#please don't put the two in the same boat

[m1ckeyb3rry]

Series Synopsis: When the husband you’ve never met returns from the war you’ve never understood, he comes bearing a strange and inexplicable gift — a prince in chains who he refuses to kill.

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Mydei x F!Reader

Chapter Word Count: 17.0k

Content Warnings: pls check the masterlist there is. a lot. and i’m not retyping all of that LOL

A/N: okay so two things a) sorry for the wait (i thought i would get this out quicker but then my professors decided to kin reader's husband and trapped me with a multitude of exams...) and b) i am. truly shocked by how many people ended up reading/enjoying part one?? like it's crazy to me SLKJFH i hope you guys don't hate where i go with this 😭 and like ik i gave a ton of ooc warnings in the main warning section but they bear repeating LOL so. PLEASE DON'T HATE ME IF BRO IS OOC IDEK HIM LIKE THAT 😓💔

The Southern Sea was unsettled again, thrashing against the shore like a bird tangled in netting, beating itself into such a frenzy that the waves broke silver on the sand. This was atypical of the cerulean waters, and you crouched, fragments of seashells digging into your bare heels as you ran your fingers through the tide. Expecting your father to reprimand you for putting yourself in unnecessary danger, you glanced up, but his mind was clearly preoccupied, as distant as his soft gaze.

“Father,” you said, standing and taking a step back, clutching his arm to steady yourself against the wind. “The sea is strange as of late, isn’t it?”

“They say it knows more than we do,” he said, staring at the horizon, where ships gathered like thunderheads. “Perhaps this is its way of protecting us.”

“I thought the empire was friendly,” you said, narrowing your eyes at the crest painted on the coming boats. “Do we not have some understanding with them?”

“I wonder,” he said. “My darling…you know, sometimes, I wonder.”

 You lay in your bed, a sheen of sweat glistening on your skin as you stared at the ceiling. The blankets covering you were suddenly overwarm, though you could not bear to cast them aside, and your eyes welled with scalding tears that threatened to spill out of their corners. Swallowing and turning over, you used the edges of your pillow to blot at them before they could fall, burrowing further and further into the confines of the tangled furs which padded your bedding. 

Your vision often swam nowadays, for you were dizzy with exhaustion, but you could not bring yourself to sleep, not when your mind had taken up this new form of torment for you. As if it were not enough that you were imprisoned here in your waking hours, as well! Over and over, it would replay that same scene, everything clearer in recall than it had been when it had actually occurred, the colors brighter, the details sharper, stabbing into you with their cruel poignance. 

There were some things, however, which were blurred, the image fading at the edges with time, and this was worse than the remembering, because these were the only things you wished to recall, and this thieving empire would not even let you have that. Even your memories were not safe from their pillaging and their curses, and so their crest was burned into your mind while the rest of it slipped away like river-water through reeds.

You had known as soon as you had awoken that you would not be able to fall asleep again, but that did not stop you from yet another futile attempt. Your lower lip trembled as you waited, fisting your sheets and holding them to your heart as you tried in vain to ease its panicked thumping, which kept time with the furious crash of waves on a far-off shore.

You wanted your home. You wanted to sleep. You wanted your father. You wanted the sea. You wanted to go back. You wanted to have never left in the first place. You wanted, wanted, wanted, but only that which you could never get. Your husband, who was so wealthy in so many ways, who had given you the prince of Kremnos himself, wrapped in chains and delivered at your feet, would never grant you those few wishes which you truly desired, had neither the fancy nor the ability to do so.

Taking one of the lighter blankets and swaddling it around yourself like a shroud, you slid from your bed and fumbled around in the dark for a lantern, which you lit with the embers of the kept hearth. Holding it close to yourself, for luminance and for warmth, you tiptoed through the hallways, your previous flush fading in favor of shivers, which ran up and down your spine the farther you got from your chambers.

There was some invisible force which tethered you to the prince. Certainly there must’ve been, for you could not fathom any other reason why your feet were tracing that familiar path down to the cellar, the blanket still tossed over your shoulders, your stomach wringing itself out from the weight — both of the palace above you and the prince before you.

You thought he might be asleep when you came, but he was as he typically was, as much of a statue as the one you had stood across from on your wedding day. His eyebrows knit together when he saw you, and it was such a sweet, dear expression that you were taken aback, for you had in truth believed him incapable of anything but that dark, glowering scowl which he maintained as if it were the sole representation of the few shreds of self-regard he had left to his name.

“You’re back,” he said carefully. You set the lantern down in between the two of you and, as he always did, he crept closer to its meager incandescence. You pretended not to notice, affording him the grace of ignorance to his innate instinct, and then you nodded.

“Yes,” you said. “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything. It’s still late at night.”

“I thought as much,” he said, nodding at your empty hands. “Time is different here, but even then, I think that I know the difference between a few hours and an entire day. Has there been some development, then? Is your rotten husband finally freeing me?”

“No,” you said, and though he disguised it with a blank frown, you noticed how his face fell. “I don’t have news in any way, for better or worse. Sometimes, I think my  husband is entirely determined to forget that you exist at all.”

“If I were to guess, he means to deprive me to death,” Mydeimos said dispassionately, as if he were talking about someone else, a distantly historical figure whose fate had no bearing on his own. “Should I face a proper execution, I will haunt him from beyond the grave as a banner for Kremnos to rally behind. As it is, he must be hoping that I will fade quietly from the annals of history — the last in another line of princes subsumed by his empire.”

You folded your arms over your chest, a shield against his blunt line of thought. “He is prone to it, I suppose.”

“Is he?” Mydeimos said, like you both were sharing some private joke. He spoke daringly, slyly, as if he were attempting to nudge you into honesty, and you imagined that if you were somewhere else, in a place where the sun shone and the tides eddied about your feet, you would’ve found his manner a temptation. Yet you were here, in this dark cellar, and so all you could muster was a kind of mournful heartache at the impossibility of it all.

“I am sure it is what he intends for the kingdom from whence I hail. Though neither death nor deprivation are required there; the princes are still young, and so if it comes to it, they will…” you trailed off, overcome, before you steeled yourself to continue once more, though a bitter resentment crept into your tone like poison when you did so. “Anyways, the eldest child of the kingdom is a daughter, and she is a spoiled, brattish thing who cares for little but her jewels and her dresses. She will pose no trouble to such an empire as my husband’s.”

“I see,” he said. 

“Ah, but regardless,” you said. “It matters little. I shan’t allow him to kill you in such a way.”

“And your word, of course, is law,” he said, and you wondered at his constitution, which allowed him to scorn you even when he was, in a sense, nothing more than a corpse, a vessel bound for funeral and finality. Was he like this with the others, too? The many men who came to gouge at him with their glares and their abuse, did he strike them with his whip-sharp tongue? Or was it that you were the only one — the only one who deserved it, or the only one who took it with your tail tucked and your head bowed?

“Do you ever sleep?” you said, for if it was the case and you were the sole person he dared to rail against, then how could you take it from him? When it had been taken from you, how could you turn around and do the same to another? “You are always awake when I come to see you.”

He stared at you incredulously, as if you were quite mad. You waited, thinking that he must be choosing his words carefully, but when he finally did speak, it was with a breathy laugh, like he could not quite believe that he had to say it aloud.

“Do I ever sleep?” he parroted. “If I sleep, dear lady, I am certain that I will never wake again. How many men would happen upon me and not dare to slit my throat in such a state, when they can be assured that I will not be able to retaliate? Do I ever sleep, indeed!”

You wished you could tell him that it was the same for you — different, because that which spelled your end came to you only in your dreams, and so you were chased from repose as surely as he ran from it, but the same nonetheless. The bruises carved into the hollows of his cheeks and painted under his dark lash-line were identically replicated on your face, although you were better about hiding it, staining your skin with all manners of concoctions so that your husband did not question what ailed you.

“It will kill you regardless, won’t it?” you said, furrowing your brow. He shrugged, and despite the atrophy of his mind and body alike, it was a powerful gesture, all the more intimidating for its halfheartedness.

“Who will weep if it does?” he said.

“Every manner of thing in this place is meant to kill you, in fact,” you continued. “It is as you said, then: they mean for you to meet death by deprivation, to suffer until your very end. You cannot sleep, nor can you eat…but as I have brought you food, so, too, shall I bring you rest.”

“And how do you imagine you’ll do that?” he said.

“I will stay here,” you said, the strength of your conviction shocking yourself. You hadn’t known until you had said it that you would, but as it left your mouth, you became utterly sure that it was the right decision. “I will watch over you, prince of Kremnos, and should — should someone else come, then I will wake you before I flee, so that you may defend yourself.”

“Why would you do that?” he said. “What good does it do for you to protect me when my end is decided?”

He said it with curiosity, not deprecation, although there was an edge of despairing anger to it. Why? Why do you extend your hand to a doomed man? If I must die, then let me die now instead of later. If he were more honest, then perhaps he would’ve said something like that, but instead he only gazed at you levelly and waited for your response.

“If we both are to meet our deaths in this palace, then let at least one of us meet that demise with a head held high,” you said.

For a moment, it seemed like he might question you. You prepared rebuttals that you could never make but which would swish around in your mind like an impenetrable defense — a death of the body is not the only way to die, after all — but then, miraculously, he only hummed

“You think that it must be me?” he said.

“The Kremnoans are known for their pride, aren’t they? It isn’t the same for my people, who roll over and show their stomachs at the slightest incitement,” you said, taking the blanket off of your shoulders and holding it out to him. “I have made my vows already. What can I do but accept this fate? Yet it needn’t be the same for you.”

He peered at you with eyes that saw far more than they should, far more than you had allowed him or anyone else to, and then he nodded. Shortly, curtly, but he did it, taking the blanket and unfurling it like a war-banner in the meantime.

“I understand,” he said.

“Do you?” you said, for you could not tell what, exactly, it was that he understood. He did not elaborate, however, tucking himself away in the corner, draping the blanket over himself like a mantle and resting his head on his arms. Although he did not close his eyes, watching you even still, you could see them fluttering against his will, and you knew it would not be long before he succumbed, whether he wanted to or not. There was only so long he could survive without sleep for, after all — at the end of the day, he was still a man, and thus prone to humanity’s shortcomings.

“Turn around,” he said gruffly. “Watch the stairs, not me. I will not be the one to bring you harm.”

You apologized, sitting with your legs crossed and your back to him, watching the shadows cast by the lantern as they flickered and danced, waltzing about to the soundtrack of his breaths, which slowly evened into a soft rhythm of inhales and exhales as the time dragged on.

Minutes or seconds or hours passed, you could not be sure, but when your legs grew numb from inactivity, you shifted so that you were hugging your knees to your chest, muffling your face in the fabric of your nightgown.

“Are you asleep?” you whispered.

He did not respond, and when you glanced over your shoulder, you saw that his eyes were closed, his face smooth with innocence as his chest rose and fell under the thin blanket. It was as if he were another person entirely, a more forgiving person, a kinder one, the sort of gentle prince that stories were written about instead of the violent beast who killed as many men as were thrown at him.

“That’s good, then,” you said, a weight on your tongue dissipating now that you were, in effect, alone. “Huh? I didn’t realize…”

Even your vows could not police your thoughts, or, if they could, they had not yet attempted to. Your stream of consciousness was still unfettered, and now that Mydeimos was asleep, you could say what you pleased, could tell him everything you wanted without fear of reproach. It nearly brought you to tears, the mere thought of it, and you had to take a deep breath to steady yourself.

“I understand you more than you think,” you admitted. “You know, just as they’ve taken the sun from you, they’ve taken something precious from me as well. I speak of the sea — oh, but I never told you that, right? Nobody here knows, or at least they pretend that they don’t, but it’s true that I am from the shores of the Southern Sea, where the sky is always clear and the people are as beautiful as the tides.”

You half-expected him to startle awake and snap at you, or for your voice to suddenly die away in protest at your rebellion, but when neither of these things happened, you slumped down in relief.

“It’s often said that the Southern Sea is beyond compare, the closest to paradise that can be found on the living earth. Perhaps I’m biased in agreeing, but I really think it’s the case. I love it, I love it as much as you love the sun — and how you miss the sun, so, too, do I miss the sea. Daily anew I ask myself how it is that I am still alive when I have been so far from it for so long, but somehow I persist, though there are times…ah, but I digress. It isn’t your concern,” you said.

If he were awake, he would’ve jeered at you. How dare you, who were the empress of this entire place, speak of struggle? When he was locked away like this and you were left to your own devices, how dare you pretend as though you understood him? You were suddenly grateful that he could not hear you, or else whatever opinion he had of you would be irrevocably lowered.

“You would find it strange and inexplicable, as Kremnos is entirely inland, but for me, the sea is parent and friend and confidante alike,” you said. “You see, I was my mother’s first child, and so my birth was rife with difficulties. For two days and two nights she labored, until a wisewoman recommended she be taken to the Southern Sea.

“Of course, my father was frightened, for who would trust a wife and a babe to the treachery of the currents? But it’s an odd thing…the waters have never been calmer than they were that day, when my mother was taken to a cove where the seaweed held her hands and the monk-seals played as her midwives. You know, the whales sang when I was finally born, a clear-eyed slip of a child cradled in my father’s arms.”

The mention of your father made you pause, for you had not said that word in so long that it was all but foreign. Father. Your father, your father, you would tell the sleeping Mydeimos all about your father if you had the time and the energy for it. But where would you start, and where would you end? 

“I miss the Southern Sea in the way a bride must miss her mother,” you said. “My actual mother never had much time for me, far too preoccupied with the rearing of the younger ones, and so I was left to the waters and my father, both who cared for me with great consideration, and both who I — who I miss most ardently.”

Your chest felt near to caving in, and you tightened your grip around your knees, as if by holding onto yourself, you could prevent the further spread of the burrowing sensation emanating from your heart, which would dig and dig until there was nothing left of you but blackened, gangrenous innards that rattled around in an empty carapace. 

Mydeimos awoke some time later, though you only knew because he cleared his throat, prompting you to turn and find that he was crouched on the ground, folding the blanket with a neat precision, matching the corners with mathematical accuracy. You watched him in bewilderment, the exactness and nigh-domesticity all but jarring, and in turn he ignored you, fascinating himself with the work so that he could avoid your gaze.

“You stayed,” he said when he could no longer pretend like the blanket required his attention. Dropping it in your lap, he looked down at you with arms crossed, a silent and clear refusal to offer you his hand in the way of a nobleman. You did not insist, taking the blanket and scrambling to your feet on your own.

“Yes, I told you that I would,” you said. “Did you sleep well?”

“‘Well’ is a stretch,” he said. You averted your eyes, lips tugging into an involuntary frown, and he sighed. “But at least I slept. For that, I am…grateful.”

“I didn’t really do anything,” you said, in an attempt to disguise the disproportionate pleasure the simple acknowledgment brought you. “But since you found it to be of some help, I will come back tomorrow.”

“If that is what you will,” he said, albeit lacking his typical sardonic bite. “By the way, you referenced your home.”

“I did?” you said, trying to think back to what you had said before he had fallen asleep. It felt as though you had lived very many lifetimes since then, and everything jumbled together in your mind, so you only blinked at him expectantly, waiting for him to elaborate.

“You said that the people of your home are known for their yellow-bellied cowardice,” he reminded you, and dimly you recalled saying such a thing, though you hadn’t expected him to latch onto such a random, stray line. 

“That’s right,” you said. “Why do you mention it?”

“Where are you from? I haven’t heard of a place so opposite to Kremnos. It’s unfathomable, the thought of somewhere with people who do not burn for the glory of their egos and esteems. What — what is it like?” he said, attempting to sound entirely unaffected but incapable of camouflaging the sheen of curiosity glazing over his irises, childish inquisition melding with a more mature, scholarly interest. 

“It is an ordinary and unremarkable place,” you said, pursing your lips and turning away from him again, your blanket over your back in the way of a shield, a barrier in between yourself and the kindly prying that you might’ve called uncharacteristic of the prince, if you were someone could claim to know anything about him and his character. “That’s all I can say.”

You lingered for a moment longer, thinking — or perhaps just hoping — that he would say something, that he would poke and poke at your dull, wounded answer, that somewhere deep in his beastly heart, he would understand what you really meant. But he only exhaled, bidding you farewell with the same inflamed terseness that he typically infused into his every word, and the moment was lost.

In the daytime, your husband’s voice had this quality of cheerfulness that, at least to you, seemed specifically designed to grate at your nerves. This was an especial cruelty, as the mornings were the worst for you, worn from the toils of the night as you were, but your husband remained blissful in his unawareness and so continued to chatter on without heed. 

You sat curled into your chair, the sun bright in your vision and his voice bright in your ears and everything all so bright, bright, bright. You considered gouging your nails into your eye sockets for the slightest bit of alleviation, or maybe scratching your fingers into your ears deep enough to bleed and drown out the speech he was giving about his plans for securing the Kremnoan border.

“...they have been severely weakened without Mydeimos, of course, but naturally that doesn’t mean they are entirely defeated; stubborn bastards, those Kremnoans, never know when to quit—”

“My lord, have you decided what you will do about him?” you said, your voice dragging on the vowels as you muffled a yawn. “The prince, I mean. Mydeimos.”

The name dallied on your tongue, sweet as the fruit you chewed on, syrupy like the juice of it on your lips. Your husband raised a brow at you, and you cursed him in your mind, cursed him for being so oblivious to so many things but this familiarity, this delicacy, this one thing you had left to savor.

“How flattered he would be, to know that you are so concerned for him!” he said. “I doubt he has ever had such a beautiful woman fawning over him so devotedly. I am sure his face would be as red as those crude markings of his if he heard of it.”

“Don’t be a boor,” his cousin interjected, the quiet control of his voice a welcome reprieve from the variances in your husband’s tone. “She’s only wondering, right, lady? He is her prisoner, after all. Why should she not ask?”

“Her prisoner,” your husband said, with a particular and unprecedented emphasis on the possessive nature of the word. “Yes, he is, at that. Fear not, dear lady; as I have said before, and so I will say again, I shall execute him when the time comes, but that time is not yet. Believe me, you will be the first to be told when it comes to it.”

“Very well,” you said, for there was no merit in further discussion of the topic. You understood when to back off as well as anything, and anyways, as you had told the prince, the people of the Southern Sea weren’t the confrontational sort. You were the worst of them, once, a barbarous lionfish in a sea of picarels, but now, by virtue of your vows, you were just like the rest, as pliant as a clamped oyster buried in the sand.

“Anyways, brother,” your husband’s cousin said when there was an awkward lull in the one-sided conversation, which was really more of a monologue on your husband’s part than anything but was still uncomfortable in its absence, “I was thinking.”

“Were you, now? And was it incredibly difficult?” your husband said. His cousin, who was one of the great military minds of the empire, smiled politely, well-used to the jabs that your husband doled out with a fraternal frequency. 

“On the contrary, your lady eases my mind. There is no difficulty when she is the one my thoughts tarry upon,” he said coolly, just serious enough that he was almost definitely in jest. “I thought she might find some amusement in visiting the elephants from Kremnos; they do not have those where she is from, I am sure, and seeing such rarities might be of some benefit to her health. Certainly the air will be.”

“You speak with wisdom…but I do not have the time to supervise such an excursion,” your husband said. “I have war-councils to attend, and an empire to manage besides.”

“Isn’t that what I was born for?” his cousin said. “I am your second, brother, and at your disposal entirely. If you cannot accompany her, then I will surely do it in your stead.”

Your husband’s eyes narrowed, so imperceptibly that it could easily be dismissed as a trick of the light or a defense against the sun. You ran your tongue along the back of the teeth as you waited for his response, a natural symptom of fretting that you could not help, but it came to nothing, as he only reclined back in his chair with an imperious nod.

“Who else can I rely on but you, hm? Thank you, then,” he said. “Dear lady, I hope you are not opposed.”

He phrased it as a question but meant it as a command; you were not so stupid as to think otherwise. Anyways, it might not be so horrible, so you only hummed in agreement and pretended like the berries in your mouth were the reason you did not say anything aloud.

The path to the stables where the elephants were kept was made of packed dirt, looping through the gardens in a meandering route far from the palace and any onlookers. For a while neither you nor your husband’s cousin spoke — he was lost in thought, and you busied yourself with admiring the scenery you had thus far only seen through the windows of your room. It was not the Southern Sea, could not be further from it, but there was a pastoral, picturesque charm to the blooming bushes regardless. Honeysuckle climbed over wrought-iron trellises, the slender vines curling in between the twisting leaf motifs of the metal, and the blush-white flowers perfumed the air with a melancholic sweetness.

How lovely you would’ve found it, if it did not all belong to you. If you were a visiting dignitary, a guest of the empire’s…if you walked alongside your husband’s cousin as a companion or friend instead of a sister-in-law…how lovely it might’ve all been. 

The sun beat down on your back nearly to the point of discomfort, but instead of complaints, all that came to your mind was Mydeimos, who you thought might’ve luxuriated in these things that you were irked by. So you bore it in his stead, the suffering, the burning, drinking it in with zeal, imprinting the sensation into your skin instead of shrinking away from it, a punishment to yourself as much as a favor to the prince that might never again wear the crown of day upon his handsome brow.

“I remember that first letter my brother’s advisor wrote to us about you,” your husband’s cousin said, ripping you from your reverie. There was a hint of shrewdness to his voice, one that you had never heard from him before, and it made you instantly wary, though he had never given you reason to doubt him before.

“Pardon?” you said.

“It was all such a surprise,” he said, though of course it had not been anything of the sort. “To think that you were to marry him. What a solution to the problem at hand.”

“Yes,” you said, picking at the frayed skin of your cuticles absentmindedly, ripping at them until they stung. “And here I am, having done just that.”

“Indeed,” he said. “It was about time he found a wife, anyways. Heirs are not born overnight; as of right now, all he has in the way of succession is me, but of course that’s not sustainable, is it? He needed a wife to beget a son most of all; everything else you have brought us is a perquisite.”

“Yet it was those very perquisites that made it all so much easier, I am certain,” you said.

“Who would not marry for as many advantages as they can come by?” he said. “You cannot blame us for that.”

“Perhaps,” you said noncommittally before shifting so that your shoulders did not face him. “But these are old things, which have long since happened. The elephants. Tell me about them.”

He wasn’t the last person you wished to discuss your past with, but if there were a list, then he was definitely near the bottom. It was conflicting in a way, nonsensical, almost, but you were sure that even if you could talk about it, you would not, for as much as you longed to, you also could not stand the notion. There was a sort of fortitude in your isolation, in your knowledge that in this place, the Southern Sea belonged solely to you. Not your husband nor his cousin nor their armies and their advisors; you, you, you and only you. So even if you had the means to speak of it with a loose tongue and ready words, you would not —  you would guard it instead, guard it and its people, keep them close to your chest, folded into your swooping collarbones where the empire could not cast its filthy gaze upon them. 

“There are three,” he began, holding up three fingers for emphasis. “The cows, Dromas and Lucabos, who were used only for the transport of goods and have taken well to their new keepers.”

You had reached the elephants’ temporary stabling by this point, and he pointed at the twin elephants in turn. Their tusks were short and blunted, and their trunks waved in the air as they reached for feed from their troughs; keepers milled around their feet, but neither Dromas nor Lucabos paid them any mind. There was an enduring temperateness to the depths of their dark gazes, and even to you, who knew nothing of elephants, it was obvious that these were not creatures of war but benevolent pack-animals in the way of your homeland’s donkeys.

Separated from the cows, the third elephant stood alone, sullen and unmoving. If the keepers dared to so much as look at him, he would rumble out a feral challenge, and unlike Dromas and Lucabos, he was tethered to the ground by ropes braided around his legs and torso. Faded red paint swirled on his forehead, a universal symbol of protection which was flaking off but had not yet turned illegible, and there was a mean slant to his eyes, his ivory tusks honed into swordpoints that he brandished before him.

“Verax,” your husband’s cousin said when he noticed that your stare had not budged from the savage bull. “The war-elephant of the prince himself. After we captured Mydeimos, he fell to his knees from grief and was easily corralled, despite his inordinate strength in battle. A loyal creature, to be sure, albeit a foolish one — you’d think he’d have ceased his struggling by now, when it so clearly will come to nothing! But still he fights, though I know not what he hopes to achieve. Even if he does somehow free himself…he must know that the one he loves has gone to a place he can never reach.”

“Perhaps he seek comfort in refusal,” you said. “There is courage and heart to be found in intransigence, after all.”

“Would you know very much about that?” he said, leaning with his back to the fence surrounding Verax, who stared at you with barely-concealed hatred, the expression so utterly human it made you shiver. 

“Should we stand so close to him?” you said, neatly avoiding the question by posing one of your own, batting your eyelashes in an attempt at naivete. For a second you thought he might not fall for it, that he might be possessed with a keen enough intellect to see through the farce, but if he was, then he did not display it, only waving you off dismissively.

“He may charge at us, but he will trip on his restraints before he reaches,” he said, and then he extended his hand towards Verax, waving his fingers at him teasingly. “See? They’ve taken every precaution; I wouldn’t have been permitted to bring you if they hadn’t. Nothing can happen to my beloved brother’s wife.”

“Let us go,” you said, tugging his arm with far more familiarity than was earned. He raised his eyebrows but did not reprimand you, allowing himself to be pulled along as you set course for the palace proper once more. “This is doing nothing for my health. I don’t wish to stay here any longer.”

“I know that Verax is frightening, but Dromas and Lucabos are as meek as horses,” he reassured you. “You needn’t fear when it comes to them. Don’t you wish to pet them?.”

“No,” you said. “No, I don’t. I am spent, and I think it’d be best if I retire until dinner. Thank you for accompanying me; I appreciate that you thought of me and my wellbeing, even though nothing much came of your attempts.”

“I will keep searching,” he said, a smile playing on his lips, taunting you as he had taunted Verax, waving the feigned gravitas he afforded the situation in your face as boyishly as he had waved his fingers at the elephant. “Until I may find what cures you, I will keep searching.”

“I wish you luck in your endeavors,” you said. “You will need it, I am sure. I do not think this ailment is one which will easily be alleviated.”

“Were you so feeble before you came here?” he said.

“On the contrary, I was healthy and strong,” you said as you passed Dromas and Lucabos’s enclosure again. Neither elephant took note of you, and you found they were easy to ignore, melding into the background like mountains on the horizon. They did not have the same demanding quality of presence as Verax, who commanded one’s attention as surely as his counterpart, Mydeimos, did.

“Perhaps there is some clue to be found there,” he mused. “I will earnestly reflect on it, and if I happen upon some answer, I will surely tell you.”

“Very well,” you said. “Though I—”

Before you could tell him that he would not find much if anything in his reflections, a fact which he most certainly already knew but was pretending to be ignorant to, a commotion broke out. Men’s voices layered over one another while Verax trumpeted and swung his great head about in a panic before lowering it, his ears flat against his neck as he strained against his constraints, his eyes focused on you and your husband’s cousin as he dug his feet, each the size of a chariot-wheel, into the muddy, rutted ground.

“Stay back, lady,” your husband’s cousin said, his arm barring your path forward and his brow knitting together in alarm.

“I thought you said he couldn’t do anything,” you said as the keepers swarmed about Verax, waving bullhooks and bindings at the elephant, who took no head of their warnings, his frenzied stomping causing the ground to shake and his bellows rending through the sky itself. 

“Would you like to find out if that’s the case?” he said. “He’s never been so belligerent before, at least not to my knowledge. I know not what he is capable of, not in such a state, and it seems as though we are his targets at present, so we must make haste and return to the palace at once. Allow the keepers to manage him, for they have been trained in the art and are doubly qualified for it!”

Was this what Mydeimos’s enemies had seen? When he took to the battlefield, had they recognized him as a harbinger of their destruction? For Verax must’ve shaken the earth then, too, the very world itself bowing to the combined might of their arrivals, to the power which was rumored even as far as the Southern Sea.

