#or maybe that was just towards the romans

[stewyhosseini-bf]

they are literally brothers that's his little brother man!!!!!! you don't get it!!!!!!

[dynamitekansai]

WWEonFOX: Roman Reigns laughed at the idea of Solo Sikoa becoming Tribal Chief 👀

[coldforestnight]

That post where @myplasticadversary said roman was the first thing kendall ever “owned” rewired my brain permanently. If I say it’s how I imagine Logan felt towards Kendall…

[hernymills]

wait i was wondering if Dr. Gaul's name was in reference to Charles de Gaul, like gaulism, like 'if we want to avoid another wwii we have to have a strong france not reliant on allies' guy (so like, nationalism. just specific)

so like i googled just "gaul" to see if that was what came up or something else

gaul was an ancient way of referring to like that whole region? like france and others? like charles de gaul leader of france in ww2 was named like

Chuck from Here?

[baepsays]

LEAVE ME ALONE GROWN ASS MAN WHOM I DESPISE STOP HAUNTING MY DREAMS AHHHHHHHHH

[stardstgf]

been looking at old character studies of old characters that I wrote and I miss. real ones remember kaeira🫡 been thinking abt her a lot today.

[errriiie]

The last practice before nationals

poly!yellowjackets x fem!reader minors DNI, all characters are 18 y.o

TW: smut, gangbang extra tags: porn with plot, praising, bodyworship, sharing is caring, fingering (r! receiving), oral (r! receiving), oral (r! giving), little bit of spanking word count: 5.1k not proofread english is not writer's first language! you've always been so nice and sweet to Yellowjackets, the one and only soccer team in your school, Wiskayok High. But you also were naive and innocent enough to constantly overlook the fact that every single girl on the team wanted your attention. And when, the last day before their nationals, they finally decided to make things clear between you and them.

When Coach Martinez first introduced you to the girls, they weren't too impressed. Average hair, average eyes, average height. Nothing special or anything to look at more than usual. You weren't even, roughly speaking, a full-fledged part of the team. At least that's what Taissa said. She was always like that - confident and sure of her opinions, even if they were somewhat offensive.

But you didn't mind, and even agreed. You were just an equipment manager, and you only became one because your mother and father were very close with Coach Martinez and asked him to find you a place out of old friendship. Of course, the coach made up a different story for everyone about how you came to be on the team - but every time you remembered the truth of your presence here, you wondered if you had the right to wear your signature yellow and blue bomber jacket. You felt ashamed, even though you didn't act like someone who got in because they got a pass. You were responsible, punctual, but you didn’t forget about empathy and responsiveness when communicating with girls. Over time, you began to be noticed by more than just Misty Quigley, who shared the same position with you.

Misty Quigley herself wasn’t too bad. Well, she was… weird. But you decided that everyone had their own cockroaches in their heads and she was just trying to make friends this way.

"You know, if we ever run out of food, I’ve always wondered what human flesh tastes like. I mean, they say it’s like pork, right? Maybe we should start taking notes just in case." Misty once said while you were cleaning up the cones after practice. You looked at her with wide eyes, full of confusion.

"Excuse me? Misty, this is a little weird…" You awkwardly continued to do your job, while Misty burned a hole in you with her gaze. Misty tilts her head slightly, her expression shifting from playful to earnest.

"Oh, come on! I was just joking… mostly. But think about it—survival is all about adapting, right? It’s just a thought experiment! Besides, we’ve got to keep our spirits up somehow. Want to talk about your favorite horror movie instead? I promise I won’t suggest cannibalism this time!”

But Misty didn’t always say such creepy things. She could talk about history, especially about Roman emperors, about her experience in first aid and medicine in general, about her interests, of which there were quite a few, but no one except you, apparently, wanted to listen to her. You didn’t understand the reasons and were patient with her. Misty immediately began to appreciate this - she did not throw away potential loved ones. Then Natalie Scatorccio appeared. Natalie did not have much experience with love, including the manifestation of care towards her. You didn't know anything about her, except that she lived in a van and was an extremely good and promising soccer player. But the more Misty shared the good news about your "endless love and care", trying to brag that she had such a tasty morsel and not the rest of the team, Nat couldn't help but become interested in you. People who lack love often don't quite realize how much they subconsciously want to find it.

She caught you after practice once and started talking to you. Nat herself didn't understand why she wanted to come back to you more and more every day - was it your manner of speech or how brightly you smiled at her after silly stories? She wanted to blush under your gentle gaze, and her heart beat strangely when you waved at her after she made a good pass to the other team members. But of course it wasn't always like that. The more attached she became to you, the more she focused on looking into your unexpectedly deep eyes, rather than at the ball.

"Natalie, don't you want to start playing properly? What are you constantly distracted by?" Lottie narrows her eyes when Natalie refuses to pass the ball to her and tries to dribble the ball to the goal herself, but hits the wall.

"Forget it, Lots. I'm just having a bad day." Natalie waved it off. It was odd that for someone having a bad day, she was smiling so stubbornly and persistently in the wrong direction. Lottie couldn't help but realize that she was looking at you. Perhaps you needed to have a heart-to-heart talk.

So, Charlotte Matthews quickly became next.

After practice, she caught you doing your job as you were supposed to, and called you out on it. She was annoyed, but more curious about your relationship with Natalie. You were blushing and apologetic, and it was hard to deny that you weren't to blame for Nat's deteriorating performance.

And then Lottie discovered that your shy face was extremely hard to get out of her head. Inadvertently, you began to talk after and before practice, Lottie sharing some details about upcoming parties at her house and inviting you. You, of course, refused. Your parents expected you to be decent, and Lottie didn't like rejection and didn't know what rejection was, being a rich girl. So she made it her goal to get you at least once. Or twice. So trying to get under your skin, subtly courting you, and trying to get through to your difficult parents was already routine. Including giving expensive gifts.

"Tai, have you seen the new hair clip in Y/N's hair? Those things cost a lot of money, I tell you, I saw it in the window of that expensive jewelry store." Vanessa was amazed at the new accessory you now had.

"I didn't really pay attention to it, to be honest. What do you… mean? Do you want one like that? I didn't think it was your style." Taissa chuckled, and Van rolled her eyes.

"Haha, very funny, but that's not what I mean… Hey, Lottie! Does Y/N have a rich mommy and daddy like yours?"

Lottie, passing by, chuckled, clearly filled with pride. "Not really. That was my gift. Y/N is very nice, you know. You shouldn't have doubted her, Taissa."

Then Taissa Turner and Vanessa Palmer appeared. They were already in a relationship and were amazed to see how quickly you changed the team's attitude for the better. And yet, from the very beginning, you were a black sheep for Taissa. Van, however, did not treat you with great disdain. She preferred to give people a chance to prove themselves first, and only then draw her own conclusions. However, they quickly liked you. Taissa was surprised that you had previously attended law and jurisprudence classes, and these topics interested her greatly. Van was pleasantly pleased with your taste in films and comics. You complemented their couple with something that they could not complement each other with on their own, after all, no relationship can simply be perfect. It was a matter of time before they both wanted your attention more than was possible. Van often invited you to her home to read or watch something, and Taissa loved to discuss social issues with you. You turned out to be more than either of them could have thought.

"Tai, I'm sorry, but I've already taken up Y/N's time for the evening with myself." Van smiled tenderly at Taissa.

Taissa raised an eyebrow in surprise, seemingly hoping for something. "Damn. How did you manage to come to an agreement with her faster than me? Maybe you'll take me with you?" she said with awkward hope. "Of course, I don't understand a damn thing about your conversations, but still…"

"No way, babe. You'll steal her attention again." Van shook her head.

"Why do I keep hearing everyone talking about Y/N from every corner of the room?" Jackie folded her arms in displeasure as she found herself next to the couple. "I understand that she's new and all that… but what's so unique about her? I swear, we won't get to nationals like this."

Jackie Taylor was annoyed by your popularity within the Yellowjackets. She could see the effect you had on the girls - they were going crazy trying to get a piece of you. She wasn't interested in you at all, but she had a feeling that if she didn't get a little bit closer, they would dethrone her and make you the team captain and even make you their mascot. She had to do something, and fast.

One day, Jackie stayed with you after practice, kindly offering to help you clean up the equipment. When you both walked into the warehouse, she almost pinned you against the wall, demanding answers to her questions.

"Y/N, I can see something's going on. I understand that you want to be friends with everyone, sure, but… we're trying really hard to get to nationals. And you're being way too… outgoing, you know? You need to stop. For the good of our team, as captain, I'm asking you to…"

"Your hair looks great today. Even after playing so hard." You blurted out, unable to contain your genuine respect. "Oh. Sorry. Keep going."

Jackie froze, her combative attitude seeming to completely falter. "You… you think so? Finally, someone sees how much I work on this hair, trying to get it just right every morning! I use powder and hairspray literally all the time, and no one has even bothered to compliment me… until you, of course."

Jackie took pity on you after that. Not when you were willing to spend hours shopping for clothes with her, stealing your clothes and trying on what she told you to try on, making you her model. No one had ever shown such steely restraint with Jackie Taylor, and every time she put on your makeup, it was so hard for her to resist the pounding of her heart and the strange desire to cover your lips with hers. But there was a catch to being with Jackie. The amount of time you spent together didn't sit well with Shauna Shipman. She was the only one who showed no interest in you at all. She didn't care about you, and that was surprising. She never, not once, approached you. You doubted she even knew your name, although considering Jackie told her everything, your name was the only thing she knew about you.

And the fact that you were a real suck-up. That's what she called you when she decided to have it out with you.

"What do you have with Jackie? Do you think I can't see how you're trying to pull the wool over her and everyone else's eyes?" Shauna narrows her eyes, looming over you. "What is it about you? Are you such a good suck-up?"

You felt hurt, but even more so, you felt a seething injustice. "I don't know what you're talking about, Shauna, I was just trying to be friends with everyone. It's not my fault they saw something in me."

Shauna snorted, unsure of what to do with you. "Well. Fine. Just stay away from Jackie, okay? And you'll be fine." Shauna had already turned away from you, about to leave. She adjusted her backpack, but a book fell out. You quickly picked it up.

"You dropped…" You looked at the cover, sighing in surprise. "Pride and Prejudice? That's my favorite book!" You exclaimed, surprising Shauna. She rolled her eyes, simply taking it from you, pretending not to care, but in reality, she was even a little impressed. You were left standing in the hallway, not quite sure what you did wrong.

And then you were surprised when Shauna came to you wanting to discuss the book, as if nothing had happened. Perhaps she was so eager to discuss her interests with someone that she decided to choose the worst option of all - you (Jackie, as expected, did not like reading books at all). You liked to read in your spare time, and Shauna was pleased that you had read a lot of female writers from the 18th and 19th centuries. She sometimes shared her thoughts on them with you, but the main thing was that at one point she made you a playlist of songs named after you. You were flattered and too busy enjoying the gift to notice how much Shauna blushed as she tried to hold your hand.

You didn't even know it would be like this. It seemed like almost all the girls on the team were literally tearing you apart. You'd never received so many gifts, compliments, and, it seemed, hints? Of course, you were pleased. You were a girl, after all. And you suddenly had little free time. Sometimes you spent time with two or even three girls at once a day. Of course, sometimes this led to conflicts between them, but they never dragged you into it. You were untouchable.

But you didn't expect that they would all decide to fix it in one day.

Despite everything, training for Nationals continued. Luckily, the Yellow Jackets team still managed to get their game together and win the filtration game that determined their participation in the competition. Everyone, of course, was incredibly happy. As were you for your favorite team.

There was just one thing. Your parents forbade you to fly with them. You begged as much as you could, but they were adamant. They wanted you to stay home and use your free time from your team to good use, studying and preparing for college. You shed so many tears in front of them, almost begging, but nothing worked. Sometimes you wanted to curse your parents.

Tomorrow, everyone was supposed to fly to Nationals. You entered the locker room, terribly dejected. You were immediately noticed, and the girls were insanely worried. Lately, all of them had been very attentive to you.

"You don't look well, Y/N," Natalie said, her smile from earlier quickly fading.

"Are you okay? Do you have a headache? Maybe a stomach ache?" Misty jumped up to you as if your life depended on it.

"Get away from her, Misty. Y/N might need some space." Vanessa shook her head, and was just as concerned about you.

"I-it's okay…" you sniffed. "It's just… I couldn't convince them. I did everything I could, I begged as hard as I could, and they still refused me. You… you'll have to celebrate your victory at the nationals without me." your eyes sadly looked around at everyone. The shared sadness touched every girl present.

"Y/N… I'm so sorry." Lottie took your hands in hers, looking at you sadly, but Jackie quickly jumped up to her.

"How so? Do they not care at all that you want to fly with us?" she snorts, angry at your family. Being spoiled by her own parents, she did not understand this attitude, especially towards you.

"At least you will be here when we return." Taissa tried to find the positives, although she was disappointed too.

"It does not make much sense, she will not be able to share the joy of us taking the first place in the moment." Shauna said, shaking her head. There was silence between all of you. You were so upset that you didn't even notice how all the girls were looking at each other meaningfully and nodding silently. Suddenly Lottie ran a gentle hand down your cheek, took your chin.

"Don't be so upset, Y/N," Lottie said softly, looking soothingly into your eyes. "You know… in all this time that you've been part of our team, we've grown attached to you. You've always been so kind to us. I think we can come to an agreement and find a way to thank you properly."

You were very embarrassed, and suddenly you felt a little awkward. "I was just being myself, you don't have to do anything for me." You, of course, felt pleased. But you were surprised when you felt hands behind you, and out of the corner of your eye you could see blonde strands of hair, and then you heard the familiar voice of Nat, who decided to come up to you from behind.

"Don't be such a shy princess. Why don't you let us comfort you?" she almost purrs in your ear, sending shivers down your spine. It felt… oddly pleasant, like a wave of excitement had washed over you.

"I, um… I don't know… how are you going to do that?" you ask. You can already see and feel Misty wrap her arms around your right hand, stroking it, looking at you in awe.

"You see, Y/N, you have some kind of influence over all of us." Lottie continues. Jackie glares at Matthews, apparently annoyed that Lottie is in charge. While she's busy burning a jealous hole in someone else's body, Shauna approaches you, her hands stroking your neck, and you shiver, vaguely aware of where this is all heading.

"We feel an irresistible… attraction to you. It's hard for us to share you between us. Haven't you noticed how hard we try to please you?" Lottie asks, genuinely concerned. "And you still wouldn't give in to any of us. We tried to figure out what you wanted, but we failed every time. So we thought you'd have to try each one before you figured out which one of us you wanted to be with."

Your brain was already running out, and now that Van's hand was stubbornly touching your thigh, and Taissa was holding your waist, whispering something in your ear, you completely stopped thinking. You were surrounded by a crowd of girls with whom you spent all your free time so happily, and they were trying to get you all the time. Was it all of them? Each of them wanted you to be their girlfriend? These thoughts left you shocked and you didn't even know how close or far from the truth it was. You, of course, dreamed about them. About each of them at least once, though about some more than others. But for you it was not serious, you did nothing! Did they really want it that much?

You yourself do not notice how you let out a quiet sigh when Shauna kisses your neck. She does it roughly, as if she is having difficulty containing the desire that is accumulating in her. Shauna is silent, examining, analyzing and suppressing in herself, and then explodes like a time bomb. And now she wants to explode at any moment.

Misty's hand undoes the button of your pants in irritation, and Van and Taissa pull them down. You are brought back to reality, and you feel panicked. You were definitely not prepared for being undressed.

"W-wait, there's no need to go anywhere-" you break off with a groan. Nat, still standing and supporting you from behind, bites your ear, licks it, makes your sensitive earlobe wet. You sigh at the newness of this strange, disorienting sensation.

"Don't worry, sweet thing. Everything is going to be just fine." Natalie purrs, and you can't tell if she's stoned or not. Your pants are thrown to the floor. And then your panties. You are naked for all the girls, and they are looking at you so mesmerized, like this is the best thing they've ever seen in their lives. Even Jackie and Lottie, standing behind you, are watching you in awe.

This time, Van is first. Her tongue touches your already wet cunt, and she circles it, tasting you. You moan, and Natalie tugs your hair a little, exposing more of your neck. Taissa gives you a couple of loud slaps on your ass, interested in seeing your reaction. You shudder and your hips jerk, because you like it. Misty's hand goes under your shirt and gropes your breasts, pulling your nipples almost painfully, while Shauna leaves wet marks on your collarbone from her mouth, wanting to leave marks on you that will definitely last until their collective return from Nationals.

You are so turned on, and you feel stimulation from all sides. Your hand wants to reach for Van's red head, to press it harder, but Nat, watching you like a hawk, pulls you back.

"Let her do it herself." She whispers in your ear. You nod frantically, it's best not to argue with them. A few more movements of Van on your clit, her skillful tongue, which had probably done the same with Taisa before, could easily bring you to orgasm. You moaned more actively, your chest moved a hundred times more intensely, and then she pulled away.

"She's ready, Lottie." Van said, wiping her mouth. It was hard for you to understand what was happening, and you just whined, saddened that you were not allowed to come. For a moment, everyone broke away from you. Everyone was listening to Lottie.

"We'll help you after you help us, Y/N," Lottie says with a smile that sounds like she's some kind of prophet. "We've been waiting so long to get your attention. We think we deserve to come first. But I promise you won't regret it."

You nodded at her, mesmerized, but you felt like this wasn't quite the Lottie you knew. She was so mysterious, and you couldn't tell what was on her mind.

"Get away from her, all of you." Lottie commanded. "And you, Y/N, sit on your knees, please. Put something down so it won't hurt her to sit on the floor."

Van and Nat dutifully laid out their own jackets so your knees wouldn't hurt from what you were about to do. It was a pleasant moment of care. You obediently settled down on your knees in front of Lottie. You were literally being eaten with their eyes, and you were ready for what was to happen.

