love with marlene mckinnon and your depiction of her, so uh yeah. Just thought I'd ask :) totally up to you though, feel free to refuse!

Anyways, I hope you have a fantastic day today!! <3

wow !!! thank you SO MUCH alex this is so sweet <3 always nice to meet another tumblr aussie lol

and i 'm honoured you like my art this much , ofc it 's okay !! feel free to use it for anything not for profit , with my permission :] this made me smile

and i also love shakespeare ! if you have any specific quotes you think would be cool feel free to ask me :) and again , thanks so much for saying all this , it means a lot to me

[sixosix]

hi hello

I'm here to write about my experience while reading the latest writing of wanderer. (it shall contain what I'm doing as I'm reading and my reactions - so if you don't wanna read it - that is a-okay!)

I'M STANDING IN -3°C OR EVEN LESS ON A TRAIN STATION FREEZING. I'm reading this by taking a glove off of my hand to scroll and then switching it to the other (taking the other glove off putting this one on) - pain fr, and then smiling to myself like a love struck idiot at 6 FUCKING AM. ON A FOGGY CROWD FILLED TRAIN STATION.

you did say in the a/n that the first part was "unnecessary" but I enjoyed the potrayal of friendship - it fleshed out the mc fr. also didn't except Heizou to be so touchy bUT THEN I gave it a second more of thought (lol) and I can see it. wanderer wearing all black is fucking canon in my eyes in modern!teyvat/world/somewhere.

the flashback was written really cutely, managing to catch the good vibes and capture, in a quite the short amount of text, the history the two have. (except like why does he think he hurt them-myb he thinks it is cos they left? idk listen I'm still sleepy if I missed something dO NOT HATE ME I WILL REREAD LATER TODAY)

next, I manage to find a spot in the train to sit, now nice and warm, chuckling at the boys & mc interaction in the hotel room

takiNG PAUSES - TURNING MY PHONE OFF AND LOOKING OUT INTO THE DARKNESS OF THE MORNING WHEN THEY KISS???? WHEN HE SAYS ANYTHING? I'm out here yet again smiling to myself and looking out of the window before continuing my reading

little love confessions cute! cute! cute!

thE FUCKING CUDDLES THE CUDDLES THE. CUDDLES. as a deeply touched deprived person with main love language being physical affection (with only selected few I care for, otherwise I hate any physical contact) my reaction is - YES. tysm. bless, thank you for your service.

it warmed my heart, perfect perfect perfect. ALSO THE LINE - I JUST RECALLED, THE LINE "You think I'd settle for less than you" - screenshoted, screamed internally, felt special, felt pain no one in this bitch ass world has me yet like that - no one ever will prob let US BE REAL (I'm mentaly dating all of them fictional mfs) , looked out of the window, paused, thought about stuff, leaned my head back to reimagine the scene as I try to also nap and fAIL cos I'm too hyped to read it - like man! 5k words - a LOT (it indeed was not a lot, I forgot how fast I read even when I reread lines and pause, and that I finish a thick ass book in 2 hours.)

it was slow burn without the slow but you worded it so nicely, paced it out, captured the essence of the thought proccess of a "crush" and stuff. also heizou being mentioned so much DOES make sense in the way - that ofc you'd think to tell your bsf this shit and chat with him DUH.

the detail of Aether texting his sister warmed my heart.

roll back a bit earlier - did I mention my train arrived late to my station - and in the freezing dark cold morning I smile and was like "ehe" cos I get to read this in PEACE for 15 mins longer - cos of the late train.

roll back to the present. after the kiss someone sits next to me so I'm putting my phone away, like I'm reading straight up smut of some shit, yet again rethinking everything you wrote.

then I see "a/n" - cut to me screaming, yelling, crying internally for more - feeling like it just began - I need the two days, I need more of the kissing, I need how they solve the end of vacay, and how they work all of it out - ALSO WHERE IS XIAO AMONGST MY ANEMO BOYS

on the topic of xiao I do understand it would be difficult for me as well to put the two boys I love the most in the same fic and just not have anything with one of them. furthermore, I understand one of your notes on a Xiao writing you did as a Xiao main. Listen me too, I could not write about my beloved. it would be a struggle just like it is for you but I KNOW WHY LET ME TELL YOU WHY - to quote Jane Austen "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more" I rest my fucking case.