They say he is more of a god than a man, the prince who sits upon the throne of Kremnos, people would whisper in the streets. All we can do against that strength is pray that he does not turn it towards our shores.

Verax shrieked, and you paused, a terrible thought crossing your mind, unsolicited and unwelcome yet more and more appealing as the seconds mounted. How horrible would it be? You might die quickly, at any rate. One more burst of suffering, as acute as the final glimpse of your home when it vanished over the sunset, and then you would be reunited with the tides, turned to seafoam and silt by the elephant. Whether your end came at his tusks or his tread, wouldn’t it be better this way? 

“Lady?” your husband’s cousin said, and he reached for your hand, but you continued as if you were in a dream, a fog creeping over your mind as you took one step and then another towards the staggering Verax. “Lady, don’t—!”

The pulsing march of your heartbeat resounded in your ears like a wardrum, and as you grew nearer and nearer to the fearsome beast, whose tusks were already stained with crimson at their tips, a fist clamped around your stomach, squeezing and squeezing, yanking on your spine in a desperate attempt to halt your momentum. Fear, that must’ve been its name; you were no battle-hardened general, to be able to face your death without such a steadfast companion. You were only a girl, and you were afraid, but more than afraid you were weary, the kind of weary which seeped into your bones and resigned you to your fate.

“He recognizes scents!” one of the keepers shouted at you. You were aware of it in the way that a drowning man was aware of that which occurred above the surface; thickly, faintly, muddily. “He recognizes scents, lady — if he smells his majesty the emperor on you, he will — you must leave at once, or you will surely die!”

Verax stood with the sun behind him, his sides heaving as he regarded you with an imperious animosity. You stood and waited for his verdict, finding the anticipation to be more excruciating than the action itself but trusting his deliberations, trusting that whatever decision he arrived at would certainly be the right one. They were wise creatures, elephants, even the ones like him who were trained only for war.

He swung his trunk towards you like he meant to knock you down, and you did not flinch away from it, closing your eyes, wringing your hands to stop yourself from shying away, from running to the safety of your husband’s cousin and the elephant keepers. You could not let such a basic impulse impede your freedom, the freedom that you could only win through this agony, this tribulation, this death.

Yet instead of a crushing, bruising impact, he brushed it against you delicately, fondly, a featherlight kiss of a touch. You held your breath, but when nothing else happened, you cracked your eyes open, your brow pinching together as you looked at the elephant.

Verax exhaled out a rumbling whine of a breath, and then he fell to his knees, his trunk winding around you in what you could only describe as an embrace and was surely the tenderest affection you had received since coming to this bleak, cheerless empire. For a moment you did not understand it, and then, as surely as anything, it came to you, and you stroked your hand along his rough grey mouth.

“Does it cling to me even now, the spoor of that cellar, that prince?” you whispered in amazement. “No, you are not mistaken, Verax, it is him. Even now, Mydeimos lives; I swear to you that he does.”

“Lady!” your husband’s cousin said, wrenching you from Verax, his nails carving half-moons into your upper arms. “What foolishness is this? Have you a death wish? What would become of me, if something were to happen to you while you were under my care?” 

“It’s irrelevant, isn’t it? I’m unharmed,” you said.

“A small miracle,” he said, clicking his tongue. “You and my brother were right. It is for the best that you remain in the palace until you are in your right mind. Do forgive me for assuming to know you better than you knew yourself.”

“What will they do to him?” you said as he guided you away, his arm hard, unyielding against your waist. The keepers had set upon Verax, who, in the reverse of his earlier demeanor, only lay there and took it, as if the faintest traces of Mydeimos which he had picked up from you had been enough to soothe him into yielding. 

“To Verax?” he said. “I hardly know. You shouldn’t concern yourself with it; likely he will end up in the same way as his former master.”

“In the way of Mydeimos?” you said. “What do you mean by that?”

“Dead, of course,” he said. “What else?”

You turned for one final glance at Verax. He had nestled into himself, his cheek in the dirt and his legs tucked neatly against his enormous body. His ears fluttered weakly against the clangor of the many rebukes, but this was all the resistance he showed. The fight had left his eyes; they were now glassy and torpid, twin whelk-shells which sparkled at the corners with something that, if you were not more learned, you would call tears. But who had ever heard of an animal that cried? Still, as you left him behind, you could not shake the feeling that, whether from sorrow or jubilation, he was most assuredly weeping.

That night, you did not bother with ceremony or announcement when you returned to the cellar. You collapsed to the ground with a huff and slid the plate over to Mydeimos’s feet. Unlike the first few times you had done such a thing, he did not hesitate to sit across from you, using the silver cutlery you offered him to cut the meat into small pieces that he nibbled on with a daintiness which was almost pretty to watch.

“I saw the elephants today,” you said. He froze mid-chew before increasing his pace, swallowing it down in a gulp and canting forward, his expression feline, intrigued. It pinned you in place, staying your tongue and any retorts that might come to life by the sheer force of it. 

“The elephants? Then Verax—?” he said, so hopefully that all you could do was nod.

“Yes, him. Dromas and Lucabos, too,” you said. 

“Is he…alright?” he said. “Verax, I mean, though of course I worry for the others, too. But Verax is special.”

“Because he is yours?” you said. “You rode him into battle, did you not?”

He cocked his head at you, and for a long time he was silent, measuring the length and breadth of your mettle with his sweeping scrutiny. You did not move, afraid of what would happen if you failed this test, although he had proven so many times over that he had no intentions of harming you — just as you could not brave Verax without that old friend, however, so, too, could you not brave the searching, seeking Mydeimos.

“It is not customary for princes in Kremnos to ride elephants,” he said finally, evidently judging you worthy, though you knew not what you had done to deserve such a designation. He continued to eat in between sentences, every phrase constructed with a painstaking accuracy that he mulled over as he chewed. “We have cavalrymen for that. An elephant is a grand mount, but for a nation that thrives on bloodshed and conflict, such grandness is an extravagance that is frowned upon for those of us who are meant to be the ideal of that very turmoil.”

“Ah,” you said. “So it is that sort of place, then. I see.”

“Verax’s mother died as he was born,” he said. “So he was meant to be culled, for there wasn’t a soul in Castrum Kremnos, our fair capital, that had the time or the temperament for such an involved undertaking as raising him from infancy.”

“Culled!” you said, your hands flying to your mouth in surprise. “Such a small, darling creature, having just lost its mother, and they could only think to cull it?”

“They are without mercy,” he said, and unexpectedly he did not chide you for interrupting him as you thought he might’ve. In fact, he seemed to welcome it, your interest spurring him to continue instead of faltering into surliness as he often did. “Only those with the wherewithal to grasp at survival with both hands are deserving of this life, or so it is said; oh, don’t make such an expression, of course I don’t believe in the school of thought myself. Who do you think raised Verax? To my father’s eternal dismay, it was me.”

“You raised Verax?” you said, trying to envision it and finding you were unable. Was he capable of such parental warmth, this menacing, hulking figure sitting across from you? Had he handled the young calf with the hands of a warrior, coarse and unsympathetic, or had he managed to palliate them, so that they might resemble the compassion of the mother that the elephant had lost? Was that the extent of the love Verax knew, and was that why he mourned the prince so deeply, so consumingly? 

“Every night for a year, I slept in his stable,” he said, his eyes faraway, a small smile hovering at his lips — not entirely there, his frown still resolute in its position, but threatening to manifest at some point in the future. “He would follow me around in the daytime, a toddling, awkward mess of limbs that attended my lessons and watched my sparring matches with a sagacity that even most men can never hope to attain in their lifetimes. We were young together, Verax and I, and when the both of us ventured forth to the battlefields beyond Kremnos, we became men together, too. He is my child and my brother alike; thus, he is my particular concern. Tell me anything. Do they treat him well? Is he agreeable in his new situation? He is difficult, I have always scolded him for it — well, he is an elephant at the end of the day, so there is only so much he can understand, but I like to think he knows what I am saying more often than he doesn’t. They aren’t riding him, are they? His back is sensitive, in truth; I would not take to it for more than a few minutes at a time even if I were a simple cavalryman, for despite his size and strength, he does not have the necessary muscular development to carry a man for much longer than that. I could not bear to train him, you see, as I always found the methods of breaking too harsh to inflict on another in good conscience.”

“He…” You bit your lower lip. Would it be better to give him the truth, or would it be worse? How could you tell him that death, too, he would meet with Verax at his side? Yet how could you lie and say that he was alright? Because that false hope also seemed like a cruelty. When he had bared himself to you in this small way, when he had drawn back just one corner of his past in exchange for nothing of your own, how could you repay him with blithe misdirection? “I think that he longs for you.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Then he is as he always is. Thank you, dear lady. I am relieved to hear it.”

This time, you had brought him a better blanket, the heaviest you owned that was not overly unwieldy as you dragged it down the stairs behind you. It was large and quilted, scenes from a hunt embroidered into it, the vibrant threads dipped in woad and madder, a pack of hounds chasing after a saffron-stained lion as he lay down and pulled the swath of dark wool over his shoulders. Tonight he did not stall or argue, only giving you a halfhearted reminder that you had sworn to be vigilant before rolling over without waiting for your response.

“You sleep so quickly,” you said. “I am almost envious, though of course for me to say I envy you in any sense is…in poor taste, as the case may be.”

He had left a little bit of food untouched, as tidily cut as what he had eaten but portioned and kept away from the rest. You didn’t want to be presumptuous, but skipping dinner every night was taking its toll, and so the pangs of your stomach insisted that he had left it for you, that he pitied or sympathized with you and so had given you this unsaid gift. You had no reason to think that he would do such a thing, of course, but eventually you could not deny yourself any longer, not when it was so tantalizing, so fetchingly plated.

“I wonder if I will ever understand you,” you said, chewing on the cold, pearly rice, rolling the white grains around on your tongue and squinting at his motionless form. “How many strange habits you have. What would the people of this empire say, if they knew that the prince of terrors was also the mother of elephants?”

You laughed under your breath for the both of you, finding refuge in the brief, catty amusement you had allowed yourself. You had no idea if Mydeimos would find it entertaining; likely he would not, considering the joke was at his expense, but you comforted yourself with the image of him sharing your humor, of one other person in this entire desolate place finding some value in straightforward repartee instead of conniving witticisms.

“But speaking of elephants…” you said, sobering immediately, all traces of levity leaving your body. Now that he was asleep, you could tell him the truth, could allow the burden of your earlier reticence to be alleviated by confessional honesty to his body, if not his waking mind. “Oh, Mydeimos, the situation is so horrible I could not stand to say it aloud to you, not when you were so — so sincere in your anxious querying, but Verax’s fate is not so dissimilar to yours.”

You pushed the plate, now empty, away from you, turning your attention to the stairs, both so that you could fulfill your promise to him and so that you did not have to acknowledge his presence when you spoke. Even his sleeping frame held a sort of judgment to it, an accusation to his silence, as if he were blaming you for everything that had yet occurred to him. You supposed he wasn’t wrong to do it, but you ran from that blame regardless, unable to take it, your back as unused to the task as Verax’s.

“They might put him down soon. They thought he was going to kill me, after all,” you said, tracing circles in the dust on the ground, coughing when it plumed into the air, blinking rapidly to clear your irises from the irritation. “I thought he was going to kill me…but, you know, I think that I wanted him to, a little bit. Or maybe a lot. I don’t know, I don’t — I don’t want to be here anymore, I never wanted to come at all, and if death is the only way I can go home, then—!”

You broke off, shame enveloping you, unable to fathom what you had just blurted out. Weren’t you self-absorbed for it? Weren’t you miserly for seeking out something that had been thrust upon him unwillingly? Something he would surely meet if it were not for you? His life, his existence, it was all tethered to yours, and yet you had tried to throw it away for your own brief deliverance.

“It was the worst season of my life, Mydeimos,” you recalled. “And, also, the last. I speak, naturally, of the one with the storms, when the empire’s ships first cast anchor in the Southern Sea.

“Once, my husband’s empire was a genuine ally of my home. We were friendly enough, or maybe a better way to describe it would be that we had an understanding with them: as long as we continued to trade with them, to bow to their whims and their prices, they would protect us from the abominable — ah, well, it was your people we feared most of all. I am sure you are not surprised by it? Maybe you are even glad that stories of your deeds precede you so far…but I should not continue to assign such reactions to you. I don’t know you any more than you know me, after all, so for all I know you find this offensive.

“Anyways. The empire was always a foreign, distant consideration, especially for me, who was always so sheltered, so guarded. I knew of them — who does not? — but they were not an immediate concern.

“My father was always suspicious of them, however. He was always suspicious of everyone, in fairness, it’s a characteristic of men like that, but against such an enormous entity, what could he do about it? For as wealthy as we are, the Southern Sea has little in the way of an army. Our men are either too young or too old or not brave enough for fighting, and that is our greatest secret, which even my husband does not know for certain but, I believe, has long since guessed at. 

“You know how covetous he is. When he came to conjecture that we were so defenseless, he sank his teeth into our underbelly, unflinching as he throttled us in the coils of his strength. It was wealth he wanted, my father’s vast stores of gold and jewels that he eyed with a feasting hunger. I do not doubt that he was fully prepared to bleed us of it, and indeed as the ships grew closer and closer they sent us a messenger on a small wooden boat.

“‘Each ship contains five hundred men, all ready to die for their empire. Surrender your greatest treasure to us, and we will spare you.’ That was what we were told. My father had no choice; he would rather give up all the gold in the world than let anyone suffer for a moment longer than they needed to.”

You bit the inside of your cheek until you tasted salt, so similar and yet so different from the sprays of brine that had infused the air by the beach on the day the messenger had come. You could recall even now what a sinewy, aquiline man he had been, his flat blue stare affixed on your damp features as he recited the emperor’s words in his stead. He is busy in Kremnos, the messenger had explained. A bloody crusade to defend you from that loutish prince of theirs. Yes, yes, I am speaking to you, lady — pray that that brute never lays eyes on you. Such a pretty little bird, so beautiful…he will most assuredly hunt you down and tear into you with rapturous vehemence.

“My father scrambled about, offering them as much as he could. Chalices of gold coins; jewels from my mother’s dowry; a hundred of the finest Eastern horses; spices that only grow in one place, for one week; yet all of these were refused. ‘You think the emperor will be satisfied with something so paltry?’ We were at a loss. It seemed as though nothing short of the entire kingdom would be enough to please them, and despite how generous my father is, he could not give them that.

“I was the one who understood first. At least, I accepted before the rest what it was that the empire truly sought out. The tides, the kingdom, these were all unreachable — even if they conquered us, we would never do their bidding, not in any way that lasted. Thus, they needed a more concrete claim, a child born of sand and sea. My child, which, upon its conception, will have a right to the empire and the ocean alike, uniting both under my husband’s name for good.”

You wrapped your arms around yourself in a facsimile of a hug, pretending like your father was there, clinging to you as he had on that final night. The wind had howled and he had cried and you had sat there, stoic, your expression motionless but for the faintest sheen in your eyes. You had refused to let yourself waver, knowing that if you showed any hints of hesitation, your father would never release you from his arms, and so the Southern Sea would fall to the fire and brimstone of the ceaseless empire.

“He didn’t want me to leave anymore than I wanted to go,” you said. “My poor father. He would’ve given up the world to keep me by his side, so I made the decision for us both and insisted upon it. I promised him that I would find love here, even in this loveless place, and whether he truly believed me or if it only soothed him to do so, I do not know, but regardless he eventually allowed it. So I boarded that wooden boat with that wooden messenger, and as the sea tossed about in lament, I came to the ship which would take me to my new home, to the statue I would wed the moment my feet touched the ground.”

You laughed again, but it was resentful and acrid, scalding the back of your throat in the way of vomit. Flexing your fingers and digging them into the gaps between your ribs, you waited until you could feel your pulse, feel the proof that you, too, had not turned to stone in the time since you had come here.

“Yes, a statue,” you said. “A real-and-true block of marble. That is what I wed, and that is what I swore to my father I would come to love. What he would think, if he could see me now…”

You yawned, your eyelids heavy, spots painting your vision as it blackened at the corners. Eventually your body would repay you for your weeks of insomnia, for the massive debt which you had incurred and kept increasing day by day, but pinching yourself, you sat up straighter, for if it was here that you conceded, you would never forgive yourself, and neither would Mydeimos.

“Lady.” The firm address cut through your daze, and you shifted to see Mydeimos at the end of his tether, holding the blanket out to you, his forehead creased into something a little kinder than a grimace but still expressing that same distaste. “Will you be able to survive for much longer in this way?”

You shook your head to clear it, swaying a bit from the effort you put into the gesture, taking a hold of the blanket to disguise your momentary lack of balance. He did not let go of it, watching your charily, as if you were wont to spook or collapse, and you would’ve protested, but what he did not know was that you really might’ve fallen if it weren’t for his stolid grip on it and, by extension, on you.

“I will be alright,” you said. “Do not fuss. If you can endure such conditions without becoming disconsolate, then should I not do the same?”

“I am hardened to it from years of campaigning on the battlefield,” he said. “I will not grouse until the last.”

“You are…” What was he? Estimable? Laudable? There were not words enough in this language for you to describe it, and you did not think that he would appreciate them, anyways, so you merely held him by the shoulders, your fingertips stressing to him all that you could not say aloud. “If it were you instead of the princess, perhaps things would not be so dire for my home. You would not have absconded as she did, would not have forsaken your people for wealth and wedding. If it were you…if it were you…”

“Do you have some vendetta against her?” he said. “This is not the first time you have spoken ill of her.”

“She had everything I could ever want,” you said. “Yet she threw it away at the slightest provocation, prancing off to her new husband without care for all that she was leaving behind. I hate her for it, in truth. What if she had had a stronger will, a prouder spirit? If she had been from Kremnos, as you are, then instead of capitulating immediately, might she have fought?”

His eyes widened slightly, and then, inscrutably, enigmatically, they softened, twin suns on a summer evening settling into a comfortable, radiant twilight. You were enthralled by them, by their vast, golden tranquility, and for the briefest moment, entirely unbidden and illicit though it was, the notion of taking him into your arms crossed your mind.

“There is honor in concession, too,” he said, lifting your hands from his shoulders and setting the blanket in them before turning away. “Sometimes it is more difficult to live than it is to die; is persisting regardless, then, not bravery? At any rate, it’s a lesson the Kremnoans, many of whom do not live until they are dying, could stand to learn. Perhaps that princess of yours has more tenacity than you give her credit for after all.”

You held the blanket to your chest; it was still warm, the heat of his skin lingering in the wool even now, transforming it into a cinder which flickered against the hearth of your breast, coaxing a smoldering, dormant fire back into feeble life even as you attempted to outrun the effect. You stumbled up the stairs with the poise of a drunkard, like the proximity to him was what mattered, like there was some distance you could put between yourself and Mydeimos which would cure you of this new revelation, which you had not experienced before but could nevertheless recognize to be unwanted, dangerous, despicable.

What was its name, this clawing, rending sensation that took root in your stomach and fought desperately to tear out? Was it another version of consternation, made delicious and tangible from its immediacy, its familiarity? Had you grown so used to him that your fear had matured into something else, something that you sought out for its nigh-pleasurable thrill? Or was there another explanation, an aspect that you were missing in your callowness?

“Lady, were you listening to me, or shall I repeat myself?”

You startled at the voice that yanked you from your contemplations, which even so late into the next afternoon had not come to a satisfactory conclusion. Your husband’s cousin was staring at your expectantly, wisps of steam from his teacup billowing in his serene face, and when he realized you were blinking at him, he set it down and folded his hands in his lap. Your face growing hot with shame, you placed your own across from his and nodded to indicate he could continue.

“Are you still perturbed by what happened yesterday, such that it even disturbed your sleep?” he said. “Rest assured, if you are so troubled, then I can command them to halt their efforts at domesticating the recalcitrant animal and slay it for its crimes posthaste.”

“Verax?” you said. “No, no — it was my own — it was my own mistake, it definitely was, and I would hate to see such a valuable treasure destroyed for my foolishness. Please ensure that he is kept soundly and well; an elephant is not easily obtained, especially one such as Verax, who is worth ten each of those pack-types like Lucabos and Dromas. We mustn’t let him go to waste.”

“How forward-thinking,” he said. “Is this how your family’s wealth has accumulated? Perhaps we ought to learn from you, if you have the mind for investments and returns.”

“No, my father was the one who managed those things,” you said, swallowing back a yawn. “I was not privy to it, nor did I have much interest. I think that this is just an example of what my people call common sense.”

As soon as you said it, you realized how rudely it had come across, and indeed you were surprised that you had been able to do it at all. Of course, it was easier with others who were not your husband, the easiest of all when it was Mydeimos, but he was not Mydeimos, and was the closest person to your husband besides he himself, so you were in truth taken aback that you could speak as you willed. Perhaps it was the intention, or perhaps it came down to the fact that no matter what, he was not your husband, and so as long as you kept that basic little decorum, you were free to do what you liked.

“There is also that explanation,” he allowed. “But the fate of that elephant is not what I wish to discuss with you.”

“Then?” you said. 

“I am speaking to you, of course, as a family member — a relative of your husband’s, with a natural concern for the fate of his line and his empire,” he began. “You know that my brother is ever-busy with his celebrations and his councils, so the task of broaching this sensitivity falls to me.”

“You are his second, are you not? Who else would it be?” you said, raising your glass to your lips and peeking at him over the rim.

“That is exactly what we must discuss,” he said. You cocked your head at him; he cleared his throat, picking up his teacup, stirring in a lump of sugar and putting it back down without taking even a sip. Steepling his fingers, he pursed his lips at you. “He has been home for long enough that there should be news of an heir’s impending arrival by now.”

Fragments of crystal flew into the air with a crash of protest, scattering and embedding into the rich weave of the carpet below your feet, the stain of tea spreading dark and bloody over the cheery floral motifs. You immediately dropped to your knees, pressing the ends of your dress to it in a desperate attempt to soak it away before the damage was permanent, but all your efforts awarded you were cuts littering your hands and knees, translucent shards digging into your palms and slicing thin, stinging streaks which might, if they scarred, change the read of your fate-lines permanently.

“I am sorry,” you said. “My hand slipped — I didn’t think it would break — and now I have ruined it! I have ruined it, I did not mean to, please forgive me, I am so very sorry—”

“Why do you apologize so incessantly?” he said, helping you stand and picking the glass out of your hands with academic precision. “This carpet is yours. You can do what you want with it.”

“It is my husband’s,” you corrected. “As with everything in this empire, it belongs to him. By destroying it, I am destroying a small piece of him, and I do not want to do that. I am not permitted to do that.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, if you are apprehensive about learning his reaction, don’t be. He will forgive you. He has finer carpets than this one, and needs more excuses to use them. Anyways, he won’t know of it unless you or I tell him, and I shall keep my silence if you swear to as well. Does that pacify you? Then let us continue with the earlier subject.”

“Yes,” you said. “You are commanding me to fulfill my obligations to him. I know I must, but…”

“Allow me to finish,” he said. “I understand that you have no desire for my brother. You needn’t affirm it, I know you cannot, but I am sure when I say that you cannot deny it, either, not if you are being honest with yourself. You hold neither love nor lust for him, and so any children born of your union will be puny, perhaps not even surviving past infancy.”

“How can you be so certain of that?” you said.

“It is enough of a trend in our family that some wonder if it is a genuine curse,” he said. “Those kings who are born of joy are robust, vigorous men, while those of withering wombs are invalid and infirm from the start.”

“I see,” you said. 

“You will not come to love him,” he predicted. “He pays no special attention to you, and the only gift he has ever given you is a ghastly prince you are forbidden from so much as seeing. What basis is there for love? So there is only one thing which can be done: you must find someone else, someone who will lie with you knowing that they will lose their life for it, and then you must pretend as though the ensuing child belongs to my brother alone.”

“You mean for me to commit such a sin?” you said incredulously. “You would endanger three lives for the sake of one? For you must know that my husband would not spare any of us — myself, the father, or the son — if he were to discover that he had been deceived in such a way.”

“He will never discover it,” he promised you. “I personally ensure that he won’t. Choose someone beneath notice, or someone who you trust with your entire being, and he will never come to know of it.”

“There is no one like that,” you said.

He smiled at you, dropping your hands and calling for a servant to fetch a broom. You eyed him, taking a skittish step backwards, but he did not match it, did not chase after you with an insistence that you listen to his idea, which was so far-fetched as to be closer to genuine fiction than probability.

“Don’t be so sure,” he said amiably. “You might be surprised at what suitors you will find, if you only think to ask.”

How was it, that in this entire palace, this entire empire, so filled with noble, genteel lords and refined, elegant ladies, you could only find sanity and solace in the cellar? How was it that until the sun set and you ran down those stairs, the stone slick and dense beneath your racing feet, you found yourself living in the type of delirious dream characteristic of fevers, and it was only there, in that dark, contained world consisting of nothing but yourself and Mydeimos and the chains which bound him, you could, for even a second, wake up?

“You wish to ask me something,” he said when he was about halfway finished with the food you had brought him. You were sitting on the blanket, the one with the lions and the hounds, and although you were pretending to be engrossed with flipping the corners up and down like a child with a new game, you had indeed been observing him from beneath your lowered lashes. “If it is so, then you should just ask. I will answer as best as I can.”

“Do you have a wife?” you said, deciding that if it had plagued you for this long, there was nothing to be lost in asking, especially as he had given you the permission for it.

He choked on the piece of fish he had just bitten into, thumping on his chest and coughing to dislodge it.

“What?” he said.

“A wife,” you said. “Do you have one? I mean, are you married? 

“No,” he said. 

“Really? But you are a prince,” you said.

“So?” he said, sneering as he regained his composure. “That doesn’t mean anything. I have spent my entire life far too busy with the care of my people to pay any mind to such a trivial construct as marriage.”

“Then you will not be able to understand my dilemma quite as well,” you said, both because it was the truth and because you wished to hide that you were, for some reason, relieved by this development. “But I will tell you anyway.”

“Your dil—you intend to seek my counsel regarding your marriage?” he said. “Surely you jest.”

“If you did have a wife,” you said, ignoring the scoff he let out at that. “If you did, and she bore a son by another man, what would you do to him?”

“I suppose I would put him to death, as would be expected of me,” he said.

“What if it was not his fault? What if your wife was the one who begged him to do it?” you said. “Would you kill them both?”

“No,” he said, sliding the still half-filled plate over to you and wrinkling his nose when you tried to give it back. “I would not kill her. Even if she were entirely to blame, I would not. It is easy to give the order for a nameless, faceless man’s death, but when it is someone you love, it is difficult.”

“Say you do not love her,” you urged, giving in to his unspoken behest and spearing a cooked vegetable through with the silver fork he had left atop the plate.

“Then I would not have wed her, and so she would not be my wife, in which case this entire situation would never occur in the first place,” he said, and rather smugly at that. “There you have it. Is that all, or must we continue this game? I thought that you were in some genuine trouble and required proper advice.”

“I…” you trailed off into a sighing exhale, suddenly finding yourself entirely foolish for expecting something like condolence from him. “Never mind.”

“Fatigue can drive someone to the brink of madness,” he said, and behind the gruffness was a note of solicitude. “Why don’t you sleep?”

“I can’t,” you told him. “I try, every night for a few hours after I have returned to my chambers, but inevitably it ends the same: I am caught in the throes of a nightmare which leaves me more debilitated than before. I cannot escape anguish, it seems.”

“Sleep here,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and sticking his sharp nose in the air — an affected show of haughtiness that even a child would not fall for. “You have given me much, so in return, for just this one night, I will guard your dreams and defend you from that which troubles you.”