Lottie was already reaching for her shorts, but Jackie spoke up. "Sorry, Lottie… but I'll be the first." She said, raising her chin high. Jackie's voice was filled with nervous confidence, and she tried to withstand Lottie's and the other girls' piercing gaze. "I'm the captain of our team, and I want to be the first one to do this. What made you think you could lead?"

Lottie was silent, and you couldn't even understand what she was thinking right now. Then she nodded, and her voice was cold. "Okay. Be the first. But don't ruin it too soon."

You didn't understand the meaning of the words, but Jackie frantically replaced Lottie, pulled down her shorts, and the taste of her cunt quickly imprinted on your tongue. You didn't know what Jackie really wanted to achieve by this - to let you fuck her first or she just felt depressed because of how Lottie quickly took control and everyone, even Shauna, was ready to obey her. In any case, you didn't mind. You devotedly licked her pussy and tried to watch Jackie's reaction, just to please her. In your fantasies, you tried many times to make Jackie as good as you could. In your mind, Jackie was not the type to give - she liked to receive more, and if she had to be on top in your fantasies, she was so gentle and timid, afraid to make an extra move, that it only excited you more. But here she was — trying to have your whole mouth, like she had been fantasizing about it for so long that you were almost dizzy with the realization. Your drool and her juices were running down her thighs while she moaned, and the others were watching, some daring to stick their hands down their own shorts. A couple of minutes passed and Jackie came convulsively, sitting down on the bench. Now she wouldn’t object. She had no strength.

Shauna was next. She was never patient, not with what she liked - her hand grabbed your hair (no one protested, everyone decided she deserved it for scoring the final goal during the nationals qualifiers) and she pulled herself roughly-gently towards her vagina. Your eyes rolled back and you almost got lost in her thick dark pubic hair, but fuck, she was delicious and you were ready to continue as long as it took. You even forgot how to breathe sometimes - Shauna was a little rough, muttering something harshly under her breath and moaning, repeating your sweet name. She came quickly and took a step to the side, pulling up her shorts and retreating to the bathroom, apparently to rethink something.

Then there was Taissa… and Van. They were both allowed near you at the same time. You were dumbfounded, not knowing how to cope with taming two pussies at the same time, but you didn't even have time to wipe the saliva and cum from your mouth, as the red vagina was in your mouth. You had to change one pussy to the other every 15-20 seconds, trying to lick both like never before. You were forbidden to use your hands, but they both frantically encouraged you as best they could, while your tongue circled their clits, and the dirty noise filled the locker room, already filled with heat and languid sighs.

"You're holding up great, Y/N… Come on, help Van a little…" Taissa whispered, tearing you away from her pussy, because you stubbornly did not want to stop. However, upon hearing her order, you quickly set to work on Van, drawing a sigh of excitement from her, and ten seconds later, an orgasm. Taissa followed.

Then there was Nat. You licked your lips, ready to receive her. You were surprised that her pussy was shaved, maybe she was getting ready and wanted to please you? This thought caused a sweet warmth in you. And Nat's pussy tasted sweet too. You sucked on her clit, wanting to please her in a way that no guy had ever done. Natalie moaned surprisingly softly, and it excited you so much that there was almost no dry spot left in your panties. She let you use your hands, and you held her by the hips, because she was shaking while your wet tongue caressed her tender folds, and the hot air from her nose came straight to her pubis. Needless to say, Nat came quickly, but for some time she did not want to leave your mouth? Misty didn't even ask your permission. Her head was wrapped around yours, her fingers tangled in your soft hair, and she was holding you to her bushy pussy like she was dying without it. You were taken aback, but that didn't stop you from wanting to please her, even if her actions were met with disapproval from the other girls. No one wanted to be played with more roughly than the rest. You licked her, trying to please her as much as possible - Misty looked like she was not easy to please, but she was whispering so sweetly in your ear, praise and advice, that your arousal literally flowed out of your panties.

"Yes, t-that's it, Y/N… That's just perfect, oh, you're so beautiful. You're just an angel, a little perfection." She muttered selflessly, her glasses falling to the tip of her nose as she came loudly in your mouth.

You were exhausted, but Lottie was still there. She was the last one. You looked up at her, tired, sluggish, and excited. She gave you a quick smile, but there was undisguised triumph in her eyes. She had you after all. Did we mention that Lottie hated rejection and not getting what she wanted?

Lottie lifted your chin, gently stroked your hair and tidied it up, wiped the tears of pleasure from your eyelashes. She let you dive into her pussy yourself, start licking it yourself, as if you were in some kind of licking contest and were going to take first place there. She let you keep glancing at her, watching every movement of her moaning mouth and trembling hands, just to please her. Your heart was beating so fast and it was so hot and you wanted to please her so much, plunging your sweet tongue into her pussy over and over again, that you had a hard time holding on. Lottie took the longest, savoring every second and apparently holding herself back. Eventually she pulled your head away from her, pressed her pussy to your forehead and came, covering you even more with her wetness. You were all for it.

"You did well, Y/N. You love us so much, you were ready for everyone." Lottie said tiredly. She nodded to the girls, and they sat around you. "Now you've earned a reward, huh?" You nodded vigorously, needing release. You were so wet, and almost whining with excitement. Your head ended up in Shauna's lap, and Nat, Misty and Jackie quickly found themselves at your feet. Misty nibbled on your calves and thighs, often not hesitating to do it quickly and hard, while Jackie, on the contrary, licked them like a kitten, gently nipping at the sensitive skin. This crazy contrast made you breathe quickly and roll your eyes, and all for the sake of Shauna watching this cute picture. Nat touched your pussy with her tongue, her two fingers slid inside your wet cunt - after such a long abstinence, taking two fingers at once was not at all difficult. You moaned, letting them all work on you while the others watched. Natalie's tongue was trying so hard to please you, playfully sucking and pulling on your clit, playing with your labia and purposely quickly driving her fingers into you, wanting to bring you to the peak and play on you like guitar strings.

"We love you, Y/N, such a gift for us." Jackie purrs, watching Natalie fuck your helpless pussy.

"You're the best!" Misty agrees with a smile, biting you and licking it slobberily.

"All that's left is to cum." Shauna says calmly, not hiding her smirk, constantly keeping her eyes on herself. "Come on. Nat's mouth is waiting for it."

As if on cue, you spill into Natalie's mouth with a loud moan. Everyone exhales relaxedly, and Natalie cleans your pussy with her tongue. "You're just sweet, princess." She smirks at her own abilities.

You let yourself sink into the girls' arms, catching your breath. You don't know yet that later they'll help you get dressed, each of them will kiss you on the lips, and you'll tell them to talk about it after Nationals. In the end, you still can't seem to choose one. You love them all, and you're waiting for them to return to Wiskayok, safe and sound, with victory in hand.

[saddleseatollie]

I said that I was gonna make a post about Hans' side of the Hansry romance so here we go (buckle up because this will be a very long post):

First off, I wanna talk about his responses to all the heart/romantic dialogue options throughout the game.

I find these dialogue choices to be pretty interesting in general because it's SO easy to read them as completely platonic, which I imagine to be quite intentional. Two bros acknowledging that they care about each other, what's special about that?

Except their friendship isn't normal. Henry is Hans' page and bodyguard. Hans is essentially his boss, and Henry is duty bound to follow him everywhere, save him when he's in trouble.

What these dialogue options establish is that Henry doesn't rescue Hans because it's his job. He does it because he wants to.

I simply cannot stress enough how important it is for Hans to hear that from Henry. To know that he is not forcing Henry into anything. He's not just Henry's boss but also a noble, and that puts him in a position of power over him that he probably struggles with to some degree.

Throughout this game we see more of the divide between "Lord Capon of Pirkstein" and simply "Hans". When he breaks down his walls with Henry and becomes simply Hans, it's because he's letting him in. He doesn't do that with anyone else.

So why is it that Hans' responses to the romance dialogues are so...unromantic? Does he not realize his feelings for Henry yet? Does he not accept them?

No. I think that even by For Whom the Bell Tolls (the end of which being the first opportunity for romance dialogue) Hans has not only recognized his feelings for Henry but accepted them.

When? Honestly there are so many possible answers to that question I'm not even going to try (personally I like to think he spent the majority of his time in the cells at Trosky just thinking about him and Henry so maybe then).

"But Ollie! Why, then, are you saying that Hans' responses were platonic?" I hear you asking.

Because Hans isn't stupid. I'm not 100% sure what the punishment for homosexuality by the law was in 15th century Bohemia but I can guarantee it was very bad. I'm not a history buff but google tells me it ranged from burning at the stake to castration and exile. Not only that but remember that Bohemia at that time was ruled by the Holy Roman Empire, which was still a Catholic Empire circa 1403 and would remain that way for another century. Catholics at the time (and some groups even to this day) viewed sodomy (officially defined as any form of "unnatural sexual acts" including but not limited to homosexuality as the word itself refers to anal sex) as a mortal sin. Basically meaning that the near-universal stance of homosexuality at the time would be that homosexual acts meant burning in Hell for eternity.

All this to say that while I believe that Hans himself has come to terms with his feelings, he recognizes that no one can ever find out about them.

So he tries his absolute hardest to play the role of "best friend" and outwardly pretend to have only the most platonic of feelings towards Henry.

And yet. And yet. Hans loves Henry. He loves him so fucking much even while knowing they can realistically never be together. But Hans is a dreamer. We see that from him a lot, actually. He dreams about a world where nobles well and truly take care of their subjects, where towns aren't raided and burned to the ground for war and profit. It's no stretch to imagine he also dreams of a world where he and Henry can be together.

And then Hans is surprise-engaged against his will and his dreams are promptly smashed against the rocks.

I mean this is his reaction to hearing the news.

He says it's because he wanted to wait to get married, to live a life of adventure before settling down. And while I'm sure that's part of it, in the context of a romanced Hans this is him realizing that he really can't ever be with Henry. Hans might be a serial womanizer (overcompensating much?) but he's no adulterer.

Look in my lovely little headcanon where everything is wonderful and beautiful and works out, do they stay together? Yes, absolutely. But realistically, I don't think it's possible. Their relationship is doomed to fail before it even begins. It's a classic example of love simply not being enough.

And that reality is simply too much, so Hans does as he always does, pretends none of it means anything at all and nothing has changed. He'll never love her as he does Henry and that's that.

And then the siege happens, and Henry volunteers for a suicide mission and is probably going to die and Hans is starving.

Hunger and Despair.

Hans is starving. Not just for food or drink but for life and love and Henry.

Hans has always been prone to impulsivity, to acting on every desire. He's shone amazing restraint, all things considered, up until that point. He loves Henry and he feels he'll die of sorrow without him.

Think about that for a moment.

When he tells Henry the tale of Lancelot and Galehaut he puts himself in the place of Galehaut, who died from grief and sorrow over the loss of his lover.

He fears he'll die if Henry doesn't return. Not of starvation. Not at the hands of a Prague soldier.

Of grief and sorrow.

He is so, so tired of holding back. Of pretending. He wants Henry, he needs Henry. Not as a friend or a protector or a squire but as some strange, lovely mix of all three and more.

Then Henry places his hand over Hans' and tells him everything will be alright and Hans realizes, maybe for the first time, maybe not, that Henry may feel the same as he.

And that tiny little spark of hope is enough to make him act. He kisses Henry out of sheer terror and desperation and longing.

Audentes Fortuna Iuvat.

Fortune favors the bold.

It's time to be bold.

[gloomskulls]

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ IMPERIUM & CHAINS [caracalla & geta x reader]

pairing(s): gladiatorii!caracalla x gladiatorii!geta x pregnant!empress!reader

⇢ ˗ˏˋ SUMMARY ୨୧ On her return in her homeland, with her children and another one growing in her womb, the Empress expects a moment of peace, a time to remember who she was before Rome. But there were never two husbands like Empress Caracalla and Geta anywhere else in the world. As her old memory resurfaces and the return into her old kingdom begins, she starts asking herself…is this freedom? Or is she just a bird in a golden cage?

⇢ ˗ˏˋ WARNING ୨୧ polygamy, extreme possessiveness, captivity, psychological manipulation, implied noncon/dubcon, violence, threats, power imbalance, misogyny, forced pregnancy, gaslighting, emotional abuse, toxic relationship, lemme know if I missed any!

If you don't wanna see my dark stories, please block the tag #madi: dark content

i just watched gladiator ii, and all of the sudden my eddie munson era is back, (so is my obsession with fred hechinger ever since he appeared in fear street 1994)

The imperial carriage rumbled over the bad dirt path, ostentatiously gilded to shine in the noonday sun. Rows of Roman soldiers flanking the route guarded by deep crimson banners. But the Empress felt anything but powerful inside her carriage

Inside the imperial carriage, the air had become still. The rich smell of expensive perfumes, warm wine, and her husbands unmistakable musk conspired to seal her in.

Across from her lay the twin Emperors of Rome, sprawled upon the cushioned seats like lazy gods.

Caracalla, in crimson toga with gold embroidery, rested his feet upon the floor. Sullen, crazed eyes would sometimes flick her way as if watching and expecting something from her—thankfulness or maybe subjection.

In contrast, Geta reclined with easiness, tunic with a looser drape. There was a slow swishing motion to his goblet of wine, and he gazed at the bloody liquid swirling around with keen interest.

The Empress, sitting stiffly in between the two, rested one hand protectively on her bulging belly while the other gripped the silk folds of her dress. Warmth from her children's laughter flowed back into her mind; they were riding ahead of her with heavy guard, separated. One would have thought her comforted by their warmth, but instead, her heart sank deep with the burden of her predicament.

She was going home. And yet, she was never free.

The castle gates swung open, revealing the King waited at the top of the stone steps. Once feared in battle, now an old lion, awaiting the cub's return, flanked by two wolves.

The imperial carriage rolled to a slow, deliberate halt.

The moment she stepped out, her father’s face softened. She barely drew breath before she clambered up the steps, disregarding the indifferent stares of the Roman guards, taking her father’s hands into her own and squeezing him with might.

“Father.”

“My child,” he murmured, his voice thick with emotion. He cupped her face, his eyes flicked down to her belly, then past her to the gilded carriage. The warmth in his expression chilled instantly.

The twins had arrived.

Geta was first out, having in his own right created a suffocating silence in the courtyard, dark eyes sizing everything and everyone present.

Caracalla followed slowly, stretching his limbs as if awakening from a sweet dream, releasing a slight sigh and then glancing toward the King with a grin.

"My lords," began the King, voice firm, with fingers twitching ever so slightly against her hands. "Welcome to my home. Again"

"We are honored," Caracalla purred, ever smooth. He cast a cursory glance around. "Although, I must say, it seems awfully… smaller than I remember."

Geta remained quiet. He stared at the King, the muscles of his jaw taut, as if this entire rendezvous was beneath him. Then he walked past them without a nod and up the steps and into the castle, like a man who owned it.

The grand hall burst into flames under the torches, amid feasting sounds. The servants dashed between the tables pouring goblets of wine and laying platters of food in front of their guests. But the food was warm; everything else was cold with tension.

The Empress sat at the long banquet table between Caracalla and Geta; her children were further down, having an animated conversation with their grandfather. If not for their innocent laughter, she would have completely fallen apart.

"You must let them see the mountains tomorrow," the King said. "The ones beyond the valley, they must know where their mother used to play as a child."

"No," Caracalla responded instantly.

Silence.

The King frowned. "I can assure you they will be quite safe."

"It is not your assurances I am concerned with," said Caracalla. He did not even bother looking up from his plate.

"Forgive my brother," Geta said, putting on a charming smile. "He forgets his manners." He sipped leisurely at this wine. "We simply have too many enemies. Our children—her children—are too precious to us to be taken on an aimless stroll through the wilderness."

The King lowered his goblet slowly. "Precious? They are not commodities."

"Oh, but they are," Caracalla finally raised his head, his gaze fixing on the King. "They are the blood of Rome. And Rome does not share."

The Empress clenched her hands beneath the table. She had known this conversation would eventually happen, but to hear it now, to see their expressions so filled with ownership over not just her but her very own children, made her stomach turn.

Her father exhaled through his nose, wrestling to maintain his composure. But she could see it; the fingers that were twitching against the wood, the way his shoulders stiffened.

"You have stolen my daughter," he said lowly.

A silence that throttled.

Caracalla reclined back in his chair without removing his fingers from the dagger. "No, old man. You gave her to us as a way to soothe your losing war with Persia. We own her."

Geta chuckled. "You should be proud. Your little girl is the Empress of Rome."

Her father turned to her then, his eyes searching. Pleading. "Are you happy?"

She opened her mouth. No sound came out.

Caracalla leaned in close, breath warm against her ear. "Be careful," he whispered just low enough for her to hear. "We wouldn't want father getting any ideas, would we?"

She swallowed hard. "I am… honored to serve Rome."

A lie. And everyone at the table knew it.

High above the castle gardens, the moon cast streaming silver light on the stone pavements and bloomed flowers. The air smelled of damp earth and roses, a scent she had not smelled in a long time. It was completely different from the Rome, where the air was forever heavy with sweat and the metallic pungent tang from bloodshed in the Colosseum.

She walked along the trimmed hedges slowly, her fingers trailing along them. Something unnamable throbbed in her heart; perhaps longing or grief. The familiar feeling of this place, the shelter it once represented, was a cruel illusion now.

She was no longer just a princess of this land.

An Empress of Rome.

And Rome never loosed its hold.

A rustle behind her made her pause, but she did not turn.

"I thought I could find you here."

Deep voice, familiar. Father.

She exhaled, allowing her shoulders to relax slightly. "I needed air."

Footfalls approached, slow but heavy. Then a rough-hewn warm palm settled on her shoulder, and she allowed her moment of sojourn.

Father sighed, grip gentle but firm. "You look tired."