I CAN FURTHER SUPPORT MY CLAIM WITH THIS - I'm talking to my friend the other day about genshin and he's like tell me about you favorite character, I say a bit while also trying to keep it spoiler free but I struggle so much, because my mind just fills with everything about him, every single thing Xiao has been through and dear gods how do I say it all, how to get across everything he is, has been through. yeah. the quote is true.

I beg on my knees for somehow another part of this wanderer writing I'm just gnawing at a train plush soft cushion (not literally).

every timE I READ ONE OF YOUR THINGS ABOUT THE SHORT SNARKY BOY I'M ALWAYS SMILING TO MYSELF ALWAYS PAUSING LOOKING AWAY, WHAT DO YOU PUT IN THIS WHAT IS THIS SORCERY?

I am very aware of how long this is, hope it wasn't boring - but HEY it is an ask, so technically you can ignore me

I probably didn't manage to caputre all my thoughts while reading it cos I'm just still very tired - hope you have a great day

ps. I could very well write an ask about how I started enjoying (read: liking) Wanderer + how the pulls went (it would be more put together than this ask honestly lmk)

pps much love, keep writing stuff x

hi hello! of course id love to read. i love the trend of sending long asks like this!! the only time i dont like long asks is when readers are requesting something---i dont like that at all :/ but youre not doing that!!! youre talking about your experience in reading my works and it really really warms my heart reading through it

OH NO T__T i cant even imagine. my countrys temperature never falls below 25-30°C so i cant even imagine surviving outside when the numbers are NEGATIVE T__T

the first part was absolutely unnecessary HAHA but thank you for justifying it. My hopeless crush wormed in and i wrote too much to just delete it sigh…

now for your question--scara moved out and essentially left the reader. it was more of a reference to scaramouche's canon backstory. he felt hurt that ei left him! and now, he's leaving the person he cares about. of course, in my head, he would assume that you'd feel what he felt. its why i put scaras mommy issues in the tags hahaha

im glad you like their interaction!! i loved writing their banter so much. i love writing scara talking to anyone in general because the way he talks is the way i think irl LOL

im so glad you also like the "you think i'd settle for less than you" line!!! ill tell u a secret. a few minutes before posting the fic it wasn't even there, but after reading through it i thought it would fit perfectly with the way i wrote scaramouche's character :D

and im so glad u pointed out the pacing!!! in all honesty i am far from confident with my pacing. i never know if im doing it right so thank u so much for saying that!!!!!!!! T__T <3 i dont know if i should clap for the late train for letting you read in peace? ??

LMFAOOO IM SO SORRY. this is exactly why i avoid reading fanfiction out in public even if i dont read smut. these strangers cannot know that i read about scaramouche kissing me.

and also fun fact!!!!! in the previous author note, it was not written that way. let me show you proof!! i cant find it rn but ill go into the version history version of my docs :D

AHHH that quote is so real im stealing that sorry. Everytime someone brings up why i dont write xiao enough ill pull that up !!!!! i know exactly what u mean :/

and about a part two… some people are already asking for it but i just don't do part twos T__T unless its stated in the fic that there's another part coming--it means that that's it…… your imagination will probably do better than whatever i can cook anyway !!!

[gladdygirl18]

omggggg i have an amazing story for you guys! It might be a bit long im not sure but ofc as always, read under the cut

Blue me, orange BF

some spicy stuff (mainly implied)

so about a few days ago, i was chilling with my boyfriend in his room (i was doing HW/writing a story, he was reading a webtoon) and him being cheeky, started tickling my feet (i swear to fuck i think my feet got more sensitive after being with my ex-gf)

Okay so what Im about to say will shock many ppl, but in this relationship, my BF and I don't hide things from each other. So he already knows I like tickling and I have a tumblr page. He had asked me, "what is your blog about tickling?"