“Here? You mean the floor? What sort of proposition—” you broke off, wilting at the dull look he gave you. “Er, my apologies. I meant no offense, and really, I am appreciative that you would offer to do such a thing, but I am sure it will come to nothing, so let us not waste any time with an attempt. My woes are self-inflicted, after all, and thus undeserving of pity, of your pity especially.”

There were many mysteries contained within this prince — of terrors, of victory, of sacrifice and of subjugation — you knew this well, so well that by now it should have ceased to surprise you when he did something odd, when he proved himself to be so opposite to the philistine warrior everyone claimed he was. Yet that did not stop perplexity from washing over you when he exhaled heavily, extending his legs and leaning his head against the wall.

“Come,” he said. You narrowed your eyes at him, not from anger but out of a genuine desire to understand his method.

“Where shall I go?” you said patiently. “I am already here with you.”

“You will not sleep on the floor,” he said. “I do not know — well, I mean, one of my legs has this infernal chain about it, so it’ll hardly be any better, but perhaps it will be enough of an improvement?”

“Pardon?” you said. “I must confess I am still confused.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched, and when he elaborated, it was through gritted teeth, each word bullied out with a diffidence so at odds with his imposing posture and broad physique.

“You may use me for your own measures,” he said. “You will meet your end if you do not, and then what? So let us make this one attempt. Lay your head in my lap if you cannot accept the floor, and, even if it is fleeting and fraught, come to sleep.”

Your mouth opened and closed soundlessly, and then you were laughing, burying your face in your hands as you giggled helplessly, because wasn’t it such a joke? All the vows and magic that your husband had needed in order to tie your tongue, and yet here was Mydeimos, his greatest enemy, who had managed to steal your voice with merely the offer of his lap for you to lay your head upon.

His thigh was hard, muscular against your cheek, and although he was abnormally hot, it was not in the way of a fever; rather, it seemed natural, as if he were born to run at this temperature, a streak of fire that had deigned to coalesce into the shape of a man for some time. In comparison, the links of the thrice-blessed chains were freezing, and you shifted so that they did not push into your forehead, wanting nothing of the empire to touch you, wishing that nothing of this place would touch him, either, even if that could never be the case.

“Why do you trust me so much?” he said after a while. “You have from the beginning. I could have killed you so many times, dear lady, in so many ways — I even told you that, and yet you have not faltered.”

“Hm,” you said, rolling over so that you were on your back and could peer up at him. “I don’t know.”

His palm met your stomach with the lightness of a butterfly, splaying over it as he used his other hand to cover your eyes so that you had no choice but to close them. Your breaths grew shallow from that same ache as the other night, that ache which you were beginning to think did not originate from fear but another source entirely.

“The fork you give me to eat,” he said. “I could tear you asunder with it. It’s good silver, and sturdy — of course, it’s no spear, and I am nowhere near my full strength, but against you it would be more than sufficient as a weapon.”

He traced a path up your sternum, and then he encircled your neck with his fingers, placing no pressure upon it, only rubbing up and down along the furrows between your tendons.

“There is enough slack in my chains,” he said. “I could draw you close, throw them around your neck, and pull them taut until your throat is crushed.”

He hummed, and then his hand slid to your heart, which pounded and pounded until you thought it really was a puzzle that it did not burst forth and make its home in his fist.

“But all of these accoutrements are superfluous,” he said. “If I want, I can tear your heart out with only my hands — or, if your husband is to be believed, my teeth. I can do it now, and all too easily.”

“Yes,” you said. “You could.”

“You are frightened,” he said rhetorically.

“I’m not,” you said.

“Your heart is beating so fast,” he said. “And I have just explained to you how simply I could kill you, as well as how frequently I have considered it. Surely you are.”

“That isn’t why it’s beating,” you said. 

“Then?” he said.

“It’s because you’re here,” you said. “I can’t explain much beyond that, but I do not think — I do not think it would beat like this for anyone else.”

“No one has ever said that to me,” he said. “I am the one who silences hearts. Never have I been accused of accomplishing the inverse.”

“That is the reason,” you repeated. “I feel that it must be.”

He lifted his hand from your chest and patted your cheek, refusing to move the other from where it still soothed over your sore eyes.

“Well, no good will come of pondering it any longer,” he said, and if you strained, you could hear the faintest traces of a smile in his words. “Sleep now, and do not worry about your nightmares; the savage prince of a savage land is far more frightening than any visions your mind can come up with, and as you have conquered me, so, too, can you conquer them.”

You did not even have the wherewithal to ask him what he meant by that before the darkness and the warmth he afforded you lured you into the deepest pits of unconsciousness, where you had not been since you had come to this empire. And whether it was his presence or his reassurance or some magic — well, likely not the latter, the gods of this empire held no love for either of you — you really did not wake for many hours, sleeping, for the first time in months, without a single dream to haunt you.

“I apologize, brother, but it really is impossible to secure the south from the sea,” your husband’s cousin said from position at your husband’s right. “I have consulted with the best naval captains this empire has to offer, and they all give the same answer.”

“Consult them again, then, or find some better advisors. How is it that the kingdoms by the Southern Sea have flourished for as long as they have, and yet we cannot so much as make a foothold without it being swept away?” your husband snapped.

They had been going back-and-forth in this way for some time now, running in circles and saying the same thing over and over, neither satisfied with the other’s perspective. Ordinarily, you would’ve been brought to tears by the grating, cyclical nature of the discussion, as well as the rapidly rising volume, but today you were far too content with the bliss that a proper night’s rest brought to let them sully your happiness.

“Perhaps we should ask your darling wife,” his cousin suggested. “How about it, lady? Any maritime wisdom or common sense you’d like to share?”

“They say the sea knows more than we do,” you said, alarmed by the sudden address but disguising it well. “Perhaps it’s sending a message.”

“A message?” your husband said. “About what, exactly?”

Leave this place. Never return. The sea is not yours. The sun is not yours. I am not yours. He is not yours. Leave, leave, leave, you damnable man, leave these waters at once, leave me at once, leave and rot in the eternal winter of your solitary empire. The sea is not yours. The sun is not yours. I am not yours. He is not yours. Mydeimos is not yours, he’s not, he’s not. Leave while you still can. Leave while I still allow it. You thought it might be something like that.

“I cannot say, my lord,” you said, bowing your head so he did not notice that your eyes smarted when you were, once again, rendered mute and dumb before him. “But might I recommend that you turn your attention elsewhere for the time being? The season of the storms approaches rapidly once more, and the waters will only grow more and more treacherous. It may be better if you wait until it is over.”

“Let us concentrate our efforts on Kremnos and leave the south for now,” his cousin said. “We will be all the better for it.”

“Kremnos,” your husband repeated, his countenance unreadable, everything about him carefully neutral. “I do not foresee them being a problem for much longer, but if you both think that we should withdraw from the sea for the time being, then who am I to continue in my mulish refusals?”

“Have you come up with some new strategy?” his cousin said. “I thought that we were at somewhat of an impasse with the Kremnoans, our last victory being the capture of Mydeimos.”

“It is not new, necessarily, but finally nearing fruition,” your husband said. “Patience, brother; as I tell you and my dear lady so constantly, all will be revealed in time.”

“You preach patience far more than any man endowed with so little of it ought to,” his cousin said, although he said it more to you, flashing an innocent grin that you did not reciprocate in the slightest. 

Ever since he had recommended you find another to father the first of your sons, you had begun to see your husband’s cousin in a new light. Your husband was the more obvious of the two, so charming that he could not be anything but false, his comeliness in the way of a brightly-petaled flower, warning those who knew the signs that he was a peril, something to be avoided or, if touch was inevitable, then treated carefully, with the utmost of prudence. His cousin, on the other hand, did not have that same showmanship, that flair — he didn’t need to, not when he could somehow wheedle out one’s greatest secrets without ever divulging any of his own. 

He did everything with the sort of deliberate scrupulousness that only a second son would, and the more you thought about it, the uneasier you grew that you were an object of some contention between the two of them. Neither your husband nor his cousin would ever say it, but you could tell from their wily, duplicitous exchanges that they both wanted something out of you, and furthermore that whatever it was each wanted was different, at odds with his counterpart’s desires, setting them against one another even as they continued to behave as though they were true-born brothers of blood and body and mind alike.

“There’s news from the Southern Sea, by the way,” your husband said, his hand on the small of your back as he walked with you to your chambers, where you would spend the day as you always did, with idle amusements that did little to occupy your mind but would at least pass the time until you could go to the cellar once again. “About the king. Do you wish to hear?”

“The king?” you said. “Yes, yes, what is it? Of course I wish to hear. Is he alright?”

“They say he is gravely ill,” your husband said.

You thought you had known despair. You thought you had known anguish. You thought that pain and suffering were things that you were deadened to, that you had learnt how to live with, but everything you had ever experienced paled in comparison to this. It was as if a million needles drove into you at once, the tips a scorching white, melting away at every carefully constructed layer of armor you had drawn over yourself, boring into the veneer of magic that prevented you from screaming and wailing and shaking your husband until he let you go home.

“What is it?” you said. “What has beset him?”

“The southerners are such silly, high-strung folks,” he said, shaking his head in amusement. “Believe it or not, but apparently, his physicians say that his affliction is none other than grief.”

“Grief?” you repeated, and then you were grabbing his arm and you hated yourself for it, but if you did not hold onto something you would crumple to the ground, you would crumple and never get up and you couldn’t — you couldn’t — “Grief? What do you mean?”

“His eldest daughter,” he said. “She has left him, and now he is dying of his longing for her.”

“I—” Your hands came to your neck, and they felt so different from Mydeimos’s, which had claimed that very same place only hours before — a constraint instead of a consolation, a sentence instead of a supplication. 

“He never loved anyone the way he loved that girl, after all,” he said, his eyes sparkling, like he was daring you to say something and finding exorbitant glee in the way you couldn’t, in the way your throat closed whenever you tried to curse him. “It’s a sorry thing, really. Perhaps seeing her even once might be enough to cure him…but we both know that’s not going to happen, is it? Oh, we have arrived at your chambers! Good day, dear lady. I shall see you for dinner.”

The worst was that you could not bring yourself to shed even a tear. You lay in your bed on your back, staring blankly at the ceiling, numb to the world as the scene played over and over in your mind. The king. They say he has taken ill. At one point, your husband’s cousin knocked on your door and told you it was time for supper, but you ignored him, or maybe it was more accurate to say that you didn’t even hear him in the first place. Perhaps seeing her even once might be enough to cure him…but we both know that’s not going to happen, is it?

You couldn’t move. You couldn’t cry. You couldn’t breathe. The sun set and the moon rose and still you were immobile, because what did it matter? The Southern Sea was lost; it had been from the start, you supposed. Your marriage had only been a delay of the inevitable, but you had known from the start that things would end like this, had known that the empire would never settle for anything less than total suppression.

Yet if that was the case, if you would meet your end regardless, then why could you not at least meet it at your home, as yourself? Why instead were you here, metamorphosed into this soulless doll, removed from all you had ever loved? Maybe you deserved it. Maybe this was your punishment for taking the easy way, the simple route, for caving to the empire instead of staying true and fighting as your father had wanted to. Maybe you should not have been surprised, and maybe you might’ve tolerated it if you were the only one bearing the consequences — but it was not just you, it was everyone, and this was what hurt you the most, what felt like twenty consecutive blows to your stomach, to that vulnerable flesh which would so easily rupture, which you thought really might rupture the longer you spent ruminating on the throwaway conversation which had irrevocably changed the course of your day, of your life.

Where you found the strength to stand, you could not say. It was instinct at this point, the act of sliding out of your bed, gathering a blanket and whatever food you had stashed away for Mydeimos before trudging down to the cellar where he awaited you. This must’ve been the reason, then — you were so accustomed to the work that your body operated even in the absence of your mind, such that you were handing his plate to him before you even realized where you were.

“Thank you,” he said before tilting his head at you. “Would you like some?”

“What?” you said. He held up the plate, and a second later, you registered his question. “No, I don’t want to eat anything from here.”

He raised his eyebrows but did not comment on it further, and so the two of you sat in quietude. You had so much you might’ve told him but could not; as for him, you guessed it was the inverse, in that he could say whatever it was he pleased, but there was just so little he wanted to say that the effect was the same.

“This empire has such finicky gods,” you said finally, focusing on the red of his throat, the way it crested and then ebbed with every swallow. “They will grant you any wish, as long as it is done in some form of three. Creation, preservation, death — father, man, son — this world has a propensity for the number, it seems, so doesn’t it make sense? And what amazing things you can do when you understand that. Repeat a phrase thrice over and think of the messenger lord; he will afford you the ability for it to be heard anywhere in the world, as long as you have been there once. Make your wedding vows three times under a portrait of the lady of matrimony; you will be bound by them until death.”

“We don’t believe in these miracles in Kremnos,” he said. “They are explicable by coincidence and cunning.”

“Even where I am from, we only recognize one god, and it is less god, more entity,” you said, speaking, of course, of the sea. “One we do not worship, but who loves us regardless. It is a more sustainable approach in my mind.”

“That is how it is for us,” he said. “Our religion is found on the battlefield, and victory is our only prayer. Sometimes, I wish it were not the case, that our devotion was not so violent, so all-consuming…but that is how it is.”

“Perhaps it is violent, but at least it is fair,” you said. “Not like here. Not like these gods, who will enforce even cruelty if it is asked of them.”

“You resent them,” he said. “You cannot confirm it, I am sure, cannot speak ill of them any more than you can of your husband. But I have come to understand your ways, and so I am sure you resent them.”

“If only there were something I could do to them,” you said, reassured immeasurably by his comprehension. “Some way I could — some way I could —”

“Rebel?” he completed for you when you clearly could not. You nodded, and he pouted in thought, pushing his now-empty plate away and reclining back against the wall the way he always did when he was finished. “I am sorry. I am a heretic in these lands; I do not know their traditions well enough to blaspheme them.”

“Oh,” you said. “Oh, that’s it.”

“Hm?” he said, watching you as you shuffled over so that you were sitting beside him, the blanket covering you both, his arm all but scalding against yours. “What are you doing?”

“You are the antithesis of this empire,” you said. “You are everything my husband hates, everything he wishes to destroy. With your mere existence, you imprecate his gods, and so I shall force those deities to defend your every sacrilegious breath. Those celestial beings who bore silent witness to your capture, to my wedding…by my will, for how much they have cursed you, they will now be bound to defend you with threefold the vigor!”

Mydeimos was motionless as you combed your fingers through his hair, his expression reverent like you were not just channeling a divinity you had no claim to but in fact were that divinity yourself. Your movements were careless, your knuckles banging against his chin, your palm skimming along his neck, but he did not complain, only staring at you with that same gentle admiration that would’ve made you flush with heat if only you were not so terribly focused on remembering everything you had ever read on the religion of your husband’s empire.

Brushing the rest of his hair over his shoulder, you took a lock from near his nape, twirling it around your finger and then holding it to your lips, murmuring words from a language neither of you held claim to but which you had memorized before your wedding, words which opened the both of you to the surveillance of the gods that would fulfill your commands.

“Integrity,” you said, separating the tress of hair into three sections and pulling the leftmost taut. “May your causes be ever strong and true; may you always be just and forthright in your actions; may you never waver from the path of honor.”

You crossed it over the middle strand, and then you took the rightmost, which was like silk in your grasp, dancing like sunbeams in the lamplight. 

“Loyalty,” you said. “May your people never betray you; may your men follow you until the bitter end; may you always have the might of your kingdom at your back.”

This, too, you crossed over the middle, the careful weave of a braid beginning to form, the neat v’s that would mark him as forever blessed, forever watched over by gods, by you. 

“Love,” you said, swallowing as you took the final piece, finding that your mouth was dry from more than overuse. “May you alway be loved, prince of Kremnos.”

A knot in your stomach unraveled as you worked, your fingers remembering the motions despite how long it had been since you had played with the hair of a friend or cousin. It was the knot of repression, of every single thing you had shoved down in the name of propriety, in the name of all the vows you had sworn, and as the warmth radiating from him sank into your bones, warding away the cold of this place for the first time since you had come to it, your vision began to swim with tears.

“I wish it were you,” you said, tucking the braid back amongst the rest of his hair, mussing it up so that it was as wild as a lion's mane, allowing your hands to fall into your lap as you wept in earnest, the break of your voice as much a product of your compounded grief as it was a supernatural effect. “I wish it were you, oh, how I wish that you were the one who had — who had —”

Married me. That was what you wanted to say. How I wish that you were the one who had landed upon the shores that day, how I wish that you were the one I had met with the sea at my feet and the sun on your shoulders, how I wish that you were that one who had married me.

“Don’t cry,” he admonished, holding your jaw with the care one might afford to a sculpture made of glass, using his thumbs to wipe at your cheeks and eyes. “Y/N, Y/N, don’t cry. Please don’t.”

You froze, and then you were grabbing his wrists, holding them in place, holding onto him like he was the only thing keeping you in this realm. It must’ve bruised him, the weight of your fingertips against his veins, but he still gazed at you with that same mildness.

“What did you just call me?” you said.

“Y/N,” he said. “It is your name, is it not?”

“I never told you, so how…?” you said.

“Even in Kremnos, we have heard of the princess of the Southern Sea,” he said. “I was very young when news of your birth came, but I remember it as if it were yesterday, hiding behind my father’s throne so I could hear the announcement. Y/N L/N, they called you, a fine babe who will grow into the most beautiful girl the sea has ever whelped. I loved you then, I think; I loved you as soon as they said you were born to seals and whale-song.”

“Say it again,” you demanded. “My name, which no one else in this wretched place knows or cares to learn — say it again.”

“Y/N,” he said.

“Again,” you said, and then you were sobbing, viscerally and searingly and pathetically. “Say it again, please say it again, I miss it, I miss my father and all these things I cannot speak of, you do not know but I miss them so much I sometimes think I will be ruined by it—”

“I know,” he said, and then he was prying your hands off of him and gathering you in his arms, holding you to his chest and stroking your hair as you bawled. “Y/N. I do know. The sea, who is your mother; the king, who is your father; the home, which you left to protect. I do know.”

“How?” you choked out. He pressed his lips to the crown of your head.

“I am not such a sound sleeper,” he said. “Everything you have ever wanted to say to me, I have heard. I know you, Y/N L/N. Beloved princess of the Southern Sea, if nothing else, I swear to you this: I know you.”

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[noheadcanons-juststories]

Vampire!141 x fledgling!reader, who was found abandoned and starved. meeting 141

“Who called you?” you demand to know.

“Amos,” the man with the chops answers.

Boss called them?

“Are you from the Night Council?” you dread.

“Not at all. Amos is an old friend of ours, back from service,” he explains. His voice was soft yet weathered, like an easy thunderstorm on the countryside. “He informed us that one of his employees was possibly attacked. Asked us to come help.”

So these men were not from the Night Council as you feared. But you were still weary to open the door.

“I didn't ask for help,” you retort with a raggedy cough. “Whoever you are, just… just tell him that I won't be coming in anymore.”

“Listen, lass,” a new man spoke up, very much Scottish with a very nice mohawk, “Amos called us in fer a favor. But once he explained the situation, we let him keep it. He's worried, and ye need someone to take care o’ ye. So we're here to help you.”

“Please…” you beg. “I don't wanna be treated like some charity case. So unless you're gonna kill me, just leave me alone.” You were tired, in pain. You could barely stand anymore.

The tall man in the skull-plated mask approaches your window, looking you dead in the eyes. “You really wanna die, fledgling?” a rougher voice asks. “‘Cause I can arrange that.”

“Simon,” Chops quietly reprimands.

“No, Cap, we need to get this outta the way,” ‘Simon’ persists. “‘Cause m'not gonna come all the way here for a fledgie too weak to live.”

“Bit harsh, dontcha’ think, Lt.?” Scot frowns.

Simon ignores him. “The reason we're here is because our friend is worried about his employee,” he tells you. “He fuckin’ cares about you. Now, we can be civil, and you let us in. Or we can cut to the end, and I put you out of your misery, quick and painless. So what's it gonna be?”

As he speaks, you slowly slide down to the floor. Pulling your blankets tighter around you. Truthfully, neither option sounds appealing. You don't know these men. Childhood lessons on stranger danger and accepting help from strange men never prepared you for the undead. But on the other hand, did you really want to go out a pathetic, dehydrated corpse? There's only two outcomes with two different paths leading to either. Die or find a clan. The Night Council does not guarantee anything except your immediate end. Meanwhile, Amos got a clan on speed dial for you.

John sits down by your window. “Listen, love…” he speaks softly. “We're here because Amos refused to call the Night Council on ya. And I don't blame him. They're diligent, but they're still pretty ruthless. Especially towards those abandoned. He called us because he knew we were the better choice.”

 You lean against the wall. “You could've refused…” you whisper.

“Could’ve,” John shrugs. “But didn't want to.”

“Why not?”

There were a few reasons…

“‘Cause I’d hate for a fledgling to die without bein’ given a chance,” he responds.

…One of them being that he was once in the same boat as you when he was first turned, albeit through uglier circumstances…

“Regardless of how you got here, you need someone to show you the ropes.”

…He was looking to sire another vampire after Kyle, despite his own reservations about immortality. Amos just happened to call while he was brewing in his thoughts, surprised that the old faun still had his number…

“And it'd be a shame to lose a sweet soul like you.”

…And Amos had only good things to say about you, practically gushing as if you were his own kid. Kind yet firm with a bit of confidence, you were.

You let out a sigh, frowning as you reconsider your options. Your expression worsens when you remember that you only have two. “What's your name?” you ask the vampire.

“John Price.”

“What do you do, Mr. Price?”

“I hunt vampires.”

You giggle after letting the thought simmer for a bit. “You hunt vamps?”

“Only the bad ones,” he smiles.

“Do I… I don't fit that criteria, do I?” you question.

John shakes his head. “No. Not at all.”

“...Mr. Price?”

“Yeah, love?”

“I'm scared,” you admit.

“I know,” is all he says. “That's why we're here.”

Kyle joins John's side beneath your window. Then Johnny, who doesn't want to be left out, and lastly, Simon, who doesn't want to be left behind at all. The men sit underneath the glow of the Half Moon. Small chirps in the grass and distant hooting in the trees bring a peaceful ambiance to the evening. Coupled with the bipolar winds of Spring gently weaving through the grassy fields.

“Whaddya wanna do, lass?” Johnny asks you.

“I don't know,” you say, trying not to cry for the umpteenth time.

“Well then,” Simon speaks up again, “whaddya not wanna do?”

“...Not hurt anyone… and not die.

John nods once. “Alright… that's a good place to start… Think you can unlock the door for us?”

It's silent for a bit, but you don't go to the door. Instead, you unlock the window and crack it open just a tad. The four men look back to see you stick your hand out, pale and spindly, which Kyle takes into both of his.

“We're right here for you, fledgie,” he comforts you, gently squeezing. “And we're not leaving you behind.”

And for that moment, you believe him.

prev | next Masterlist

Role Call!: @boy-pussyyy

[muqingslover]

Hii!! Love your writing!!

I wanted to ask if you have any hc about the lads men as fathers? For example, my hc was that Xavier is a boy dad that makes sure his kid will not end up listening to those "alpha podcasts" because he sets the example of a gentle yet "i slayed over 70,000 wanderers", kind yet assertive man. HOWEVER, since the level 175 affinity interaction came out, I'm 100% hes a girl dad raising his daughter to be a strong and independent woman (like the MC he loves dearly). What do you think?

[ my first ask! yahooo! thank you, pookie! I'll give you my thoughts in general (a big mix of everything) but if anyone wants one of the boys in more detail then feel free to ask because I have more to share! ]

Alright maybe this is a hot take but I don't think he wants children, like at all.

Xavier does NOT like sharing. He's literally jealous of himself for goodness sake and he really, reaaaally, does not want to share you, especially not with clingy children that would take almost if not all of your attention and also his sleep.

In-game he's also shown to not be super fond of children in general which I find hilarious.

He's lived a long life, sacrificed everything and everyone for you, and spent the rest of his years searching for you. He believes he has the right to be a bit selfish and keep you to himself. Let's be honest, he's earned it.

He does want children, but he is the type to plan for it. And I mean *plan*.

Out of everyone, he understands the best what it means for both your body and mental health the changes pregnancy would bring (including the chance of postpartum depression and other complications) so there would be a looooong discussion before anything happened.

When putting together the nursery it's like he's preparing for the apocalypse and not a baby "We might need this" (you won't be needing it), "This was made with [chemical], it could be toxic for you or the baby." "Zayne, it's just a plastic spoon."

Absolutely not as cool as he leads you to believe. You have this man stressed™ but he is so, soooo patient.

He'd be very serious about follow-up appointments and he'll make time for the both of you no matter what.

GIRL DAD ! GIRL DAD ! GIRL DAD !

100% victim of waking up covered in silly drawings and bows in his hair but he says before him than his poor white walls.

You have your hands full monitoring these two that love to sneak around and stuff their cheeks full like hamsters with sweets.

Now this man wants a whole LITTER if you'll let him.

Hear me out: TRIPLETS. Oooor, twins with a younger sibling right after. Maybe one more if you are really brave.

This was not planned at all, but when you tell him he's so happy he'd be in actual tears while hugging you.

Luke and Kieran are over the moon about it too. They'd be so cute with the children because they get to be big bros now and they take their role very seriously.

Sylus would pull out his phone or coat and it would be covered in cute stickers. He takes no action in getting rid of it though because he loves it.

Those children are S P O I L E D. You have to take the role of saying no otherwise he'd take over the world just because his baby asked to be queen of the world on a random Thursday.

I think he's on the same boat as Xavier but for different reasons.

I have some...perhaps...controversial takes on this little guy in general so I'll leave it open for your interpretation hehe

love him though<3

I know I know everyone says he'd be the best girl dad but PLEASE pleaaaase give this man a little boy.

If you think women's baby fever are bad just wait until you see Caleb's

He would draw on your belly bump where he thinks the baby is and talk to him even while you're asleep

This guy is taking lessons about pregnancy, how to support you during birth and he is 100% in one of those moms group chat.

"Caleb we do not need another onesie—" "But look! Look how cute it is! Oh, and the little hat? C'mon angel, please?" (Ban him from shopping by himself because he comes back with WAY too many things you do not need)

He loves and I mean LOVES matching clothes. From silly costumes, to pajamas and outside outfits.

So. Many. Pictures. He takes pictures all the time to keep them as memories because if something were to happen where you or he lost their memories again then they'd forever be preserved :(

[ I have so much more to say about this but maybe I'll just make a separate post for each of them ]

[osmanthus-wine-addiction]

23 Voyeurism

Zhongli x Reader / NSFW / Modern AU / Reader is a camgirl / Consensual Voyeurism and Exhibitionism / Zhongli is reader's landlord and sort of her roommate / Power imbalance / Ambiguous age gap / Emotional avoidance and fear of attachment / Mentions of manipulation, blackmail, and parasocial dynamics / Don't worry, it's sweet at the end! / Word count 12K

You would've noticed someone standing at your door had you been less occupied with your chat. When you finally turned at the knock on your door, your eyes landed on the unexpected face of your landlord, whom you hadn't seen in almost half a year. Your heart might as well have stopped.

"Ahem… I did not mean to intrude." A deep voice pierced the silence.

Your chat went crazy. How could it not? The expression on your face changed three times in the span of a second. First was pleasant surprise, then panic, finally settling on a furious blush. Your chat was going a million miles an hour, demanding to know who had interrupted your stream. Wild guesses were thrown around. Some were close, others way off. Nobody got it right.

"Perhaps it would be best if you closed your door." The man at your doorway reminds you.

"Thanks. Can you please shut it for me?" You asked sheepishly.

The door clicked and you tried to resume the stream, but no matter what you tried, you were unable to get back into the right state of mind. Zhongli's sudden appearance had completely thrown you off your boat. All you could think about was him now.