She released a soft, humorless chuckle. "I am always tired."

His hand fell away, and when she turned around, he was looking at her. Like really observing her. They had last met when she was younger, freer. Not a woman weighed down by the crown of Rome and the possessive grip of the twin Emperors.

His gaze fell to her belly. "Another child."

She nodded. "Another."

He inhaled sharply, shaking his head. "How many more, my daughter?"

She didn't reply.

Rather, she had her head turned to face the sky, feeling the cool air kiss the skin.

"You could stay," her father said after a long silence.

Lurching of the heart.

Her throat contracted and she forced herself to say the words. "You know that is not possible."

"Is it?" His voice was laced with frustration. "I am still a king. This is still your home. I could—"

"You could do nothing," she interrupted, shaking her head. "You think you could hide me? That they would simply let me go?"

He didn't speak, but the tension of his jaw told her all.

He knew. He knew that Caracalla and Geta would burn this kingdom to the ground before they let her slip through their fingers.

But still, he wouldn't let that go "You do not have to live like that."

She laughed bitterly but softly. "And how do I live, Father?"

"Like a woman in a gilded cage," he said.

She went still.

His voice softened. "You flinch when they touch you. You never look them in the eye for too long. And when you speak, you measure every word, as if your very breath belongs to them."

Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. "Because it does."

Father's eyes darkened with wrath, but it was not against her. One step was taken closer to and around him, bearing down with great presence. "I could protect you. I could protect your children. You wouldn't have to go back."

Her lips trembled but quickly sealed them into a firm line.

The thought was dangerous.

So dangerous.

But then, for the first time in years, sparkled hope within her. The idea about staying was intoxicating, living beyond those cold, suffocating walls of Rome with her children, without the constant presence of them.

For the briefest of moments, she allowed herself to think it could happen.

The empress didn't know what she was tensed about. She was just a servant girl, staring with wide eyes and nerves.

"The emperors request you," she said. "Immediately."

Now she was in their quarters, she could feel sweat forming in her palms as the tension in the room was rather tense. She could already sense in her gut that something was wrong.

Geta stood at the window, faced out into the darkness of the courtyard. He did not turn round when she entered, but the tension of his shoulders told her all.

Caracalla sat propped in a cushioned chair with one leg flung over the other, playing languidly with his goblet full of wine. Unlike his brother, he was looking at her directly, a faint smirk curling at the edges of his lips.

"It took you a while to get here," Geta murmured. "How rude of you."

Saying nothing, she just stood shivering at the door post.

"Tomorrow at dawn, we leave" is all Caracalla said.

Her breath caught.

"Why the sudden change?" she inquired, doctoring her voice to a level, impassive delivery.

Geta wheeled around at that instant, vision tearing through her like a knife. "There is nothing else for us here."

Caracalla sighed, arms crossed, as he tossed his empty goblet elsewhere. "it's too bad. I was just starting to get into the entertainment." He smiled at her, making little effort to hide the glint in his deep-set eyes. "Your father is such a gracious host. But I am left wondering… does he think he can keep you?"

Silence.

The Empress gulped.

Caracalla stepped closer, the air thickened by his presence. "I wonder," he said softly, "is it possible he thinks you want to stay?"

Another of his tests.

She covered her expression, lowered her eyes. "I am the Empress of Rome."

"Yes," Caracalla said darkly, "you are."

It was a quiet chuckle from Geta. "See, brother? No need to worry. Our little Empress knows where she belongs."

Caracalla looked anything but convinced.

His fingers just brushed her wrist, a light touch, but a warning, nonetheless.

"You should sleep," he murmured.

She nodded, turning to go, but before she could step away Caracalla caught her chin between his fingers, jerking her face back up towards him.

"You wouldn't mistake forgetting, would you?" he whispered.

Her heart pounded in her throat.

"No," she whispered.

He held her for just a moment more and then let her go.

Geta saw it all with lazy boredom. As if he was looking at a lecture.

"Good girl,"

And that was her dismissal.

But as she walked, her heart thundered away in her chest. Now they suspected her. Which meant that if she was to escape, it would have to be soon.

Because come morning, she would be on the road back to Rome.

And once she was back within those golden walls, under their ever-watching gaze, so suffocating and smothering, she's surprised she could even breath.

There would be no way out.

@gloomskulls 2024. DON'T COPY, TRANSLATE OR USE ANY OF MY WORKS HERE OR ANY OTHER WEBSITES. Photos don't belong to m

[nereidprinc3ss]

mojave ghost

in which spencer reid spends the night with fem!reader—a total stranger—because she just feels so familiar. based on the song "my life in art" by Mojave 3.

18+ (implied intimacy) warnings/tags: based on a song about a stripper who runs away from her abusive boyfriend. tws for mentions of physical abuse. r has bruises from pole dancing. a little ooc bc Spencer hooks up with someone he just met but that's the point and if u know him like I do u know its not completely impossible. mentions of typical cm violence/murder. one brief mention of spencer's addiction. spencer's childhood trauma and abandonment. it's kind of just a heavy one, lmk if i'm missing anything a/n: I doooo suggest you listen to the song first just to feel the vibe of the piece and also how it is literally about Spencer Reid. and also bc its gorjus. anyways its been a while and this is not my most standard content but pls lmk what u think and if u liked it <3

He shouldn’t have done it. 

But when he saw you, sitting in a metal folding chair next to some peeling veneered-desk, his breath caught. Something primal deep in his stomach tugged the way it does when he finds little external fragments of himself, calling out to him—usually nonhuman objects. He’s seen himself in books, still warm from the hands that held them but ultimately forgotten on a bench or in the airport, needles in alleys or in between tiles on his bathroom counter, in shards of glass, in a hundred open wounds and dead animals, abstractly gutted on the side of the street. 

When he does see himself in a person, it’s in alarming glimpses. The man in the sleeping bag on the corner who talks to people that aren’t there. The lost child crying on the subway platform, rooted to the spot and still gripping the straps of their little backpack with responsible fists. It’s never anything he wants to know about himself, but this identification, this taxonomy and recognition of sameness—it’s so strong it stops him in his tracks, every time. He never really relates to the people he’s supposed to. Not Hotch. Not Gideon. Not even Maeve, in the way he’d so naively hoped for. Three people, all incredibly intelligent, at times standoffish. Used to being on the outside. All still possessing things and redemptive qualities he doesn’t. And what Spencer has secretly believed about himself for what has recently become a very long time, is that he is defined by his lack. The shape of him is made of negative space. He feels like whatever is in your lungs when you’ve pushed all the air out. 

And then, you. 

Physically, you look nothing alike. And he stops and lurches and does a double take like he’s seen his doppelgänger or been startled by his own reflection in a passing window anyway. Maybe it’s the way you hold yourself—hunched, foot tapping, head hung but still scanning the room, ever vigilant as you pick at your nails. You want to be small. You want to fold in yourself so many times you become a black hole. Spencer knows this. 

Something calls out from deep inside him, from all around him, that is not quite in his voice, but feels like grasping and reaching. 

I know you, I know you. 

He doesn’t catch himself in time before he’s walking toward you like he’s been waiting for you. 

Of course your head snaps up at the same time as he stops, and your eyes are shiny but not teary—frozen over with a layer of thick, dark ice like you’d carried the cold inside with you. You look caught. He searches for some sort of recognition in your eyes, anything to betray the fact that you have met before, because he never forgets a face but he knows what familiarity feels like and he can’t remember meeting you. 

His throat forms around something but the wrong word comes out. Halting, like he’s trying to lasso it and pull it back in. 

“Hi.” 

You pull your scarf down—a deep Roman purple—to reveal a pretty mouth, lips chapped by the unforgiving freeze outside. 

“Hello,” you say, politely, considering his probably strange behavior. He gives you a proprietary scan. Utility coat over a thick grey sweater. Jeans, cuffed at the bottom but still nearly too long, probably belted, although he can’t tell from the posture and the sweater. Brown boots. Your bag is a frayed tapestry of neutrals and patches. Fingerless knit gloves. You’ve given yourself false density, let the clothes swallow you up. Shapeless. Nearly faceless, magnet eyes framed between the scarf and the hat. But you’ve got a name. Everyone has a name. There’s yet to be anything humanity has discovered and not bothered to name. 

He forgets to ask. You clear your throat. 

“Um, I spoke to someone on the phone—Aaron, I think? We’re supposed to talk.”

Spencer tries to pick his jaw up off the floor. 

“Yeah, um, I can—I’ll… go get him.”

He turns away and breathes for the first time since he saw you, but he feels you behind him. He’s aware of exactly where you are in relation to the back of his head, he can feel you, like a hot spot, all the way to Hotch’s door. He lets himself in, slipping between as small a gap as he can manage and shutting the door gently behind him. Hotch looks up, not noticeably displeased at having been interrupted in his endless paperwork. 

What Spencer learns from his boss is this: you live in DC. You heard about a murder in Kansas—a girl, her hair still a fine, pale cornsilk. Barely not a child. You heard the details, and you called the cops, because you swear to god you know who did it, and they told you there was nothing they could do and gave you the number of someone who might be able to help, and so you followed a bureaucratic trail of phone numbers designed to discourage until you got to the BAU. Hotch says he’s going to interview you, but it’s probably nothing. 

“Actually, I’d like to do it if that’s okay.”

Hotch frowns deeper than usual.

“Why?”

Spencer swallows. Hesitates. 

“I finished my incident report early.”

Though he clearly has his reservations about Spencer’s sudden interest, Hotch is knee-deep in paperwork. So that’s how Spencer ends up in the round table room with you. 

You look too young, too raw to have been married, but you’re rubbing at your ring finger with the adjacent thumb like something is bothering you there. An absence that has become a presence. Negative space. You see things that aren’t there. Spencer knows that, too. Maybe you’re the kind of person who could look at him and see something.

That is his most intimate fantasy. He imagines it with you and feels the same kind of illicit shame and bloodied, starving hunger other people feel when they imagine sex or drugs or ravaging power; the way anyone imagines anything they want and can’t have.  

But he can’t put that kind of pressure on you. He can’t hold expectations like that. You’re a stranger. 

“Do you always do that?”

He points to your fiddling and gets that sour feeling in his throat he always does when he says something and wishes he hadn’t said it. That probably doesn’t show on his face. Most things don’t show on his face. Or maybe they do and nobody has bothered to tell him. 

You flex your pretty hand and then make a fist like you’ve been burned, probably to stop the compulsion. When you give a self-deprecating laugh, Spencer feels incredibly guilty for having pointed it out. But he doesn’t know how to talk to you. And at the same time, he almost expects it’ll be like talking to himself. Only nobody will give him odd looks. 

“Uh… old habit. I used to spin my wedding ring around when I was nervous.”

Used to. You’re especially too young to have been divorced. 

“You’re nervous?”

Your eyes flash as you look up to him. With what, he doesn’t know. Lightning, maybe. Electrical impulses that are a little less well insulated in you than in everyone else. 

But maybe he’s projecting. 

“Yeah. I feel crazy. But I was with a guy for a while who—and he was from Kansas—who would always, like, talk about… about hurting people. And I thought it was a joke at first, but… he laughed, at other people’s pain. He liked to hurt people. And animals. His dad had a farm, so I thought it was maybe he was just cavalier about life and death, but it was more than that. And he lived… he lived in that town. Where that girl died. He probably knew her. I… I probably knew her.”

Spencer’s heart sinks and he clears his throat like the force could bring it back up the right level again. 

You’re not his soulmate. You’re just paranoid. Looking for answers and resolution, like everybody else. 

The piece of himself he saw in you was just free radical damage. Instability. 

“Did he ever kill anyone before?”

“Wh—not that I know of. But I don’t really think he would’ve told me.”

But you would’ve known. You’re here because you’re lost. 

“Did he ever seriously injure anyone?”

You swallow and sit up a little straighter. Heat lightning in your eyes, again. It makes him feel something. He sits up too, despite your indignance, because it’s entrancing. 

“Yes.”

“How so?”

“He… he…” you melt as quickly as you inflated and go back to spinning a ring that’s not there. It’s like watching technicolor go to black and white. “He’d beat people up. He cut them with broken beer bottles and… yeah. A lot of other shit. He was just… he was crazy. He wasn’t… okay.”

The way your gaze flickers back and forth like you’re reading pages of a book or perhaps in REM as you recount in vague detail what your ex had done clues Spencer into the fact that you’re extremely traumatized. The way you make sure to emphasize that your clearly abusive ex wasn’t okay clues him into the fact that you care too much. That you’re too quick to excuse people’s bad behavior, or dismiss it, because you know how it feels to be dismissed entirely and you don’t want to make anyone else feel the way you’ve felt. 

Or maybe he’s still projecting. Maybe he’s idealized you in these few short minutes since you met and he’s too far gone. Maybe he should’ve let Hotch do this interview after all. In fact, he absolutely should’ve. 

But the worst thing by far he did was ask to walk you to your car after all was said and done. 

The interview went on for over two hours, and he’d learned things about you he suspects you’ve never told anyone before, and thus has learned about himself, and the building is mostly empty when you finally leave. The work day is over. So he selfishly asks you to wait while he gathers his things—buttons his coat, wraps his scarf, packs his bag—and then he soaks in the silence on the elevator because it’s that terrible, beautiful space between where you first cross the line and when you do something unforgivable. Asking to walk you to your car was crossing the line. 

Sleeping with you was unforgivable. 

And he didn’t care. Maybe he knew he was going to do this from the moment he saw you. Spencer never does this. The knowing that it was going to happen is quite a distinct flavor of intuitive knowledge and it was always on the back of his tongue. 

You’re silver and purple, a streak, a blur, you move too fast to keep up with and even when you’re perfectly still the atoms around you scramble like they’re jonesing. You inspire movement. You are movement. But he gets to see you slow, and despite having known you only a few hours, he knows this is nothing short of a natural phenomenon. A once in a lifetime sort of shooting star. That’s where the silver comes in. 

The purple, though—it’s in strange places. Around your upper arm. Between your thighs. On your knees and shins and hips. The first time he noticed it he couldn’t ignore it, but he couldn’t very well ask what’s hurting you while he was touching you in a way that was decidedly not painful, if he wanted to keep it that way. And he did. He wanted to keep you looking at him through half-lidded eyes like he was something to see. 

Still, he can’t notice it and then fuck you without saying something—or maybe he could, and you desperately want him to and you ask for it and maybe most people would, but he won’t—so he brings it up. 

“I lead a very active life,” is your whispered excuse, shaped by a smile that is something like mischievous. And then you’re kissing his flushed neck and making your descent and so he can’t ask very many questions. 

It’s only in the precarious after that he can fit his questions in, which is dumb and he knows that, because you’re a dizzying contradiction of cagey and flighty and really the slightest thing will send you running. It’s funny how he knows that after a few hours and sex. Sex can tell you so much about a person. Spencer has compiled all the data from his experiences and decided sex is radically more effective a profiling tool than interview. 

You’re on his pillow, lying on your stomach, and his hand is in your hair. Falling in love is quite a distinctive taste as well. Or at least, the recognition that if you spend enough time around a person you will, beyond a shadow of a doubt, fall in love with them. It is almost the same thing. It aches because it’s there and the proper thing to do is pretend it’s not. 

And his hand is in your hair. And your eyes are closed, and you look like you might fall asleep, and he should be beyond grateful for all of these things. He is. 

But that pesky desire to ameliorate, to improve and make better, and fix and heal, is too strong. Probably it’s the only way he thinks anyone will love him, is if he makes himself useful. That’s no revelation to him. The thought is not shocking whatsoever. It’s just true. 

So he asks again. You blink your eyes a quarter of the way open. 

“Hazard of the job.”

“What job?”

You make a noncommittal noise of reluctance—a discontented puppy’s whine, half-asleep. 

“I’m a circus freak.”

He laughs and remembers to keep scratching your scalp. The way you smile, eyes closed, is infectious. 

“Yeah? What’s your act?”

“Guess,” you challenge through the remnants of a smile, oozing satisfaction and glowing like a star. 

When he pauses to regard you, to seriously consider, studying the curve of your cheek and the color of your lips, you open your eyes again. 

“Tightrope walker,” he finally says, earnestly, so soft it could tear down the middle like gauze. 

Your answer is a smile into the dark. “How’d you know?”

The corner of his mouth vies higher. 

“I sensed a kindred spirit.”

Silence floods the room again, slowly, thickly, like molasses. It’s pleasant. You’re still here, in his bed, and he’s still measuring time with the pendulum of his hand in your hair. 

“What do you really do?” 

He expects you to be asleep. 

“Dancer.” Your lips hardly move as you say it, inflectionless, immediate. If his hand falters, it’s only momentarily. That explains the bruising, and so is a relief, as far as he’s concerned. But perhaps his silence is misconstrued. “Do you want me to go?”

It certainly doesn’t seem like you want to go. Your eyes aren’t even open. 

He keeps his voice low and gentle like maybe you really are asleep. 

“Why would I want you to go?”

“Don’t… do that.”

“What?”

“Don’t act like you’re not judging me.”

“I’m not judging you. I’m from Vegas. Your job is not a novelty to me.”

This time when your eyes slide open, there is a new, curious light behind them. 

“Really?”

He nods, distracted by a freckle just beneath your eye. 

“When I was ten I ran into my bus driver wearing two quarters as a shirt. And we weren’t even on the strip. We were in a Texas Roadhouse parking lot.”

You snort with laughter and it’s melodic, like twinkling crystals, like running water. Even as you hide your face behind your hand, he’s transfixed. God, he’s never cared about being funny before. Now he wants to make you laugh over and over again. He wants to keep you softer than you’ve ever been. The laughter fades slowly and he grieves it—but your hand sliding away from your face like the sun coming up from behind a mountain eases the ache. 

You reach out as if in a trance and run your thumb gently beneath his eye. He holds his breath as you make contact, butterfly light. Nobody has ever touched him like this before. 

“You’re gorgeous,” you murmur. A thoughtless observation. A truth cast to the breeze. Knuckles carefully follow the dip of his cheekbone—a cartographer, learning her way by touch. Marking her territory. He’d let you do it. His eye stings, ready to spring forth a river just so you can have the pleasure of discovering it. “Breathe,” you laugh, softly, and he does. 

“Sorry.”

You don’t say a thing. You let your fingers trace borders into his skin and follow them with soft eyes and he wonders what he’s ever done to deserve this kind of magic. He wonders if he’ll ever feel as good as he does right now, when it’s all over. Nobody has ever paid this much attention to him—but you’re intent, focused, like he’s art. 

“Tell me about Vegas.”

It takes him a moment to reply. 

“Hm?”

He feels bewitched. Warm. Foggy. A thumb brushes over his lips, but it’s only a pass, thank god, because he can hardly stand how you’re touching him already, at the high point of his cheek, beneath his brow. Finally getting enough sometimes feels awfully close to too much. He’s already almost cried once. 

“I wanna hear about Vegas. I’ve always wanted to go. Is it hot?”

Spencer will say whatever you want him to say, but he has to focus a little—like he’s speaking through honey. 

“In the summer, during the day. In the winter at night it drops to below freezing.”

“Desert-y,” you hum.

“Very.”

“Tell me more.”

There’s a rousing hunger in your voice and it reminds Spencer to want you again. He finds your waist and tugs you closer. Who is he with you?

Is he better? 

“There are 175 casinos in the city, but only thirty on the strip. There are 15,000 miles of neon tubing on the strip alone. It’s the brightest place on earth. You can see it from space.”

“Not that.”

Petulant. He loves it. 

His lips find the softness of your shoulder. “Then what?”

The only clue that you can feel what he’s doing to you is the twitch of your fingers on his cheek. 

“Tell me something… tell me exactly how it feels to stand in the middle of the desert. With nobody else around. Tell me things and details I couldn’t know about unless I’ve been there.”

At the junction of your neck, he pauses. This beautiful girl, and her beautiful brain—you are so disarming. So perfect. 

You shiver into him as his fingers brush up the back of your neck, gently pushing away hair so he can learn you everywhere. So he can remember your landscape, just like he’s doing as he closes his eyes and falls into memory. 

A gas station, off the side of the road—seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Desert all around. His dad’s ’79 Ford Fiesta—the one he didn’t take with him when he left. The driver’s door is open. Spencer’s dad has been inside for minutes. Spencer is watching from the middle of the road, because he looked out from the backseat of the Fiesta, and saw that dark, unassuming spot, and thought—how would it feel to be the darkness? What would I see if I were nothing at all?

When he gets there, and he stands on the sun bleached pavement, veined with spiderwebs of tar, and he sees this all from a distance—he realizes he feels exactly the same as he always does. So he pivots his head to the left. The road goes on until it disappears into the smudgy horizon. To the right, it does the same. The earth swells, far away, so many miles, so coal black, so impossible. Hardly even real. But there is something out there, he thinks. There is something, even if nobody else has ever been there, and I want to stand in the middle of it and I will learn how it feels to be nothing. I will not observe—I will become apart of the landscape, with the Joshua trees that have been there for a thousand years, and the rocks that haven’t moved in millennia. 

So he begins to walk. 

The rocks crunch under his feet, and that is the only noise. 

He walks for minutes. He walks until he knows the gas station will be small. He walks until he can feel the emptiness on the back of his neck, until it feels like an embrace. 

“It’s silent,” he hears himself say to you, in some other universe, decades in the future. “At night, it’s completely silent. You can hear yourself breathe. If you throw a pebble ten feet away, you’ll hear it hit the ground.”

Little Spencer takes a deep breath of inky air. 

“It smells like… geosmin.”

“What?”

Perfect. Your voice is perfect. 

“Dirt. But it’s not the same as dirt anywhere else. It’s… drier, like it’s smelled the same way for a really long time.”

Spencer’s cheeks burn. He’s doing a terrible job explaining.

But he feels your breath on his cheek—eager. Your hand at his shoulder as you lean closer, enraptured. Reverent, almost. 

“What else?”

What else?

Dry brush snags on the hem of the corduroys his mother had picked out for him. They’re a little too short. She’s going to try to take him shopping again tomorrow. It’ll work this time—they’ll get to the store. Mom’s just been having some trouble leaving the house lately. 

Rustling leaves skim the tips of his fingers as he reaches out for them, and keeps walking. When was the last time someone touched that shrub?

“There’s vegetation. Creosote, mostly, if you’re in the scrubland. Larrea tridentada. It’s dry—kind of twiggy, with green leaves and yellow flowers in the spring. The smell is bad, like asphalt, but you only notice if you get close.”

He hears his dad calling his name. It fades in and out. 

It’s dizzying, hearing his father’s voice. His father saying his name. 

It’s been a long time. 

“It’s so flat that things don’t echo. But because of the extreme variations in temperature the air pressure sometimes forces the sound waves to the ground and makes it impossible for them to propagate. They’re called the Santa Ana winds. Someone could be standing right next to you and if the wind blows at just the right angle, you won’t be able to hear them. But when it’s still, sound carries far.”

His father is angry. Or is he worried? 

Spencer can make out his dad, pacing frantically back and forth across the gas station pad, white button-up a glowing beacon even from this far away beneath the lone yellow street light. He looks so small. So very far away. Ant-like. 

Santa Ana comes slow—warmer than the night air around him, to ruffle his hair and rustle the dry leaves and blow soft clouds of fragrant sienna dirt around at his knees. It blows through him. For a moment, it wakes the desert up. 

Then it’s passed. It moves further down the desert and leaves Spencer behind. Things settle into silence again. He’s alone again. 

Spencer’s stomach flips as he realizes his father can’t see him this far away, this deep into the dark nothing. 

As he finally feels the enormity of the distance on all sides. 

Suddenly the void behind him is massive. Suddenly it is everything, and it is sucking him deeper. Nobody can see him. He could just disappear into 25,000 square miles of desert. He’s already, what—a thousand feet gone? More? The weight of all the infinite space behind him presses, and he thought it’d feel interesting but it feels like dying and there has never been so much regret or dread curdling in his stomach before. His face crumples, eyes stinging in the dry air, and he takes one step forward, and then another, and then he runs like he’s running for his life. But he doesn’t feel chased—no, that’s the worst part. He is running from an infinite, vacuous, nothing. Dad! He screams, but even this young he knows how sound waves work in the desert and he can tell his dad can’t hear him and he’s running and screaming until his lungs burn, and the scrub lashes at his ankles, and it has been the same for a thousand years and it will stay the same for a thousand more with or without him. Dad, I’m right here! He sobs, the words ripping up his throat with desperation as they go. 

Finally, finally, he’s heard, and he’s close enough to see his dad seeing him, he stops pacing and stares dumbfounded at the little boy appearing from the desert, sneakers slapping cracked asphalt. He gets closer and closer until he can see the lines on his father’s face and the color of his eyes and he sobs as he crashes into him. His dad’s hands are vice-tight around his arms, as Spencer cries and can’t breathe and thrashes like a fish out of water. 

What? Is all his father can manage, tight and baffled and afraid and the first word of a question he doesn’t even know how to ask. He says it again and again, like a skipping record; what—what? What?

On the drive home, Spencer sits in the backseat, a bottle of Bug Juice in his lap. His ankles sting, whipped and bloodied and punished for wearing too-short pants. 

The silence is cloistering and at the same time, completely par for the course. He does not expect his father to speak to him, but he sort of thinks maybe another father would. 

Outside, the black spine of distant mountains rolls on forever and stays impossibly far away. He peers out into the nothing, past what the moonlight can illuminate—and now, he doesn’t have to wonder. He knows how it feels. Imagines another little boy made of shadows, as far away from the road as he’d been, and feels sick from all that fruit juice. He won’t ask his dad to pull over—all he wants is to get rid of that feeling on the back of his neck, like he’s dissolving into space. Like he’s the only thing for miles and miles. 

But the problem is—the feeling doesn’t go away. 

Not in the driveway. Not in the bath. Not in bed, later that night. 

Spencer did a bad thing and he wishes he could go back to normal. He wishes he didn’t get that desert feeling when he was surrounded by other people. But it comes back, again and again. At school. When he tentatively asks for new pants and his mom throws a vase at the wall and then sobs on the floor for forty minutes. When a few weeks later, his dad leaves, and doesn’t take the Ford with him—so it sits under the carport, greets him on his way to school every morning, and over the course of years the windshield turns opaque with dust. 

He hasn’t stopped feeling that way since. 

“You okay?”

A long, soft breath draws him back into his body. Into his bed. 

Not creosote. Not geosmin. Not the Santa Ana winds, coming from the deepest parts of the desert and carrying their desolation to him. Shampoo. Warmth. A girl who smells sort of like him, now—a girl whose perfume is all over his neck and chest and pillow. 

You’re there. You, a stranger. You, a girl he’s going to fall in love with. You—the only person he ever brought into the desert with him. The only person who ever brought him back. 

Point Nemo is not in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Asphodel is not in the underworld. It’s a little less than half a mile out across from an old gas station on the I-15 in the middle of the Mojave desert. 

Spencer nods because he can’t bring himself to speak just yet. 

You smile and take the time to find his hand in the dark. 

“Felt like I was out there with you. Thanks.”

And he squeezes your hand—because for the first time, it feels like someone is going to come looking for him. 

lyrics from my life in art <3

[wrioluvr]

flirty playboy x mature male reader

this stupid ass meme had been on my mind forever and i realised how funny it would be to have a slutty playboy who just sleeps with anyone to seriously pine over a more mature, secure guy who doesn't fall for any of his shallow charms and tricks.... here are just some blurbs of their dynamic (˵ ¬ᴗ¬˵)

his name is roman. he's a little toxic, but he just wants to be loved.

cw: some smut, top male reader

it all started with a little night out. you didn't do those often, due to devoting most of your time towards work and earning a stable career, but finishing this particularly gruelling assignment called for a celebration. at the bar, dancing with your friends, a good-looking man with a playful glint in his eyes approached you full of bravado. he told you how handsome you were, and had been eyeing you from across the room for a while now. but from a single glance, you could tell he was the type to break hearts. beach-blonde dyed hair, a tight fitting tank top revealing his muscular build, an eyebrow piercing, the way his mouth curled up so subtly into a little smirk.... he was everything you knew to avoid getting serious with. but a little hookup couldn't hurt, right? you deserved a little fun.

and it didn't hurt you at all. a few failed relationships had made you wise beyond your years, knowing to easily seperate the good guys from the bad. you knew your self-worth. roman, on the other hand, was absolutely smitten. no other man had fucked him THIS good, gave him such gentle aftercare, and even let him stay as long as he needed. the way you so effortlessly lifted his legs up to thrust in and out of him at a rhythmic pace, or fondling his tits and squeezing his nipples softly while you hit it from the back, or tenderly running your fingers down his spine, arching it sensually.... he loved it all. it was clear to him that you prioritised his pleasure as much as your own, and it showed in how he orgasmed several times before you even came in him once, panting breathlessly while wearing the sluttiest expression of his life. it was nothing like any of the men he had sex with before. afterwards, you let him stay the night in a guest room, and even brewed a cup of coffee for him in the morning.

roman was damn near tears when you offered to drop him off at his house before you headed off to work. if he was being honest with himself, his insecurities were the root of his constant need for sexual intimacy, so being treated with genuine kindness for once was new to him.

"is dropping you off here alright?" you ask, turning into the road of his apartment complex.

"y-yeah...." he looks out the window, unsure how to look you in the eyes.

"okay. thanks for last night. stay safe." your words carried an air of finality to them, like you were so sure the two of you would never cross paths again. he didn't like that.

"uh, uh......" he stuttered, all his usual flirtatiousness thrown out the window as he couldn't meet your gaze. "could i... get your number?"

your friendly smile froze on your face. "uhhhh.... sorry, i'm not really looking for anything serious right now."

he quickly regained his composure, charm turned up to the max. shifting his tank top so more of his chest was exposed and you could notice his nipples protruding, roman whispered in a low tone, "that's okay! we can just be casual... and fuck anytime you like." a wink. a hand on your thigh.

"jeez... okay, no offense, but i've heard rumours from my friends that you're a bit of a... playboy. i'm not interested in being your toy, sorry."

roman's face flushed in embarrassment, knowing what you said was true. except the part on him seeing you as a toy. that was untrue. he could feel a warmth growing from the pit of his stomach at the thought of spending more time with you. were these... butterflies?

maybe begging would work.

"okay fine, i am a bit of a player... but please, please, pleaseeeeeee.... let's be in contact, okay? as friends?" roman sniffled pathetically, shaking your shoulder in desperation. he needed to be in your presence. why weren't his usual maneating tactics working?!?!

"alright. here you go. just don't spam me or anything, okay? i gotta go for work. see you." you sigh, a little exasperated but choosing not to let it show. he immediately lit up, typing your number in his contacts and saving many hearts next to your name. you prayed your acts of basic human decency wouldn't cause him to catch feelings. you needed to focus on your job right now.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

3:02pm

[romanbabyxx]

hiiiiiii

[romanbabyxx]

i know you said not to spam you but like

[romanbabyxx]

i miss u

[romanbabyxx]

can we meet up at the bar for drinks or something like that? please?

3:10pm

you check the messages on your phone, rolling your eyes and ignoring them. he was probably sending this text to at least three other guys right now. he had a history of cheating, based on what you heard from your friends. you weren't going to be another one of his victims.

5:35pm

[romanbabyxx]

are u ignoring me?

[romanbabyxx]

im sorryyyyyyyy

[romanbabyxx]

pls hit me back when ur free

7.30 pm

[name]

sorry, just got off work. will be super busy this week, so not free. mb.

[romanbabyxx]

oh, its okay! next week then?

[name]

i'll see

this went on for a few weeks, you constantly evading his invitations, being polite and professional, never too intimate over text. roman was starting to get fed up. he's so used to getting everything he wants, he doesn't know what to do when he actually has to work for the one he desires. he actually hadn't hooked up with anyone since your one night stand, but you didn't believe that.

roman was at his wits' end. he could only think of one final plan to get your attention.

trying to make you jealous.

over the next week, he hooked up with any and everyone he met in the bar, not bothering to keep his slutting around discreet. he wanted you to hear the rumours. he wanted you to feel a sense of unease within your very being. he wanted you to feel possessive. he wanted you, to want him. the whole time, even as he was getting fucked, he could only imagine you caressing him, holding him close, loving him.

his deeds didn't go unnoticed. your friends told you about it, yet you didn't feel anything in the slightest. you were right, after all... he forgot about you within a week and moved on to whichever poor man he would leave high and dry next.

the next time you bumped into him at the bar, roman was his usual, party-loving self, excitedly slinging an arm around you, a drink in hand. his plan had to work, surely? you would be begging to have him back. but yet, when he offhandedly (yet so intentionally) mentioned how much dick he had been getting the past week, anticipating your change in expression, nothing happened. "oh. good for you." was all you said.

he sputtered, flustered by your calm demeanour. didn't you care? at all?! "but.... but.... aren't you jealous? that i've been hooking up with other guys?!"

you stare at him, a genuine quzzical expression plastered across your face. "why would i be? it's not like we're dating or anything. it was just a one time thing."

your words hit like a knife through his heart. he clutched his chest dramatically, a pout forming on his lips. "i'll be faithful! i promise!" his words came out more desperate than he intended. he felt so vulnerable, so naked, yet you were the face of serenity. your unimpressed eyes stared through his soul, as if you were scrutinising his very core. he knew you could heal him, make him feel loved, but he was starting to doubt there was any possibility you would feel the same.

"i'm sure that's what you said to the last guy you cheated on."

.

.

.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

i intended for this to be lighthearted but why was it actually kinda depressing tbh

[mediumgayitalian]

Hazel thinks she hates New York.

It’s not Camp Half-Blood. She likes Camp Half-Blood, actually, likes the sweet-smelling strawberry fields, the rolling waves in the distance, the way every colour, every conversation or moment, just seems more. Louder, livelier. It’s only been a couple days but she’s fond of the place, even though the people are odd and the customs odder (seriously — who came up with the curfew harpies? Hazel is no stranger to demigod structural violence, but a group of demonic bird ladies let loose at a random time of “after the sun sets, usually” to kill and devour children and teens is a new level of weird even for her. Percy assures her that the harpy murder is alleged, as he has spent several summers in camp and has not seen it happen, but he is also an amnesiac and an enabler so what does he know).

It’s the stars, she thinks.

New York doesn’t seem to have any.

It was a shock when she was first brought back. How dim the night sky had become, how devoid, bereft. Uranus’ dome now pales in comparison to the dazzling Alaskan skies decades ago, even in New Rome, huddled away from California’s worst light pollution. Even in the middle of the Pacific, in quiet midnights aboard the Argo II, the sky seemed lonelier. She’s gotten used to it, for the most part, the tar-coloured skies, but New York is like the inkwells on the desk she shared with Sammy. They spilled them, constantly, clumsy hands taking the slap of the ruler in exchange for tapping fingers and quiet giggles, and the dark-stained woodgrain is a perfect amalgamation of the skies she watches now; stifling over the screened tent roof, silent as a packed grave. Unsettling.

She should be sleeping. Gwen’s snores beside her are familiar, and the ground is solid. A welcome reprieve from the months she’s spent at sea. But despite the exhaustion twisting in her limbs and bagging under her eyes, she cannot convince herself to drift. Her eyes remain stubbornly open, locked in with the stillborn sky, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Even the moon is dull.

Finally she can take it no longer. Careful not to wake her friend, she creeps out of her sleeping bag, wiggling out over the course of several minutes to avoid the loud rip of the zipper, The tent’s door she can’t muffle, so she opens it as quickly as possible, somersaulting out and zipping it shut behind her in under ten seconds. She holds her breath, hands braced on the taut plastic, straining to hear a shift, a sniffle, a snort of disruption, but there’s nothing. Gwen remains blissfully unconscious, snores steady and even. Good.

Sword firmly in her hands, watching warily for demonic chicken ladies (who are nowhere as sweet or cool as Ella, awful cousins are universal among species it seems) or whatever other horrible ‘features’ Camp Half-Blood forgot to mention to them, she picks her way out of the Roman encampment, through the strawberry fields, and towards the main.

It’s around three in the morning, she’s pretty sure. She can’t be certain, because she cannot see the sky, but she’s always had a knack for navigating the dark. Nico can, too. Perks of being an Underworld child, she supposes.

Hopefully Nico is asleep. (She replaced his cabin door with a solid brick of obsidian to force him to sleep, yesterday, so he better be, but he’s a slippery little brat and she does not doubt his ability to squeeze through the air vents she left for him, or something. His hair was probably greasy enough to slide him right through. He better have showered, or she is going to smack him. Hard.) If he isn’t, though, she wouldn’t mind his company. She is in the mood to complain about the modern world. And if he is, maybe she’ll go wake up Percy. Or wander around until the sun rises. Who knows.

She notices, as she wanders along the edge of the wonky cabin-omega, movement coming from the Big House. Most of the windows are dark, but the bottom floor on the left — the infirmary, she thinks — is dimly lit, conscientious of the late hour, and there is definitely someone moving around. She pauses, watching for a moment, and — yep. A blond boy, every couple of minutes, rushes past a window, stethoscope bouncing off his chest, new thing in his hands with every trip.

He seems harried.

Without much thought, Hazel pushes through the rickety screen door.

At first, he doesn’t seem to notice. Hazel is camouflaged, slightly, but the shadows, her black bonnet and dark sleep clothes blending in with the many shadows cast by shelves of equipment and gently swaying privacy curtains. The boy is busy, flitting from cot to cot, scribbling on charts and tripping over chords. He moves so quickly he is blurry, hard to focus on. It takes him almost a minute to stop, freezing in the dead centre of the overcrowded infirmary, and turn to face Hazel. He is tired, she notices. His eyes are darker than the bruises under them; glassy like black labradorite, and widen as they notice her.

“Oh my gods, you’re — you’re Hazel Levesque! Holy moly.”

“Hi,” she says, smiling slightly. “You look busy for this time of night.”

The boy waves a hand, returning to his fluttering — a little slower, this time, though. Less frantic.

“Oh, yes, well. Lots of things to do. Julia’s collarbone was totally shattered, have to keep monitoring that, and there’s a group who got drop kicked into a broken onager, their recovery concerns me, and we’re rationing nectar again, and I swear I’m always running out of bandages, and I keep getting that niggling feeling, you know, when — you’re forgetting something? Important? But of course you have no idea what, and — I’m sorry.” The boy twitches, freezing midway through changing an empty saline bag, glancing back over at her. “Oh my gods, are you injured? Fuck, of course you are, it’s the middle of the night and you’re here, obviously —”

“Wait, I'm completely —”

“Oh, no, you’re fine.” He sighs, a full bodied thing, and turns his attention back to the chart in his hands. “You’ve got an old riding injury ‘round your left patella, though. You should get that checked out.”

Hazel blinks.

She…does have an old knee injury.

It was a riding accident, when she was nine. She doesn’t remember much, only flying, warm wind kissing along her face, bubbling out of her lungs as she laughed and whooped and forgot who she was, what she was, forgot the stones popping up behind her. They couldn’t catch her anyways. And she remembers falling, wind at her back, instead, and she remembers Sammy’s face, and the panic that clouded it, and her mother’s shouting. She remembers cold marble and an oil-slick voice and cool hands on her forehead. 

She blinks, shaking her head slightly. The blond boy has moved past her, now, pacing up and down the rickety cots, trailing his long fingers over bandaged foreheads and crooked elbows. His mouth moves softly and silently, hands glowing along, shoulder sagging, slightly, with every person he visits.

“You’re exhausted,” she observes. 

The boy smiles slightly, finishing a whispered hymn before turning her way. “Who isn’t?” His fingers twitch, in absence of a task, and start picking at the bandage around his wrist, wrapping, unwrapping, wrapping, unwrapping. “Is your knee bothering you? Unhealed injuries last longer for demigods. Especially after battle. Something about unsettled scores, I don’t know. The concept pisses me off so I refuse to entertain it on principle, but I can ease the pain if you like.”

Her knee does twinge, actually. It’s a damp kind of ache, like a headache in a rainstorm, but it's old and familiar, and hardly even registers. It smarts far less than her heart, anyway. 

Gaea’s gone. 

So is Leo.

Leo is gone.

She swallows. “I’m okay. I’m used to it.”

“Three years ago, a man named Michael Moylon went to the ER for a ‘headache’ he’d been ignoring. Turns out he was shot in the head but was used to the pain, so he didn’t bother.” The boy stands starighter, scolding hands on his hips. Hazel stares at him. “So.” He pats a padded bench with a papery cover over the seat. “Let me take a look.”

…Camp Half-Blood will always be, Hazel thinks, a strange, strange place, with strange, strange people. It’s hard to believe she once thought the Apollo-descendants of Camp Jupiter oddities; it’s hard to believe she once found anyone odd. Even outside of Camp Half-Blood. 

Gods, child-eating harpies. She really can’t get over it.

The medic wastes no time. The second she forces her feet to move, settling in on the cot, he is in action, tapping her pant leg gently so she rolls it up – which she does, flushing red and pretending not to see his bit-back smile – and prodding gently at the area, humming to himself. 

“Jeez,” he murmurs, pushing the tip of her kneecap with his thumb until she winces. “You shattered the whole bone!”

“There is no way you could possibly know that,” she argues. “I broke it – gods, I broke it ninety years ago, almost. And it healed.”

“It healed ish,” the medic corrects. “By ish I mean maybe someone tied a bandage on it and you were on crutches for a week.”

Hazel has seen a grand many things, even for a demigod. She has faced Titans. She has faced Giants. She has won, in all of these fights, she has held fallen comrades, she has wept for them, she has wept for decades, cursing and loving her mother in equal measure. She has stood her ground in front of six of the most powerful demigods to ever walk the Earth and defended her brother. She has faced off her own Father, even, and the broken power behind his eyes. She has bent the Mist to her will. She has bent the Earth to her will. It is not cocky to say she is strong, it is not arrogant to claim she has seen all there is to have seen. 

Still, the small pop of her gaping mouth echoes in the quiet, midnight infirmary, and the boy smiles, sideways and crooked, and shoots her a wink. 

“I could tell you how often someone two hundred thousand years ago ate shellfish by looking at a fossilized tooth. Believe me, I know what a shattered patella looks like.”

Modern medicine is a wild thing. Hazel has found that a lot of her friends in modern times have no idea how good they have it, and how wildly medicinal science has progressed in the last century. Aside from machinery and accurate devices, the pure knowledge that is widely available is mind-blowing. Hazel still remembers the looks she got when recommending calomel to a stressed out mother of a colicky baby in a cafe – it’s not like she knew mercury was poisonous. She remembers dosing out her mother’s calomel solutions for her deepest depressions. 

Still. There is a difference between modern medicine and near-divining her past with the barest touch of a bone through layers of skin and fat and muscle. 

The boy hovers wide, scarred hands over her knees, waiting for her nod. As he rests his palm on her skin she sighs, quick and startled like the quick collapse of a carnival tent; the bright, clear heat of his hands sinks into the pores of her skin and settles deep inside her brittle bones, warming a cold she hadn’t realised she’d been harboring. He begins to sing, under his breath, first, but slowly swelling with the night breeze through the open windows, swirling around the climbing plants hanging from the ceiling and weaving through the stone fountain in the room’s corner, pulling her lingering pain away with it. Hazel watches, wide-eyed, as the shadows take shape, chasing the song, of a horse, red-eyed and panicked, and a small little wisp of a thing, weak and limp. With every lilting note, the shadows get softer, and softer, and softer, until they wash away in the fountain’s stream. 

In the silence there is the warmth of the medic’s hand still on her knee. In the silence there is that same warmth, liquid, slowly pushing its way through her veins and blood, settling curled and tired in the marrow of her bones. In the silence there is, for the first time in nearly a century, a stillness, a total lack of the low, pulsating, ice-cold pain that has been quietly pushing from her knee for longer than it hasn’t. 

“Can everybody do that here?” she asks, finally, breathlessly. “Or just you?” 

Hazel makes no habit of the infirmary in Camp Jupiter, but biannual check-ups are mandatory and she is not immune to injury. Still. This is a relief unlike she has ever felt. 

The waves his hand, pulling back, and grins. “I take it you feel better?”

She answers honestly. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt better in my life.”

There is an ache, still, home in the dead centre of her chest, a lump still growing in the back of her through, and should she think too long, her eyes sting. But Leo is not…Leo is missing. And he is troublesome, like his great-grandfather, and slippery, and she has more faith in her friend than in Death. The ache is not overwhelming. The ache is tinged with something spiked and fiery, fueled by the genuine strength she feels in her body for perhaps the first time in my life. 

“Good.”

The medic twitches, slightly, as if he were about to reach out but thought better of it. He nods, instead, smiling, and walks back off to the end of the cots, where a monitor is beeping softly. This time, Hazel follows him, sliding off the bench and peeling the crinkling paper off her backside, stepping nimbly over taped-down cords and kicked-off blankets. She stands behind him, on her tiptoes, straining over his (too tall. People should stop growing after five-ten, she believes, except Frank who is an exception because he is cute) shoulders to watch what he is doing. He explains, around another muffled smile, each number and symbol, pointing to the freshly bandaged chest of the patient and muttering about reckless, thought-averse fools and internal bleeding isn’t real, nyeh nyeh nyeh and when I finally go insane and quit, they will have to beg for six business years to get me back I mean it. 

“Are the other medics this…” Hm. Unprofessional is probably not the word to use, here. “...Spirited?”

The boy raises a perfectly-shaped eyebrow. Hazel flushes. 

“The other medics are eleven and thirteen,” he says dryly. “And Kayla is currently over there –” he points to a snoring girl with dyed-green hair, who is bandaged in six different places and is sleeping upside down – “because she makes bad choices and has been demoted to assistant until I’m less mad at her, so.” He shrugs. “Spirited is what y’all get.”

“I didn’t mean to offend,” she tries. The boy just snorts. 

“Y’r’gonna havta try a whole heap harder to offend me, that’s for damn certain,” he assures. “If I was really gonna quit, I woulda done it two years ago when they slapped the head honcho badge on my shoulder and told me to get crackin’.”

Hazel stills. Demigod life is a – wild thing, she knows, and most have not lived as long as she has, ageing like amber in the depths of the Underworld while the world stretches on ahead. Percy’s face when he realized demigods could live longer than eighteen still haunts her nightmares. Camp Half-Blood is a loud, lively place, that burns brightly over its layers of ashes and yells over the sound of weeping ghosts left behind. That much she can gather. It should not be strange to her for an eleven-year-old medic, or an army of teenagers. Her own camp is guarded by an eight-year-old. 

But this boy still has stubborn baby fat clinging to his cheeks, for all his height. He cannot be more than fourteen. Fifteen, if she stretches. 

The youngest head medics at Camp Jupiter are twenty-two. Regardless of demigod life, skills take time to learn, and stomachs and hearts take years to turn to stone. 

“I’m – sorry,” the boy says, voice crackling like burning pyres. “I’m –” he forces a smile, a quick, strained thing – “I am, uh, spirited. Unprofessional. I haven’t slept in several days and I’m – uh, I don’t like working Austin too hard. He’s still learning, and he doesn’t like healing much, anyway.” He busies himself quickly with the patient he pointed out earlier – Kayla, the thirteen-year-old medic. It is quickly apparent that there is nothing to be done for her, and he stands there, back turned to Hazel, scarred hands twitching above her forehead until they settle, finally, featherlight, like he’s scared a touch will wake her. Like he’s scared a touch will hurt her. 

His shoulders shake, slightly. It’s too dark for anyone else to see the twin droplets, splattering on the corner of her cot. 

Hazel’s chest smarts something awful. 

“Where are the other medics?” 

She knows there are none before he answers. He must know that she knows, judging the careful steadiness of her voice, the fleeting touch of her finger on his clenched fist. She pulls back when his hands begin to shake, worse than before, and his finger worms under the bandages on his wrist, pulling and twisting, twisting, twisting. He stands close to Kayla, still. Hovering, careful. His lips part, and Hazel holds her breath. 

“There were more of us,” he begins, hushed. His dark eyes track Kayla’s snoring. “I was the thirteenth. They were –” He looks up, suddenly, looks over, and the look in his eyes is like cracking ice, like a glacier that has stood for thousands of years breaking finally into the arctic sea and falling under its own weight to the sandy floor. Like the fractured flash of sky between lightning, like the azure glass shards of a Christmas ornament refracting back the twinkling candlelight. “It was so loud in here, once.”

Hazel tries to reconcile that, in her head. This boy standing at the edge of his younger sister’s hospital bed, his younger brother tucked safely away, awake for maybe the fourth or fifth day in a row. I was the thirteenth. 

Hazel knows a little something about unlucky number thirteen. 

“War?” she asks, quietly, remembering something Jason had told her, on guard on the Argo, about a Titan’s battle on two sides of the country. About an army of snake-monsters for them, and something on the other end. Something worse. 

“Slaughtered,” the medic says hoarsely. Another tear traces the path of the first, low light flashing off the sheen of it. “First the – first my sisters, the oldest, then my brother, then – all of them, at once, at the same –” He chokes, on something, on the truth of it or the pain of it or both. Something bubbles in Hazel’s chest, thick and oily, something like horror and pain and hatred; a pit of the same tar that killed her the first time bubbling through her veins and burning the back of her throat. Twelve children. Her throat dries.

“All of them?”

“Every last fucking one,” says the boy, and the pain swells from him so thickly and ardently Hazel is half-sure each ghost is standing behind her, boring into his gaze. “Every last one. I watched them.”

Hazel watched. She held her eyes open for as long as she could when the tar swallowed them, when Gaea dragged them down. Her mother’s kiss burned hotter on her forehead than the boil of the earth exploding around them, and the shine of Marie Levesque’s guilty tears glittered brighter than the diamonds popping like falling stars everywhere Hazel touched. She held her eyes open until the heat dried them blind. She watched, as long as she could, her prodigal mother sink, her beautiful, broken mother die. She had thought she would feel something worse, something like satisfaction. Vindication. Nico told her they hold grudges. She had known it about herself before then. But the pain of her body ripping from her soul was secondary to the pain of realizing, to the pain of finally understanding that her mother suffered, too. Pluto’s wanting had cost them both, and Marie had only barely been able to apologize. She had never been able to make amends. And now she walked, like all souls do, along the beaten paths of Asphodel, reduced to her guilt, to her anger, to her wanting. 

Hazel sits heavily on the one remaining cot. After a moment, the boy joins her. 

“I don’t think it’s worth it,” he admits, quietly. He meets her eyes when she faces him, blue-black in the candlelight. “All – this.”

She follows his gesturing hands. To the bandaged girl, Kayla, to the bloodied, to the sheets pulled over small faces. To the brothers and sisters slumped exhausted by bedsights, tear tracks dried on young faces. To the faded pictures rubbed worn with mourning, gentle fingers. 

They have never been thanked by the gods. 

She’s not sure it would be worth it, either.

“There’s nothing that will bring them back.”

It’s not consolation. It doesn’t sound like it, either; to her own ears it sounds defeated. Agreeing. 

“Do you think they’d even want to be back?”

“Probably not.” She swallows, thinking of Leo. Is he relieved? He’d insisted on being the sacrifice. She hadn’t fought him. She couldn’t blame him for wanting. “I wouldn’t.”

They sit in the non-silence. The medic pulls the bandages on his wrists until they are bruising; Hazel’s fingernails, unbidden, reach up to her lips, pick, pick, picking until salted iron dribbles down her chin, onto her pajama shirt. In the heavy stillness of the twilight there are people coughing, and snoring, and worse, moaning, groaning. Crying. Calling out for their mothers, for their sisters. Birds wail outside the open windows. Cicadas weep. Dryads murmur amongst themselves, sap dripping out of them in swathes.

“I know you’re a big-shot Prophecy of the Seven kid,” says the medic, smiling wryly at her. He sniffles, swiping a hand over his face; as the first rays of sunlight begin to stream in Hazel realizes he is spattered with a night sky’s worth of freckles. “But, uh. If you’re not busy, I could use a hand today. Every day, really. Whenever you’re free.” He exhales. "Sometimes it makes it a little bit worth it."

There is a veritable library’s worth of to-do lists for Hazel to work through tomorrow. Today. She’s a high enough rank that her presence and her direction will be missed. 

Regardless, she smiles back. 

“Yeah.” She reaches for his hand, and he releases his bandages, holding their palms together. “Yeah, I’ll hang out in here today.”

[missadangel]

The Heart of Rome (Marcus Acacius x OC)

All Chapters List

VII. The Wedding (+18, Smut, MDNI)

 Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia… 

Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia…

Domus Severiana…

The night before the wedding.

It had been five days since the fight, during which time General Acacius had paid Domus Severiana a visit on two occasions. The exact date of the wedding had also been agreed upon. Your dowry had been arranged by your half-brothers and was in alignment with the General's – your future husband – expectations. Tomorrow promises to be an eventful day in the Domus Severiana, as weddings are usually held in the home of the bride's family according to Roman tradition. After the wedding ceremony, you and your husband would be conveyed to your new home, the General's villa, in a carriage. Fortunately, you were not a stranger to there. You had already spent some time there, although not as his slave this time, but as his wife. You were pleased to be leaving this fascinating place, particularly as you did not intend to spend any time in the same place as Caracalla and Julia. However, with Geta, was a different story. Perhaps he was the only one you would miss, as you felt a certain bond with him. He seemed to feel similarly towards you, but it was challenging to discern his feelings. It seemed like a puzzle that could never be solved. 

On that night, in your room in the imperial chamber, on your big bed, you were sitting with Decima, chatting, perhaps for the last time. The slave girl, Geta's favourite, had brought you a bucket of verbena for your bridal wreath-like crown. She had offered to make you the crown you wanted, but you were having trouble deciding on the colour and were seeking their input. 

"Perhaps pink would be a good choice?" Decima picked up the pink verbena.

"I'm not sure," you replied, shaking your head doubtfully. "It might not match the colour of the veil.”

"Since your dress will be white, maybe it should be a lighter colour," the other girl suggested, taking a lighter pink from the bucket.

You picked up a white one from the bucket and placed it on your saffron-coloured veil, which was laid at the end of the bed. "I think white is a simple and pure choice. So, the green leaves will complete it."

"Ah, just like a bride, a wonderful choice, my lady."

"Yes, it's beautiful." Decima agreed.

Before you could say anything, Geta burst into the room with a big smile on his face. The girls stood up and greeted him.

"You seem really focused on those flowers, like it's a matter of life and death. Would you also help me with some strategic documents? It's so hard to focus on them," he said sarcastically.

"Isn't that your responsibility? After all, you're the emperor," you teased him.

"Oh, but it's so boring," he replied with a frown.

When he jumped on the bed, next to you, you were startled but not by the shaking he caused.  "Hmm, white, nice." He was lying on his side, propped up on his elbow, supporting his head, picked up a white verbena with his other hand.

"What are you doing? I have a wedding tomorrow and I need to get some sleep."

"Oh, right, that's why I came here." He said, pointing at you.

"What do you mean?”

Geta turned his head towards the door an yelled. “Come on in!” 

A young man, who appeared to be a slave, entered the room and approached you, his movements slightly hesitant.

You looked at Geta in shock. "What is he doing here?"

But you were not alone, Decima and the other girl were also quite surprised.

“There won't be time before the wedding.” He said arrogantly.

“What are you talking about?”

“Undress.” Geta ordered him.

“What! No, don't!” You shouted at the slave. He grabbed the end of his tunic, unsure of what to do.

"I'm doing you a favour. Do you really want to ruin everything on your wedding night?"

"A favour?" Is that what you consider to be a favour?” You spoke a little louder than you intended to.

However, Geta didn't seem to care. "I'm not suggesting you sleep with him, but it might be helpful to study the man's body, especially the important parts." He pointed to the young man's pelvis.

You jumped up from the bed, feeling embarrassed, your cheeks burning.

"Thanks, but I don't think that's necessary."

Geta sat up in bed, his eyes twinkling with mischief. "Are you sure? Look at you, your cheeks are all red. You'll certainly faint when you see the General Acacius naked." 

His loud, ringing laugh was the final straw that broke your patience.

"I'm not a virgin!" you exclaimed.

Everyone in the room looked at you in surprise. You felt extremely embarrassed. You turned your back towards them, feeling ashamed to look at their faces.

Geta clapped his hands. "Well, well, well, my sister is not so innocent after all." He approached you. ”Caracalla will be disappointed though. He was thinking of giving you to the Temple of Vesta to become a virgin priestess." He laughed.

You turned towards him. “What?"

"To piss off the General, that's for sure. Anyway, you're not a virgin, so it's not an issue.”

"I don't think that's funny at all,” you said angrily.

"It seems there's more between you and the General than I thought.” Suddenly his face was serious. “Since you trusted him enough to dare to give yourself to him before marriage.”

You averted your gaze from him, not because you felt guilty, but because you didn't want to discuss such intimate matter with him.

He really didn't like your serious face, especially when you looked away from him. He leaned towards you with a playful smile. "But if you'd like to observe anyway, I mean, before the wedding, my body is in great shape. Not as muscular as his, but still."

'Can you please leave my room?' You pointed at the door.

'I understand your pre-wedding nerves and I forgive you, otherwise you can’t treat me like this,' he said smugly. 

“You started it," you murmured.

He seemed relieved. “Have a good night, sister," he giggled, and walked out of the room, his slave following behind him.

Once they were gone, you threw yourself on your bed and sighed deeply. “I hate him.”

Decima and the slave girl were giggling. 

Decima sat on the bed next to you. “I was thinking of talking to you about the wedding night, but I don't think I need to. I mean, since you're not,” she said, her voice trembling. She must be remembering painful memories from that house.

“Decima, I'm so sorry,” you voice cracked.

“No, you don't have to feel sorry for me, please. But can you tell me exactly how far you and the General have gone?" She gave you a suggestive look.

“Well, it happened once, you know.” Your cheeks were starting to flush again.

“So you're still inexperienced, my lady.”

The slave girl opened her eyes wide as you both turned your heads towards her. “I apologise, I was out of line, my lady.”

“How do you mean?”

“She's right,” Decima said. “There is so much for you to learn.”

So it turns out they were right – everything had happened so quickly that night. And you still dreaded the wedding night like a virgin. The last time you remember, he was stopping himself from going any further and was really patient and gentle with you. But you were still feeling like a virgin, not physically for sure, yet emotionally, novice to all the pleasures that the male and female body can experience. Thinking all of these, a new concern arose inside you, the inability to satisfy your husband's expectations as his wife. Like that's all you need, really.

For the rest of your last night in the palace, you were relaxing in the marble tub, breathing in the steamy air mixed with the floral aroma, while Decima's gentle fingers rub your legs. After a few embarrassing conversations, you savoured your last night as unmarried woman, since, from tomorrow you will be a married one. 

As the memories of your time with Marcus came to mind, you wondered when you first fell in love with him. When did it happen? Was it when you first saw him and felt a peculiar attraction? Or was it the first time he touched you? Each time he was kind to you? Perhaps it was when he smiled warmly at you? Or the first time he kissed you? You smiled to yourself. It seemed a little silly to choose between your beautiful memories as if you were entering them in a competition.

You were certain from the first moment you saw Marcus, you loved him. And it grew more and more every day. You suddenly realised how much you had missed him. The last time you saw him, he was talking to Geta and Caracalla about marriage as if it were a strategic issue, and you just watched them. You hadn't even had a chance to talk properly or touch him. 

Once you had finished your bath, you lay down on your bed. Your eyes lingering on your veil, which lay over the armchair next to the small table. As the sweet breeze from the window caressed your hair, you closed your eyes and dreamed of tomorrow.

Wedding day…

In the early hours of the morning, the streets of Rome were filled with a festive atmosphere. A group of people gathered around the Palatine Hill for the wedding of General Acacius and Princess Aurelia, eager to witness the momentous occasion. They patiently awaited the arrival of the carriage carrying the General to the wedding venue, hoping to catch a glimpse of him or the imperial family. 

You opened your eyes slowly and became aware of a number of voices. The first thing you heard was a sound that could be described as shouting. This was followed by a hum, which seemed to be the sound of a crowd, the swallows flying past the window, and then a knock on the door. As you gradually sat up in bed and yawned, Decima entered the room, accompanied by three slave girls carrying your wedding dress. 

“What's all that noise?” you asked Decima as you got out of bed. “Emperor Geta and Caracalla have had an argument I guess.” The slave girls put your dress on the bed.

You looked at her, surprised. “What's the argument about?”

“I'm not sure, but it's nothing to do with you or the wedding. Don't worry.”

“Then you must know why.” You said, eyeing the other girls, noticed that Geta's slave wasn't with them.

“I wasn't going to tell you not to worry about it on your wedding day, but I think Emperor Caracalla took an interest in Emperor Geta's favorite slave and it didn't go down well, so there was tension.” She was helping you undress.

“Is that why she didn't come with you?”

“Would you like me to ask her to come over?” she asked as she helped you into your long white silk tunic.

“No, I don't need to, but I hope she's all right.”

Decima rolled her eyes. “Perhaps you should stop worrying about someone else. Today is an important day for you.” She smiled softly. "You're the bride, remember?"

You giggled and nodded. She was right, but you couldn't help thinking that something might happen to the slave girl because of those two. 

With the assistance of the slave girls, you were nearing the end of your dressing process when Geta arrived a short while later.

He clapped his hands. “Sister, you look gorgeous.” Then he crossed his arms and inhaled deeply. “General Acacius. That lucky bast-.”

“Brother." You silenced him and frowned.

He pursed his lips, suppressing his laughter.

“Why didn't your slave girl come to help me?”

“Because she was busy dressing me,” he pointed to the white toga with gold embroidery he was wearing. 

She arrived at the door a moment later, holding your floral wedding crown. 

“Look, here she is. Come, girl quick!” Geta beckoned her over. “General is about to arrive and it's time to put the veil on.”

“Your highness, first we must put on the belt,” said the slave girl. 

Two of the other girls placed a thin belt around your waist, where the Heracles knot would be tied, and tied it one time. Geta's slave was combing your hair at the same while pinning a few to the sides with hairpins.

“Tie plenty of knots.” Geta grinned. 

You rolled your eyes. “Don't be childish.”

“Your Majesty, if the groom can't untie the knot-“

“I know, it's bad luck,” he grinned again. He was giggling like a child as he tied a few knots in the belt around your waist.

“That's enough!” You pushed his hand away. 

“Looks like the Glorious General Acacius will be trying to undo the knots until morning.” His laughter echoed around the room, and everyone could hardly keep themselves from laughing. You were almost one of them, biting your lip hard not to. 

Before long, you heard footsteps and one of the slaves came into the room, out of breath. “Your Majesty, my lady, General Acacius’ carriage has arrived.”

You felt a sudden rush of butterflies in your stomach when you heard his name. 

“Time for the veil,” Geta ordered the slaves. They draped the long saffron-coloured veil over your head. Decima wrapped the end of the long veil around your arm to keep it from getting tangled around your feet. You grabbed the part hanging from your arm with your hand. The yellowish colour of the veil made it a little difficult for you to see clearly. It was like looking at the sun at sunset, with everything bathed in a yellow glow. You bowed your head a little as Geta's slave placed the flower crown on your head. 

“Wonderful!” Geta smiled and held out his arm to you. “Shall we?” You took a last glance at your room, hesitating for a moment before taking his arm. Decima looked a little sad, so you gestured for her to embrace you, the veil preventing you from moving freely. She came and hugged you, and you felt a little uneasy about leaving her there.

“You know, it's not too late. If you're unsure about... I’ll tell him.”

You gave Geta an aggressive look, despite the veil, you were sure he saw it.

Then you took his arm in a hurry. “We can go now.”

“Impatient, sister?”

You rolled your eyes and felt your long eyelashes brush against the fabric of the veil.

“After all, you’re old. Around twenty-six? I think you're fortunate to have found someone to marry.” He smirked.

"Ha-ha. How funny.”

As you left your chambers, you heard the murmurs of guests coming from the main courtyard. You walked out with short, confident steps. As you descended the stairs, you saw Caracalla standing there. Geta turned his head away from him. Were they sulking at each other?

Caracalla eyed you up and down. “I liked the tempting idea of keeping the General waiting, but the guests will gossip about us,” he chastised you with a laugh. When he held out his arm to you, you looked at him in surprise. “How dare you keep my arm waiting?”

Geta could joke, but Caracalla could do more than that. He could joke and at the same time manage to chastise and sarcasm. You took his arm, despite your initial hesitation. As you walked between the two of them, you looked at their faces out of the corner of your eye. It was a strange but nice feeling.

Soon you found yourself in the main courtyard where you were greeted with applause. It seemed that the guests recognized you from a distance thanks to your yellowish veil. Your eyes searched the crowd for Marcus and were momentarily distracted by the flowers hanging from the upper balcony. But you continued your search with determination.

“Where is mother?” Geta asked.

“I sent her away,” Caracalla snapped.

Geta looked at him angrily. “Are you mad?”

“Stay out of my business.”

“Stop it,” you hissed. “Don't ruin my wedding.”

Geta leaned towards him, whispering behind your back. “This isn't over, brother.”

Whatever had happened between them and wherever Julia had gone, you really didn't care right now. You were too focused on Marcus, who was waiting for you at the altar. He looked magnificent in his white toga virilis, (special toga worn by the groom). Your consciousness was clouded by the exhilaration you felt, and the voices of Geta and Caracalla sounded like grunts to you.

The only thing you really saw was Marcus' face, it filled your vision, for a moment you could think of nothing else. His eyes were a buttery, burning dark brown color, his stunning face was almost severe with the depth of his emotions.  And then, when he meets your gaze, a breathtaking smile appears on his handsome face. 

You felt like you might have fallen from the exhilaration and excitement if it hadn't been for your half-brothers holding your arms. Fortunately, the seemingly endless march was over and there you were, right next to Marcus, your General. 

Flamen Dialis (the high priest of Jupiter) began his speech to preside over the wedding. 

“My emperors, and honored guests, welcome to the wedding of General Marcus Justus Acacius and our Princess Septimia Aurelia Marciana.”

With soft applause from the guests, the slaves brought in a lamb adorned with flowers, its bleating echoing throughout the courtyard.

"Great Juno, Goddess of marriage and fertility, accept this gift of life from the great house of Emperor Publius Septimius Geta and Emperor Lucius Septimius Bassianus Caracalla.”

You chose not to look as the lamb was sacrificed, glad that the veil blocked your view. With a gesture from the high priest, Marcus held out his hand and asked Geta and Caracalla the usual question. 

“My Emperors, do you promise to give me this woman, your sister, to be my wife?"

Geta and Caracalla glanced at each other, and then back at Marcus. 

“I promise.”

“Promise.”

They vowed.

You didn't realize you were crying until your tears soaked the fabric of your veil. You blinked, trying to see Marcus' face more clearly. Geta and Caracalla placed your thin hand in Marcus' large, warm palm. As soon as you touched his skin, that familiar feeling blessed you. He stroked all your fingers with his thumb, as if to calm you. The High Priest seemed satisfied and turned to Marcus. "General Marcus Acacius, she is yours.” He announced.

Geta and Caracalla took a few steps back, you took a few steps towards Marcus. He gently lifted the veil from your face and placed it over your head. You smiled with joy as you could see his gorgeous face more clearly. It seemed unbelievable, but this amazing man was now yours and you were his. Marcus took your hand gently and placed the golden wedding band on your fourth finger. You playfully caressed the ring -with the symbol of clasped hands on it- with your pinky finger. Here's one more thing to get used to.

“Seal it with a kiss.” The high priest gave consent.

Marcus gently grasped your shoulders, bent his head towards you and kissed you tenderly, adoringly. In that moment, you forgot everything else: the time, the place, the guests, and the reason you were there. All you remembered was that he loved you, that he wanted you, and that you were his.

“Let's witness the contract!” The high priest raised his arms and the guests applauded.

Marcus and you both broke the kiss with great effort, you even heard someone clearing their throat. You were almost sure it was Geta. Marcus pulled himself back to look at you, seemed amused, a smirk appeared on his face. There were giggles and murmurs coming from the audience, but you refused to look away from his face to see them.

The sweet evening breeze wafted gently around the Domus Severiana, carrying with it the sounds of a small crowd enjoying a wedding banquet under the soft lights. Marcus was conversing with Octavius in the vicinity of the fountain, while you were sitting in the fancy seat that had been reserved for you and Marcus, next to the imperial seats of Geta and Caracalla. Your half-brothers barely spoke to each other during the banquet, their mother Julia was nowhere to be seen, but nobody seemed to care. Macrinus, however, was looking at you out of the corner of his eye when he was talking to Geta. When he finished talking to him, he came over and smiled at you.

"My lady, I would like to congratulate you."

"Thank you, sir."

"I wish you and General Acacius every happiness."

You looked away. "I see Sir Gaius was not able to attend." 

A thoughtful expression crossed Macrinus' face as he realized the implication in your voice. 

"He asked me to convey his sincerest congratulations to you.”

"I'm not sure, I don't think he's sincere.”

"I beg your pardon, my lady?" He leaned a little closer

"I wonder if you were aware of his plans?" You shook the glass in your hand, your eyes fixated on the movement of the wine in it.

Macrinus cast a quick glance at his fellow emperors and leaned towards you.

“Can you please explain how you mean?”

“He told me a little about the plan for the throne, almost in a threatening tone,” you replied. Then you looked at him in the eye. ‘You didn't know?’

Marcus saw you two looking at each other with serious faces, so he frowned and ended his conversation with Octavius. Macrinus' face was hard to read. Whatever he was feeling, he was hiding it well. You were determined to solve him though.

"Whatever Sir Gaius has said, my lady, I can have no such thoughts,  I am at the service of your brothers, and of you too, surely.”

“There is no need for that, Sir Macrinus.” You were startled by Marcus's harsh voice. He stepped between the two of you, protectively, right in front of you, his shadow falling across your face.

“As her husband, I am the one who must look after my wife, Lady Aurelia, and I am grateful for your services thus far.” Marcus spoke with a tone that brooked no argument.

Macrinus smiled. “Of course, General Acacius, congratulations again, now, if you excuse me.” He turned and strode to the other side of the hall.

When Marcus turned back to you, he looked concerned. He sat down beside you and leaned in. “Did he say something to bother you?”

You shook your head. “No, he just congratulated me.”

Marcus raised an eyebrow.

“It's nothing to worry about, really,” you smiled at him.

He put his arm around you, "We'll talk about this later." His free hand went straight for the food on the table. “Did you eat enough?” He stuffed a grape into your mouth. “You'll need your strength for tonight.” 

You almost choked on the grape as he smiled crookedly. 

Geta's loud laughter startled you. When you looked at him, his favourite slave was feeding him some food too. Caracalla was also very busy romantically with his own slave. When you turned to Marcus, he was staring at you under his eyebrows. There was desire in those brown eyes that melted like butter and made your throat go dry. 

Then Marcus's face turned serious as their laughter continued. He turned his head and looked at your emperor half-brothers. “I think that's enough of the banquet.” He looked back at you with a soft expression this time. “Is my beautiful bride ready to go to her husband's house?” He gripped your hand tightly.

'Husband' word made you giggle. “I am very ready, General.”

He smiled and kissed the top of your hand then stood up, pulling you with him.

“It seems our happy couple have decided to take their leave,” Geta noticed you two. 

“With your permission, your highness,” Marcus nodded.

The slow music picked up to match the pace of the ceremony, which marked the bride's departure to her new home. In keeping with tradition, Marcus grabbed you by the legs, threw you over his shoulder, and ran across the courtyard towards the gate, carrying you outside. The guests watched this cheerful moment with laughter and applause.

While Marcus was carrying you over his shoulder, you tried to look around, but all you could see was your veil sweeping the floor. As he stepped out of the main gate, you were met with a surprise: applause and the sound of your own name being called. Marcus set you down. The crowd chanted both your names. They threw you rose petals, and you smiled and greeted them. The guests inside, Geta and Caracalla, had followed you, also greeted them. One of the slaves handed Geta a bowl full of red rose petals, which he proceeded to shower over your head. His earlier mood had been far more cheerful, but now he was serious. It was as if he was sad, but it was hard to be sure. Caracalla folded his arms, not bothering to touch the rose petals. You were taken off guard when Geta suddenly hugged you. You felt Marcus tense next to you. Geta looked at Marcus with an air of command. “Take good care of my sister, Acacius. Or there will be consequences.”

It was common knowledge that he was an emperor who liked to issue threats and give orders, and Marcus was aware of this, but no one was used to seeing him do it to protect someone else. It was clear that there had always been tension between them, but there was something different in the way they looked at each other, something you could hardly make sense of. 

Marcus grabbed your hand and looked at Geta with a sharp gaze. “Lady Aurelia is now my wife and under my care, she will be well looked after, you can be sure of that, your highness.”

Geta pursed his lips as if thinking about something. “Well then, you can go,’ he said then, pointing to the carriage.

“Be gentle with her, won't you?” Caracalla laughed hard.

Of course, shameless jokes were part of the tradition and your brothers were the experts at it.

Geta smirked. “Good luck,” he said, gesturing with his hands to his own waist, alluding to the belt around yours. 

You rolled your eyes at him and got into the carriage with Marcus's help. He lifted your veil as you got in and helped you to sit down. He called over Octavius and had a quick word with him. You were curious about what they were talking about, but you couldn't hear it clearly over the music and the crowd. When Octavius left, he came into the carriage and sat down beside you. He ordered the coachman to get the horses moving.

As the carriage moved, he held your hand and placed it in his. He traced the outline of the ring on your finger with his thumb. Then he lifted your hand and kissed each finger. You heard another carriage moving just behind yours. You turned your head and lifted the curtain with your free hand to look out.

“Another carriage?”

“I believe it's an imperial dowry,” he said sarcastically.

You looked at him, confused.

“Your brothers are sending you lots of clothes and jewellery,” he explained.

“Must be Geta.” You thought so.

“They have no boundaries when it comes to spending coins.”

You chose to remain silent because he was right.

“Still,” he grasped your chin gently and turned your face towards him. “My beautiful wife deserves it all.”

Before you could react, he kissed you passionately. His arms wrapped around your waist, and you felt his impatience. You inhaled his masculine scent and felt a moistness between your legs. Gods, why does this road never seem to end? You thought.

Villa…

By the time the two carriages drew close to the General's villa, the sun had finished its work for the day and was beginning to set. As he left, the sky darkened, and the moon rose soon after. The moon was bright and illuminated the night, almost as bright as the sun, especially tonight.

When the carriage finally arrived, Marcus stepped down and offered you his hand. You took his hand with a smile, but you had forgotten the veil you had wrapped around your arm and you stumbled on the steps. Marcus wrapped his arms around you and put you down effortlessly. Like you were a little girl. 

Octavius had already got out of the other carriage and came over to greet you. You turned your head to look at the other carriage. You were astounded to see Decima standing there, smiling. 

“But how?” You looked at her in surprise.

"Your wedding present, part of your dowry." Marcus explained. “I asked Emperor Geta to give her to your service, and he agreed.”

“Marcus, I don't know what to say. I'm so grateful.” 

He smiled in response, then took your hand and led you to the courtyard entrance of the villa. “Now we have to complete the ceremony. Are you ready?”

The ritual of entering your new home was a Roman custom that was not very common in Egypt. As a result, you were not familiar with this part of the ceremony, yet Geta's slave had informed you of a few details.

“Please guide me.”

He gave a nod. When you got to the door, all the General's slaves were waiting for you there. Two slaves were holding torches at the front. As you passed through, you noticed Norell and Tullia and wanted to give them a hug, but they were looking at you a little solemnly. Right, the ritual wasn't over yet. They both lifted you up and carried you over the threshold. You walked to the centre of the courtyard and realised how much you missed this place. It looked a little different than usual with the lighting and decorations, but you were home.

Marcus stood right in front of you. Norell handed him lucerna (an oil lamp), Tullia a jug with water in it, the symbol of life.  You took them from his hands carefully and, with his gesture, you raised them up for all to see. The slaves applauded softly, and you smiled. Then Norell and Tullia took them back from you. Marcus approached you and whispered, 'You know what to say here, don't you?’

You gave a little nod. It was a sentence you'd run through in your mind a few times already.

“Ubi tu Marcus ego Marca, where you are Marcus, I am Marca.”

He responded “Ubi tu Marca, ego Marcus, where you are Marca, I am Marcus.”

And the contract was fully signed, you were officially his wife. 

“Welcome home, my wife Aurelia,” he said with a warm smile.

It was like music to your ears to hear your own name come out of his mouth with the word ‘wife’.

"Welcome, Domina,” the slaves greeted you.

You smiled at them, and as Norell smiled back at you, you wanted to go over to talk to her, but Marcus' expression almost changed with the emotions he was feeling. He grabbed your hand and pulled you to the stairs leading to his room, or rather your room now. You could feel his impatience in the way he touched you. Your heart thudded audibly against your ribs, and your breath seemed to get stuck in your throat. 

He closed the door firmly behind you two. You could feel his eyes on you, but you refused to look at him. What was this sudden nervousness all about? You looked at his bed and saw the rose petals that had been sprinkled on it. Then, he rushed forward to snatch you into his arms, taking your breath away. You giggled, “Did you miss me?”

What a silly question, Marcus thought.

"Yes," he growled, and pulled you hard against him. "I can't think of nothing but you. Dreaming this moment was the only thing that kept me patient." Marcus's strong arms were wrapped around your waist, pressing himself against you. When he felt you tense under your dress, he reacted with a slight frown. 

“Why are you so tense? You made it through the first time well.” He brushed his lips against yours. “If I remember correctly, you liked my kiss?” His kiss was forceful, deep, overwhelming. He had got that wrong, he realized dazedly. He was the one who liked your kiss.  More than liked.  He loved it. He was radiating a strange intensity today. You could feel it under his lips; he was screaming his longing to you through them.

He slid his hand to your thigh. “I remember you liked my touch too,” now he was touching you where you wanted him most. You bit your lip. He grinned as he felt the moisture forming beneath the fabric. “I see you want me, but I want to know what makes you nervous.”

You swallowed hard, unsure of how to tell him how you felt. 

“Are you afraid of me?” His voice was so soft.

You met his eyes. “No Marcus, I'm - I'm afraid what if I cannot satisfy you or please you as your wife.”

Marcus's smile was broad, cheerful. You blinked your eyes as you looked at him in confusion 

“You will learn, my love.”

He ran his fingers up your arms, caressing your shoulders, your collarbone, your chin, “We’ll both be learning each other’s likes,” then took your face in his hands, "Each time,” he smirked, his gaze dropping to your lips. He kissed your lips softly. His mouth was hot and sweet on your own.

Marcus broke the kiss to remove the veil from your head. It was getting in the way of his arms around you and feeling your skin. He placed it on the edge of the bed, a little hastily. When he came back, he took your hands and put them on his shoulders, just above the shawl on his white toga.“Will you do as my wife?”

“Sure.” You took hold of Marcus's plain white shawl and slowly removed it from his shoulder, then waist. He now wears only his plain white tunic. You placed it on the bed neatly. You gasped as his hands wrapped around you from behind. He kissed the nape of your neck gently but needily.

“Turn around to look at me.”

You did as he said. His hands went to your belt, his smile fading as he realised the knots. It was exactly the reaction you thought he'd have.

“Why did you tie so many knots?”

“Apologies.” You bit your lower lip.

"He did this, didn't he?" He narrowed his eyes. He grunted when he saw the answer in your expression. "He always manages to annoy me.”

Marcus untied one of the knots patiently, but there seemed to be more. While he was untying it, your eyes drifted across the room to Marcus' leather armour. Next to it was his sword and then you noticed the item that you thought might be useful. Marcus' pugio (a dagger used by Roman soldiers as a sidearm).

“This belt represents virginity, right?”

Marcus answered without looking at you, determined to untie the knots. “Yes?” Suddenly, he stopped and looked up. He met your gaze, following the path of your eyes. He turned his head in that direction.

“So I'm not a virgin after all. I mean…"

He laughed when he realised the implication in your voice. “I'm all ears.”

“Can't you just cut it off?”

“Gods must have blessed me with an intelligent wife.”

He took his pugio, unsheathed it and came over to you. “Stay still.”

You nodded and swallowed, wondering why this turned you on so much. Marcus grabbed your endlessly knotted belt with one hand and pulled, almost staggering you. With the other hand, holding his pugio, he cut your belt in one swift motion. You were startled when you felt the sharp surface of the dagger just slightly under the fabric. But it was over in a flash.

Marcus threw the belt on the floor. "There's nothing holding us back now.” He hurriedly put the pugio back in its sheath. And in the blink of an eye, you were in his arms again. You trembled with ecstasy in the dress which freed from the tightness provided by the belt. Marcus's impatient hands grasped the fabric of the dress at your shoulders, perhaps a little roughly, and skilfully undressed you. The dress fell to the floor, pooling around your feet.

“Undress me,” he demanded. Unlike his impatient hands, yours were slow, yet eager. You grasped the hem of Marcus' tunic in your clumsy hands, lifted it up and pulled it over his head, allowing it to fall to the floor.

As you looked at his bare chest, your eyes drifted to where he was last injured, and you looked at him as you stroked it with your hand. "It's not healed yet. I'll have to make some ointment.”

He grabbed you around the waist and pulled you hard against him.

“Do that later, now focus on the other thing I need you to heal.”

You looked away, and before you could turn your chin, he grabbed it in his hand.

“Wrap your arms around me,” he commanded.

You obey, feeling him between your thighs, growing, making you swallow loudly.

“Run your fingers through my hair,” he said, looking into your eyes. You already liked touching his hair so much, was he reading your mind? Marcus's breathing grew heavier as you ran your fingers through his curly, dark, partly gray hair. He grabbed your hips, lifting you slightly onto his lap. His strength was a huge turn on for you, feeling the way he was easily able to pick you up. Walking with your legs wrapped around his waist he carries you there and lifting you off of him. He laid you down on the bed carefully and then watched you. You felt the soft touch of rose petals against your skin yet didn’t care. You literally felt his eyes roaming over, from you hips up to your waist up to your breasts, and your cheeks surely turned red than they already were. But you didn't feel exposed. In a way it felt liberating to let him see you because you didn't have the urge to hide yourself from him anymore. The eager expression on his face made you feel beautiful and wanted. And then he kissed your neck, which felt even better, and you turned your head to the side to offer him more skin to kiss. He swirled his tongue on the skin behind your ear, causing you to moan. He continued working across your neck with his tongue, then pecked your earlobe and then moved to your mouth. He crushed his lips to yours. He felt your hands as you press against his back, clasping him to yourself. You ran your hands over his broad shoulders as he kissing you with unbridled passion, his lips moving over yours with a hunger you had never experienced before. Marcus was already healed when he felt your fingers caressing his wounds. The feel of your bare skin against his is beyond compare. It is absolutely glorious.

The moment he forcefully parts both of your legs with his knee, you look up at him wide-eyed. His face is intense, and you know soon he’ll take you. You don’t want him to stop, but can’t help to tense. You fight against his hold but it is as though you're fighting a marble statue.

Marcus looks down at you sternly. His voice becomes commanding. 

“Aurelia, if you could just relax, we've done it before, this time it won't hurt,” He whispers into your ear. You did what he said and let him take you. Your immobile under his control, extremely turned on. 

“I wish to please you,” he says, his hot breath caresses you belly. He slowly runs his hand downwards, reaching that intimate, soaked place between your legs that he has touched before. A satisfied groan builds in his throat. “Hmm. So responsive.”

A deft finger circles a sensitive spot gently and you bit your lip hard, feels good. You feel the need to writhe in response, but his weight is holding you down, unyielding.

He enters you with two fingers and his hand is so big that each time his finger is in, his palm presses your most sensitive spot. He curls his finger, massaging another extremely sensitive spot inside you. And finally, he puts his mouth close to that area and touches it with his tongue, while he caresses your breasts with both hands then pushing his tongue back in against your clit, then sucks, consuming you, relentlessly. You can’t suppress your whimper. And groaning loudly. He looks up at you. He was determined to watch you come and the closer you got to climax the heavier your breathing became. 

"Marcus," you moaned again. “P-please.”

He smirked watched your face contort and kept at it, licking and sucking, devouring you while your legs started to shake beneath you. Soon you reached the climax and felt as if you had ascended to the sky. Marcus kissed you repeatedly around your belly, proud of the feeling he had caused. He had a smile of triumph on his face, but now his body had become more impatient. 

“Now wrap your legs around me,” he was stroking your legs. You did as he said, already craving him more than you ever wanted him, your body squirming to be his. In a swift movement he grabs your hips and pulls you down and his full length is inside you. You moan and your breath hits against his chest. Your nails dig into the back of his neck, breathing harshly. You didn't expect it to happen so quickly, but this time it didn't hurt at all, maybe because it was too wet, dripping wet.

You weren’t with him for this part, but he was acutely aware of you every shaky breath. Somehow, despite his pleasure, he found himself moderating his thrusts without too much effort. True, he had to squeeze his eyes shut to concentrate.  The feel of you around him was like nothing else.  It was strange how aware he felt of the clench of your fingers at his back as he luxuriated in the tight, silky clasp of you. How often he felt compelled to press his lips to yours. 

When he felt his brow begin to bead with sweat, he groaned and told himself his exertions had gone on long enough. He needed to withdraw.  You don’t need to, a voice whispered in his head that sounded very like his own. She’s your wife, yours. He looked at your face to confirm, determined not to lose his self-control and cause you pain. Fortunately, he saw that you were far from suffering. He smiled confidently, thinking how beautiful you looked right now. He could see it in your face, so when he hardened his movements a little, he realized that you were moaning with pleasure. A smile of triumph spread across Marcus' face as you screamed his name over and over. His thrusts are becoming quicker now, but still not too quickly, and you know you will climax simultaneously.

You close your eyes and moan as you feel yourself begin the ascent to your orgasm. He is moaning as well, then he pushes himself as deeply into you as he can, triggering his climax. As you feel him throb inside you, filling you completely with his seed, you come hard, your moan becomes a howl, and Marcus presses his mouth to yours, causing your body to twist into lovely shivers.

He slides his tongue into your mouth and strokes yours with his, extending both your climaxes. Moaning into each other's mouths, you don't want this feeling to end, and you're certain he feels the same. As you ease down from your respective highs, Marcus breaks your kiss and looks admiringly into your half-closed eyes and smiles through heavy breathing.

"I can't believe how stunning, amazing you are," he whispered, running his fingers through your hair. “I love you Aurelia, my beautiful wife.” 

You smiled at his kind words.

“I love you too, Marcus.”

Both of you naked in our post-coital bliss, a military man buried inside you, the General, now your husband. You think it was the most romantic wedding night you could imagine. Not because he's so handsome and charming despite his age. But because he's your Marcus, he's perfect.

When he finally pulls out, it hurts, but only emotionally. You already miss the fiery connection between your bodies. He kisses you again and pulls you against his chest, wrapping his arm around you, as if he's trying to stop you from running away. You smile, he must have remembered what you did last time. He places his chin on the top of your head, your nose close enough to touch his neck, your nose caressing his jugular vein. 

The warm breeze whispers through the window, blowing out the oil lamp and allowing the bright moonlight to bathe your naked bodies in its glow. Once the sounds of love have ceased, you find yourself surrounded by the gentle chirping of crickets, the soft howl of an owl, and the calming rhythm of Marcus' breathing. After a while, your eyelids gently close, and you drift off to sleep, caged and imprisoned by his arms.

The Dream...

The moonlight was all you could see, blocking out everything else. The soft wind caresses your skin, causing you to shiver, but you are not cold. You ask yourself why you are shivering. Your feet, your hands – where were they? Everything was blurred. You opened and closed your eyes, your heart racing in your chest. But why? You open and close your eyes once more. Your hands are there, but your feet are off the ground.  You open and close your eyes once more. This time, the light dims, and you can see around you. You are relieved. You thought you were blind a moment ago.

But the relief doesn't last long because you remember where you are. You were here before. This meadow, this wind, this sky. "Save him." And that chilling whisper. You flinch and gasp as the owner of the voice suddenly appears. The goddess appears in front of you, her white skin glimmering like diamonds. This time, she doesn't resemble you. She draws closer, and when you recognize her face, you fall to your knees. This time, she allows you to feel the grass and flowers. Is it because she pity you?

'Mother?' your voice trembles. You've never seen her before, only her statue, in the tomb in the Domus Severiana. She is beautiful, in a way that is difficult to describe.

'Save him,' the same tone, with a hint of urgency and a touch of pleading.

You get up on your knees and look at her, ‘I did it, Mother, I saved him.’ 

Unsatisfied with your answer, she turns away, strolling in a circle among the grass. You're certain she'll pick another herb to give to you like she did last time. But no, she grabbed something from the grass, and when she lifted it up you jumped backwards for your dear life. 

‘Don't be afraid, child,’ she whispered. 

The viper she held in her hand was torn into many pieces and spread out through the grass, then into the soil. What? Why? How? You felt like you were losing your mind. 'He will need you, Rome will need you,’ she whispered again, ringing, echoing in your ears. Rome? Him? This overwhelming, all-consuming dream didn't allow you to speak or think clearly. He was your sole focus, and you made the conscious decision to ask questions for him, even if it meant losing your mind.

'Save him from what, mother? Please…” your voice cracked, you were panting, heavily breathing.

Without batting an eyelash, she grabbed your hands and lifted you up on your feet. Her eyes were fixed on yours, as if she could read your mind.

"You already know.” Her voice sharp. 

This time, she turned around, and her hair danced in the warm wind. You shook your head in defiance, demanding to know more. She reads your mind again. "Think, Aurelia."

In a gust of wind, the grass and flowers on the ground were uprooted, plucked, and gathered around your mother's silhouette. It was incredible, overwhelming, and it consumed all of your senses. You rushed towards her, but she had already disappeared among them as if caught in a whirlwind. Your feet were no longer on the meadow with green grass and flowers. Instead, you were on a dirt field, and you felt abandoned. No more moonlight, no more wind, only dirt ground. No more her. With her voice echoing in your ears for the last time, crushing your soul, blowing your mind last time, your dream was about to end.

'Think.'

please reblog, comment or like if you enjoyed thank you all <3

@myownwholewildworld @orcasoul @pedroslut4eva @immyowndefender @lailathepedritofan @screechingchildfury @shinymusicpanda @somedayheaven @ivoryandflame @negrita2345 @music-lover09 @javiismyhsbnd @idontcareihavenoidea @jisungandpedrolover @mmkkzz @ro-nahime-things

if anyone wants me to tag them please lemme know

[radawaycunt]

for a lucius fic/blurb maybe he was betrothed to a girl before he was sent away and them reuniting after the events of the movie

OMG YES THANK YOU!!! This is divineeee im gonna make it a lil angsty (with happy ending though)

———

In all the years he’d been gone, he had never stopped counting the days until he saw you -- his betrothed, the love of his life -- again. Both of you had been young when your engagement was arranged, meant to marry when you were of age. You were the daughter of a senator who was close to Emperor Marcus Aurelius, his grandfather, and you had been friends since infancy.

He remembered playing in the gardens together, chasing butterflies, picking flowers for your mothers, and feeding the fish in the vivarium. Endless days of laughter, without worry of what the future might bring. At least you had each other, and there was comfort in thinking it would be for the rest of your lives.

But everything changed after the death of Maximus, the gladiator who had slayed his uncle, Emperor Commodus. Staying in Rome as a youth was far too dangerous, as many would attempt to assassinate him for the throne. His mother Lucilla's last act of love was to save him, even it it meant there was a possibility he would never come back.

Unfortunately, though, that meant he did not have time to say goodbye to you; to vow his everlasting fidelity. In Numidia, the breeze blowing in from the sea whispered your name, and he swore he could almost see your face -- as he remembered it in youth -- where the sky and the water met on the horizon.

The resulting rage and guilt fueled him as he started training, becoming stronger and more cunning over the years. He vowed his revenge against the Roman armies, fiercely defending the country that housed him.

Their arrival had been both a curse and a blessing, but only because they took him back with them. In the sands of the Colosseum, he fought harder than ever before in order to prove himself.

It was torture being unable to find you, wondering day and night where you might be in the great city. But once again, he let it fuel him, hellbent on taking down any enemy that might stand in his path.

It wasn't until the first game he participated in that Fate seemed to smile upon the two of you, and you saw each other across a great distance. Him in the arena and you sitting on the second tier with your father.

Your eyes widened in recognition and you couldn't look away. You almost stood but stopped yourself in order not to bring any unwanted attention to yourself. You absently grabbed your throat, your heart thundering fiercely with a maelstrom of emotions.

"Lucius..." you murmured, your voice barely audible.

"Did you say something, dear?" Your father asked, glancing at you curiously.

You shook your head, but an icy dread spread throughout you as beasts were released into the arena. Lucius nodded at you just barely before he had to tear his gaze away, his sword at the ready. The way he fought was precise and ruthless, reminiscent of his father, Maximus.

You anxiously looked towards the Emperor's box, seeing Queen Lucilla come to the same realization. You desperately hoped you would be able to speak to her, so the two of you might find a way to speak to Lucius.

You sat at the edge of your seat the entire time, watching him fight his way to victory. You couldn't help but cheer with the crowd, immensely relieved, but covering it up with infectious enthusiasm. Lucius looked to you once again before he was forced to leave the arena, silently vowing to get to you, no matter the cost.

Under the cover of night, and with some help from General Acacius, some of your father's guards accompanied you to the underground cells where Macrinus kept his gladiators.

The gate to Lucius' cell was opened and you stepped in, making him immediately stand from his cot. Tears sprang to your eyes, a sound that was half sob and half laugh escaping you.

"Lucius!" you said as he embraced you, kissing you desperately.

You kissed him back as tears of happiness tracked down your cheeks. You pulled apart to look at each other, taking in the evidence of time on your features. Your hands cradled his face tenderly, seeing the boy you remembered beneath the man that now stood in front of you.

"I can't believe you're here," you said as he kissed your palms. "We have to get you out."

His jaw clenched in rage and frustration. "I have to earn my freedom in the arena, it is the only way for me."

You let out a sound of despair, trying not to break down sobbing. "But surely General Acacius can--"

He shook his head. "No one can know who I am. At least, not yet. There is too much at stake."

You grabbed both of his hands and held them against your chest.

"My heart belongs to you, Lucius Verus Aurelius," you said solemnly. "I have always been yours, and I intend to marry you no matter your status."

He swallowed thickly, pulling you in for another kiss as he realized time was running out. He leaned his forehead against yours, holding you as close as possible.

"I love you," he said. "Nothing could keep me from you.”

“Then promise me you’ll live.”

He promised, intending to see it through. There simply was no other way. Even through the most grueling trials that followed, losing one too many people in his life, he prevailed. He rightfully claimed the throne of Rome, ridding it of the threats that almost were its downfall.

And his first act as Emperor was to marry you in the palace’s gardens under the night sky, with only the Gods as witnesses. The way it was always meant to be, your fates written in the stars.

————-

[damiansgoodgirll]

OK I found it! (No rush what’s so ever BUT!)

(During Roman’s tribal chief era.)

!Female Reader always had a crush on Roman, but was always too scared to ask him out.

One night during a match Kevin Owens costs her the match, (kinda like how Dom cost Raquel that one time) (you can pick between who ever is on the smackdown roster to have reader up against but it’s also not really required if you don’t want to.)

And basically the bloodline, mainly Roman goes to readers rescue, cause beef with Kevin.

(I know it’s not really…LIKE Roman to do something like that because he’s the tribal chief, but I feel like it would be a nice concept idea.)

Idk just fluff and adorable and what ever cause Roman… LMAO.

sorry it took me so long writing this but i’ve never written for roman and i had no idea on how to start 😭 i hope you like it + the timeline doesn’t really exist here lol

roman reigns x reader

likes, comments and reblogs are always appreciated

‼️nothing major, hurt/comfort, angry roman, some fluff too, kevin owens is mean here sorry

my weakness

everyone loved roman. yes, he played the big mean guy part and he was definitely good at it but deep down you knew that he cared. he cared for his family, his cousins, the fans, he even cared about his opponents while in the ring. deep down you knew he had a big heart and he was a kind person who pretended to be the bad one.

and maybe it was because of his big mean yet kind personality you caught feelings for him.

it’s not that you were big friends - you had a closer relationship with the usos and your shy personality made it harder for you to get to know him better.

but there were times when you and roman spent some time alone. at the gym, training before a big match or backstage, his presence was nice and even if you didn’t speak much, you enjoyed being around him even if the only present sound was the silence.

unbeknownst to you, roman always admired you. he adored your quite presence. when everyone was noisy around him, he found comfort in your silence. your presence was enough for him.

and his admiration for you didn’t go unnoticed backstage but everyone kept quiet, too scared the tribal chief would get mad if someone said something and they know better to not upset him.

all the locker room knew about that. the saw how roman was nice in your presence but mean with everyone else and even if it made you laugh, you never thought more about that.

even if you had no real beef with anymore backstage, somehow kevin picked you as a main target just to made roman even angrier.

it was going all good on friday night smackdown and you had a match against tiffany - if you won over her, you would get a title shot against nia and after being in the industry for over five years with little to no titles opportunities, you were ready to take it all.

it was your moment to shine, to prove everyone that you deserved to be the women’s champion.

what you didn’t see coming was kevin owen running towards the ring the moment you almost pinned tiffany. you almost had it. but you got distracted by him running and tiffany saw that as an opportunity to stand up and hit you in the back.

you were kinda surprised to see kevin there, why was he even there? he barely talked with you backstage and you pretty sure he wasn’t there to help tiffany as he had no business with her either.

feeling pain in your back, you tried to take back control inside the ring but when kevin got closer to the metal stairs, you and the blonde woman both turned your head towards him.

“what are you doing?” you almost screamed, definitely irritated that he was there to ruin your moment “get down kevin…”

but he stood there, watching the way you and tiffany kept fighting. for the second time that night you had the chance to pin tiffy down but you were too close to the cords and nonchalantly kevin put tiffany’s leg over them.

“what the heck! kevin!” you screamed, even angrier now. you were pretty sure you did him no harm so why was he ruining your moment like that?

at this point you were tired and in pain. kevin was trying to sabotage you and you didn’t know if you had the strength to pin tiffany down for a third time.

meanwhile backstage roman was getting ready for his interview later that night and he had no idea what was happening in the ring. he knew you had a match and he was dying to see it but jimmy forced him to repeat his lines for the interview and he was missing all of your match, until jey came to the tribal chief private locker room and asked him if he knew why was kevin ruining your moment.

roman scrunched his nose, trying to elaborate what his cousin just told him “what did you say?” his tone hard.

“kevin is costing y/n’s title opportunity man, i didn’t even know those two had beef” jey uso repeated.

his words making roman’s blood boil “they don’t” he simply said before he left his changing room.

you fought with every single bone in your body. your head was spinning, your back was killing you and you were tired but you wanted that title opportunity so you kept fighting and for the third time that night you had the chance to pin tiffany down, only for kevin to grab you by the leg and drag your body away from the blonde one.

you couldn’t understand. you really couldn’t.

was it in the script and no one told you?

was your career so pathetic that superiors wanted you out of any title opportunity and instead of telling you, they sent kevin?

your mind was spinning so fast and even faster when your teary eyes met kevin’s eyes. somehow you knew he felt guilty about what he was doing to you and yet he kept going on, dragging your body out of the ring.

you had no strength left so you laid there, hearing the bell ringing, letting tiffany win, and you lose, again.

the crowd erupted in boos, especially since everyone was waiting for your match and cheering for you.

you still laid there, trying to catch your breath again when you suddenly heard the crowd going apeshit.

a very mad roman reigns was running towards kevin owens and punched him right in the face. you quickly stood up, surprised he was even there.

you stood by the ring, a hand behind your back as you tried to catch your breath once again. jimmy and jey coming to your rescue as you all watched roman dragging kevin inside the ring “your beef is with me, now with her…you’re gonna pay for this” he whispered, almost as a promise before leaving the ring.

the crowd was cheering, thinking that it was all part of a script and some even thought that you were going to join the bloodline but you honestly had no idea what was happening.

you saw roman waking towards you, his eves never leaving your body “you okay?” he asked but you were too confused that didn’t even answer “let’s get you backstage…” and for the first time you saw the twins walking in front of him as. roman’s hand gently moved to your back as he helped you walking away from the scene.

medical staff checked you out and luckily you had nothing broken. you were just in a big uncomfortable pain.

roman brought you to his changing room, telling jey and jimmy to go somewhere else as he wanted to speak with you - alone.

“are you okay y/n?” he asked once you sat down on his couch.

“yeah, i think so…” your voice trembled. you definitely weren’t okay. you didn’t even know what happened in the last thirty minutes. your brain couldn’t comprehend it.

“you’re not okay…come here” he gently sat next to you and engulfed you in his big arms. you didn’t even realise you started crying. soft whimpers left your body as roman stroked his hand over your back “kevin is gonna pay for what he did” he said with stern voice.

you looked up at him, quickly wiping your tears away “i don’t think i’ve ever been mean or rude to him, why would he cost me the only title opportunity i’ve been given in five years?” you said mostly to yourself.

“because of me…” roman didn’t want to confess. he didn’t want to ruin the little friendship you two had.

your look quite confused “you?”

“yeah me…” he took a deep breath “because the men in the locker room know…”

“they know what?” you couldn’t understand what he was trying to say.

“that you’re my weakness…” he tried to avoid your look as you watched him with big eyes “you’re my weakness, i never felt like this and they know it…they know i have feelings for you but no one ever said anything…except for kevin, who thought that ruining your moment was okay…he did it because of me, he probably feels like shit knowing that he fucked you up but he got my reaction, he pissed me off and that was his goal” he exhaled once he was finished.

you stayed there, trying to assemble what roman just told you. he liked you, kevin used you to piss roman off and roman defended you, because, again, he had feelings for you.

“you have feelings for me?” you whispered, fearing that if you said it out loud it would have been fake.

“yes…”

“you, the roman reigns, the tribal chief, you have feelings for me?” you whispered again, making roman chuckle this time “am i dreaming? that’s the only possible explanation, i am dreaming…”

his strong voice chuckled again “i promise you that you’re more than awake…”

“why didn’t you say anything about it? we could have avoided a lot of silence conversations…” you asked.

“because i didn’t know, i still don’t know what the outcome of my confession is…i didn’t want to lose you and in all honesty i loved being in your silent comforting presence” he smiled, making you smile back.

you looked at him, trying to find any sign that he was lying but when you find none, you moved closer to rest your lips upon his bigger ones. it was a soft kiss, the both of you testing the waters.

“this would have been the outcome if you told me earlier…” you whispered against his lips, making him laugh.

the title opportunity long forgotten when roman gently moved you over his lap and deepened the kiss.

“i can’t believe you like me…” you whispered, too stunned to believe what just happened.

“i’ve been liking you since you joined the roster…i should have said something earlier…” he said softly while his hand softly stroked your cheek “but i’m glad i did it now…” he kissed you back feeling you smile against his lips.

after a couple of minutes of softly making out, you both got distracted by the twins knocking on roman’s door.

“not now” he said, a stern voice while you tried not to laugh.

“we just wanted to remind you of the interview…” jimmy voice said and you felt romantic scoffing, clearly annoyed to be doing that interview.

“i’ll be out in five” he screamed back and began to kiss you again when he felt the twins walking away from his locker room.

“as much as i love this, you have work to do…” you reminded him, getting an annoyed look by him.

moving back to sitting on the couch, you let roman getting ready as you admired him. he smirked feeling your look on him, especially when you tried to look away.

“i promise you, you’ll get your title opportunity back and no one will interfere this time, you have the bloodline protection, that’s a promise” he said, promising you.

of course you believed him - you knew how important he was in the game and he knew that if he asked hunter for a little favour, he wouldn’t say no.

“once i’m done with my interview, i’ll come back here and then we’ll finish what we started, back at my hotel” he smirked again before leaving the room.

you watched him leave, not being able to answer back. your mouth agape at the idea of spending even more time with roman - maybe, after all, it wasn’t a bad night.

[romizari]

Ffffreeeeaking whateverrrrr. whatEVERRRRRRR!!! sonicxdm au be upon ye !!!!!!!!!!

individual slides + my rambles under cut—

au rambles......

☆ ok so like i fr did NOT think super far into this. i dont even know wtaf or who tf lil petey would be... it's just sonic!dm, shadow!petey, and maria!grace and the events of sa2.....if anyone expands the sonicxdm world beyond this, or alr has, LET ME KNOWSWW

☆ on the topic of grace, i have trouble recalling who exactly said it, but someone suggested petey growing in stasis and being older with grace kinda the same and i lowkey fw it....

— im planning on drawing some scenes from sonic 3 for petey and grace cuz shadow and maria are my ROMAN EMPIRE💔💔💔💔 the family....

☆ i know petey's tail isnt flat but i feel like similarly to the periods of shadow being tested on etcetc (im thinking movie!shadow tbh....) i think maybe he was physically altered in some ways, his tail being one

☆ i also took a LOT of liberties with dm's design... idk if the spiked ears are the vibe but i messed w them heavy idk💔

☆ on the topic of designs, i tried to have dm and petey have somewhat of a similar shape to sonic and shadow respectively.

— it probably isn't show very well here but i feel that sonic has round shapes concentrated around the middle of his body, while shadow has more pointed/sharp shapes concentrated towards his chest area. maybe i'll tweak the designs again but that was what i was going for!

☆ while a lot of their [dm and petey] interactions will be based in the games/idw comics, i feel like i will draw sm movie scenes cuz omfg .... sonic n shadow on the moon talking..... that shit was brutal af i gotta hit dm and petey with the beam

☆ hey so these bitches gay man. you cant be rivals in every universe, raise a child tgt in many, and expect to come out unscathed. i need to hit them with FREEAAAAKING HAMMERSSSSSS

ok that's it byeeeeeeesies!