I told him, and I quote, "Yes, actually, it is."

Yes, I told my boyfriend I had a tickle blog.

"I've had it for about.... since before covid, or during covid, i don't remember."

"Are you serious?"

"I'm being so deadass right now. Our friends know i have a tumblr blog, but they don't know what it's about. You are the only one that knows."

I then continued to tell him that I not only do I write about the 2 of us (like I am now), but about the tickle fics i write for my OCs and characters of other fandoms. He was surprised and even looked me up on google, and low and behold, he found me.

After all of that, I then asked him, "Is it weird that i have a blog about tickling?"

"Of course not. Tickling is something you love, and from what you've told me, it's gotten you through a lot of hardships because it cheers you up. Why would I judge you or shame you for something you love and something that I can easily provide for you?"

AHHHHH I DONT DESERVE HIM I DONT 😭💖🥰

And when he said he would provide, oh my goodness, does he provide. After that conversation, he straddled me and started tickling me like crazy. When I would try to fight back, he would grab my wrist and hold them back.

"See this is why I need those restraints, because someone won't take their tickling~"

Just end me now. He said he'd mainly use them for my ankles so he could have both hands free to tickle me 😆💖😋 he is such a fucking tease i cannot with him, but i love him all the same💖🥰

And you wanna know what he said after he tickled me for damn near 5 minutes straight?

"Put that in your tickle blog~"

😶🙃💖😭WHY HE BULLY ME /jk /lh

Some days later, i believe during the weekend while at his place, he had left early morning for work and i decided to sleep in. After waking up, I helped his mother make her other sons' halloween costumes (It was really fun! My mother was a tailoress and she taught me how to mend clothes, so doing this with my boyfriend's mother felt like i was doing clothes with my momma again, and it was great 🥰💖 God bless that woman, I love her so much!)

Around mid-afternoon, my boyfriend came home from work, ad we just cuddled for the rest of the day. and once again, my boyfriend's hands started to travel up my sides and he started tickling me once again. And while I was laughing my ass off, he says, and I quote:

"Would you write about this in our tickle blog? Dear tickle blog, today my boyfriend tickled me till i couldn't breathe~"

I HATE TO ADMIT IT BUT HE DID😭😆💖

Yknow the type of laugh that just has your mouth open, nothing coming out but just air (best kind of laughs in my opinion) but yeah, he had me silent laughing.

Cut to a few days later, my boyfriend and I were getting a midnight snack. At first I thought he was being cute by hugging me from behind (how wrong I was😅) ofc he starts tickling me, and idk y but i was just very sensitive that night and I literally crumbled to the kitchen floor, and he followed me down. He sat down on the floor with me between his legs just tickling me.

"Let me gohohoho!" "Nope, I've got you right where I want you."

where we were sitting, we had a clear view of the oven door, and he goes, "Who's that giggly girl? Who is she? Do you know her?"

THE BABY TALK I CANT AHHHH 😆😆💖🥰

After that, he started tickling a part on my upper/inner thigh and oh my God. I was bucking around and laughing like a maniac, and my boyfriend couldn't help but laugh along to. He would stop after a while and ask "Are you okay?" while laughing and then do it again. His grip around me was strong but i was thrashing around a lot. "You almost knocked me off a few times there."

After he finished torturing me, he stood up, looked down at me and grinned, "Put that in your tickle blog"

"You're evil"

"Oh, dont act like you didn't love it"

I couldn't say a word after that, cuz there were no lies detected

Three mornings ago, I'm sleeping over at my boyfriend's place, and me, I like sleeping in (but we had to get up and leave the house within the hour to get to campus) but our classes started late so we had time. This man climbs on top of me and starts tickling me for like 10 minutes straight

"Rise and shine honey" "Come on, laugh for me, baby~" "Who's my tickly girl?"