You bit your lip in frustration as Zhongli's devastatingly handsome face resurfaced in your mind. When you first met your landlord in person, you instantly developed a crush on him. With the eloquent way he talked, you had expected someone well put together, but you didn't expect him to be this good-looking. It was just a pity he only graced your eyes once every few months, each stay limited to a fleeting week or so. He came and went, leaving you both thankful and disappointed. He would usually send you a short notice by text just before he lands, but you were streaming today and had been ignoring all your calls and messages.

You end the stream and drag your anxious self out of your room. To your horror, Zhongli steps out of his own room at the same time. His hair was still slightly wet, indicating he had just taken a shower. You awkwardly follow him into the living room, taking a seat as he fetches a pot of tea that had been brewing. He set down two cups and filled them, one for you and one for himself. Finally, he lowers himself into the adjacent seat, amber eyes falling on your flustered face while crossing his legs elegantly. He raised his cup to his lips, taking an unhurried sip. You felt like you had returned to your highschool days, sitting in the dean's office.

Zhongli was significantly older than you, so even if he doesn't intentionally intimidate you, you felt small in his presence. It didn't help that he had accidentally witnessed you doing such a scandalous act. The memory would probably scar him forever if you did not alleviate the tension right away.

"I'm sorry you had to see that!" You said all in one breath.

"Are you perhaps in need of money?"

"No!" You answered too quickly. "I mean yes, I originally started doing it for the money. This place isn't exactly cheap haha…" You laughed nervously. "I'm okay now."

Working a job like yours, you wouldn't normally be able to afford to rent a place like this alone, especially not with the rampant price hikes in the market right now. It was perfect, close to your workplace and located in a safe, guarded community. Best of all, your only roommate, who also happened to be the owner of the property, was never around. He only needed to keep one of the two rooms locked for when he happened to be in the city during business trips. To say you got used to his absence was an understatement. You often left doors wide open and walked around the house half-naked. Only during his brief stays did you behave yourself and keep up some semblance of decency.

"I apologize if I came off judgemental. That was not my intention. What you do to earn a living is not my concern, as long as you don't miss any of your monthly payments."

"So I'm not going to get evicted?"

Zhongli chuckled. "I do not believe you are breaching any of the terms stipulated in our lease, so why would you be?"

You let out a breath of relief.

"So how long have you been home?" You asked, not realizing how the question could imply other things.

He cleared his throat. "Half an hour."

Your eyes widened as a flush rose in your cheeks. He definitely heard more than he could stomach, or he wouldn't have come knocking.

If it weren't for your voice, he might've thought there was a stranger in his house. All those flirtatious interactions with your chat was a persona you put on for the camera. The person you presented yourself as was much bolder than how you were in real life, how Zhongli remembers you. You imagined how shocked he was, standing in front of your bedroom door, catching you shamelessly touching yourself while entertaining your audience. How long did he endure the sounds coming from your room before he got up to see what you were up to? Just how long had he been standing in front of your open door before he knocked?

Did he perhaps get a bit excited watching you entertain your thirsty viewers? Was that why he had to go get a shower? The poor gentleman. Maybe if it were anyone else, you'd take offense if they peeped, but him? If he gave you the chance to show him, you'd try to make all of his closeted fantasies come true too, no tips required.

You couldn't help but let your eyes wander. Zhongli had on a simple buttoned shirt and a pair of slacks. With that handsome face, tall frame, and lithe body, he was already blessed in looks, but now you wondered if he was well endowed down there too. How could you not?

"I…I don't mind that you saw me. It was my fault for forgetting to close the door. Tell me if there's anything I can do to make things more comfortable while you're here. I only stream three days a week and for about two hours a time, but I can always adjust that if you need me to be quiet while you work. If you want, I can give you my schedule." You rambled on, unaware of how your words seem to encourage him to be present for those times rather than avoid them.

Zhongli smiled appreciatively at your efforts to accommodate him. This was not the first time he had seen you frazzled. The more flustered you were, the more you talked. The thought conjured up another sinful image in his head. He imagined you trying to talk, blabbering incoherently in between moans as he fingered your dripping cunt. How adorable would you look, spread out underneath him as he teased you?

Your sweet moans and sighs were what had drawn him to your door, but the pretty flush of your skin and the tantalizing curves of your naked body was what had rooted him there, staring like some depraved creep. He was not proud of his lapse in self-control, but at that moment, he was no different from anyone in your audience.

You sounded so eager to please, working so hard to satisfy those needy viewers of yours, but at the same time so overcome with need yourself. He felt sorry for you, but he had to reign in his presumptions. If you didn't enjoy the attention, you wouldn't have been so engrossed that you failed to notice him at your door earlier. How lucky it must be to be one of your viewers, to be able to see you up front and center, to be addressed so affectionately while you pleasured yourself to their demands.

"I would love to know your schedule." Zhongli's voice was deep and velvety as always. There was a heavy tinge of suggestiveness though, his reply twisting your words into an invitation that he was simply responding to.

Your face burned as you blurted out your schedule. In your head, it certainly sounds like you were now making plans for him to join you next stream.

Zhongli made a mental note of the hours you mentioned. He had no business to attend to during those times, so he would undoubtedly be home. There was no need to deliberately leave his own house just to avoid your streaming schedule. He was not some unrestrained teenager who couldn't handle a bit of temptation. Perhaps with repeated exposure, the both of you would find some way of dealing with the blushing elephant in the room.

"How is work treating you lately?" He asked you, genuine care emanating from his voice.

"I'm surviving." You replied vaguely at first, but realized that he's probably asking because he thinks you're struggling to come up with rent. "They gave me a small raise when I got promoted so I don't need to rely on this side hustle as much."

"That's wonderful." He nodded, his guilt dissipating a bit at your words.

If he had known just how much financial strain you were in, he would've kept the rent the same as the previous year when you renewed the lease with him. He doubted your family and friends knew what you did to make ends meet. As your landlord, he was directly responsible for the additional sum that lead you to take on this extra work. Perhaps you learned to derive some form of joy from it, but if the demand for money were not there, would you have even considered it?

"I have a proposal for you, one that you may very well refuse if it toes your boundaries too much. This is simply something I'm offering as an addition to what you're already doing, a means to lessen your financial burdens if you will." Zhongli begins, stern eyes locking with your curious ones. He sounded so pragmatic, it was like he was ready to whip out a printed contract and have you sign it right then and there.

"Let's hear it."

Zhongli was not someone who relished in squeezing every last drop of interest out of others simply because he could. As high as prices were in this neighborhood, the room you rented from him was a steal for all the perks included. You smiled, trusting him to come up with something that made sense and benefited both parties simultaneously.

"Allow me to sit in while you stream and I will pay you a fixed sum which I can either issue to you as a bank deposit or deduct from your payment this month. I will not speak nor make demands of you. Neither will I touch you or interact with you in any physical capacity as that would disrupt your work. Merely treat me as if I am not there. I will refrain from making any inappropriate actions without your explicit consent, including touching myself. If it comes to that, I will leave the room so as to not affect you."

Your brow went up, mostly from shock but also from pleasant surprise. His proposal was almost too good to be true. Sure, it was a bit out of your comfort, having a living breathing spectator in the room while you cam, but something about that person being Zhongli specifically made your heart race. An image of him sitting in that armchair at the corner of your room that was just out of your camera's frame surfaced in your mind. If it were someone else proposing this, you'd shoot them down immediately.

Drawing in a deep breath to give the impression of hesitation, you held his gaze. Inside, you had already made up your mind. He was giving you a blatant chance to seduce him, clueless to the unholy thoughts he effortlessly plants into your head. It was your chance to show him what he had gotten himself into, reel him in with your well-practiced charm and charisma, or fail miserably and end up begging him to fuck you instead. Would it really be a loss? Dignity be damned, at least you'll have crossed one thing off your do-or-die-regretting list. He just didn't know it yet and you were determined to keep that mask on until it melts off your face from the heat.

"How much exactly and how long?"

"However much you usually charge for private sessions. Are they usually priced by bid?" He asked you, obviously unfamiliar with the unspoken rules of the trade. "As for the duration of this proposal, I will only be here for two weeks this time, so we can set it to that."

You nodded. "My price differs from stream to stream. Sometimes it's a few hundred and sometimes it's a few thousand depending on the length of the call. It's not really comparable since I'm not actively interacting with you."

"I see." He stroked his chin in thought. "How about this instead."

He quickly calculated the difference between your monthly rent before and after the lease renewal, rounded it up and presented it to you. Six sessions total, it would help you out immensely in the next few months he'd be gone and he receives a front row seat to an indulgent performance that all your viewers would probably kill for.

"That works…" You agreed, voice going soft like a whisper as you wrapped your head around the fact that he'd be watching you the next time you streamed. "The price is a bit higher than I expected. I can throw in another perk for you."

Zhongli chuckled, smiling at how considerate you were being with him. He wondered if this was how you treated all your viewers who tipped you. Seeing how hard you pushed yourself earlier, he hoped the earnings you made were at least proportional to the demands you received, or else he would be inclined to sponsor you himself and save you from all the trouble dealing with hordes of entitled men who didn't even bother to pay you well for bending over backwards. He could easily imagine what kinds of disrespect you must tolerate everytime you streamed, needy viewers ordering you around like they owned you just because they tipped, the thoughts tugged at his protective nature. It was silly, he knew. You weren't some damsel crying for his help, so it was unwarranted of him to feel the need to shield you from that imagined harm.

Perhaps it had been too long since he had last been in a relationship. Why he was feeling these sentiments towards you, his tenant of all people? He had always found you attractive, drawn in by your subtle charms rather than your physical looks, but now his mind could no longer hold off those more illicit forms of admiration. Was it simply just the sight of you streaming earlier? Things had changed in that instant, like the ringing strike of a hammer against a chisel, cracking the smooth surface of the rock. He could no longer go back. The wall that stood between the two of you had already crumbled.

"You're not going to ask what that perk is?"

"I'm sure it would be worthwhile." Zhongli smiled.

"How about I let you pick out what I'm going to wear on stream? Unless someone tips and overrides it, of course. I have to honor tip redemptions…" You thought aloud.

"I look forward to perusing your wardrobe when the time comes."

"It's settled then?" You asked.

He nodded, smiling fondly at you. "I'll leave you be now. There's still some unpacking to be done." He excused himself, dragging his suitcase into his room with him.

That suitcase had been sitting in the living room this whole time, as if reminding you that he would only be here for a while before disappearing from your life yet again. Perhaps that was why you should keep your distance from him, especially your heart. It was fine being attracted to Zhongli, but anything deeper would be emotional recklessness. You'd be no more than a fling if things got out of hand, even if he never struck you as a player. It was just the inevitability of his departure, like clockwork every time. You knew better, at least that's what you wanted to believe.

When the next stream day came around, you sat at your desk adjusting your mic and lighting. You even printed out a silly little sign to place on the armchair in the corner. It read 'VIP GUEST' in big bold letters. Soon enough, you heard a soft knock on your door. Your special viewer arrived. He had just gotten home from lunch with his client. You had to admit, Zhongli looked absolutely ravishable in formal wear. Your thoughts drained down a predictable gutter. How satisfying would it be to remove all those layers one by one? Would he start tugging them off if you managed to get him hot and bothered enough? Alas, you were the one stripping for the camera, not him.

Zhongli took a seat in the chair, an amused smile on his lips as he picked up the place card. You went off to gather your outfit candidates for the stream. As promised, this was his choice to make.

"This one, this one, or this one for the lingerie?" You asked, holding them up against your chest in succession. "I'll be honest, sometimes my choices are misses rather than hits. Maybe your taste aligns better with my chat's."

"Is that so?" His brow raised in surprise. "Let's go with this one today, but I can imagine you'd look lovely in all three."

"I want to try different styles, but I think the majority of my viewers prefer a consistent look. I can tell with the viewer count and tips."

"Hmm…" He leaned back and stroked his chin in contemplation. "Perhaps there's an element of successful branding working against you in this. Once consumers of a product come to expect a certain thing from you, it would be hard to branch out. Straying from what's already been established can certainly be met with repulsion."

"Well, if they don't appreciate your taste, I guess they're out of luck." You laughed, putting away the two sets that were passed up.

Even though Zhongli had technically seen you naked already, you didn't want to kill the suspense by stripping and changing into the lingerie right in front of him.

Every stream, you had to dangle yourself like a carrot in front of viewers, drag it out until the tips start pouring in. You had it down to an art, teasing and toying with their imagination, making them work just as hard for their own satisfaction as you did for their wallets. It was a twisted game you played with your admirers, because you were simultaneously the prey and the predator. You fed them exactly what they wanted, but they only wanted what they can't easily get. They wanted to toy with you, make you jump through hoops for them, roll over and beg for treats like a circus animal, but if you catered to their every whim, the magic is instantly lost. They enjoyed competing over you, having you fluster over their shows of dedication as they out-tip each other for your attention. Sometimes you felt like an inanimate bystander, as if you were a covetted painting at an auction. Other times, you were the knockoff purse laying on a dirty tarp at a flea market. It all depended on how much these disembodied usernames were willing to throw at you. Even as your numbers climbed and the algorithm pushed you in front of more and more viewers, you never forgot how awful it felt to be the latter. It reminded you every stream to not lose yourself to the illusion of being that painting. You could go from one to the other at the blink of a viewer's eye.

It was just for the money, you tell yourself. You had to do what you had to do to keep this roof over your own head. It worked out in your favor and you didn't have to pack your bags even after the market phased this place out of your budget.

For the longest time, you had nobody to rely on but yourself. You couldn't reach out and ask your parents for money. They were already struggling to make ends meet themselves and never once asked you for help. You couldn't ask your friends for money, because you hated to taint your relationships with such worldly troubles. They gave you all the emotional support you could ever ask for so you could have the strength to deal with these pesky problems.

When Zhongli asked you if you were in need of money, your knee-jerk response was to deny it, but the relationship between the two of you was transactional to begin with, so you accepted his proposal without much hesitation.

As you greeted your excited chat, you couldn't help but steal a glance at him. How did things evolve into this strange arrangement? It feels like an absurd fever dream. Blaring alarms and obnoxious carnival music went off in your head. Buried underneath all that commotion was your own heartbeat, racing with anticipation.

Were you a friend to Zhongli? You didn't know him well enough, at least you didn't think so. Was he just your landlord? Not quite, since he was also your roommate from time to time and he definitely cared more for you than the usual landlord does their tenant. Could you trust him? It probably wasn't wise to since you weren't in the sanest mindset. He could easily turn this situation into blackmail and demand things you didn't initially agree on from you. Wasn't that how it usually goes down?

Too much hinged on Zhongli's character and you weren't dumb enough to expect altruism from him. He was a businessman and money flows where there is plenty of shade. Opportunists would always try to turn a profit at every chance. Could you really expect him to be the sole exception?

What does he gain from this exactly? You get money from him, a very practical thing. He doesn't even get to talk to you during your live, something that you indulged your viewers in for the entire duration of the stream. If he were an exhibitionist, maybe whipping out his cock and having you react to it would stroke his ego, but he explicitly cut out all possibility of that.

Your chat was starting to get impatient. An entire hour had passed and that lingerie set that Zhongli picked had not yet made an appearance. The viewer count fluctuated, but it didn't faze you. Your tip bar was the true indicator of how thirsty your viewers were. Once they started trickling in, you knew it was time to start the actual stream. All of the friendly banter was just a lengthy intro.

"Truth or Bare? You guys are really nosy today, aren't you?" You read the redeem that had just popped up on the screen.

The questions started rolling in, each one attached to a tip. A timer went off and you read the highest tipper's question aloud.

"Am I a virgin?" You sighed. The amount of times you had gotten this question was exhausting. You had to fight the urge to roll your eyes and pull on a puppy dog face instead. "How many times do I have to tell you guys? That question will never be answered. Unless you already know that and just want me to take something off…"

Your hand reached up to tug at your hair tie. This was a popular strip game you played with your viewers. It doesn't end until you're completely naked, so you always prepared for it. Jewelry and hair accessories counted, but you tried not to be too overt with it. You would always get a flood of compliments when you let your hair down, so starting the stream with your hair up created a little something for your viewers to look forward to, an appetizer of sorts.

"Am I single?" You read the next highest bidder's question after the timer went off again.

It was one of your regulars, who obviously already knew the answer to that question.

"I know you're just trying to give me an easy pass, so thanks."

Someone brought up the voice that interrupted you last stream and consequently ended it. Apparently your chat were not goldfishes, to your detriment. Once one person bit, they were all biting, all wanting answers. You watched in horror as your chat became consumed with theories again.

"I'm not lying! He's not my sugar daddy either okay? I'm not into that."

You had to fight the urge to turn and look at Zhongli, who you knew could hear every word that comes out of your lips.

"No, for the last time, I don't have a boyfriend. If you're so curious, you can bid for the next question."

You quickly shut down the overflowing questions before they got out of hand. Your mods also began timing people out for being annoying. The game went on.

"Do I like being eaten out?" You scrunched your nose. "I want to say it depends on the person and if they're good at it, but would you really say no to a blowjob? Not everyone has a giant cock, but everyone can eat pussy well. They just need to be willing to learn. If they're willing to do it, I think I'll enjoy it. Now if they're confident about it…" You giggled at the thought. "That's hot."

Who were you kidding? Everyone apparently. You talked as if you've sampled peak oral before and had a wealth of experience to draw from. In reality, you probably had as much as the dude in your chat who asked that question. It was all about the bluff.

"Pain tolerance?" You read the next tip winner's question after the timer went off. "I'm a chicken. No pain, at all. I'll bite you if you make it hurt. I like the gentle ones."

You received a few questions here and there that you refused to answer, so after removing your necklace, earrings, and socks, you finally had to take off some actual clothes. Your chat was high as a kite and the viewer count shot up.

"What was my first guy like? As in boyfriend, or like the first guy that managed to get me naked?" You tapped your chin as if you were really going to answer the question.

It could just be another angle at the first question you started the game off with, but you wanted to get confirmation first since the asker tipped quite a lot to win the bid. A sigh left your chest when it turned out your suspicions were right.

"That's for me know and for you to keep wondering." You tried to be sweet about it, giving the camera a wink. "Since you were so generous with the tip, you can decide if you want me to take off my shirt or my shorts."

You got your answer, shorts. Getting up off the bed, you stood up to unbutton the denim shorts you had on, making sure everything was in frame. Slowly, you unzipped it, making a little twirl for the camera before taking it off. At the corner of your eyes, you caught Zhongli with a smile on his lips, jaw resting against his hand. His posture was relaxed, legs crossed elegantly as if he were admiring something much more demure. The way he was looking at you made you feel like a ballerina on stage as opposed to a streamer playing a stripping game with her chat.

The next question was an easy one, but the one after, you couldn't answer. You grabbed the bottom of your shirt and pulled it over your head, removing it in one fluid movement. Finally, you were in just your underwear.

Zhongli's eyes raked over your figure, smooth skin adorned in nothing but a few pieces of lacy fabric. The color suited you, contrasted nicely against your skin, just as he envisioned when you had him choose between the three sets. He could only see you from an angle, the best view reserved for your viewers. You couldn't even meet his eyes, but he enjoyed the discretion, being able to take you in as he pleased, watching you smile and laugh without sparing him a single glance.

You got up to grab something from your desk, finally rewarding his patience with a view that your entire chat had already been spoiled with. It was a fleeting glimpse, but it was enough to satiate that growing itch. You posessed an undeniably tantalizing figure, one that he never had the chance to properly admire until now. Watching that adorable, unassuming shell of yours stripped all the way down to lingerie like this was a delightful treat.

Last time, Zhongli had walked in on a stranger with your face and voice. This time, he saw your transformation. He could never have imagined you in this way before. Ever since two days ago, he could not get that racy image out of his mind. Those two conflicting versions of you overlapping in his mind did something to his body.

He was not the only one whose attention you commanded, cock straining against the fabric of his pants. Countless nameless, faceless strangers were also lusting after you, some he could imagine already desperately stroking themselves at the sight of your pretty tits encased in lace.

More questions came. You reached behind your back to unhook your bra. Zhongli drew in a breath. The lacy garment was discarded on your bed. Next went your panties, which you took your time removing. You climbed off the bed, getting up close to the camera so that it could capture what you needed it to. As requested by your chat, you did a spin, catching Zhongli's eyes as you turned your back to the screen. A flush rose in your cheeks as he drank in the view, caressing your luscious mounds from afar with nothing more than his smoldering gaze. His amber eyes seemed to melt you with their intensity as they glided down your body, settling on the remaining piece of fabric. No words were exchanged as agreed, but you didn't need them. Your fingers hooked underneath the waistband, sliding your panties over your hips.

You broke eye contact, turning to face the camera again, but then immediately bent over to pick up the lace garment dangling around your ankles. Zhongli shifted in his chair, fingers sinking into the plush armrest. His bulge was painfully visible now.

You had just presented your VIP guest with a gratuitous view of your unadorned ass, before all your other viewers. Were you feeling sorry for making him wait until last? He could tell it was intentional. His mind was instantly clouded by wanton thoughts of squeezing and groping those soft globes, perhaps adding a pink handprint or two to them even. Had you always been this cheeky?

At last, thoughts were only thoughts. He couldn't act on them. The tie around his neck was starting to feel tight, so he tugged it loose and unfastened the first two buttons. It helped, but only barely. This was all the relief he'd be getting while sitting in your room. Touching himself was strictly against the terms laid down.

You began playing with your tits, probably a request by your chat. Even from the side, he could see the way they almost spilled between your fingers as you kneaded them. Your lips parted to let out soft moans as you pinched and rolled your nipples between your fingers. The sweet sounds sent shivers down his spine. His cock twitched as you let out another moan, this time louder. One of your hands were now buried between your legs while the other continued massaging you breast. Zhongli couldn't see what you were doing, but he could imagine it. Your finger sunk between your pink folds, stroking your sensitive walls as your lips parted to let out those wispy moans. Your camera gave everyone in your stream an indulgent view of your pussy, getting wetter and messier everytime you pulled your slick-coated finger out. One finger was hardly enough, so you added another, fingertips curling and dragging along your sensitive walls. The moans drifting from your lips turned into soft whines, then whimpers. The expression on your face must be divine, if only he could see it. That was reserved for your stream.

He watched as you reached for the object you had grabbed from your desk earlier, a toy apparently. He couldn't tell what it was initially, because it didn't look like one at first glance. He had to admit, it was rather tastefully designed, discreet like you were. You pulled off the cap, holding the silicone tip flush against your dripping heat. You pressed the button and the vibrations started, immediately making you jolt with pleasure. Gently, you pushed it in.

Zhongli's clenched his fist, adverting his gaze. Your decadent moans still reached his ears, causing his breath to grow shallow. His jaw was taunt, muscles tensed. You sounded almost tortured, probably looked the part too. Your camera captured everything, but he could only imagine your pretty face, contorted with ecstasy as you chased your orgasm. His cock was so unbearably hard, the leaking tip dug into the seams of his dress pants.

You came undone, walls fluttering around the toy as your orgasm finally came and swept you away. Sweat coated your neck and your chest heaved, heart still racing as the ripples subsided. You laid there, back against your sheets and legs parted so that the camera could catch the mess you made of yourself. When your senses returned, you glanced over at the corner of the room where your armchair sat. It was now empty. You didn't even notice when Zhongli had gotten up and left the room.

After cleaning yourself up and winding down with your chat, you finally ended the stream. Everybody got what they showed up for, but at the same time nobody was satisfied. You managed to get yourself off, but what about Zhongli? If he was fine, he wouldn't have walked off before the stream ended. Did you really manage to make him lose his patience?

Zhongli had no doubt gone to take a shower. You could hear the water hitting the bathroom tiles from the hallway. You wondered what he thought about the arrangement now that he had a taste of it. What could be going through his mind right now? Would he still want to continue?

You didn't get to see the state he was in before he left. Did he leave because he got uncomfortable, or did he get that turned on? The possibility of it being the latter gave you an unexpected headache. This was technically his proposal. If he couldn't handle the very terms he came up with, he'd have to persuade you to loosen them up. While your rational side would shoot that thought down immediately, your impulsive side welcomed it too eagerly.

You liked this house a lot, but nobody could deny you had the hots for its owner too. If you sleep with him, chances were, you'd probably have to leave as soon as your lease ends. There's just no way you're getting into a relationship with your landlord, especially one that involves a lot of fucking around and not much of anything else. He'd be leaving in less than two weeks, leaving you scrambling to make sense of whatever loose ends he leaves in his wake. Repeat that every time he comes back and any sane person would become an emotional wreck. You wanted to fuck him badly, but it would literally ruin your life if you did. There's no way you'd let those intrusive thoughts be anything more than a self-indulgent joke.

When you joined Zhongli in the living room later that evening, the two of you pretended nothing ever happened. Nobody brought it up like the two of you had mutually decided to get amnesia about those two hours in your room today. You asked him if he was hungry. He offered to cook so you let him.

An amused smile crept into your lips as you rested your arms on the backrest of the couch, watching Zhongli chop and dice vegetables. This was pretty much your house, since he was only around a couple weeks in the year. The apron around his neck was yours, but you couldn't help but find it adorable on him too, in a mismatched way. This was not the first time he's cooked for you. You were already aware that he was a good cook when you first moved in. He had treated you to a homecooked meal, complete with soup and side dishes.

If your mom found out you know a handsome, single guy who cooks good food, she'd order you to seduce him and lock him down. If she knew he owned the house you lived in, she'd already be banging down your door. You couldn't possibly tell her.

Zhongli was the kind of gentleman old people always want to introduce their daughters and granddaughters to. Honestly, it could all just be a front. You can't exactly say you knew him well enough to vouch for him. All you really know about him was that he's unmarried, owns the house you live in, does business all over Liyue, is a good cook, loves reading, hates seafood, gets along with birds and little animals, and is very old-fashioned when it comes to certain things.

You only go into Zhongli's room once in a while to help him dust off his shelves when he's gone. As curious as you are about him, you respected him way too much to go snooping around. Likewise, he doesn't overstep boundaries and seemed to operate on a strict set of self-inflicted rules, on top of being away for most of the year, so you never really had to deal with the usual roommate drama that your coworkers always seem to be complaining about. Life was good, aside from the rising rent, but that wasn't really Zhongli's fault. Was it too much to wish for life to go on like this forever?

Once dinner was ready, you helped set the table and sat down opposite of him. It always felt more like a home when Zhongli was around. You ate alone most of the time, consuming mostly takeout on workdays whenever you didn't have the time nor energy to cook yourself a decent meal.

"This reminds me of my mom's bamboo shoot soup."

Zhongli chuckles. "Perhaps there's similarities in our recipes."

"It's not really the taste." You shook your head.

"I see. It must be nostalgia then."

"Yes! I swear, there's a taste to it." You beamed at him while enthusiastically helping yourself to the yummy stuff.

There's nothing quite like the satisfaction you feel when the person you're talking to puts what you're struggling to say into words.

"You should invite her to come visit you."

"She's too comfortable in Qingce Village. The big city isn't for her. She says all the honking cars give her a headache."

Besides, it wasn't like this was your house. You just rent a room in it. Where would she sleep and keep the mountain of stuff she'd most likely show up with? Better to pay her a visit when you get time off from work than have her visit you.

"A pity. It would be nice to meet her."

"Zhongli!" You almost spat out the mouthful of soup in your mouth. "You can't say things like that! I know you're good with the old ladies, but if my mom sees you, she'll think we're an item."

"Hmm…" He hummed, his expression unreadable. "You could just tell her the truth. Surely she can't be as unreasonable as you say."

"You don't know her like I do. I'm just protecting you." You said with a full chest.

He laughed heartily, his amusement infecting you and causing you to break out in laughter as well. Since you had just swallowed a spoonful of soup, it went down the wrong pipe. You coughed repeatedly while Zhongli got up to get you tissues and pat your back.

"There there. I should not have laughed." He said while patting your lips dry with a napkin. You tried to snatch it from him but failed.

"You know, I wouldn't get nostalgia from your cooking if you're just around more. It's been too long since I've had soup this good."

"Would you mind if I stayed?" Zhongli asked you.

Your brow went up as you glanced over at him.

"This is your house, Zhongli, not mines. Why are you asking me? You can stay for as long as you want." You said with a laugh, obviously not following his train of thought.

Zhongli's sighed, amber eyes studying your face. Were you really this oblivious or were you just pretending to not understand his intentions?

"Would you like for me to stay?"

You froze upon hearing Zhongli repeat the question. Something was off about the way he worded it this time. Why does it sound so… suggestive? Like something a one-night-stand would only ask if they were entertaining the possibility of becoming something more. You swallowed, face heating up all of a sudden. Were you overthinking? The last time you checked, you haven't slept with Zhongli yet. Why was he talking like the two of you have already crossed some invisible line?

"If I say yes, could you?" You asked cautiously.

"I can make it happen, if that's what you want." He replied, equally as carefully.

"Then stay."

As soon as you let those two words roll off your tongue, you held your breath. Your heart felt like it was going to burst with how hard and fast it was beating.

A glimmer of something faint in his eyes grew brighter the instant your words met his ear. It almost gave you the impression that he had been waiting to hear them.

"I will make arrangements to extend my stay here for another two weeks."

"Wait!" You quickly blurted before your head grew so big and light, it floats away. "You're really going to stay longer, just for me?"

You pinched yourself underneath the table. Nope, this wasn't you hallucinating or daydreaming. On the surface, you were all smiles, but inside, you were a nervous pile of knots.

He nodded, a reassuring smile on his lips. "My calendar is more flexible than you may think. Another two weeks will not disrupt my work."

Zhongli explained to you once that an operating partner was just a fancy title for a business consultant. He spends anywhere from weeks to a month in a single place, monitoring various companies he's contracted with. From what he just disclosed, apparently it was entirely up to him to decide how much time to allocate to each venture he oversees. Most of the correspondence, reports and whatnot, could be done without his physical presence. He did not even require an office, but a place to stay was still needed. The house you lived in served as one of his many footholds. You wondered if he had tenants renting his other properties. Did he treat them all to slow-cooked bamboo shoot soup, or were you the only one with that perk?

You were still reeling from the fact that Zhongli had just rearranged his entire schedule this month, all because you told him you wanted to see him around more often. Since when did you hold so much influence over him? Even if your viewers regularly shower you with attention, you never let their thirst get to your head. Likewise, you had always kept a conscious distance from your landlord, as irresistible as you found him.

Now that you think about it, Zhongli certainly seemed to be the one making any effort to bridge this deliberate gap you had put in place. He was always sharing interesting stories about the places he's been and bringing you little souvenirs. You've always found him to be odd in that regard. Most landlords wouldn't even bother to get to know their tenants, since the only thing that truly mattered was getting paid on time. Getting too acquainted opened up the possibility of exceptions to that, which Zhongli had already shown he did not mind when it comes to you. You had paid your rent late multiple times in the past. He never threatened to evict you nor did you receive any stern warnings from him. It's almost like it was an afterthought to him. Still, the transactional premise of your relationship always managed to hold a firm grip on you. Now, that grip was slipping and so was your rationality.

The next streaming day, Zhongli took his seat on your armchair while you set up your equipment. Like before, you let him pick your outfit. There was something so undeniably wrong with this whole situation, this debauched contract that you had somehow agreed to. So many alarms should be going off, but they were all muted.

This was something you would never have seen yourself agreeing to when you first signed that lease with him. It was bizarre beyond anything you had the audacity to imagine. This was someone whose belongings you wouldn't even dare peek into while he was away. This someone was now watching you shamelessly touch yourself in front of a camera.

You tried your best to ignore how Zhongli's mere presence in the room affected you. Even if he didn't say a word, you couldn't help the tingle that ghosts over your skin everytime you catch his gaze. Did he find the sight of you in the bra and panties he chose arousing? When your hands glide over your skin, carressing your body, does he wish they were his instead?

Like the last time, you see him get up and leave. He doesn't make eye contact and you try to act natural in front of the camera even though your mind was no longer in the room with your chat. Slick dripped down your thigh, mixing with the lubricant you had coated your toy with. You bit your lip, riding the pitiful thing, whimpers and sealed moans captured by your microphone.

This time, you managed to catch a glimpse of Zhongli as he stood up. You got an answer to that burning question that had been eating you up inside since the last stream. The tent in his pants ruined his facade. It told you everything you had been dying to know.

You ended the live shortly, mind filled to the brim with Zhongli. So this attraction you've always felt was not unique to you anymore. Do you pretend you don't know how hard you could make him, ignore how badly he wants to fuck you after seeing you touch yourself?

Unlike the last two streams, there was no sound of water coming from his room. You imagined Zhongli barely making it to the privacy of his own room without yanking his belt off. What if he couldn't hold himself back, instead giving into the impulse? You envisioned him palming himself desperately to the thought of you, thighs clenching at the self-indulgent images clouding your mind.

"Zhongli?" Your voice drifted through the gap, barely above a whisper.

Despite your better judgement, you pushed the door open some more. It was dimmed inside so you couldn't make out where Zhongli was.

Had he been in so much of a hurry, he forgot to close it, or did he leave his door open like this on purpose? Suddenly, the door flung open all the way. Your eyes shot upward, meeting Zhongli's as he came to the door.

"You ought to get some rest, dear. What are you doing here instead?" He asked you, amusement threading his voice.

"You left before I finished streaming, so I just…"

Like he asked, just what exactly are you doing here? Were you here to confront him about that raging hard-on you saw him leave your room with? Your gaze discreetly fell to his crouch. It seemed he had yet to resolve his dilemma.

The indecent thoughts running amok inside your head made for a very curious expression. His eyes swept over your face, then down your body. Upon ending the stream, you had put all your clothes back on, but under Zhongli's smoldering gaze, it was like he had you undressed again with a mere glance.

"My apologies for the sudden exit. Was there something you needed from me?" He smiled at you harmlessly, but the effects were anything but. Either he really didn't notice the blush on your face or he was pretending.

"That's what I came here to ask." You deflected, growing increasingly frustrated with his unyielding demeanor. Even with an obvious tent in his pants, this man wasn't making a single move on you. "Are you sure you want to keep playing the gentleman?"

"Ah, so you do see the affect you have on me." He chuckled.

"I'd be blind if I didn't."

"Ignorance can often be a blissful disposition. At least for you, I believe it to be so."

"Sit down." You ordered him in a tone far too intimate than what you ought to sound like with him. "I'll help you get it down."

"I assure you, there's no need to do any favors for me that are not included in our agreement." He immediately turned down your scandalous offer, a rare tremble in his voice.

"Was cooking for me and bringing me gifts part of our lease?" I asked as I took a step forward, forcing Zhongli to take a step back.

If he continued, you'd have him sitting at the edge of his bed anyways, so you just kept walking, unhurried and intentional. His body was not rejecting your offer the way his lips were. Dealing with a well-intentioned hypocrite like Zhongli, you just had to give him what he wanted and his front would crumble under the weight of his own contradicting desire.

"Ever since you saw me the first time, you've wanted me, haven't you?" You began your lewd accusations, raising your hand to his chest to prod him with a haughty finger. "You couldn't resist making that proposal, knowing exactly how inappropriate it'd be. Now look at yourself. You can barely keep it together. Sit before I change my mind and leave you high and dry."

"Hmm." He hummed, not sounding at all offended. "It seems you have me all figured out already."

Something glinted in Zhongli's eyes before he wrapped his hands around your wrist, gently tugging you into his lap as he sat down at the edge of his bed. This was what you demanded. Except why did it feel like the roles had suddenly reversed? The moment he admitted you were right and he was entirely at your mercy, Zhongli had successfully coaxed you into a false sense of control, an illusion of power.

You sucked in a sharp breath as his hardened length slotted between your legs. The fabric of his pants did little to mask the swollen girth of his cock and neither was it enough to keep the wetness clinging to your heat from seeping through.

"May I remove your clothes?" He asked, still hesitant to discard his manners. You appreciated this immensely, found it unbelievably hot. Or probably it was just him. Everything he did and said seemed to effortlessly turn you on.

His hands reached out to lift your shirt from your body as soon as you gave him permission. Then it was your skirt. You climbed off his lap to allow him to undress you. Soon, you were in nothing but the set of lingerie he had picked before your stream. His eyes raked over you form unabashed, silently marveling at how well the material and color complimented you.

"You like it, don't you? Dressing me up and stripping me down like your personal plaything…" You whispered into Zhongli's ear as you lowered yourself back into his lap. "They have no idea that you're in the room, sitting there just outside of the camera. Neither will they ever know what we're doing right now, after the stream. They can only see, but you…" You smirked at him. "I'll let you touch me if you promise to be good."

"How unfair of you. Though I'm not complaining since I do enjoy watching you pleasure yourself. What better than to inflict such sensations on you myself?" He mused, hands unapologetically gliding over your soft skin, which he had previously been unable to touch. It was as silky as the imagined it to be. He drew in a breath, taking note of your every minute reaction to his touch.

How long had he been yearning for this? He couldn't even recall anymore. Perhaps it was a good thing, being away so often. He would've been that much more tormented by your enticing presence had he been around as often as you would've liked. How he managed to keep his hands off you this entire time and his gentlemanly impression intact, he couldn't fathom, but he was glad you were finally ready to accept the possibility that he might want more from you than your monthly rent.

There was also so much more he wanted to give you, but he never found a suitable excuse, nor possessed the appropriate role to approach you in that manner. The last thing he would want was to scare you and have you scurrying off like a spooked mouse. Zhongli was your landlord afterall. By default, you had so little power. He wanted desperately to even out this imbalance, but as long as this dynamic existed, he was powerless to change anything. That was the reality of your relationship with him, until that day he came home to find you camming.

That catalytic moment had altered something within him, along with his perception of you. He suddenly found himself spiraling. The proposal, though not entirely thought out at the time he offered it to you, was a desperate attempt to ground himself again amidst the bizarre circumstances. Just when he thought he was regaining his bearings, you come into his room to offer an even more preposterous proposal, sending him on yet another unpredictable tangent. Perhaps that was what you've always been to him, an agent of chaos, but he could only welcome it, along with everything you came with.

"Zhongli…" You called out his name breathlessly. "I know you like seeing me in these, since you picked them out, but don't you—"

"Shh.. " He silenced you. "You're much too impatient, dear. If I can wait this long for you to come to me, I can spare a couple minutes to admire you in such tasteful lingerie."

You blushed at his words, failing to catch the veiled confession he slipped in due to the pink fog clouding your mind. He let out a sigh as his lips feathered along your shoulder, igniting goosebumps in his wake. Finally his fingers reached behind your back for the clasp of your bra, unhooking it. You drew in an anxious breath, knowing where his hands were going to venture next.

His fingers splayed over your breast, cupping it gently in his large hand. Soft moans drifted from your lips as he proceeded to knead it, squeezing the supple flesh between his fingers and playing with the sensitive peak.

"Can I kiss you?" You asked him, arms draping over his shoulders.

Zhongli chuckled. "I thought you didn't want to."

"You think too much." You scrunched your nose playfully, pulling him in to press your lips against his.

You couldn't blame him for assuming though. If you wanted to kiss, it would've happened before he ever asked to take off your clothes and it'd have to be initiated by you, according to his exasperating list of unspoken rules. A kiss was something he had not yet been given access to, so you'd have to lead him to it. This was something you'd gradually realize as the two of you become increasingly entangled with each other. It was not a subconscious habit, but a deliberate one. He was a patient man, you've always known this. It's just sometimes, that patience can get a little inconvenient for you.

"I don't get it." You pulled away from his lips to catch your breath.

"What is it, dear?" He asked you calmly.

It wasn't that you were unsatisfied with the kiss. You just couldn't understand why Zhongli was taking his time like this when you were mentally prepared to take all the shortcuts the moment you made the offer to get him off.

"How are you so hard, but kissing me like you can wait another hour? Don't you want to fuck me?"

He smiled, reaching up to stroke your cheek. "Well, you're already in my lap. There's no need for urgency since we both have no reservations this evening. I do in fact have an hour to spare."

"If you want to hold it in, then hold it in. As long as you don't burst before I get a chance to put it in, I won't punish you." You teased him.

He swallowed thickly. "That I can promise."

You went in for another kiss, tongue pressing against his lips for entry. Zhongli gave it, enthusiastically meeting your demand for more. He welcomed your pillage, your curiosity, and all your audacity. It was an immeasurable delight, experiencing just how much you wanted him. You weren't putting on a performance nor trying to appease an audience to earn a living.

"I can't take it anymore." You tore away from the kiss again, panting from how turned on you were.

Zhongli's smoldering gaze followed your hands as you frantically unbuckled his belt and unfastened his dress pants. He didn't seem fazed by how rough you were being with the expensive material. Anticipation brimmed in his eyes as well. You finally pulled down his pants, freeing his erection. It sprung upright, tall and rigid. The daunting size of it instantly sobered your lust-ridden mind.

You swallowed at the sight as you wrapped your mind around his girth, wondering how it was going to even fit. The sight made you involuntarily clench your legs. Now that the fabric was out of his way, every drop of slick seeping out of your eager cunt landed directly on his shaft.

Were you really going to fuck Zhongli? No matter how unreal it feels, you could never really help the way your body reacts to him. Even while streaming to hundreds of thirsty strangers, you didn't feel like half the slut the sight of Zhongli's cock had you reduced to. If he told you to get on your knees right now and suck him off, you'd do it without a second thought.

You heard Zhongli's shuttered intake as you wrapped your hands around him. A feverish tint was beginning to take hold on his face and a haze fell over his eyes as you began to stroke him, your movements slow and unsure. He let out a soft groan, hand enveloping yours in encouragement as he moved your hands at a faster pace. His hands also caused you to place more pressure in your grip. You bit your lip in concentration, focusing on making him feel good. His cock throbbed under your sweet torment and his breath grew heavy. Beads of precum slid down from his tip.

"Need me to touch you?" He breathed, voice gravelly with arousal.

"Please…" You answered breathlessly.

It must be obvious how needy you were getting, with your soaked pussy rubbing against his thigh. The moment Zhongli's hand cupped your drenched entrance, you shuttered. His fingertips traced your slit, barely sinking in between the soft folds. You whimpered softly, grinding yourself against his hand. As deep chuckle caressed your ear as he finally plunged a finger into your cunt. Your slippery walls immediately clenched around it as he pumped in and out of your eager hole. He added a second finger, scissoring them inside the narrow space, stretching you in preparation for his cock.

"I think I'm ready." You panted against his neck. "Can I put it inside?"

"Be my guest, sweetheart." He replied, withdrawing his slick-coated fingers.

You lifted yourself up on your knees. Zhongli’s hands rested on your waist to help you align yourself with his tip. The second your warmth enveloped the head of his cock, he let out shuttered gasp. It felt way too good, the way your tight heat immediately clenched around him, drawing him in like a fever dream. Indeed, having you in his lap like this, taking his cock inch by greedy inch, it certainly resembles a dream he was guilty of having from time to time. He wrapped his arms around you tightly, as if afraid you'd suddenly run off and end it all too soon.

Zhongli thrusted upwards, his patience finally crumbling as he buried himself to the hilt inside your fluttering walls. You had never felt so full, so satisfied. Those toys you played with during stream? How were you ever going to get off on them after having a taste of this? It was no longer just your imagination, but the memory. The pleasure Zhongli was giving you was something you could see yourself coming back time and time again for, like some depraved cock addict. He fucked you so well, your mind was turning into mush. You didn't even register when he had flipped you underneath him or when the rest of his clothes disappeared. He pressed your knees against your sides, pausing only momentarily to admire your blissed out expression and your hair splayed messily over his silk sheets.

Soft squelching filled the air, intermingling with your gasps and moans and Zhongli's occasional grunt. The way his thick girth dragged against your stretched and sensitive walls was downright unfair. His tip grazed your cervix as he bottomed out, hitting all those places that made your toes curl in one smooth stroke.

"Enjoying it so far?" He asked you as he drove into your slippery hole.

Over and over, he rammed himself into you, tearing a needy moan from your lips each time he pulled away. You could barely catch a breath, much less answer him in any degree of coherence.

"Zhongli… Zhongli…" Was all you could say.

At least you knew who was fucking you so good. Zhongli groaned as you neared your limit. The way you trembled in his grasp, your lips latching onto his in desperation as your nails dug into his skin, it was all too sweet. The feeling of being inside you like this, holding you so closely and hearing your unbroken moans of pleasure, it was worth all the wait in the world.

You couldn't tell who caved first. Maybe it'll happened at the same exact time. Zhongli barely managed to pull out last minute, his thick cum splattering all over your stomach and thighs. It was a filthy mess, but you were too lightheaded to care. Your body still tingled from the intensity of the sensations that had coursed through it moments ago. Zhongli panted, focus gradually returning to his eyes. The first thing he saw was your beautifully flushed face. He reached down to stroke your cheek, earning him a silly grin from you.

"That…" You drew in a breath. "That was insane…"

"Are you alright?" He asked you.

The concern in Zhongli's voice was like a drop of warm honey dissolving amidst a swirling mass of emotions. You were only now coming down from the high.

"Better than ever." You replied, still breathless. Your eyes dropped to his spent cock. A smug grin overtook the dazed expression on your face. "I did good, didn't I?"

"You were amazing, dear." He whispered after pressing a kiss to your forehead, a tender gesture that caught you off guard. Were you and Zhongli this close now?

"So what happens now?" You murmured against Zhongli's chest as he settled beside you. "You pretty much just ruined it for me."

"Have I?" He raised a brow. "You were the one who came to my door to solicit your help. How exactly have I made matters worse for you?"

You smiled, satisfied with his reaction. Zhongli was more amused than offended by your accusation, an indication that he was not someone who immediately withdraws at the first sign of complications.

"I still have to stream, you know." You reminded him.

"And I still have plenty of work to do, but now I have this utterly enticing distraction to fend off my mind. I'd say the ruin goes both ways." He chuckled as he twirled your hair between his fingers. "Wouldn't you agree?"

You nodded. "So how do you propose we go about this?"

"Well, for one…" Zhongli let go of the strand, tucking it behind your ear. "I am rather fond of you. Would you be adverse to being with me in a more exclusive capacity?"

"Are you asking me to be your girlfriend?" You squinted at his oddly worded question.

Zhongli had always been a precise person. In certain instances however, he also becomes overbearingly formal. The more uneasy he feels, the longer his sentences. You couldn't hear it in his voice, but if he wanted to get a certain answer from you, he would ask it in a way that would make it unreasonable for you to answer in any other way.

"I was hoping to ask you that before I leave three and a half weeks from now." He chuckled, relieved that this discussion was happening much sooner than anticipated. "But if you have an answer now, I will take it."

"I think I need some time to think about it. You should too, Zhongli." You paused to draw a deep breath. "I don't want to be with someone that I'm only going to see once every few months. If this doesn't work out…"

"If things do not work out, nothing between us needs to change. I will not force you to be with me if you do not wish to be." He replied. "Matters of the heart cannot be dealt with by deliberation. If you do not like me, you can tell me. I will not hold it against you."

"I do like you though!" You corrected him, earning yourself an amused chuckle. "You're good-looking, polite, caring, plus you make really good soup. What's there not to like?"

"I suppose I have a fair chance then."

There was nothing fair about Zhongli. From the moment you met him, he already checked off all the boxes needed to sweep you off your feet. Everything afterwards only served to make sure you'd never be able to keep your eyes off him. Now, after you've had a bite of him, you wouldn't be able to keep your lips or hands off him either.

"Ngh…Zhongli!" You cried out his name in a pitiful sound between a whine and a sob.

Every evening after a stream, this would predictably happen. You'd find yourself at Zhongli's door or he'd be at yours. Usually you'd be the one impatiently throwing yourself at him simply due to his patience surpassing yours, but he'd understand your urgency nonetheless. It was impossible for him to not get riled up watching you cam. Something about your eyes not being on him while you pleasured yourself gets him really on edge, like a tiny piece of gravel grating against his sole. Only when you're wrapped seamlessly around his cock did this irritation go away.

You took him so well, your wet haven so warm and tight, he was slowly losing it, loathed to imagine leaving you all by yourself once he had to go. With the way you begged, driven delirious by your own toys, who would you go to once his door was locked? He hated to imagine you seeking relief in any other way that didn't involve his cock repeatedly pounding into your needy cunt. Who else could fill you so perfectly, make you unravel so completely?

This was Zhongli's last day in town before he leaves for his contract in another city. After mulling over it all night, you canceled your stream, something you rarely did. You sent out the notice without any hesitation. There would alway be a next stream, but everyday with Zhongli was precious. When he finally found out he had you all to himself, he insisted on taking you out to a nice restaurant and even got you a bouquet of qingxins, maybe as a reminder for you to not overthink. How could you not though? His question from two weeks ago still lingered in the back of your mind.

You had enjoyed every aspect of Zhongli's company, despite how short his stay was. You could tell he was not holding anything back from you. No matter how he conveyed it, whether through his meals or in bed, his care and attentiveness covered you like a thick blanket. Even if you knew he was about to board a plane and disappear from your sight for months on end, your heart was still grounded, as if it had taken root.

"I will miss you dearly." He sighed as you bid him goodbye that evening at the airport.

"Well, if you can't stand the loneliness, I don't mind taking a quick vacation." You joked. "I have a lot of PTO saved up so I might as well use it."

"You still haven't given me an answer." He brought up the question that had been eating at your brain ever since he asked it.

"Zhongli…"

He stood there quietly, waiting for your reply.

All the people around you faded into a blur. You could almost hear the beat of your heart quicken ever so slightly. Looking up into Zhongli's gorgeous amber eyes, you wondered how you ever managed to resist him for so long.

"Do you think I can still say no?" A faint but hopeful smile spread over your lips. "Just don't break my heart. I don't want to be wrong about you."

A relieved smile took hold on Zhongli's face as your words reached his ears. You've never seen him smile so unrestrained before and it melted you into a puddle of shared joy.

"I would never wish to. How could I bear to break something I've been waiting to cherish for so long?"

You furrowed your brows. "What do you mean for so long? Don't tell me you've been crushing on me this whole time."

He chuckled, gathering you into a tight parting hug. "I won't refute that."

"You're such a loser. Couldn't you tell I liked you?"

"It was not apparent to me. I would hate to assume incorrectly and make things uncomfortable between us."

"Fine. I should've made a move sooner." You replied with a heavy dash of sarcasm. "Or dropped more obvious hints."

"Indeed you should've." He had the galls to agree!

"Are we really going to debate this right now? Right here? If you don't get on that plane, you're going to be stuck here with me."

"Is that not what you'd want?"

"No, go away. I can only take so much of you."

"You take me just fine, if I dare say."

"Zhongli!" You fumed, blushing at the reminder.

The shameless man laughs heartily at your expense. Lord help you. Even when he's teasing you, your heart flutters.

Finally he rushes off to the gates. As soon as he turns his back, a sigh leaves your chest. This time was harder than all the previous times you've said goodbye to him. You were no longer the same person you were four weeks ago. Your crush on Zhongli was no longer just a crush.

A fond smile graced your lips at the thought of the man who had just departed. He left you with a warm and safe feeling, nothing at all like what you imagined you'd face everytime you convinced yourself to not let him into your heart. It was about time. Not like you could casually hand it to someone else with his name etched all over it. It was in good hands now, you assured yourself.

"Do take care of yourself and try not to eat too much take-out. Send me photos so I can see that you are eating well. Nevertheless, don't miss me too much, darling."

You scrunched your nose at the text message Zhongli sent just as you got into your car.

"Are you my dad or my boyfriend?" You texted back. A silly grin was plastered on your face the entire ride back.

Sure, he was a bit old-fashioned and treated you like a rebellious teenager despite your age, but you liked the thought of constantly being on Zhongli's mind. As long as the person was right, what bad could a bit of distance and time apart do? If anything, it'd make you yearn for each other a little more intensely.

Maybe you'd even consider sending him the link to your streams.

----

I swear these oneshots are getting longer and longer. I don't know how I keep typing up so much context for kink prompts. Anyways, this one was inspired by fanart of Zhongli sitting in an armchair. Mainly this and this. You have these two artists to thank for the brainworms that infected me and forced me to write this longass smut!

[hello-gloomy]

Hello Hello! I tried to find your rules, but I couldn’t so I apologize in advance if I’ve broken any! May I request some Senku headcanons or an imagine (whichever you prefer) of him and his genius! S/O post petrification. They managed to get un-petrified elsewhere and he comes across them doing their own thing in the same “I need to rebuild society” mindset as him

Nerd-synthesis-

Ngl I went off the handle w this one and it's kinda fire, I hope you don't mind that I put a wack ass twist to it. (Might have to make a part two let me know ya'll)

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A Thousand Years

Senku x Gender neutral!Reader

Description: When the KOS arrives in Europe for supplies for the rocket project, they find a colony that is quite far along with their advancements. When some locals take them to the colony's leader, it's the last person Senku thought he'd see.

Warnings: It's pretty tame, with a sprinkle of angst. The reader isn't introduced till later, and there is no mention of pronouns or exact gender. Slightly dialog heavy. Nameless side characters. Strays from cannon.

A/N: This one gave me so much damn trouble, please enjoy this so its at least worth all the suffering I went through for it. Also, this might be my new fav timeline for this one ngl. Let me know if ya'll want a part two, please. BTW make sure u look up what Senku's name after you read this and his birthday :^

Words: 2,087

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"Orstway trip ever," Gen spoke as they set down the boarding plank to the beach. After finishing things up with the American colony, they planned to head toward Europe to finish getting supplies for the rocket; they chose their crew members and made the estimate of the trip taking two months and planned accordingly. Senku walked near Xeno and looked around the beach, looking at the lack of stone statues. Xeno looked over at him, hoping that he saw it too.

"Something's wrong," Senku said with a slight diminishment. He was hoping they wouldn't get into a fight just as they landed. They were low on food and needed to replenish supplies before they could have anything happen. Ukyo looked up and stared off. A few others saw and looked where he was staring, and then they heard children laughing. A group of what looked like grade schoolers came running up to them excitedly; they spoke English and were asking questions about the boat. An older teen came running to catch up to them, looking slightly fearful of all the foreigners. Gen and Senku made way to talk to the teen, seeing as they were close in age, and Ukyo talked and entertained the younger kids with questions. Xeno and Stanley came to join Gen to make a plan; they convinced the teen to take them to the main European colony to talk to this group leader and would leave Ryusui and a few others on the Perseus to keep watch in case things went wrong. The teen herded the kids along while guiding the group. They took notice of a few things: the clothes were pretty close to 20th-century clothing, there was a clear path from the beach to somewhere else, and it was pretty worn in, showing that it was made a while ago. The teen led them to a rustic-looking establishment and took them indoors to a Railway depot. When they were fully inside, other people were waiting in the station with them; some were reading books, and others were talking and waiting quietly.

"Apologies- but when was this colony established?" Xeno asked while taking in everything. Gen had run off to talk to other locals as subtly as possible. Senku was practically shaking with excitement at how far along the entire place was; he couldn't wait to see what the main area looked like.

"I think the founder said they broke out around 5728. AP," The teen answered with a shrug. The group all came back together with each other when they heard the loud bellow of a train horn. It was sleek, black, and a fantastic piece of machinery to behold for them.

"Ryusui-chan is gonna want this so badly when we tell him about this later." Gen teases with a grin as they board the train, walking past other seated passengers, with some staring at the start before returning to their little worlds. They all take their seats while admiring the inside of the cabin. Stanley lights a smoke, and a woman in a uniform matching the trains interior scheme comes over, opens the window and a fold-out tray where they are sitting, and sets out an ashtray for him. The group is stunned and amazed before chatting excitedly about the ordeal. Senku watches the scenery pass by them out the window; the area surrounding the train tracks still keeps the natural areas the same, and they pass by one or two towns on the way to what he hopes is a city. He sighed and rested his head against the glass; the whole ride there took about ten minutes. The announcer tells them the name of the stop, and they get off with a few other passengers; their guide tells them they must stop for a payphone to make a call quickly.

"YOU HAVE PAYPHONES!" Gen looks like he's about to cry, and Senku races to catch up with the teen, asking to see the phone as well. The kids stay with some of the group while Senku, Xeno, and the teen make the call while the latter two watch. After they make the call, they walk along the stoned and paved roads to a cafe to drop off the kids with another friend and then make their way to the council office as they've been informed all the prominent leaders are currently having a meeting. The outside of the building had a gothic architecture; when they made it inside, multiple bells lined the ceiling, with most of them sporting linning connected to a device on a far side of the building. Senku made a note to ask about that later. The teen told them to have a seat while they went inside to get the colony leader.

"How high is the possibility of us getting shot on sight?" Gen asks with a slight nervousness to him. Xeno leaned against Stanley, and Senku got up to pace a bit while observing the inside of the building.

"We have a 20 percent possibility of that happening, " the soldier answered nonchalantly, and both doctors nodded along. The doors they were waiting outside burst open, and many voices came from within the room.

"Sorry about that! Ya'll can come in now." A woman with a strong accent told while poking her head out. They all looked between themselves before shrugging and waltzing in. There was a large round table in the center of the room, a balcony above them, and a few people sitting around and arguing. Senku looked around and was starting to get weary with the lack of progress now; seeing all the advancements was nice, but he needed materials and needed them soon; eventually, a voice that he thought he would never hear again booms out from the shadows.

"We've built payphones, trains, lights, hell, even cameras! But you want to stop at the thought of creating a satellite." Such conviction in your voice made his heart clench; you walked down the steps, came to the center of the room, and slammed your hands on the table.

"I wish to explore the stars and communicate across the waters!" You said with a flourish and a wave of your black-gloved hands.

"And getting to the stars will help me accomplish that goal." It was like when he built inventions with you in the old world. He couldn't help but smile as you laid out your plan to everyone in the room and swayed them so quickly; in the end, when you held the vote, everyone agreed with you with the joy you held when you initially told them of your plans. Once the meeting was over, you had everyone leave the room; the woman that had let them in earlier had pointed them out to you; you took a double glance when you saw him and dropped everything in your hands when you saw him.

"You look older, " he tells you while skimming your appearance; the kid earlier said the time of when you had broken out, he estimated that you had to be at least nine years older than him. He walked around the table to get a closer look at you, and you backed up a bit as he approached. Your eyes started to water as you looked at him; he thought you were always more emotional than him. He raised his hand toward your face but stopped just short of it; then, you crushed him in a hug. He returned it the best he could and laughed while you cried quietly into his chest.

"Uhm- hate to break whatever this is up, but care to explain Senku-chan?" Gen butted in, and Senku sighed while still holding you, patting your back while you got out thousands of years of distance from your lover out on his lab coat.

"They're my…Hm…Fiancee." You snapped up from his chest with a surprised look.

"Congratulations." Xeno offered while you and Gen both spluttered; you were about to ask when this happened when Senku slipped off your glove and then on a metal band with a small green jewel onto your left ring finger. You were left standing there looking stupid while he told you to show them around the place. You were floating along the whole tour, still lost on how you would get married after having not seen him for over three thousand years.

"Oh, there's still a monument left from when we originally built the town when I woke up here." You perk up as you tell them and pick up your pace to show them. As you walk outside, they see other city inhabitants greet you with warm smiles and occasionally stop to give you things or to chat quickly. By the time you make it to the monument, the sun is starting to set. It's slightly off from the communal eating area for the original island settlers: a giant stone slab with names carved on it and dates beside them. The five of you look at the list of names, and Senku spots yours; his eyes trail over to the date you broke out of stone: January 4th, 5728. He reaches his hand out to it. Gen looks over at the date, and his eyes widen at the year.

"That means you should be forty years old.." The four of them look over at you.

"They don't look forty, closer to twenty, thirty the most," Xeno says as he holds his face while looking at your features.

"After the second time I was turned to stone, I stopped aging." You answer with a shrug; they all look at you slightly horrifiedly. You wave them off and lead them back to the town hall.

"We should probably call the Perseus to restock on supplies." Senku interjects as you lead them.

"Let's go to the communication room, then; the payphones might not connect to your frequency, " you tell them with a happy clap of your hands. You lead them to a large room with vintage communication systems and lead them over to a girl who looks older, taller, and closer in appearance to you. You introduce her as your sister and tell her to communicate with their ship. Xeno helps her find the frequency, and the device crackles to life; you hand Senku and Xeno a headset, grab one for yourself, and start to speak.

"This is the city of Thousand Skies hailing the Perseus; do you copy?" There's silence on the other end before a calm voice answers.

"This is Perseus we copy." You smile at Senku and let him take over; he breaks down the situation, and you can hear some cheering in the background.

"We'll send out a group to help move you guys to the city and take the Perseus to the docks closer to the city so we can load it up with supplies." You sent out a few groups with some cars with good carrying capacity, as the train would have taken too long and stopped running due to the late hour. You head to the meal hall and ask for the chefs to prepare for a party; while you wait, the four that came with you initially sit, and you bring over some drinks for them all. You sit beside your soon-to-be husband and start fussing over his clothes a bit; when you finish, you look at his face and sigh while running your hands over the petrification marks that were left permanently. He grabs your hand with the ring on it while watching you, moving closer you glance at his lips, and before the two of you can kiss,

"Damn, is this how you felt with me and Xeno, Gen?" You cover your mouth with your hand while Senku glares at your onlookers. They cackle amongst themselves while teasing Senku some more. You lay your head on his shoulder instead, and the rest of his crew burst into the hall; they start to take seats at all the tables, and the one you heard over the mic sits with your group along with a loud blonde and Senku's childhood friends. You haven't felt this at home in a long time; his friends excitedly tell you tales of their adventures worldwide, and you end up sharing yours with them the hall calming down to listen. When you finish your story, Taiju raises a toast in your honor, and everyone shouts their 'cheers' for you. Eventually, when everyone is distracted, you share your long-awaited kiss with Senku; it was worth waiting all those years for it.

"OH MY GOD, THEY'RE KISSING!" Senku holds his head in his hands, and you can't help but laugh.

[outtathisworld-imagines]

Fine line

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Pairing: Bob Reynolds x F!Reader

Warning: As much angst as there is fluff, mentions of needles/ medical environment, depression. Not proofread

A.N: Still very much holding sweet Bob in my heart 🥹🫶🏻 I feel like ‘Fine Line’ -which I recommend listening to while reading- was such a fitting song for this concept of Bob and the reader.

Lyrics are in bold italic!

Please let me know what else you guys would like! I do have a few other fics on the back-burner (for now!) that I'll start to post soon and just let me know if you'd liked to be tagged in further works too ✨

——☀️——☀️——☀️——☀️——☀️——

Put a price on emotion

I'm looking for something to buy

Bob mindlessly wandered the streets, smiling to himself seeing the brightly coloured souvenirs, the bustling streets and the noise that came with it. It’s the first time he can remember smiling in weeks.

Leaving home, trying to find himself and survive through his own bitter struggles, was a challenge to say the least.

That challenge was suddenly accepted by a smartly dressed man who handed him a business card telling him it would change his life. Bob had nothing left to lose, so believed him.

He sat in a cold, harsh, clinical room with others. He looked up, directly across to bouncing knees and a worried expression. He moved and sat beside the person riddled with as many nerves as he was.

“Are you okay?” He asked.

“I don’t really know.” You replied. “I don’t usually get myself into things like this. I don’t really even know what I’ve signed up for!” You let a nervous laugh escape your lips.

“That’s alright, I’m in the same boat as you.” He admitted. “I’m Bob.”

“Hi, I’m Y/N.”

You shook hands and then the group was called into a room full of perfectly symmetrical beds and a vial of neon yellow liquid. You stayed next to Bob, even asking if you could hold his hand because you couldn’t bear the sight of the needle being brought to your arm. He sent you a soft smile, reaching across for your free hand and letting you tightly squeeze it as hard as you needed too.

Then for the two of you, everything went dark.

You've got my devotion

But man, I can hate you sometimes

Bob woke up in a bright room, his head throbbing and his limbs aching. He didn’t know how long he was out for this time and hated himself for it. Every time he was injected he would blackout, unaware of what was happening to him and his world.

He hated that, almost the same as he hated himself most days.

He did have one constant. Someone who made the days bearable. Someone who made the hate towards himself disappear whenever he saw the smile on your face.

A smile solely for him.

He helped you through the torment of being injected with the neon yellow liquid.

You helped him laugh again.

The two of you formed a close bond within the confines of the lab masked as a hospital ward, especially as the number of people dwindled down. You assumed the worst. You were told they withdrew. But you still had Bob.

“It was always my goal in life to have as much confidence as the ‘Florida man’ you see on the articles.” You told him one night, late after dinner when it was just the two of you in the soulless shared space they had made for you all to ‘relax’. You brought his long forgotten State into the conversation.

He laughed so much he cried, you could singlehandedly bring soul to that soulless room. He let out a relaxed sigh and let his hand fall to the void between your leg and his own, he looked down and saw his pinky involuntary stroke your thigh. You felt it before you saw it, subtly moving your own and intertwining your pinky with his.

In that very moment, Bob felt every painful thing he held inside of him disappear.

I don't want to fight you

And I don't wanna sleep in the dirt

As the weeks went on, the less people there were. There became a point where you and Bob just reached out for one another instead of asking or offering when they rolled around with the neon yellow serum. Despite the fact you got it daily, you still weren’t used to the poking and prodding of the needle. “Do you actually know what this is really for.” You asked one of the nurses who took your arm.

They remained silent and you turned your head to Bob “They can’t tell us, Bob.” You said with a mischievous smile. “They must be making us into superhero’s or somethi- AH!” With a wince you gripped onto his hand tighter feeling the sharp pinch in your arm before the world went dark.

“You okay?” A voice in the darkness. It was Bob. You were lying on his lap as you came to. You tried to move but he held you down, insisting you rested. You complied and looked over to the empty room, the soulless space that now only held two hearts.

“Where is everyone?” You asked.

“Gone,” replied Bob. “Just me and you.” He took your hand, squeezing it hard like you had done on the first day. “Please don’t go.” He begged in a pleading tone.

You squeezed his hand back “I’ll always be here for you.”

We'll get the drinks in

So I'll get to thinking of her

Your body became weaker by the day, Bob could tell. However, he felt much the same. It was tedious and exhausting being a human Guinea pig and most days you were the only thing that kept his strength up.

A call in another room, unbeknownst to the both of you, would be a catalyst for something the world was never going to be ready for.

“Two remain.” A stoic, monotonous voice droned to the person at the end of the other line. “Both doing well. Both showing good signs of responding to the serum. Both very close to one another.”

A pause.

“I wonder what would happen if we separated them?”

We'll be a fine line

We'll be a fine line

“Congratulations.” One of the nurses approached you both one late afternoon as you and Bob were chatting. “You have both successfully completed your testing.”

You and Bob shared a brief, puzzled glance. “I don’t know if I feel any different?” You said your thought aloud.

“Me too,” Bob chimed in. “How can you tell?”

The nurse avoided the question “There is a meal being prepared for you both, it will give you all the vitamins and nutrients you’ll need to sustain you. The day after tomorrow is when you’ll be able to leave, after some further testing of course.”

You both looked at each other with a smile and shared a hug, Bob would have done a lot more of the nurse wasn’t standing in front of you.

“You did it!” You squeaked, hugging him again “I knew you would. I’m so proud of you, Bob.” Your lips were by his ear which meant you didn’t see the tear of joy slip down his cheek at your words.

That someone in the world was proud of him.

And that you kept your own- you were still there for him.

We'll be a fine line

We'll be a fine line

“If I didn’t knew any better, this would be a date. But with hospital scrubs…” Bob joked from across the candlelit table as you were served dinner, tugging on the attire.

You raised an eyebrow “Are you suggesting we wear less clothes…?” You playfully retorted, causing him to choke on his water.

Bob nervously laughed “Sadly I think there’s too many cameras for that.” You both shared a giggle.

“Maybe if there was a lot less eyes on us, huh,” you spoke under your breath but he could hear you clearly. Tension suddenly flooded the room, as if the truth was sitting at the invisible chair at the table.

“Maybe, once we get out of here,” Bob nervously toyed with his napkin “Just maybe we could…”

“Take on the world?” You said with a smile, you could tell he was nervously searching for the right words. You reached across and held his hand, just as he had held yours throughout the god knows how long you had both been there. “Just maybe I think we could. And maybe with less hospital scrubs.”

After dinner you both walked back to your rooms, your routine tomorrow would be a different one. Neither of you knowing if it would be good or bad, but knowing you’d still have each other which was enough to face whatever they would throw at you.

“Well…” Bob stopped at your room door. “Goodnight Y/N.” He stayed there for a moment, his lingering made you smile. Then he leaned forward and quickly pecked you on the cheek.

He wondered if he had crossed the fine line that he mentally drew. That you weren’t ready to cross it into something more. Something more with him. Nerves bubbled in his stomach until you spoke up.

“You missed.” Quietly and with conviction. Bob raised a brow in silent question. “I said…” you leaned forward, capturing his lips with your own. “You missed.”

Pulling back, you saw his grin spreading across his whole face.

“Goodnight, Bob. See you in the morning.” You disappeared into your room.

We'll be a fine line

We'll be a fine line

Bob sat on the bed as someone took his blood pressure and someone took notes. “Uh, is Y/N going to be here anytime soon?” He said looking to the tray of medical instruments, one of them being a needle and a vial to draw blood. “Only because she really hates needles and needs me to hold her hand.”

The two in the room shared a glance. The one with the board placing it down and looking at him empathetically, not quite sympathetically.

“I’m sorry, Mr Reynolds.” They began and Bobs stomach dropped, lorn seeping into his veins. “Miss Y/L/N unfortunately don’t make it through this process. She became very unwell and-“

“No…” Bob choked out, barely above a whisper.

“She didn’t-“

“No!” Bob began to break down, his now bright heart- thanks to you shining on it- suddenly became dark.

“We tried-“

“NO!”

With a scream his world collapsed into nothing but darkness. The light of his life was gone and his whole world plunged into nothing but a void.

Test of my patience

There's things that we'll never know

Bob didn’t know how much time had passed.

How much time he lost.

He didn’t know what on Earth was happening in the world, or when it came to him.

He didn’t want to know.

As far as he was concerned, the only thing that was worth living for in this world was gone.

He let them test away, always looking over for a hand to hold.

One that wasn’t there anymore.

One day he was given a clear serum. His eyes closed over and he saw nothing but darkness. That was until he fell from a box into a room full of fighting people. They stood looking at him in hospital scrubs, his foggy memory didn’t help anyone either.

That was until the sun shone on him once again.

“B-Bob…?”

That voice.

He wondered if he had died and that’s why he was hearing it. “Is that really you?”

There you were. Standing in hospital scrubs with glossy eyes.

“Y/N? B-but how?!” He ran over to you, scooping you up in his arms.

“I don’t think we have time for a reunion!” A man with a shield chided the pair of you as he and two others frantically searched for an exit. You saw a body on the floor and knew better than to question it.

“They told me you didn’t make it.” You gripped onto him tightly, still not believing that he was in front of you. Bob pulled back, hazily remembering they had told him the same.

“Let’s just get out of here. We can chit chat later!” A girl with blonde hair ushered you both hurriedly before the room was set alight. All of you narrowly escaping.

Bobs hand remained holding yours.

When you all made it out and to the van, they pushed you and Bob in the back. He gripped your wrists with tears welling in his eyes at the sight of you again. But with the trouble you had all suddenly had found themselves in, he knew he had to keep you safe one more time.

And that meant letting your hand go.

You sunshine, you temptress

My hand's at risk, I fold

Your lungs burned from how loud you screamed, begging him not to go. Not wanting to lose him for a second time, not when you had just gotten him back.

He selflessly risked it all for you and the group of three mysterious people he had just met.

The one you came to know as Ava, held you in her arms as you all drove away.

Your eyes spilling so many tears, you didn’t see Bobs potential. What had happened to him from that neon yellow serum.

You weren’t around to hear Valentina ask what you both could do. What her band of nurses and doctors unlocked within you both.

“Night and day.” She was told. “He is the night and she is the day.”

Crisp trepidation

I'll try to shake this soon

When you reached the Watchtower, seeing Valentina, she sent you a smile that made you ill. Like she knew more about you than you did yourself.

You felt since briefly reuniting and then losing Bob again, being bound by another person called Bucky, which you later realised was the Winter Soldier, and now with a group of newfound allies surrounding the woman responsible for your unknown length of torment- was something almost as emotionally nerving as you being tested on. “You my dear, are just so special.” She said pointing to you. “Just as special as Robert…” she motioned to the stairs and your jaw dropped and your eyes widened at the very different (and suddenly blonde) Bob.

A far cry of who you knew.

“I made you both special.” She proudly admitted. “Meet Sentry. He’s going to ensure the security of this world. All powerful. Just like you.”

You felt the eyes of the team surrounding you suddenly lock on to your figure. “What are you talking about?” You asked.

She chuckled “You don’t remember? You burned brighter than the sun at one point.” You blinked, blithely unaware of her claims.

“Enough of this,” Bucky muttered and in a blink of an eye, Bob protected Valentina. You felt your body float before crashing against the wall, you couldn’t find the strength to pick yourself up again and fell to the floor, dipping in and out of consciousness. Rubble falling in front of you and trapping you there.

It was only when they were in the elevator after being tossed, punched and beaten, did Yelena yelp out.

“Where’s Y/N?!”

Spreading you open

Is the only way of knowing you

“Bob, stop,” you summoned enough strength to quietly beg from your trapped corner as he had Valentina against the wall.

That was until a woman walked in and pressed a button, making him fall to the floor with a sudden thud.

“No,” you sobbed. “Please not again.” The sunlight quickly dried your tears into your cheeks. Your fingertips tingling with an unknown feeling before you blinked and saw a shadow of what was once your hand-holder lying lifeless on the floor.

Your eyes opened and closed frantically, you saw sparks flash with each blink.

That was before you saw Bob again. In what looked like a well-lived in bedroom. “Is this real?” You asked, now able to walk and looking down at your suddenly unscathed body.

“Yes. No? I don’t really know.” He admitted. “But I’d like it of you held my hand.” You sat down next to him and did just that.

“Did you die…?” You asked with a trembling voice and a tear slipping from your eye.

Bob pursed his lips “After I was told you were gone back in the lab, I became a shadow of myself. I became a void.” He told you. “It’s always been there. I got even more alone after you were ripped from me and it took advantage of that.”

“Valentina was right,” you quietly spoke and your head hung in shame. “I remember. When I was told about you, I burst. Like a supernova. I let out so much light it burned everyone and everything that surrounded me.”

Bob let out a dry, humourless grunt under his breath, one that made your features quip.

We'll be a fine line

We'll be a fine line

“We are much the opposite.” He said.

“The star the night sky, I guess you could say.” You solidified his choice of words.

His hand squeezed around yours.

That’s when it clicked for you.

“You have to let go of my hand.” You told him. As much as you didn’t want to. But you knew what you needed to do.

“I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to let you go”. He pleaded with you, holding onto you tighter.

You sent him a smile in order to reassure his worry. For a moment it eased him.

“Okay.” You said and leaned forward, taking you both by surprise when you kissed him. Bob melted against your lips with a smile.

He didn’t feel your hand slip from his.

We'll be a fine line

We'll be a fine line

You opened your eyes, clutching your chest and gasping at the burning feeling brewing inside your body.

Glancing up from your corner, now enveloped in darkness, you saw a figure with glowing eyes hovering above the city.

We'll be a fine line

We'll be a fine line

You felt a newfound strength, your body suddenly glowing and floating above the floor.

It was time to show the world, and the void that had his clutches on Bob, just how bright you could shine.

We'll be a fine line

We'll be a fine line

You floated through the air and firmly remained in your spot seeing the darkness that consumed him.

“You got out.” It sounded confused.

“I just had to hold your hand.” You confessed.

We'll be a fine line

We'll be a fine line

It tried to push you away, mustering as much power as it could to dim your brightness.

But it couldn’t

You reached your hand out and burned brighter than the sun and the stars in the sky.

We'll be a fine line

We'll be a fine line

“You won’t take him from me again.” You yelled, burning brighter and gripped onto its hand tightly before wrapping it up in your arms. “We are going to take on the world.” You said.

“What makes you so sure?” The darkness tried to fight you.

But you outshone it.

“Because I said I’ll always be there for him.”

We'll be alright

Your eyes opened, the blue sky almost blinding you.

You felt a weight in your hand and turned your head.

Bob was lying there. Your Bob. Looking at you with his hand in yours.

“Thanks for holding my hand.”

You let out a broken laugh at his words and rolled over, pressing a kiss to his mouth as the world filled with light and the shadows were casted away.

We'll be alright

Since that day, the two of you were inseparable.

The team helped you both control your powers and embraced you both with open arms.

And most importantly, you always had a hand to hold and Bob always had someone there for him.

We'll be a fine line

We'll be a fine line

It was when he was holding your hand that he finally asked you to be his girlfriend.

The moment you said yes, you could hear the team cheer for you both.

We'll be alright (alright, alright, alright)

He held your hand through your sleepless nights.

He held your hand each time you shone like he had his own personal sun.

He held your hand when he made love to you.

He held your hand when you were scared.

He held your hand when you laughed.

He held your hand when you cried.

We'll be alright

Bob loved having your head resting on his lap, almost as much as he loved holding your hand. He gently caressed your cheek, trying to calm his nerves. It was his idea to have a picnic one summer afternoon. You enjoyed the warmth of the sun on your skin, and the smell of the wildflowers that surrounded you both, and the sound of the birds in the sky.

“Are you okay?” You asked, worry laced in your voice, noticing he wasn’t being himself.

“We’ve been together for a while now, huh?” He softly smiled and you needed in agreement, sitting up and crossing your legs.

“We have, we’ve certainly taken on the world- just like we said we would.”

“And then some.” Bob added, twiddling his fingers.

“Hand in hand,” you took his fidgeting fingers in your own.

That was before he pulled back, reaching into his pocket for something he had kept well hidden for months and propping himself up on one knee.

We'll be alright

“Will you take my hand again, but this time in marriage?”

[daydaydayrk420]

I don't need a sugar daddy

Logan Howlett (Wolverine) x male reader

⚠️Car sex, drunk y/n, dom bottom Logan, sub top y/n⚠️

🚨 Minors and girls do not interact 🚨

______________________________________________________________

Y/N. One of the richest men in this economy.

People call him Lucky. So rich at 25. Well, he has his grandfather to thank for that. But is he happy? No. Not really. Sure he can buy everything he wants. But does he have what a person really needs most?

"Don't let go, Jack..." The TV plays quietly as y/n is cooking in his kitchen. The wifi dropped out so he's stuck with cable. Lucky for him only romance movies seem to playing. What a way to rub it in. It's like TV knows he's single and lonely.

Y/n's a businessman. Meaning he goes to a lot of meetings. He also often goes to red carpets and whatnot, which means he frequently uses a limo.

Every time the same limo. Same driver.

Recently though. His favorite limo driver seemed to get worse in health and his car had bullet holes.

"Logan it's been two weeks and you still haven't fixed your car." Y/n said as he walked towards the limo. Logan just huffs and finishes his cigar. "If you need money you can just ask ya know." Y/n added. Logan opens his door. "I don't want a sugar daddy." He grumbled. The younger man just laughs. "That's not what I was suggesting. But I'm not opposed to it." He winks at the older man and sits in the car.

Logan's glad the younger man is already in the car so he can't see the faint blush appearing on his cheeks.

Another week goes by.

"Logan seriously what happened to your car? Just get it fixed and put the bill on my name." Y/n said as he handed Logan a check. Logan rolls his eyes and closes the back door of the limo. "I told you y/n. I don't want a sugar daddy." "You may not want one but you definitely need one." Y/n said and put the check in Logan's breast pocket.

"Take extra if you need. Fuck take enough to buy that boat of yours you keep checking on. Just don't lie to me. I know you need the money more than I do." Y/n said with a strict tone that made Logan's knees weak. Thankfully he's leaning on his limo so it's not visible.

Later that night Logan is picking Y/n up from the party he drove him to earlier. The younger man is obviously drunk. And seems to be in a good mood.

"Jeez. You look happy." Logan scoffs and helps the wobbly man into the car. Y/n giggles and runs his hand over the older man's chest. "But you don't. Maybe I should help?" He giggled. Logan rolls his eyes and sits him in the limo. He walks around the car. He stops by the drivers door and takes a moment to calm him mind.

It's not the first time he has seen y/n drunk. But every time the younger man seems to get more horny.

Once he mentally prepared himself he got in the car and turned it on. He looks into the review mirror briefly before he starts driving.

"Looogann" Y/n sang. The older man chuckles. It's starting. "loooogannn" the younger man laughs and walks towards the front of the limo. "Why aren't you responding Logan?" He giggles as he pokes his head through the small window separating them. Logan looks at him briefly and shakes his head. "Get back into your seat Damien." The younger man huffs but does as he's told anyway.

He goes back to the back of the car and flops down. He huffs and looks out of the window. "Play some music please."

The older man nods and turns on the radio. Y/n keeps staring out the window. Even when the car is on a red light.

Logan looks through the review mirror and watches how the younger man is doing. He doesn't want to clean up vomit from the carpet of his limo. He paused once he saw the bulge in Y/n's pants. Yes, whenever y/n is drunk and Logan is picking him up, he gets flirty, but he's never gotten a boner. And yes, he did have some people flash him here and there, but he doesn't mind.

But the fact that it's y/n that's building through his pants is... Exciting him. So when the light turns red he starts driving again. But he turns a different way.

"Hey slow down handsome, you missed our turn." Y/n said. "There was an accident on that road we gotta go around." Logan lied. The younger man shrugs and sits back. He's known Logan long enough to trust him. He knows he's lying of course. But he also knows that Logan lies when there's something for him.

Maybe he's noticed the boner in his pants. Y/n thinks to himself as he looks at the said boner. He gets an idea. The younger man looks up and keeps his eyes on Logan. He slowly starts to palm himself through his pants. He doesn't bother with hiding his moans. It's what he wants.

He wants Logan to hear him. To see him. Watch him.

So he reaches his hand into his underwear. That gets him to moan loudly and throw his head back. He's been so pent up all night that his body responds to everything. That moan catches the older man's attention. Logan looks into the mirror and practically freezes. Thankfully, they're on a red light, so there's nothing to worry about.

Y/n is sitting with his pants undone, legs spread as far as possible, head back, mouth open, and his hand steadily stroking.

A car honking from behind them snaps Logan out of his thoughts and focuses on the road again.

Y/n smirks. He pulls himself out of his pants and strokes faster. "Oh, Logan." He moans louder than before on purpose. He watches through the small mirror for any sign of the older man's reaction.

He can't see anything. But Logan is biting his lip until it bleeds and heals, and repeats. His pants are also getting tighter. Y/n lets out a huff and throws his head back. He keeps moving his hand in ways that make his mind spin.

Logan keeps glancing into the review mirror to watch the younger man practically melt into the leather seat. The longer he watches the tighter his pants get. He huffs and shifts in his seat. Logan tries his best to focus on the road but the moans from the back of the car keep distracting him.

The fact that the younger man keeps moaning the older man's name doesn't help.

"Ah fuck Logan!" Y/n cries out as his body shakes with orgasm. Logan's had enough. He makes a sharp turn towards an old parking lot which causes Y/n to fall to his side onto the seats.

"What was that about?" The younger man asks once the car is parked. But Logan doesn't respond because he's already out of the car, walking towards the back.

The younger man just watches in confusion. But the moment the door opens and there stands the older man with a very clear boner makes y/n's eyes widen.

Logan climbs in and shuts the door. He starts to undress. "Get on the floor." He ordered. The younger man visibly shivered and laid down. The older man scoffed and kicked off his pants. "So willing. How pathetic." He nutters. Y/n shiveres.

"Is this what you want? Hm? An old man to be your sugar baby? An old man that will use you for money and sex?" Y/n only moans in response.

"Well, technically, I'd be the one using you for sex -" "I don't care." The older man huffed at the sudden correction. The smaller man immediately closed his mouth and nodded.

Logan finally removes his boxers. Y/n's eyes widen at the big size that the older man has the burden to carry around. It's a shame that it's completely useless. Logan straddles the younger man and wastes no time to sink down onto the smaller dick. Y/n, in his drunken state, doesn't think about prep. All he can think about is tight, tight, tight. "Oh fuck" he throws his head back and lets his jaw drop into a silent scream.

Logan groans and rats his hands on y/n's chest for leverage. He starts to bounce. The car bounces and their moans are heard through the whole parking lot.

"Fuck, look at you. So wrecked by an old man riding you. Are you that desperate for me? All these months? Is this what you wanted?" Logan practically growled when the smaller man's nails dug into the flesh of his thighs. He sped up his bouncing. The car started creaking against the weight of Logan's constant movement.

Y/n whimpered as his hips started to go sore. Logan doesn't look it but he's heavy. Y/n doesn't know that the older man, who's riding him like a cowboy chased by a sheriff, is a mutant. So he has no explanation about his weight. But he's not complaining. He loves that he'll feel him tomorrow and maybe the whole week.

"You look so blissful. You haven't even cummed yet." The older man groans and shifts to different angles until he finds the right spot. Y/n only gives a sheepish and tired smile. Logan scoffs and leans back. Resting his hands by the smaller man's legs. He moans loudly once he finally hits that spot he was searching for.

He bounces harder. His cock slaps against his belly. Y/n watches the way it bounces. Logan is definitely the one with the big prize here but the fact that he's still the one who has his ass stuffed with a dick is so arousing for the smaller man.

"Logan, I'm close," y/n whines and arches his back. Logan groans and throws his head back. "Fuck y/n."

The younger man sits up and runs his hands over the older man's bare and arched body. He kisses every spot he can and marks it. But because of his drunken state, he doesn't notice how they heal almost instantly. The older man shivers. "Cum with me." He groans and uses one hand to grip onto y/n's shirt. Y/n whines and nods with desperation.

Logan lets out a couple of low grunts before he cums all over y/n's shirt and his belly. Y/n follows shortly after and spills into the other man. He holds his hips bruising tight to keep him in place. Their bodies shake from the intense orgasm. Y/n peppers the older man's chest as he pulls him to lie down. Logan hummed. Suddenly, a cold breeze flew through the car from the front window that had been left slightly open.

Logan shivers, considering he's the only one fully undressed. He doesn't know where his clothes are because he threw them around and is too lazy to search. Y/n notices the shiver and sits up. He removes his jacket and covers Logan with it. The older man smiles at the gesture. "Always a gentleman huh?"

The smaller man smiled as he laid back and pulled Logan close for warmth and urge to cuddle. One the older man got snuggled into the jacket he runs his fingers through the younger man's hair. They lay like that, with their eyes closed and soft smiles on their faces, for a while.

"I guess I could get used to having a sugar daddy." Logan hummed. Y/n snorts and buries his face in the chest of salt and pepper hair. Logan in return buried his face in the smaller man's hair and held him close. He threw one leg over his hip to be as close as possible.

"I think we should be more than a sugar relationship." Y/n murmures. "But I will still give you money when you need it." The older man chuckles at that.

"Alright rich Maggie. You won me over." "Finally." Logan laughs at the smaller man's instant reply. The younger man smiles and leans in for a kiss. The kiss is soft. Logan isn't used to soft kisses but fuck did it melt his heart.

"I should go and close the window. You'll freeze to death." Y/n sits up but he's pulled right back. "You're not leaving."

The younger man laughs and kisses the older man's shoulder a couple of times. "Logan the night is gonna be cold plus it'll be raining."

"....Fine." Logan lets go of the smaller man who heads towards the front. He closes the window and locks the door. He puts the heater on so they can get at least a little warmer before going to sleep.

Logan pulls him right back the moment the smaller man sits down. Y/n chuckles and lifts Logan's thigh over his hip again so they can be in their previous position. "Didn't think you were this cuddly."

"People never do. They always say that a mutant like me is not a good man, a cuddler at that." Logan said before thinking. His secret is out. Y/n now knows he's a mutant.

"A what?!"

[arc-misadventures]

Friends AU: Still want to know how the other specialists react to pictures of Jaune's nephew, and whether or not Winter is now planning on calling Saphron for Jaune's baby pictures

Sorry, I would have answered these sooner, just couldn't make it work. Until now!

///

I Regret That Now

Marrow: Oh gods... it's in my tail?!

Jaune: I thought, Grimm didn't have guts!?

Vine: They don't.

Harriet: Then why the hell am I covered in Grimm guts?!

Winter: Because, you destroyed, Vilbiofactor's creep sack, after you threw a gernade down it's throat, and it exploded. It's filled with biowaste that the, Grimm produces. It fires these as a bioweapon, granted when it get's vomited it is there where it is actually dangerous, so you should be happy you didn't get covered in that.

Harriet: Oooo, listen to misses fancy pants rich Mcgee over here! Fuck you!

Winter: E-Excuse me?!

Jaune: Please forgive her; She's just upset that we're covered in, Grimm guts, and you're not.

Winter: Very well, I'll let it slide...

Jaune: Now then, everyone hit the showers!

~~~

Jaune: Bleh... I swear I got some of that in my mouth... tasted like black licorice.

Marrow: Oww... my tail hurts from all the scrubbing... can you top off my aura, Jaune?

Jaune: Yeah sure.

Marrow: Ahh, hahaha! That's the stuff.

Jaune: Oi! What did I say about weird noises when I top off your aura?!

Marrow: Nothing sexual?

Jaune: No! Don't say anything at all!

Marrow: Sorry...

Jaune: Haa whatever... I gotta grab my spare officers uniform now... I need to send all of my stuff to the cleaners. As well as my armour at that! That blasted, Grimm gunk has caked itself onto my armour!

Clover: Hey, relax, Jaune it won't take that long to get rid of it.

Jaune: Oh, stuff it, Lucky Charms!

Clover: What did I do?

Vine: I think he's angry that you didn't get covered in, Grimm guts, even though you were in the blast zone.

Jaune: Very much so.

Clover: Hey?!

Harriet: Ahh~! That's better... you guys doing better?

Jaune: No, only if I can shove, Clover into a mud pit!

Clover: Hey?!

Elm: Good luck with tha...? Hey, Jaune, what are those photos in your locker?

Jaune: These? Oh. they're just photos of my family.

Winter: You put family photos in your locker?

Jaune: Yeah, is there a problem with that?

Vine: Of course it's fine, it's just... There is ten people in that photo alone.

Jaune: Oh yeah, that's my mom, and dad, and my seven sisters.

Elm: Seven sisters?!

Jaune: Yeah, my sisters, and I like to think my parents were really trying for a boy. But, we all know that they just have high libidos... very high libidos... and, loud...

Clover: Ouch.

Harriet: Uhh... Jaune, who's that pair with the kid?

Jaune: Hmm? Oh, that's a photo of my sister, Saphron, and her wife, Terra, and my nephew, Adrian.

Harriet: Nephew...?

Winter: You're... you're an uncle, Jaune...?

Jaune: Yeah.

Harriet: Oh he look adorable!

Winter: He'll be a heartbreaker when he grows up!

Jaune: Uhh, yeah...?

Marrow: You two interested in babies?

Winter: Well...

Harriet: I wouldn't put it like that.

Vine: What, Marrow meant is, are you interested in starting a family one day?

Elm: Oh, you made it sound like you meant something else entirely, Marrow.

Marrow: My bad, I've just seen a lot of woman act weird around babies. Baby fever, and all of that stuff. But, my question still stands, are you two interested in retiring from the, Specialists, and starting a faily?

Winter: Well... I admit... I am interested in having a family some day. With a loving husband, and a few kids running around. But, only with someone special~!

Jaune: Uhh...?

Elm: What about you, Harriet?

Harriet: Oh, I'm in the same boat as, Winter. I hope to have a family one day too, with... with a special someone~!

Clover: Uh oh...

Vine: What about you, Elm?

Elm: Only if they're okay with adoption.

Jaune: Are you okay explaining that?

Harriet: Why are you asking if she's, 'okay' saying she wants to adopt?

Elm: Because, Jaune has a highly analytical mind, and from that one word he figured out that I'm infertile.

Jaune: Damn, I was hopping my guess was wrong...

Harriet: Wait, what?!

Vine: Is that true, Elm?

Elm: Yeah. I was basically born infertile, nothing major, that's just how it is sometimes.

Jaune: I'm sorry to hear that, Elm. I hope I didn't make you upset asking you that.

Elm: It's alright. Like I said, maybe I'll adopt some kid someday. But, at the very least, I can be the cool aunt when you two have kids!

Winter: Well, I'd hold my breath if I was you, I don't know when that will happen. Hopefully, soon though~!

Jaune: Uh oh...

Harriet: Same, but who knows... maybe I'll get 'lucky' some day~!

Clover: Oh shit...

Harriet: Well, I've got to get going, I've got some paperwork I need to catch up on. I'll see you guys later.

Marrow: Yeah, I've got some paperwork to catch up on too.

Winter: Good luck you two. I need to go to the training grounds to check up on some equipment. If you have time to spare, can you help me with them, Elm?

Elm: Sure, lead the way, Winter.

Vine: Well, I'm going to go rest, I am tired from that mission. I'll see you later everyone.

Winter: Goodbye.

Elm: See ya!

Vine: Good luck.

Harriet: Have fun.

Marrow: See you tomorrow!

And, with that; Everyone soon left, leaving the leader, and the rookie of the, Specialists all alone.

Jaune: ...

Clover: ...

Clover: Whelp... we're boned.

Jaune: Pretty much...

Clover: What should we do now?

Jaune: Hmmm...

Jaune: Squeaky Cog?

Clover: Oh gods yes! I really need a drink after hearing what, Harriet hinted at.

Jaune: Same. The way, Winter looked at me... (Shudder!)

Clover: I'm so glad you told me to buy those condoms... Otherwise...

Jaune: Otherwise, I'd be holding you at gun point threatening to fill you full of lead if you didn't marry her. That's if, Winter, or gods forbid, Elm didn't get to you first...

Clover: ...

Clover: N-N-Noted...

Jaune: Good. Now come on, drinks are on me. And, we're going to need it...

Clover: Yeah... We're going to need it...

[sleepyangelkami]

I'm posting this from my phone so please bare with me guys.

"ew, you write y/n as a baby."

okay, so. I understand that the way I write might not float everyone's boat which is so okay !! But yk what you could do...? Scroll !! There's no need to hate. I really apologize if the way I've written my readers in x reader fics is harmful in any way. However, I'm not going to stop making the character they're with baby them and look after them. The beauty in all of this is that none of it is real. Life can be hard and life can be way toooo much and at the end of the day you might js wanna read ab getting babied. People baby their partners all the time whether you're male female any other gender none of this matters. I write female y/n and if you have a problem with the characters babying her but at the same time you're posting matt sturniolo (I apologize if I spelled that wrong) and saying omg cutie baby 🥺🥺 it's the same thing !!! It's so normal and people are making it weird. If you want to read badass!y/n then write badass!y/n. People get so hung up on writing shy readers and saying it's weird. It's how a lot of people feel and I'm personally really shy irl which is why everything on my account is fake !! Kami isn't even my real name ! You guys need to stop spreading hate towards people and if you don't like their work whether it's cringe or even a little weird then please just scroll

"ew innocence kinks are for p*edos."

Oh my. More often than not innocence kinks are usually submissive people loving the chase and getting dominant people to spell it all out for them. Not only that but sometimes people suffer from childhood trauma (me !!) and they read things that make them get to relive the part where their 'innocence' was 'taken' from them in a gentle way and not by abuse of power. Also, some people just have innocence kinks !! And that's okay as long as you're two consenting adults. When did everyone get so judgemental !! I've seen stepcest, ACTUAL incest and more prominently pain kinks and knives kinks guys innocence kinks really are not the worst problems out there ! I understand that some people take them too far which is not okay and under no circumstances would I ever support someone taking advantage of someone else who doesn't fully comprehend what's going on. But yk what this is?? Mere fantasies. They don't exist, it's just what people like to read so please leave us alone 🩷

And finally, "why is y/n such a pushover omg?"

Wanna start off by saying I don't condone cheating ever !! And I would never write a fic where the reader gets back with the character after they cheat. With that being said, the only fics I have ever seen of that (very VERY few) they have put trigger warnings at the beginning to let you know what you're reading. And for the people who say that the reader shouldn't go back because their partner yelled at them... Guys PLEASE !! I understand that yelling isn't something that should be excused, you should never put your partner in a position where they are scared or feel uncomfortable. However, I also know for a fact that everyone reading this has at one point in their lives yelled at someone. Being loved isn't about loving someone with happy rainbows there's gonna be bad days which I find realistic enough. Partners argue, sometimes relationships even take breaks and people get petty and people yell but you know why?? Cause we're human !!! It's in our nature if we're angry or annoyed or whatever it may be. Of course this behavior shouldn't be excused if it's constantly on show. Although denying the fact that you'd ever get back with someone after they yelled at you during an argument is a little bit childish. I don't mean hate to anybody whatsoever I'm just saying that you're dating a human (hopefully) not an alien (you'd be surprised on Tumblr I actually can't rule that one out) they have emotions and while sometimes they can be misplaced... It doesn't mean they're a bad person for it.

This isn't meant to harm or send hate to anyone !! I've just seen so much hatred spread across Tumblr and it's really upsetting. People should learn to support one another and if you don't like the content, scroll ! Once again this is hate to nobody enjoy ur day/morning/evening/night lovelies !!! 🩷🩷

(sorry for the ramble angels)

[melancholicstation]

FRAT!JACK SCHLOSSBERG SFW AND NSFW HEADCANONS

imagining COLLEGE SWEETHEART!READER who loves the outdoors, is the best in her harvard polo team, is a criterion channel SNOB, spencer hasting's archetype, vacations in miami, aspen, ibiza and saint tropez, is the president of many student clubs, buys hermēs blankets for the dogs kennel blanket and keeps an elegant stack of erotic, cheesy novellas under her .

tags: @obsessedwithjohnjr @candyneckl6ce @rocker-chick-7 @ultr4v1ol3nt @violetharmonsfavgf @strip-weather-forecast @darcyspirits @fortheloveofjos @h-l-v-kennedy-blog @h-l-vlovesvintage @bluelancergirl @snowsgames @salvatoresablondie @dulcegal @kennedyism @bloxholden35 @kimcrystal123 @absurdlyvintage @jackiesgirl @chemicalw0rld @remotewatch @starsprangledgirl

fyi: I have not edited this nor looked over it too closely so if there's spelling/grammar mistakes je m'excuse please!!

you cross each other's paths at institut le rosey in year 13 because you guys are unfortunately wealthy teenagers of highly successful family dynasties so it'd be sacrilegious to go anywhere else... where else would they go to get their educational chops that they can brag about at dinner parties?

super rich kids by frank ocean is both of your respective spotify wrapped no.1 song

you guys don't formally meet until harvard law school

always immediately goes to you for any fraternity parties where they need to be all gussied up for it and whines until you do his makeup... and of course he wants you to use your expensive chanel, byredo, chantecaille make up

jack uses your own la perla thongs as bookmarks to keep track of a certain page in a law textbook when studying at your place cause he left all his stationary at home

when you both found each other you guys were both in your slut era and weren't looking for anything serious

tries to make you beef tartar in the confines of your tiny dorm like this one chick on tiktok does in her bed

after a couple days of not seeing each other jack comes back with little gifts and trinkets cause he has the instinct to gather in his bones, baby!

you both eat like a 17th century king despite being college students

classes were cancelled for a day due to a particularly aggressive blizzard that sought to reek havoc on anyone in its path--or in this instance trying to get to their econ major on time for once so you two are held up in your dorm end up watching 'secretary' (2002), one thing leads to another and you and jack's have ended up recreating this scene except jack is lee... and the saddle is an old hermēs vivace jumping saddle that you got for an early christmas present one year back (something like this) and the carrot is slightly dirty cause its been in your farmers market tote since your last run to whole foods... but you both enjoy it all the same cause you guys are F.R.E.A.K.I.S.H.

he has a very intense samurai sword obsession to the point where his dorm closet holds all the medals he won for the best sword in local competitions... and gets extremely territorial if you want a drawer in his closet cause where are the synthetic fabric medals supposed to go??

always buys you lingerie whenever ssense has a sale

you both buy each other maison margiela shoes for a joint graduation present from law school

you both always have a ritual of buying mint and lavender lemonade at different harvard athletic games

you guys broke up briefly during mid term hell-week and you genuinely observed him re-connecting with nature in the harvard yard to ease his anguish

you guys practice parenthood by adopting a few sylvanian families and putting them in a house

your matching boat n' totes (top: yours bottom: jack)

on holiday break from college you guys go on so many sketchy facebook marketplace hunts to the point where jack films with his phone just for evidence purposes

your dream that makes you crash out over imessage to jack:

NSFW UNDER THIS CUT 🧵✂️

he definitely wears a hat while you guys are fucking making beautiful sensual love

foreplay is stimulating conversations with jack

as foreplay you make jack recreate that one cmbyn timothee chalamet scene with the peach

eroticising studying and giving each other orgasms when you've memorised a topic correctly

two beers at a beer garden and you guys are in each others pants immediately. stat!

they are delicately perverted

he loves giving you some clavicle kisses... like that is his shit!

jack loves to be lightly tapped with the hermēs crop but he'd never admit it what?? who said that??

[unforth]

I keep seeing posts comparing this to 2004 or other past election losses and how this feels the same or similar to those past times.

As another Old who voted in 2004 (and I missed voting in 2000 by a month and was furious about it) I really can't even put into words how vehemently I disagree.

In 2008, I remember very earnestly sitting down with some friends and saying that if somehow McCain beat Obama, I'd have to join the fucking revolution, because I couldn't believe that this country would elect a Republican AGAIN after the previous 8 years of bullshit. I look back now and think how incredibly naive I was, but I also look back now and think, damn, why aren't I 25 NOW? I can't join the revolution now, I'm 41 and I own a house and have two young children and one old parent depending on me.

Because honestly, truly, as someone who has been studying American history since I was 7, as a Civil War buff with expertise on the years before the Civil War, as someone who has at least some memories of every election since 1988... guys, this isn't the same as 2004. I was furious then. Swift Boat bullshit I swear to fucking dog. And I was and still am fairly convinced that the 2000 election was deliberately stolen. But also I still had every reason then to believe in the rule of law.

In 2004, I still believed term limits would be respected.

In 2004, I still believed a person who wasn't elected would demure gracefully to the winner.

In 2004, I still trusted the courts.

In 2004, I still believed that we'd made progress on bigotry.

I could go on, and to be clear, my point isn't "I thought these institutions were ~good~" in literally any objective sense. Y'all are cynical but my generation was raised by, surrounded by, Vietnam vets and trust me, there was no way to be a kid, seeing what the 70s did to this country, and not come out as cynical and furious as the best of um. (My grandfather was a World War 2 vet, as were his close friends. My father and both his brothers are Vietnam vets, tho my dad didn't go overseas.) But I did believe that even corrupt institutions, even broken racist systems, even fucking Republicans, would follow basic norms of democracy. They said they believed in the constitution and I believed them. I believed that, like Nixon, truly getting caught doing something insane would at least force a mea culpa and turn public opinion. I believed...

Well, I guess it doesn't matter.

Because I no longer believe any of that.

I have watched the guard rails disappear over my lifetime. I have watched the party who once spent 2 years pursuing a guy over a BJ in the oval office elect a convicted rapist. I have watched and at times I've participated and I've voted and I've organized and I've protested and I've read the news more days than not and I've lived and I've grown and I've learned.

I have been an adult, legally, for almost 24 years now.

Guys... there are no norms remaining on the far right. The guard rails are gone. The Fascists control the White House, the senate, the Supreme Court, and things aren't looking promising for the House.

The bus has no brakes anymore. They think they have a mandate - and I can't blame them, as horrifying as this mandate is, because if things had gone the other way and Harris had gotten these results I'd also think it was a mandate.

Please sit with what this means: Trump and the Republican party said, "hand us the reins and we'll make everyone you hate hurt," and more than half the people who bothered to vote said "sure buddy, here goes." We don't have a usurper this time. This is the country that the majority of Americans said they wanted. Whether they come to regret that or not, they saw open Fascism and went "oh yes, count me in." And it wasn't because of the electoral college this time. It was because this country is so bigoted and misogynistic that they'd rather have this than a woman of color in the office.

I'm sick of "well she didn't run a good campaign." (Lie.) I'm sick of, "well we didn't get a primary." (Who cares?) I'm *extremely* sick of "well, Palestine." (Yes! Democrats actions have made the suffering there so much worse! It fucking sucks! You know what's about to suck so much worse?)

15 million people who showed up for Joe Biden couldn't be fussed to place a vote for Kamala Harris. Whatever their reason for not voting, we all knew the outcome if she lost. And seeing open fascism didn't fire them up enough to make the effort, and that's fucking pathetic. The consequences of the worst happening mattered so little to them that they couldn't be fucking bothered to make the minimum effort to stop it, and now millions of people will suffer as a result.

Because here we are: the huge swathe of the country who wanted a strongman now have one.

Look, I don't know what happens next. But I do know, and remember keenly: after 2016, Trump did, or at least tried to do, most of the things he said he'd do. When he was stopped, it was often because of career government employees: judges, bureaucrats, etc. And this time, he's said he's going to purge those people. I don't know if he'll succeed, but I certainly believe he'll try.

This is not 2004 again.

This is 2024. The Republicans have ripped the mask to shreds, shredded apart the book of political norms, and empowered hate, and they've been handed a governmental mandate for stamped "have at with our blessing!" in exchange.

And now they'll use that mandate to make everyone they hate suffer: people of color, queer people, trans people, immigrants, non-Christians.

Don't assume the worst can't happen. I am a Jew, and I have a photo album full of black and white photos of dead people that constantly reminds me: the worst has happened and it can happen again.

Do not despair. Despair is enervating. Be furious. As we should be. These douche bags are repulsive. Be prepared to fight. Be prepared to flee. Be prepared to defend. Don't assume you simply can't do something. There's always something to do, and even the smallest act of defiance can help. There's never any knowing until after which acts of resistance will end up galvanizing the good and just out of their apathy. But that apathy is the enemy.

Because none of this is normal. None of this is "just like when..." Please stop saying it is.

And before anyone screams "privilege" at me, yes, I am in many ways. I'm white. I have access to some generational money even tho my own family lives paycheck to paycheck - we won't be rich but have enough of a support network to be comfortable. I live in a blue area of a blue state. But I'm also a woman (legally speaking, at least) married to another woman - since before Oberkfell, and yes I remember exactly what steps we had planned any time we wanted to leave our state. My wife has physical disabilities. We have two children. Both are biracial (half black). One is trans. We are caring for an elderly parent. I am Jewish and as my kids' birth parent, so are they. I own a publishing company that publishes the exact kinds of queer and kinky lit these people intend to ban. We tick so many boxes of what these people hate.

I know ya'll are scared. Trust me, I'm terrified. But fear is paralyzing. And that won't help. Whatever happens, don't lie down and take this shit.

When Gore lost I was one month shy of my 18th birthday and already in college. I have been fighting my entire adult life, and I'm exhausted. I'm much less able to fight now, much more tied down with responsibilities. But the fight isn't over. I'm checking our passports. I'm packing a go bag. I've convinced one vulnerable friend to move here and I have another who wants to and we're figuring out how to make that happen. I'm protecting who I can, starting with putting on my mask first. I don't know what will happen but if in the end all I can do is uproot my entire life to protect my children then I am preparing to do so. I can at least save them if no one else.

None of this is normal.

And I'm not sure, after Trump's in office, that anything will ever be normal again in the US. At least not the old normal. And there are ways that's a good thing, so many ways that the old normal sucked for so many people, and I'm optimistic that there's a bright future ahead, but man it looks far away right now. I don't want to go back to the old normal, and I want to be part of establishing a kinder, more just, more equal new normal, but we're a long way from there.

Whatever happens, we must endure. We must survive. We must support each other. We must find our allies and be prepared to compromise with them. Don't try to save everyone. You'll fail. Help even one person and you can change the world. Everyone things they can't do everything and so do nothing. That's insane. Do a single thing and it will be better than nothing. One phone call. One letter. One act of defiance. Very few people get the opportunity to grand gestures that matter, and the rest of us will die waiting for that moment. But the secret is that what makes those moments - the time when one person is in the right place at the right time for their action to matter - is built on millions of small moments by millions of people doing what little they can to make things slightly better. Think of every iconic photograph of a Sole Resistor you know of and think about every single tiny thing that had to happen for that moment to occur. Most of us will never me that one person, but that one person is a myth anyway. Countless tiny unseen moments create those myths. Doing literally anything is better than doing nothing.

And tooth and nail, quietly and loudly, in our homes and our towns and cities, during protests or when they come for our neighbors, we must fight.

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

Angel Dust: "How come Niffty put ME in the angel kill on sight group and not YOU, toots?!"

Vaggie: "No idea. Maybe she just likes me better?"

Niffty: "STAB STAB STAB!"

Vaggie: "Or uh, likes you better. So much she want's to stab you."

Niffty: "STABSTABSTABSTABSTAB-"

Angel Dust: "Niff- DOWN! Sheesh! Go look to ya right- go get Vag-gay over there!"

Niffty: (giggling) "ANGEL STAB! ANGEL STAB!!!"

Angel Dust: "GEEZE! Like sure my name's Angel an' whatever, but I ain't an angel?? I don't even got the wings for it! YOU look jus' like an extra bitch with your wings and eye so what the fuck! What gives!!"

Vaggie: "Wow... That's, actually a good question, Angel Dust."

Angel Dust: "YEAH WELL WHAT'S THE ANSWER MY GRIP ON THE RAILIN'S SLIPPING!!!"

Vaggie: "Hey Niffty? Why are you hunting him and not me?"

Niffty: "Charlie told me not to~"

Vaggie: "She told you not to... what?"

Niffty: "Hunt you like an ANGEL! Because of the TRAUMA, right??"

Vaggie: "Uhh, the-"

Niffty: "You're already SUFFERING and if I stabbed YOU for being an angel you'd just feel lame and sad and boooo like you deserved it even though you don't. BLEGH!" (pouts) (sticks out tongue) "Boooooring!"

Vaggie: "Yeah?" (smiling) "Charlie said that, huh."

Niffty: "She's so nice~ She didn't want me to waste my time~"

Vaggie: "Yeah. She. She really is the nicest person ever."

Niffty: (SIGH) "I guess you two match. You're not a very good BAD GIRL are you? Even with having been an exorcist! What a WASTE!"

Charlie: (hugging gf from behind) "I know right? I love hugging her around the middle! She has a very lovely everything!"

Niffty: "NO!!!! NOT WHAT I MEANT!"

Vaggie: "Waste as in wasted bad girl potential, babe, not hug zones."

Charlie: "Oh!"

Niffty: "A tragedy." (heaves sigh) "Oh well..."

Niffty: (turns) (lifts knife) (Grins) "Ohhhh Angellll Dusssst~"

Angel Dust: (SCREAMING)

Vaggie: (softly) "Charlie..?"

Charlie: "I don't think she can really reach him up there... Hm?"

Vaggie: "Thanks. The... the angel thing..."

Charlie: "Shhh." (squeezes) "You are NOT the stabable kind of angel. Even Niffty gets that. See?"

Chaggie: (watches a gleeful knife waving niffty bouncing around under a terrified and dangling angel dust)

Charlie: ".... um."

Vaggie: "Damn she's catching air."

Charlie: "And Angel Dust's grip is a bit less than I thought it'd be. Do you think you should maaaaybe use your pretty angel wings to save him?"

Vaggie: "Fuck no. Let Husk do it."

Charlie: "Husk??? Why would Husk be the one to-"

Vaggie: (pats charlie's hand) "You've got your ships babe and I've got mine."

Charlie: "Oh please- I kow you think Pentious being sweet on Cherri is cute too! I've HEARD you give him tips!"

Vaggie: "Those? Just survival tactics."

Charlie: "More like how to survive liking a girl tactics."

Vaggie: "Well I guess me and you are in the same boat there anyway... Aren't we?"

Charlie: "A ship not a boat and always, Vaggie. Always."

Angel Dust: "WILL YA SAPPHICS STOP CUDDLIN' AND WHISPERIN' SWEET NOTHIN'S AND HELP ME!?"

Niffty: "ARE YOU AN ANGEL CAKE??? ARE YOU DONE? LET ME STAB YOU AND FIND OUT!!!"

Vaggie: "...."

Charlie: "So where's his Husk in shining armor?"

Vaggie: "Sloshed armor. I never said it was a good otp, sweetie."

Charlie: "I'll check the bar. You?"

Vaggie: "Will make sure Angel Dust doesn't end the night with more holes than he started with."

Charlie: "I'm gonna miss hugging you the entire time I'm gone~"

Vaggie: "Me too. Hurry or I'll leave our porn star to his fate."

Angel Dust: "OH FOR FUCKS SAKE LET GO ALREADY!"

Niffty: "You FIRST!!! MUWAHAHAH!"

Charlie: (slowly letting go) "The things we do for our friends..."

Vaggie: "Hey, look on the bright side. We can have another heartfelt make out session once we're meet back up again."

Charlie: "-HUUUUSSSK WHERE ARE YOU? FUCKING WAKE UP! THERE ARE ROMANTIC EVENT FLAGS GOING OFF ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE AND I WANNA KISS MY GIRLFRIEND! HuUUUSK!!!!!!!!"

[historicity-was-already-taken]

What I'm actually furious about, isn't just the anti-Semitism I've dealt with here.

What I'm furious at is the Israeli government and military. I am furious that they have the nerve to perpetrate war crimes while appropriating the memory of the 6 million. It makes me sick. It feels me with rage. It fills me with feelings of betrayal (those are complex and require deconstruction, discussed briefly below). How dare they massacre children, civilians, and fucking hospital patients; and how dare they do so while using the 6 million as a rhetorical shield?

The edgelord who left me a snide remark comparing the situation in Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto wasn't the first person to make that comparison to me. It was actually the Palestinian woman who translated two major sources from Hebrew into English for me.

She was translating a biography of Tossia Altman when her three nephews and sister-in-law were murdered during the IDF action in Gaza. I asked her if she wanted to stop working on the project (with no impact on her fee for the project, of course; that's where about $4000 of the money y'all helped me raise went, fyi). The brand of Zionism practiced by Tossia and her comrades is very very different from the version embodied in Netanyahu, and it was those schools of Zionism which mostly died in the Holocaust (I said), but I would completely understand if the material was too triggering for her.

She said "I’m not sure about this triggering me, I think holocaust survivors and Gazans are on the same boat to tell you the truth. It could be an opportunity for me to actually fathom the full picture, in a way." And I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

I'm not going to post the rest of our conversation here, for what I hope are obvious reasons. And for concerned parties, this woman has been living away from Gaza for a very long time.

But this is why I'm so angry and emotional.

And I'm over here having these, frankly, very painful, personal feelings (if my posts over the last 4 months haven't made it clear, I spent my teen years in an extremely manipulative right wing Israel "education" program, and was raised surrounded by first and secondhand Holocaust trauma which inevitably impacted how my elders educated me about The Conflict none of which I was fully able to deconstruct until I became a Holocaust Historian in grad school). Especially with my knowledge of how SHITTILY Holocaust survivors were treated when they got to Palestine in the mid-1940s; of how fucking disgracefully Yad Vashem treated Rachel Auerbach and Yitzhak Zuckerman. Of the way the Jewish fighters actually died in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. I became a Holocaust historian because I am the great/granddaughter of survivors and I do this work because it's a fucking calling, not something that brings me joy. And the goddamn Israeli government, the government of a nation which likes to say it exists for all Jews (when it barely even represents the Jews who live there but that's a different conversation); the way that government manipulates and misuses that history to excuse their actions in Gaza make me fucking sick. And, as demonstrated by some of you actual fucking pieces of shit, puts Diasporic Jews in danger. (side thought: Does Netanyahu WANT to put Diasporic Jews in danger?? He knows how this fucking shit works, and I wouldn't be surprised if he WANTED Jews to feel deeply unsafe and respond to that by fleeing to Israel).

And WHILE I'm experiencing all of this and trying to keep it all together while writing the what may be the most important thing I've ever written in my career, you fucking [word I don't use out loud or in writing] come in here and to throw your anti-Semitic bullshit at me when I ask you to please not spew it at me via my (year old) fucking Holocaust Remembrance Day posts, and when I ask you to be fucking mindful of it in your political speech.

So let me make it fucking clear, as far as I am concerned there are 4 separate conversations at play rn.

1) October 7 was horrific, genocidal, and traumatizing for Jews on a global basis.

2) Israel is committing heinous war crimes in Gaza right now which, if its own military's statements are anything to go by, are actively genocidal.

3) You shouldn’t harass random Jewish people because you’re disgusted with Israeli governmental and military decisions and actions.

4) The Israeli government’s appropriation of Holocaust memory within its larger state building project doesn’t give you [collective: non-Jews] the right to abuse Jews for discussing and generally having feelings about the Holocaust.

And FRANKLY I think all those conversations are accurate and valid. I also don't think I'm obligated to tear my heart open give you all my intimate feelings because a bunch of pieces of shit on this site can't grasp points 3 and 4.

So fuck that right wing program I belonged to as a teen, fuck you fucking left wing anti-Semites who can's grasp that you're touting the ideologies of people who would have wanted you dead, and fuck the Israeli government for committing war crimes. fuck them for their ongoing abuse of palestinian civil and human rights, and fuck them for invoking the memory of the 6million while doing it.

I've fucking had it with that fucking State, I've had it with you goddamn Jew-haters, and I've had it with the Jewish ppl who might want to destroy my career upon seeing this post.

I am mad as HELL.

I'm not even saying my mental health break is over. I've just had a moment of clarity, my period is over, and I'm pissed as hell. i'm tired of policing myself to make the gentiles who hate me comfortable; and I'm tired of policing myself to make my coreligionists who'd destroy me for having these thoughts comfortable. and there are 122,000 if you, so i don't care if you're so fucking fragile that this post makes you hit the unfollow button.

tl;dr:

[yoursweetheartsrevenge]

Well Bred

Summary: The daughter of an affluent horse breeder, Charla “Charlie” Denvers, approaches the Romani’s own resident horse expert looking to make a match between their fine breeding stock. However when strong personalities collide will the match simply remain between the stud and mare or bleed into their owners’ passions?  

Warnings: sexual tension, flirting, classism (Charlie's dad does not care nor understand the plights of the common people), MINORS DNI, 18+ 

Word Count: 1.8K

Author’s Note: For @blind-dates-fest. Starting off by saying I know absolutely nothing about horse breeding. The knowledge in this story was gained through research and not personal experience. Shout to my cousin who does have horse experience and assisted me in this story. If anything is incorrect within this story I apologize. Sometimes you just have an idea that involves a subject you don't know about then you spend several hours watching horses trout. Abraham is from one single episode of Grantchester so stretching out his personality was a bit fun.

Standing in front of her was a beautiful horse, a grey lipizzan with a soft freshly groomed mane. 

Charlie had never been more put off in her whole life. 

Her horse.

Her stud. 

She should have a say in who he was to breed with. 

The woman, as she had so often told her father she was now, had raised the sweet stallion since he was fresh out of his mother’s womb. Charlie had even helped pull away the afterbirth herself. He was her forever companion, a responsibility she took seriously despite what her parents thought would happen. 

Everyone always thought of Charla Denvers as another spoiled rich girl. 

She got everything she wanted being an only child of the most well off family in the area. All the dresses and pretty things were hers for the taking. Anything she demanded as a child was always within reach. Nothing had ever been off limits for Charla. 

Except this. 

The only thing she had ever wanted she could not even have. 

The horse seemed to sense her tension rocking his head up and down. Charlie placed her hand gently on his nose. 

“Shh, love. It’s alright.” It wasn’t. She could feel him snort at her lie, hot air teasing her palm. 

She reached with her other hand into her side bag for a treat for her pal. Charlie wasn’t sure what angry munching looked like, but Hades was certainly exhibiting such behavior. 

“Easy, boy. Let’s not lose our temper before we even meet the mare.” His lips quivered at her words chewing and sucking on the sugar cube. 

Charla stepped away brushing her hands together. 

Her father had found the mare after Charlie had proposed one evening at dinner that she would indeed like to get into the family business.

“Papa, I should like to breed Hades. He’s a fine stallion coming from an excellent line and the -” Her father had merely waved her off saying she was fine to do as she pleased. 

He hadn’t really been listening. 

Her father had never listened when she spoke most days. Same as her mother. He huffed and puffed stating it was better to agree to begin with, face consequences later. At least that was how he felt with the two women in his life. 

He had agreed to let her take on a foal from his prized mare, a white beauty fresh off the boat from Denmark when she was a teen. She was a fine mare, belly full of baby ready to give birth to a new friend for his daughter. Charlie had loved the mare, Crystalline as well. She still tended to her, but Hades was her boy. 

Her father had a large array of horses that did all sorts of things. He wasn’t an expert on breeds. Her father paid a nice young fellow to do that for him just like he paid others to manage other things in the house hold. 

This fine young fellow had betrayed her!

“Hades is a rare breed.” She knew that even as he spoke to her father. 

His breed was dwindling, yes, but Charla had already had it set in her head that breeding him to one of her childhood friend’s mares would be quite lovely. 

Charla didn’t care for things like money or preserving a notable line as her father had noted they would be doing breeding one lipizzan to another.

She wanted to have things her way. 

For the first time Charla Denvers would have to NOT get her way. 

She sighed loading up the stallion with more of her overnight equipment. At least she had convinced her father to let her go on this venture alone. He had found that a mare of this breed was close. Two villages over from the Denvers’ sprawling estate was a visiting Romani group spread out across the small community. They had intermingled according to her father enough that his “man on the inside” had found that one amongst them was nursing a sweet dark colored lipizzaner who happened to be female. 

What luck! 

What dread . . . Charlie thought, mounting her horse. 

She didn’t know the first thing about the Romani people, only that they were nomads, quick to wander. It was why her father had told her to make the offer to the young man in charge of tending horses quickly. Normally it was the mare owner that would pay the stud’s owner however in this case, her father was ready to make an offer. 

The thoroughbred foals would be worth more then what a silly breeding price the mare owner couldn’t afford. Her father assumed as he always did. For Charla, she would much rather have her horse breed with a mare she was familiar with, owned by a person she was friendly with. 

What did she know about this man who owned this lipizzaner? 

Absolutely nothing. 

Charlie kept her face void of any emotion. This was a business transaction, plain and simple. She pressed her heels to Hades motioning him forward. The stables were a distant memory as the pair marched forward to what she suspected would be doom for the pair of them. 

***

The village was very . . . quaint. 

She felt eyes lock on her as she entered. Her light eyes shifted, knowing what they were seeing. Charla wasn’t the type of girl to hide herself. She hadn’t spent hours choosing her outfit or fussing with her hair. She had tied a white bow in her long chestnut brown hair. Charlie’s waist length black coat was pressed as she trouted past the dirt road through the village. She knew she was out of place here, as did everyone else.

The encampments were fixed about the edges of the village. Women hung up laundry. Droves of children played tag with one another, grabbing and laughing in the carefree afternoon. Charla felt her stomach rumble. Hades scoffed prancing forward. 

“Come on now. Almost there.” The two seemed to have a symbiotic relationship. She could tell her sweet boy was hungry as well. 

Charlie managed to ask where the Romani kept their horses. 

“You’re looking for Abraham.” She hadn’t gotten a name, but she supposed that could be the name of a wandering horse tender. The older man with a heavy pipe pointed to an open mock stable area where a few horses were kept. 

She maneuvered her way past a wagon or two to get to the area. There was a young man, a blonde quiff and sleeves of black inked tattoos on arms that were tense with hard muscles. She saw his blue eyes worked her over as she approached. He was feeding a gorgeous brown mare. 

Charla hated the fact that Hades seemed to pick up his trout upon sensing the female. 

“Alright, calm yourself.” She told her boy. Charlie swallowed, seeing his eyes lock on her. 

“You are?” He wondered.

“Charlie Denvers.” 

“Really? Was expecting a man.” His eyes lingered too long on her chest. Her eyes merely rolled. “You're posh.” 

“Thank you for noticing.” Hades shifted impatiently back and forth. 

“You can tie him up on the other post.” The young man poked his chin to another mock spot. “I got some feed here if he’s hungry. Travelled a bit. Don’t want the poor boy starving.” 

She nodded. At least he was considerate of the horses even if he seemed to have an issue with her. 

Charla did as she was instructed, tying him off on the post. She brushed her hands off. When she turned he was waiting there with a bucket of feed. He didn’t hand it to her instead eyeing her again, in a slow nearly menacing way before moving past her. Hades huffed at him. The young man smiled. 

“Feisty fellow, ain’t he?” He put the bucket down as an offering. The horse moved his hooves forward then back as if contemplating. “Don’t worry. I won’t mess with your girl. Much.” She rolled her eyes again to see him smirk. 

She held her own stomach as it rumbled. 

“Would you like some dinner then?” He looked at her. “Suppose we will need to get acquainted to make this deal. Go on then, say hello to my Heidi.” 

Charla turned to the beautiful mare. Her face was deep within a trough of water now spilling over the sides. She was flabbergasted how shiny her coat was complimenting it out loud to Abraham. Slowly her hand worked over the horse’s mid section petting her with hard strokes. The horse’s tail twitched. 

“She’s usually timid. Gave her a talking to. Said she’d be meeting her beau today.” Abraham patted Heidi's shoulder roughly. The mare seemed to be used to the touches. 

“She’s stunning.” 

“Not always the case. She was in real bad shape over a year ago. Nursed her back to health. Took a lot of time and effort. Poor girl was abused, frightened of everyone, especially men.” She was surprised when Abraham nuzzled his nose against her neck. “Nipped at me a few times, but I didn’t give up on my Heidi. She’s my best girl.” He gave the horse a little peck. 

Charla didn’t like that he was sweet. 

Not one bit. 

“But I suppose we should get this business over with.” He nearly sighed. “Wouldn’t want to keep you from your fancy mansion.”

“That depends on how you would like to -”

He was sweet to the horses. 

“I ain’t stupid, missus.” Abraham immediately piped in. “I know what I got. Your man that approached me, he thought I was . . . stupid that is . . . probably think you can one up me cause I’m Romi don’t you? Well you can’t because I know what I got.” He pat the horse again. “She’s pure money here.” 

Maybe she was starting to dislike Abraham a bit. 

“I’m not here because I want to be . . . Abraham . . . is it?” He looked at her nodding as she spoke. “I would rather take my horse and breed him elsewhere, but my father seems to want this deal to go through. For our two lipizzaners to breed and secure a line meant for greatness. So yes, whatever you want is yours.” 

He watched her setting his jaw and swallowing. 

“Whatever I want?” He said it so suggestively it nearly made her blush.

Nearly. 

“Money, wise . . . that is.” Her voice was breathy in the stale air that smelt like manure, dry feed, and the dampness of their horses. 

“A shame.” He teased. Yes, he was only teasing. “I can name my price?”

“Mmmhm.” She clarified. 

“Right.” He swallowed, wiping his hands on his pant legs. “Da always said the best deals are made over a meal and a pint. Care to join me, missus?” He offered her his hand.  She did not take it. 

“It’s Charla.” She told him. He simply nodded. 

“Right, well, I’m Abrabram. Pleasure to meet you, Charla. I’m eager to make beautiful babies with you.” He gave her a soft wink as her face flushed a bit at his suggestion, breaking her stern demeanor. “Ponies that is.” 

Yes. 

She was starting to dislike Abraham very much.

[nottinmyheart]

"She just fell"

Theo Nott/Brothers bsf x Reader/Malfoy

Part Two-

Quite angsty ig but not from Theo!

Writers note: This is my first fic EVER, so please don't judge too harshly, but I'm also welcome to constructive criticism! I was thinking of making this a series, but I guess it depends if people like it or not. Tbh this was all really just for fun and my personal enjoyment!

Summary: You and Theo have been in love for years, but nothing has ever happened. After an incident where your twin brother (Draco) leaves you in tears, you are confused as to Theodores' feelings towards you.

As you stumbled over your own feet and felt yourself begin to collapse, a sudden pair of muscular arms wrapped around your waist preventing you from falling. Looking up, your whole body froze as you got lost in his mesmerising mixture of blues and greens for eyes. Breaking you from your trance was his deep, luscious voice which you so badly wished you could listen to on repeat for the rest of your days, "Well this seems familiar." He chuckled. And yes, it did.

Back in 1st year, you had been put in the exact same situation where you were running through the halls, dreading being late to snapes lesson, when you suddenly, abruptly tripped over your own feet. Just to your luck, Theodore Nott had been standing there and observing when he noticed the inevitable before it had even sprung into action. He immediately caught you with ease and couldn't stop himself from admiring every feature on your stunned, gorgeous face. He was consumed by your beauty while you were in the same boat as you stared back at your saviour. You swore it was love at first sight, and little did you know he felt the exact same way. Before either of you could speak, you were interrupted by that bellow of an annoying voice, your older brother (by 10 minutes). "Oi, get your hands off her Nott!" "Huh?" He spun around in confusion and was met with a fairly irritated Draco. "Don't hold her like that." He froze for a second, but after registering his friends words let go of you. "Ugh, Draco, what do you want!" You voiced back clearly unimpressed by his antics. "Draco, is this your girlfriend or something, mate?" Theodore questioned, clearly confused by his demand. "EW!" Both you and draco screeched in unison, quite childish. "NO! She's my annoying baby sister, " he explained, clearly offended by Theodores' outrageous comment. "BABY?!? You are older than me by 10 MINUTES. Don't act like you are any wiser than me!" You retaliated upset by the fact you were referred to as 'baby sister'. "So you are twins?" Theodore stated as he grasped the concept of how he had just fallen head over heels for his best mates twin sister.

"Oi! Get your hands off her, Nott!" There it was, just like last time, of course your brother had to interfere. Theo stiffened slightly at the sound of dracos voice, knowing he had just lost the chance to talk to you. Again. But he didn't let go straight away, and neither did you. Draco was now right next to the two of you and practically ripped you away from Theos hold. "What are you fucking doing Y/N, don't act like a helpless slut in front of my friends!" His voice was filled with malice and the weight of his horrible words poured over you. The hurt that his statement had on you was clear as your eyes began to fill with tears. Theo didn't know if he should defend you or not but seeing how hurt you looked he couldn't just allow you to stand there alone. Not wanting to completely ruin his relationship with draco, he barely held himself back from lashing out on him right then and there. "Dude she just fell! There's no need to start calling her names." Theo clenched his teeth at his friends quick response "She didn't "just fall" Y/N is clearly seeking attention and she doesn't have to seek it from my mates!" You stood there completely shocked from the words coming out of your own brothers, your own twins, mouth. "I- I honestly didn't mean to!" Was all you could splutter out but Draco just looked at you unconvinced. "Yeah whatever, stop acting so pathetic and just fuck off." So you did. As quickly as you could, you ran away from that situation and straight to your safe place.

In the astronomy tower, you were fortunate that no lessons were currently going on as the thought of anyone else seeing you like this, in pieces, made you sick to your stomach. You knew Draco and you were recently growing apart. And he was occupied by girls and rarely talked to you, but you couldn't believe how he had just treated you, his own flesh and blood. He treated you as if you were some trashy pick me girl just trying to find someone to fuck. You weren't that, why did he treat you like that? More tears began to flow down your face in an ugly sob and you couldn't stop.

Your best friends (Pansy and Luna) soon realised you weren't in lesson and questioned Draco as to if you were okay. Seeing the guilty expression on Dracos' face, they both knew he had said something. Although you and Pansy were both in Slytherin, in second year you ran into Luna Lovegood who as peculiar as she was, soon became great friends with the two of you and ever since then, the three of you had been like sisters. Knowing where you were, they both excused themselves and were let go since they used the 'period excuse'.

You were sat on top of the astronomy tower, questioning yourself as to why he would talk to you like that. Maybe you were just attention seeking, I mean, you were deeply in love with his best friend, so you couldn't deny you did want Theodores' attention. But you didn't deliberately fall into Theodores' arms, I mean, you didn't even notice he was there! You were just trying to catch up to your friends after you told them to walk ahead while you spoke to the teacher. And why did Theodore not let go of you? And now that you thought back to it, he did kind of defend you, right? Okay, now you were sure you were delusional, and your confused thoughts only fueled the fountain falling down your face.

Theodore was worried sick about you as he noticed you didn't show up to the next class and he soon saw Pansy and Luna leave the class looking extremely stressed, most likely in search of their lost friend. He felt horrible for just letting you run off and not defending you, and the guilt was eating him alive. But he was also pissed. Pissed at Draco for saying such foul words to you. So when he got the opportunity in class to have a conversation with him, he did. "Dude why the fuck were you so horrible to Y/N. She just fell and I caught her." He whispered in a hushed, stern tone, Draco responded in the exact same way. "She needs to understand that she can't just act like that around my mates. I mean God forbid she actually trys to hook up with one of you." Theodore was beginning to get annoyed at Dracos absurdity again. "But you were fucking horrible. I mean did you see the way you left her!? Plus why is it so bad if she does get with any of your friends? It's not like it would affect you in anyway?" Draco was baffled at this point "You can't be serious? It would affect me in every way and I would never get away from her. She's so annoying and never shuts up, it's not like any of you lot would fancy her anyway." He dismissed the thought, "She's just being dramatic, I'm sure she's fine". Although rage was bubbling over in Theo's head, he left it at that reflecting on how Draco viewed him having a relationship with you would be like.

"I'm sure she's fine." No, you definitely weren't fine, not even in the slightest. As Pansy and Luna made their way up the steps to the astronomy tower, they could hear your desperate sobs and locked eyes with eachother before covering the last few steps, empathy filled each of their eyes and they knew something really bad must have been said as you rarely cry, let alone have a full on breakdown. As you heard steps coming towards you, you frantically spun your whole body around, filled with fear, but relief washed over you as you realised it was only your friends. They comforted you for a good long while, listening to you rant and question yourself. They reassured you and promised it wasn't your fault, which made you feel slightly better, but the question still stood, "Why did Theodore not let go?" Sure, it could easily have been shock, but the way he looked at you, almost as if he never wanted to let you go, made you highly doubt that theory. Before you could dwell on the situation any longer, dinner rolled around, and you had promised your friends that you would go with them (not before you cleaned up and made yourself look presentable first). You couldn't let Draco know how much he had gotten to you. And you couldn't let Theodore see you in this state, even if you didn't yet know how he felt towards you.

[billwidoll]

Beautiful boy || Rafe Cameron x Toxic)

Rafe has always been a man of having dark and narcissistic thoughts. He knew he had a problem, but he always tried to fight it, he knew he was sick, but he tried to fight it. But he couldn't, But that changed when he met the great and greatest love of his life, which was you. Rafe knew that you were the one who brought him calm, peace and hope. So he never wanted you to leave him He loved you, and he wanted to protect the people he loved, even when he did horrible things.

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon on the Outer Banks and you were on the boat with Rafe, lying in bed because the mansion's air conditioners had broken and the boat was the only one with air conditioning. Working at that time, so you and Rafe went there

"It's so much better here, Rafe" you say, hugging Rafe in bed

"Yes dear, I think I'm a little sleepy" Rafe says a little sleepily. He always slept when he was hugging you

"why don't you get some sleep?" You tell your boyfriend, you knew Rafe worked a lot, so it was obvious he was tired

"yes, you're right, but don't let me sleep too much, okay?" Rafe says, kissing your cheek and slowly closing his eyes. You nod your head

Rafe ends up sleeping and you end up looking at your cell phone and hearing a noise coming from outside the boat room.

You wanted to wake Rafe up to tell him about the noise you had just heard, but he was sleeping like an angel and you didn't want to ruin his peace. So you decided Get out of bed and see what was going on (even though I'm very scared)

"Who is there?" you say looking around the boat already out of bed

You look and see John B, taking Rafe's swimming gear

"What the fuck are you doing here, John B?!" You say shouting in anger, but relieved that it wasn't anyone else

“It’s none of your business Y/n!” Jonh B speaks in the same tone and it makes you angrier

"You're on my boyfriend's boat, stealing his things, that is, my business" You say, approaching John B and increasing the tension between you.

"ok! Your shitty boyfriend is trash! And he hit my friend Pope" jonh B speaks angrily

"that's not possible! Rafe has a strong temper, but he would never do something like that" You say, not wanting to believe it

"whatever! Now let me go!" Jonh B Speaks, taking the equipment and putting it on his back

"What are you going to do with this equipment?" You speak before John B leaves

"I really need them, I promise I'll bring them back" John B says and leaves you there on the boat

You didn't hate pogues like Rafe, and having that conversation with John B just showed how kind and harmless they were

But Rafe always kept you as far away from them as possible.

You return to the boat room and see Rafe moving slowly on the bed and muttering something

"who was here?" Rafe speaks in a voice that is seriously weak from sleep.

"hun It was John B" you say simply, sitting on the bed and taking out your cell phone to scroll through

"WHAT?!" Rafe says, jumping out of bed and opening his eyes frantically.

"Hey, my love, stay calm, okay?" You say taking Rafe's arms trying to calm him down

"what was he doing here?! Did he touch you?! Did he look at your body!?" Rafe wouldn't stop talking madly

"No, no Rafe..." You were about to speak but Rafe interrupted you, taking a gun from under the bed and scaring you.

"Rafe! What are you going to do?!" you speak with a shaky voice

"These Pogues just annoy me, but...touching you...it's too much." Rafe speaks hoarsely and putting bullets in the gun

"Rafe! He didn't do anything, please drop that gun!" You speak with tears in your eyes

But he didn't listen to you, he just got off the boat nervously , You didn't know what to do, you only knew how to cry and pray that nothing bad would happen. But it was already too late

Two hours later:

It was already night and you were sitting on the bed hugging your body and crying. Rafe was taking a while and that only made you worry more, but then he arrived, opening the door to the boat room.

"Oh my God! Rafe, where were you?!" You say getting up and touching him

Rafe was cold and dirty...with blood

"what blood is this Rafe?" You speak in a low voice and are afraid of your boyfriend

"It's over, my love, this guy will never bother you again" Rafe says, running his hands over your face

"Rafe..." He interrupts you once again, placing his lips on your mouth and then hugging you tightly

"Close your eyes Have no fear The monster's gone" Rafe speaks softly into your ear and your heart speeds up. You were definitely his