AHHHHHHH I CANT WITH HIM 💖😆😭

After he finished tickling me, he craddled me in his arms and pulled me in close, hugging and kissing me sweetly.

"You don't know how happy I am that you're ticklish."

"What do you mean?"

"It's my way of giving back to you for all you do to me. I may not always give you pleasure in certain ways, but having you laugh and squirm around in my arms, and cuddle close to my chest... it makes me really happy, because it makes you happy."

WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE HIM 😭💖💖🥰 I LOVE HIM SO MUCH OMGGGG 💖💖🥰😍

And a few days ago, my boyfriend and I had a day out with our families to have them meet (his mother and 2 younger brothers, my father and sister), and everything went along better than expected. Throughout our time out, I had wore a crop top with short shorts and ofc, my boyfriend would sneak in some tickles to my sides every now and again.

After our day out, my boyfriend's mother drove us back to campus. While driving back, my boyfriend wrapped his arm around me and started tickling me; my sides, belly, thighs, behind my knees, neck

AND I COULDN'T MOVE CUZ WE WERE IN A CAR 😭😭😭I WAS LEGIT TRAPPED

But id be lying if i said that wasn't fun. When he finished tickling me, he whispered, "Put that in your tickle blog."

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh he's never letting me live that down

This was a very long TTS, only because it was covering a plethora of days and crammed it all into one. Stay tuned for another one!

Tagging the fwends: @giggly-squiggily @sunstone-smiles @burningablaze @cutesmokes @otomiyaa

[ouroboros-hideout]

Time to mix up some blorbo drinks! All the labels on bottles got mixed up, but we still remember what each ingredient tastes like Fine Cocktail Aon: — Pour #1; — Add #7 for texture; — Sprinkle it with #22 for a nice aftertaste! McVladonalds Smoothie: — Spill #11; — Now get to- Oh no, the ice machine got broken!

Your order is ready for pick up Ma'am!

Fine Cocktail Aon:

1: What memory would your OC rather just forget?

A few things would fit here but I go with the death of one of her best friends. I think I mentioned that “event” some time in one of the other 1000 asks already, but it’s happening after Phantom Liberty when SovOil finds her hidden mine bc one of her closest confidants snitched on her. She then has to witness during a brutal fight, where a lot of her people die how Gregori, the man she would even call her brother, dies right in front of her eyes and she can’t do anything about that and will feel forever guilty about it. (sorry for the huge angst)

7: What's one way your OC has changed since you first came up with them?

I think the most prominent change is the fact that I ship her with Kurt. It wasn’t meant to be like that AT ALL in the beginning. They should have been just friends, close enough he would trust her to be part of his plans to strike Rosie and probably the whole NUSA down. A tough woman who balances out all the dudes that hang around with him bc it definitely missed a female touch imo. Out of that the idea of friends with benefits came up because their dynamic seemed kinda fun and interesting to me. And then everything escalated when I wrote the first chapter with them - what actually should have been the third or fourth chapter of that abandoned thing, that should have been my main fic. Quote: “I am not a shippy person myself”. Hmm, sure Boro. Suuuuuuure.

22: What character alignment would you consider your OC to be?

Oof I am terrible with those charts. I am not sure. I am torn between Chaotic Good and Chaotic Neutral I think. Somewhere there in the middle.

McVladonalds Smoothie:

11: What is your OC's weapon of choice? Have they ever actually used it?

He used to start his training in the police with handguns and stick with that throughout his life. When the pay got better he got himself a unique pair of power pistols he nurtures and cares for with a lot of effort (if I ever feel the urge to tortue myself I would change some textrue things about Alex gun and use it as his). And ofc he needs to give them some cringe names. His main gun is called “Dies Irae” - the second he takes as a backup “Ab imo pectore”. He and everyone else who knows him well enough is aware of the fact that he doesn’t need silly guns or anything else other than his hands to kill someone. But he prefers (at least in a normal state of mind) to shoot a quick bullet into someone's head instead of making a huge mess.

And you are lucky today - The ice machine works again: