#riverside hunt

[countryboys45-70]

Egale rock, Idaho

[shrikeseams]

Aredhel and Celegorm with a (platonic) Alec/Richard relationship, where she picks fights with strangers and Celegorm duels (murders) them to keep in practice.

[calixcasual]

https://www.instagram.com/p/DA1i5s2BcCv/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Job Opportunity

University of California, Riverside

Riverside, California

[britneyshakespeare]

A few weeks ago at Savers I bought secondhand Signet Classics editions of Henry IV, Part I and Henry V.

I own all of Shakespeare's plays in my 1972 Riverside Shakespeare that I inherited from my aunt who used it as a text in college for her Shakespeare class; I've had that for five years. I usually read Shakespeare plays in there but since it's a big ass tome it has its drawbacks, and also sometimes I'm just curious about the supplementary material that come in other editions of Shakespeare. Last year I read The Winter's Tale from Modern Library Classics (made in collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company) and I really loved their presentation of the text, so I wanted to branch out more to other editions as I continue on reading the plays. They were only 2 bucks each so like, fuck it why not, right?

It was also kind of a perfect coincidence because I had just finished reading Richard II, the first play in the Henriad tetralogy, so the next play I was going to read was gonna be 1 Henry IV anyway. And then I could read part two in the Riverside, and then Signet Henry V which concludes that historical series. Kind of serendipitous too because my Savers has heavily, heavily downsized its book section (the selection is just pitiful now) and these were two of the only plays they had at all, let alone by Shakespeare.

I finished the book I was reading that I was waiting on before starting 1 Henry IV, and until now I hadn't even really opened the new Signets. But the first thing I noticed when I flipped to the script was that there was writing; someone had annotated the pages. That's cool; I like finding that in secondhand books. I feel connected to the previous owners that way. That happens a lot w Savers books too. So then I opened Henry V, to see if it might have something. There's not much writing on the pages themselves from my brief skim but there is one small pink sticky note, with not much writing on it but just enough to the point where I think I can identify it belonged to, and must've been donated by, the same person who annotated 1 Henry IV.

But I do find it odd then, that 2 Henry IV wasn't there. I *doubt* someone would've bought that separately from part one or that the owner would've kept that, but donated its prequel and sequel. I guess I don't know for certain, but it seems unlikely. Oh well, I won't be able to verify that.

Idk. It makes me just wonder about the secondhand book market. I know most used booksellers don't rely solely on donations directly from their communities; there are tons of ways that people in the business buy up lots of used books. But I'm not in the business and I don't know about the logistics of how things are separated and organized, and why some things end up where.

Where is Henriad Donor's copy of Henry IV, Part II??? Who is this enigmatic Henriad Donor??? How did their books end up separated in a Greater Boston Savers???

I don't know.

[deadly-diminuendo]

You Were My First

a spawn astarion x fem!tav reader oneshot / nsfw / ~3.9k words

Summary: The night he bit you, Astarion awakened something unexpected within you: desire. You offer to let him bite you again, only to receive a more scandalous offer in return. And though you have never before had a lover, you have never felt more tempted.

CW/Tags: virginity loss, vampire bites/blood drinking, tadpole mind sharing, fingering, oral sex, piv sex, act 1

Read on AO3

Or read below...

You toss, you turn, any hope of drifting back to sleep lost to you as memories of last night echo through your mind.

You let Astarion bite you.

And you liked it.

A little thrill runs through you as you reach your hand to your neck. You trace the marks where his fangs had pierced you, remembering the rush of exhilaration you experienced, the strange sense of intimacy you felt as he drank his fill. To lie beneath him, heart racing, losing yourself… Not so different from a lovers’ tryst, you imagine.

Not that you would know. You were quite the romantic in your youth, dreaming of waiting for the one. As the years passed by, you adopted a more practical view, seeking out not an unattainable ideal, but a genuine connection, simple and achievable—still, you never found it, and your first time has yet to happen.

Whether it is because of the unfathomable pull you feel towards your pale companion, or the threat of death lurking around every corner, you are beginning to believe attraction alone is enough.

Gods, you’ve given so much of yourself to Astarion already. And you would give him so much more.

You want him to be your first. Badly.

Really, you should know better. The man is a liar, a flirt, a vampire. He held a knife to your throat the very moment you met, questioned so many of your decisions in his exasperated, exaggerated tones, revealed himself to lack the morals you hold dear to your heart. You two are worlds apart, clearly.

But no amount of reason can dull the growing ache between your legs.

Tired as you are, you prop yourself up, your eyes scanning the surrounding campsite. Most of the others are fast asleep, or at least tucked away in their tents. Only Astarion is nowhere to be found, his tent open and empty, an extra unoccupied bedroll near the fire. Not yet back from his hunt, so it seems.

Temptation urges you to relieve yourself of this tension as you did last night following your exchange with your unexpected visitor. You were careful, shielding yourself with your blanket, limiting your movements, suppressing the sounds that nearly spilled out of you. You got away with it then, you think, but with Astarion still gone, you decide the risk tonight is too high. The embarrassment of him returning and catching you would be more than you could possibly handle.

You sigh. Standing up, you quietly make your way to the riverside. Something about gazing across the moonlit water brings you peace, and right now, peace is what you desperately need.

But you are not alone for long.

“Couldn’t sleep, my dear?”

You gasp as you whip around to see him standing before you—as useful as Astarion’s talent for stealth has proven to be, his penchant for sneaking up on you makes you nervous.

“No,” you answer, though you do not elaborate. “Did you have any luck on the hunt?”

“Not so much as a squirrel, I’m afraid, though they are hardly any better than the rats. There is nothing out there so tasty as you anyway.”

Your heart pounds, your cheeks flush, your mouth runs dry. The satisfied smirk he then gives you tells you he noticed.

You search for something sensible to say. “Will you be all right…?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” he says, a touch aloof as he picks over his sleeves. “If our little adventure continues as it has, I’m sure it won’t be long before more foes will have the misfortune of crossing our path. Blood will be much easier to come by now.”

Your shoulders slump a little, and you realize just how much you want him to sink his teeth into you—and maybe not just his teeth. You must be losing your mind.

“Maybe…” you squeak out, and then you freeze. No, this is a ridiculous idea, the worst idea—you cannot do it.

That wolfish look of his returns as he concentrates his full attention on you. “Yes?”

Ugh. You are going to do it.

“You can feed on me tonight, if you would like.”

“My, my. What a sweet, generous little thing you are,” he purrs as he inches closer, eyes ever locked on yours. “I could never refuse such an irresistible invitation. Shall we find somewhere more comfortable? Perhaps you’d care to join me in my tent?”

“Your tent…?!” You expected a little flirtation, but not this sort of proposition so soon.

“Come now, don’t act so surprised. The thought of last night has driven me to distraction, you know. And I know you feel it too.”

Oh, you do. You have wondered about it, cannot stop wondering about it—what it would be like to feel his skin, to hold him tight, to kiss his lips.

“I’ve seen the way you look at me. The way you tilt your lovely neck, even now.” Instinctively you straighten it as your cheeks burn hotter.

You cannot actually go through with this… Can you? There is something… off, about it all. Something wicked in his intense gaze and devious smile. Like a tiger eager to devour its prey.

Or a vampire eager to devour your blood, plain and simple. Perhaps that’s all this is, an attempt to guarantee his meals.

“I think it’s my blood you want, not me.”

“Not only your blood, I assure you. I rather liked having you under me. Indulging in you. Making you squirm. I’d like to explore that further.”

You know what the right choice is, the one that is sensible and safe: no.

But you’ve been sensible and safe for far too long.

“I… I would too,” you confess. You feel painfully shy now. Not even a tenday you’ve known him, and here you are, agreeing to share a bed with him.

He grins at you as he smooths away a strand of hair from your neck. You shiver at the sensation of cool fingertips touching your skin, your pulse quickening, anticipation rising as he lifts your chin, as your eyes again meet his.

“I thought so.”

And then his lips touch yours.

His kiss is perfection, equal parts sensual and sweet, the way you like it. It is not your first kiss—but this is better than anything you’ve known before. He pulls you in tight as you wrap your arms around him, longing to savour him, melt into him, become one with him. You never want to stop kissing him—but you crave more. Your hips rock gently, surrendering to instinct as he grasps at your blouse, looses it from your waistband.

This is really happening, you think—and then the reality of it all comes crashing into you, and though you have never wanted a man more, you find yourself pulling away.

You know you need to tell him.

“Second thoughts?”

“No,” you assure him, building up your nerve. “I want to, but… Well, I’ve never done this before.”

His eyes widen and you begin to shrink under his incredulous stare. “You’ve never had sex?”

You nod.

“Really, darling? I mean, there is a certain… innocence about you, but… Never?!”

“Innocence?” you repeat, feigning greater offense than you feel. He is teasing you, sure, but you don’t feel he is outright mocking you. You tease him back. “Make fun if you must, but if you really find me too sweet for your taste, I’ll gladly go to bed alone.”

“Oh, darling, there is no need for that. I’ll admit I have a bit of a sweet tooth from time to time. And I’m more than happy to help you right this terrible tragedy of yours.” He pauses, momentarily dropping his theatrics. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes,” you affirm, both to him and to yourself. “This is what I want.”

“Hm, I suppose it’s fitting, then. You were my first, after all.”        

You chuckle at this, equally charmed and perplexed. “What do you mean?”

“The blood of thinking creatures was forbidden fruit to us lowly spawn. Not anymore thanks to the tadpole—and thanks to you. You are the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.”

Why exactly the idea of this man literally consuming you enthuses you so, you do not know—but you decide you do not care either. You might as well embrace it.

“To your tent, then…?”

“Perhaps… but there is one other place that might suit us better.”

+++

Astarion leads you into the woods with the promise of a more private setting.

You recall all the romantic tales you read over and over again as a child, the sort starring a noble hero and a kind-hearted princess who fall hopelessly in love, find happily ever after.

This is a far more lurid tale, you think. One of a maiden swept into a dark forest, carried away to the lair of a charming scoundrel, finding sinful delight in his arms.

Not what you ever pictured yourself doing. No, this is much more thrilling.

You imagine passion, primal and raw, surrendering to the predator within him as he takes your blood and your body. But as you approach a sweet little hideaway made up of blankets and pillows, you know you are in for a more tender experience.

“Funny that this cozy spot is already here,” you comment, knowing he must have set this up long before you agreed to come here with him.

He shrugs, playing innocent, though he is anything but. “I thought we might have use for it eventually.”

The first thing he does once you reach your destination is strip off his shirt, and you can’t help but steal a glance at his flawless form, your hands longing to run across his lean muscle and smooth skin. A touch nervous still, you opt for a more modest start for yourself, bracing against a nearby tree as you unlace your boots.

Just as you kick them off, he is on you, kissing you, tugging at your clothes, eager to pick up from where you left things earlier—and you are too. You work together to undress yourselves and each other, until not a single barrier is left between you.

He takes a step back, drinking in the sight of you, and you survey him with equal scrutiny. You have never before been naked in front of a man, and as much as your instinct tells you to shield yourself, you don’t.

And gods, he is gorgeous like this. You could feel him twitch against you as you locked lips, and now to see with your own eyes the undeniable effect of your touch… You want to drop to your knees and worship him, lavish him with your adoration—but your inexperience holds you back, makes you anxious.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs, a welcome boost to your confidence.

“So are you,” you say, laughing softly.

“Obviously.” You laugh again, more heartily this time, your amusement lessening the apprehension you feel.

He closes the gap between you with another kiss, soft and tender and all too brief.

“Tonight will be all about you,” he tells you. You inhale sharply as you open your mouth to protest, but he speaks first. “If you’re still sure about this, of course.”

“I am, but… What about what you want?”

“Oh, don’t worry about me, darling. I know I’ll have my fun with you.”

Astarion guides you down to your makeshift bed. His approach is slow, surprising you a little, but you appreciate it. He pulls you onto his lap and treats your back to a soothing massage, your muscles relaxing under his touch.

“That’s it, love. Let all that tension go.”

He draws you closer, peppering your neck with kisses as he holds you tight, the occasional graze of his fangs stirring your senses. Though you are acutely aware of his vampiric nature—how he could bite down hard and drain you dry at any moment—you marvel at how safe you feel cradled in his arms. His hands begin to roam, your need for him growing as he discovers every curve, every line, every detail—everywhere except where you want him most.

You already know how talented he is with his hands, and you wonder what else he can do with those dexterous fingers.

As one hand glides down your abdomen, you smile, knowing you will not have to wonder much longer.

A whimper escapes you as a single index finger gently runs along your entrance, curling into you with each enthralling stroke.

“Last night, when you went back to bed… You touched yourself, didn’t you?”

Oh. You were less covert than you thought. “Yes,” you admit, struggling to maintain your composure as he begins to trace slow, soft circles around your clit.

“And you were thinking of me?”

“Yes,” you sigh, a little more sheepish about this confession than the first.

“Good girl. I want you to show me what you did. Show me how to please you.”

You feel a tingle in your mind as he seeks to open the connection between you.

So you let him in.

You concentrate hard on the memory of your own touch, the rhythmic pressure of rubbing fingers into your sex, bringing yourself to elation. An art you have perfected in the absence of a lover to share yourself with.

And then the thought of him slips in, how you ache to be one with him, to share in his pleasure, and he in yours. A want that transcends the physical realm, you realize now, a want to not only know his body, but his mind, his heart, his soul, through and through.

Panic hits—you have exposed far too much, left yourself far too vulnerable. You hastily sever your telepathic link.

“You sweetheart,” he purrs, amused. Embarrassed though you are, his touch quickly makes you forget all else.

Tucking a second finger behind the other, he gravitates to the spot you prefer, the one you showed him in your mind, each stroke skilled, precise, perfect.

All you can do is give in.

You allow yourself to moan, to let him know just how well he’s working you, how easily your climax will likely come. The sensation is familiar, executed with an expertise that matches your own, but this time enhanced by the excitement of being with a partner. Of being with him.

You ascend towards your peak, your mind cycling through everything you have ever dreamed of doing, everything you hope you will have the chance to try with him: to ride him, to stroke him, to suck him, but most of all, to let him do anything he wants to do to you.

“And what was it that pushed you over the edge?” he asks, his voice now a whisper in your ear, making the whole encounter feel deliciously illicit. You could listen to him like this for hours. “Picture it. Show me.”

Oh, gods.

You follow his command, your minds melding together once more as you bring forth the memory: your favourite new fantasy.

The moment he bit you.

To succumb to him, to feel your blood coursing through you both, to let him conquer you so completely… You want him to taste you again. You want to feel his cock moving inside you when he does.

His fingers still stroke you flawlessly, the apex within reach—and you both know how you can get there.

So he bites your neck.

Release finally washes over you, waves of intense pleasure pulsing throughout your entire body as you writhe about—a result of both your orgasm and his indulgence in you.

“Gods,” he growls as he lets go, as the feeling begins to fade, as your minds disconnect once more. You delight in the possibility your bliss was a shared experience, flowing from your consciousness into his, flooding his mind with your pleasure. You let your body collapse against him.

“Oh, we’re far from done yet, my darling.” He pulls your face to his, your lips parting eagerly, welcoming the brush of his tongue against yours. You can feel him grin against you before he stops to speak.

“So eager to be tasted, you sweet thing. Perhaps I might… taste you elsewhere?”

You think you know what he means, but you are truly entering the unknown now. Unease still lingers in your mind, yet anticipation propels you forward, eager to know what carnal delights you have yet to discover.

You give him a nod and a smile.

He maneuvers around you, and with a firm tug at your hips, he has you flat on your back. His lips explore you, trailing kisses along your skin until, finally, he is between your legs.

And then he licks you.

The sensation is entirely foreign to you—overwhelming, overstimulating at first. He seems to recognize this, focusing on gentle, broad strokes to ease you into it, to build you up until you are ready to be devoured.

And when you reach that point, you instantly understand what you have been missing.

“Astarion!” His name escapes your mouth as a bewildered cry, the pleasure you feel unlike anything you have ever experienced—every lick, every stroke, every swirl has you moaning, nearing your peak already. You glance at him, and he fixes his eyes on yours, the sight of him lapping away at you driving you deeper into this mesmerizing madness. You run a hand through his hair, fingers entangling in his silvery curls, and with the other, you reach for his.

“Yes…” you hear yourself chant, high-pitched and urgent, as he tongues your sensitive nub with quick, deliberate flicks.

Orgasm overwhelms your whole being—your body tenses and spasms, your wails ringing out so loud you fear they might reach the campsite—but you are long past caring now.

You thought it might end there, but instead his tongue feathers against you, a light touch to let you recover—and then he goes in for the kill again. You buck against him in a frenzied search for release as he continues working you, desperate to let this newfound rapture engulf you entirely.

Euphoria fills you once more as you shake violently against him. Countless times you have used your own fingers, thought you had found the limits of your body, but this pleasure is beyond belief, beyond what you ever thought was possible.

He stops, but only briefly—just long enough to make a single request.

“One more for me, darling?”

You watch him as he continues to pamper you, your next climax coming so easily you can barely comprehend it, your keening shattering the quiet of the night.

And now there is only one thing you long to experience more.

Astarion crawls over you, splaying your legs apart with his knees, your anticipation for him burning so hot now it agonizes you. You whine as he guides his length along your folds, coating himself in your slick, driving you wild with need.

“Astarion, please…” you find yourself begging, unwilling, unable to wait any longer for him to claim you.

Mischief pulls his mouth into a grin. “Please what, dear?”

It takes everything in you to say it, but you do. “Please fuck me.”

He rewards you immediately, easing his way inside. You adjust to this intoxicating new sensation, feeling only a hint of resistance as he stretches you, until at last he is wholly inside.

“You’re taking me so well,” he tells you, his seductive tone making you melt.

Gods, you have never felt more full—he fits so perfectly in you, as if your bodies were made to match each other. You bask in the delicious friction he creates as he pulls away only to plunge back into you again and again, your moaning, soft, intermittent at first, becoming bold, steady.

You love every sensuous detail—the feeling of skin against skin; the look of pleasure that graces his handsome face; all the noises you make together, from his little groans to the wet, salacious sounds of your joining. You arch against him, every thrust hitting you just right—he knows he has you hurtling towards your release, knows the moaning, writhing mess he will make out of you.

And then it comes. The sweetest surrender.

You tighten around his cock, revel in in every tremor of your release, sing out in pure ecstasy.

You lavish kisses upon him, his neck, his collarbone, his lips, anywhere you can reach, eager for him to feel as cherished as you do, to take his pleasure in your body, to give in to his deepest desires. And he does, you think, his restraint beginning to falter as you surrender to the powerful, relentless motion of his hips meeting yours.

His want is clear as you feel the tips of his fangs against your neck, and you are more than willing to comply.

You open the link between you, pushing a message from your mind to his: “I’m all yours.”

You barely notice the twinge of pain, too lost in bliss to care, too stimulated by the sensations that flow from his consciousness to yours—how your blood fulfills him, thrills him, sates him; how deliciously pliant your flesh is as he sinks into you endlessly; how he’s, oh, so close to his climax.

So close that you once more find yourself rapidly approaching your own—you sense his want, his need to feel the elation of emptying himself inside of you, your own core equally aching for his spend.

When you register the tell-tale twitch of his orgasm, you slip into your own. His pleasure crashes into your mind, and yours into his, becoming indistinguishable—an intimate and intense intertwining of your bodies and minds.

As you lie together, silent and satiated, your minds both your own again as you attempt to readjust to reality. You relish in the lingering thrill of sex, recall every moment of pleasure you experienced, from your first kiss to the moment he finally spilled into you. You just had the best night of your life—but doubt creeps in, gnaws away at you.

You are sure he truly wanted you when your minds merged—yet you could sense something else, something dark underlying his consciousness. You look at Astarion—the smoulder he gives you is as calculated and collected as it always has been, betraying nothing. A perfectly crafted mask.

You realize just how much you wish that he will drop that mask for you one day, that you might truly bond and connect. You knew this risk was there, that you might end up feeling more attached to him than you perhaps should—but you have a little hope, and you will hold on to it. You reach for his hand, enclosing it in yours.

“I’m glad you were my first,” you tell him.

He gives your hand a squeeze, repeats his little joke from earlier as he smiles back at you. “And I’m glad you were mine.”

Maybe you are playing the fool, but something in his eyes, in his voice, something about the way his own words seem to surprise him… It feels genuine this time.

And for now, that is enough.

Thank you for reading!

My AO3 | My Masterlist

This was the first fic I finished on AO3, and now here it is on Tumblr! I'm currently working on two more short x reader fics, one for Spawn Astarion and one for Ascended Astarion, but I haven't ruled out also writing a follow-up for this one where our reader shares another first with him. 👀

Work is particularly annoying right now, but I hope to have more smut to share soon!

[hotwings0203]

Needed to get possessive alpha bakugo off my chest, ill prolly write a sequel to this tmrw cuz i got some ideas

Tw: noncon, omegaverse

thinking about childhood possessive bakugo who's pined for his omega since she joined the pack Time after time again since you were kids he'd always tried to get close to you, using a number of strange to threatening courting techniques. It was benign at first when you both were young, with him jumping up the large apple tree to get you the juiciest fruit you could never seem to reach, but when you two grew older and played together with the rest of the pack, his efforts seemed more...possessive.

He'd always single you out and force you to be on his team, following up with growling at you whenever you'd run more than a few paces in front of away from him. His sleek gold and black coat would brush up against you constantly, as if only touching you would satiate his desire for your proximity. Bloodred eyes would glare at you when you'd shyly back away at dinnertime, opting to sit away from his intense gaze.

Not like he'd let you get that far.

When it would come time for bathing with your sisters, somehow, everytime you'd be out of the loop and would end up being forced to wash yourself on your own in the cold water.

Little did you know your sisters were not-so-kindly encouraged to not communicate their congregation to you by a certain fiery alpha.

And so when everyone was by the fire, barking out laughter and telling stories of their weekly hunt, you'd sulk to the riverside by yourself, clutching your towel over your shivering body as youd sink closer in the shallow water.

You wanted to get it done as fast as possible so you could join your pack in merry-making, haphazardly scraping dirt off your paws and washing the crevices between your ears.

But as soon as you take a step towards the lush bank, you hear a heavy splash behind you.

You whip around, ears drawn back immeditaley after seeing the alpha who shamelessly follows you around like he's already claimed you.

"W-whatre you doing here? Everyone's by the..fire..." you trail off unsurely as his spiked-up wet mane shakes in laughter. His lack of concern for the reprimands he'll undoubtedly recieve for being this physically close to you send faint warning alarms at the back of your head. Usually he glowers at you and turns tail, but this is new.

"I thought the pack leaders told you to leave me alone," your lip wobbles as your tone borders on fear and indignation. Your brothers had always kept you safe from him, snarling and hiding you behind their tall legs whenever he was around. Bakugo never seemed to give up though, his own flashing teeth and sick grin mirroring their own worry pulled back from their lips.

"Yeah? But you're here though."

You swallow hard and hope he doesn't hear your whimper as you splash backwards towards the bank, but his low grumble of pleasure upon smelling your sweet fear-omones says otherwise. It proves to him that you're not as immune as your other brothers swear you are to protect yourself against him, theyre actually worried for a reason.

They know you'd never stand a chance against him.

And his muscles do ripple amid the water as he steadily stalks towards you, leering as he licks his canines and trains his eyes on your feeble form.

It seems like as fast as you flail backwards towards unseen safety, he advances twice as fast, and within seconds your back hits a hard and scratchy surface.

Bakugo chuckles a humorless laugh as you've nestled yourself in a nice, private corner away from the mainland where everyone can see you. You've backed both of you into an enormous concaved treetrunk, one that circles around 10ft and only one opening...

which you've trapped yourself in.

The roots of various plants that have grown inside this hollowed out trunk provide little cushion as you whimper and try to desperatley climb the walls.

"When are you gonna give up?"

His voice is low, raspy with mixed want and bitterness.

"S-stop, stay away from me or I'll call for h-"

"When are you gonna realize you can't escape me?" He harshly whispers right at your ear as he lunges toward you, causing you to squeal with terror.

He nips your soft ear and inhales your neck, craning his own to get a good look at the sensitive unclaimed part of your neck.

His hands grip your sides and mold the squishy parts as though they were dough, his greediness increasing exponentially as he lowers his drooling mouth to your ear and laves his wet tongue over the planes of your neck and shoulder.

You begin to shake and sob, never having been dealt with him actually touching you and being a victim to his lust. You've taken the protection of your brothers for granted, and oh how you wish you could softly howl out if you had the courage to ask for help.

But the blonde's presence itself is enough of a threat to your life and safety, that much being made clear as his hands grow claws, no doubt his physical appearance shifting from being so riled up. Your skin prick and cuts as his nails jab harder into you, his hands roaming up and down your back, feeling your hips and ghosting over the swell of your ass as well as chest.

You writhe against him which unbeknownst to you, pushes your naked chest out against his own shredded pecs, your pebbled nipples grazing his toned skin and practically making his eyes roll back in efforts not to pin you down and take you like his bitch.

"I just wanted to wash," your voice comes out pleading, and meek. You have no idea how he'll react to you being aggressive and defensive against his assault even if you had the courage to speak out against him.

"And I want to claim you as my omega," he growls directly in your ear, causing you to whine again and cower your head beneath his hounding mouth. "But I guess we'll both have to wait for what we want, huh?"

He knows you know.

You have to know.

Have to have known how badly he wants you, wants to hear your voice ring high with laughter like you do teasing your sisters, wants to hear your playful growls as you wrestle with your brothers who let you win just to see you swish your tail with prowess. He wants to feel you rest your head on his chest, wants to see you look up at him with security and ease, knowing that he's there to protect and love you.

But how can he explain that, with years of nothing but threatening looks and yards of distance between you two?

If it brings you familiarity and perhaps ease of seeing him as you've always thought to have known him, as a brute with nothing on his mind apart from taking you like an animal and conquering you, then he'll save the monologuing for later.

"After all," he heaves in the darkness of the seclusion, voicing his thoughts, "your birthday's coming up, right? You'll be of age to be claimed."

He thrusts his knee in between your trembling legs, pushing your shoulders down while following with his head and never letting his mouth rise above your unclaimed mark. You gasp as he begins grinding his knee in circles against your hooded clit, bouncing you lightly to evoke whatever sweet noises he can from your pursed lips.

You choke and sputter, suddenly grasping around his neck for leverage as you try to pull yourself up, but you're no match for him as it only serves to prove his point and enrage him from your constant rejection.

You can lie to him all you want, but your body never will.

"And trust me, little girl, when that cunt ripens for me to take, when that neck fucking sings for me to lay my mark-"

Your voice cracks into a howl as he takes one of his hands and squeezes the fat of your tit while the other spanks your jiggling ass on his knee, feeling whiplash from the onslaught of sensations.

"-I can promise you, there's no running. There's no cowering behind your brother's legs like some fucking baby, there's no using your sisters as an excuse to turn your face away from me."

Bakugo presses you tight against the wall, smothering you chest-to-chest with him and using the confined space to rut his naked erection against your thigh, his hips snapping forward and chasing years of needed release in your presence.

"I'll tie you down on my bed, face down ass-up and breed you as my bitch. I'll take you bent over and wrapped around me against every surface and floor of our secluded cave."

You blubber as you can feel yourself coming to a high, the water splashing obnoxiously at your humping against each other. In an effort to keep your pride, you try as hard as you can to grit your teeth and delay your orgasm, but he seems to catch on pretty quick.

"And then," he drops your tit and uses both hands to pry your asscheeks apart, impaling you impossibly closer down on the hard bone of his knee, your clit grating deliciously as his leg vibrates and flexes from moving you back and forth, up and down, any direction he can get your teeth to latch onto your lip and pussy clench on nothing.

"Then, you won't have to hide that pretty voice anymore. I'll get those years of silence back in exchange for your screams for help."

At this, he hugs you flush against the wall and himself as you shake from your orgasm, the water rippling at your reaction.

"So if I were you, I'd be grateful for any solitude from now on. Because you won't be getting it anymore."

[cadere-art]

The spotted lesser owlcat is a small predator of the owlcat family - flat-faced theropods with small wings, a curved toe claw, and a facial disk. Lesser owlcats of various species are found all over Uanlikri.

Like other owlcats, it hunts by ambush, targeting primarily birds and other flighted small prey. It prefers mixed habitats of wetland and woodland: its distinctive mix of spots and stripes confer it good camouflage under the canopy and among riverside bushes and sparse reeds.

Antiole activity cutting down forests to build artificial wetlands for the cultivation of swamp rice has led to the spotted lesser owlcat's range diminishing in favour of its close cousin, the banded lesser owlcat.

[lightleak007]

~ The Legend of How You Disappeared ~

Storyline: Kokushibo thought that people with rare blood are the only ones who can make him feel the excitement of consuming them. But you—you are awakening his humanistic urge that is supposed to be long forgotten.

!! SMUT ALERT !!

!! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK !!

PS. Hi, reader! I'm making my tumblr debut with one of my favorite Demon Slayer Character x Reader stories that I made. Hope you enjoy reading~

During the Taisho period, it is part of the culture to be married at a young age. The age of sixteen is the appropriate age to have a husband through an arranged marriage. That’s why learning how to be a good wife is much more important than learning how to be intellectual.

You had prepared yourself for the day to be chosen as a bride, but your life wasn’t the same as everybody else—no one wanted you.

If only you were chosen and got married by the age of sixteen, you wouldn’t be seen as bad luck by your own family and everybody else in town.

As you live your life for two decades, you are seen as a disgrace, and everyone who knew you always looked at you with pity in their eyes. Even work does not come easy since everyone believes you’ll only attract misfortune to their business. It got you thinking that maybe life isn’t hard, it’s just you finding it hard to live because the people around you make it so.

It feels like you’re just breathing, but not living—you feel empty and unwanted. The only thing that gives you peace of mind is an evening walk, and you developed a habit of doing it every night without a miss.

Even with the rumors about a demon who hunts humans for food being the only talk in your town lately, it doesn’t stop you to take a late-night walk. More like, you don’t care if you encounter the demon and he puts an end to your life—or maybe the demon won’t even choose you to be their prey in the first place.

You scoffed at the thought of encountering a picky demon as you continue to walk towards the riverside. When you got to your usual spot, you put down your lantern on the grass before sitting beside it. The moon is unusually bright tonight and its light is reflecting on the calm water that is flowing in the river in front of you.

“Ah~ It feels a little chilly tonight,” you said to yourself as you felt the night breeze, and put on your haori that you brought with you. Nighttime is the only time you are free—from judgments and the pitiful stare of everyone you know. It feels nice to have solitude and the gentle flow of wind against you is adding to your relaxation.

The cold air of the night keeps brushing against your skin and as the wind blows, your scent is being flown with it—reaching the nostrils of the rumored demon in the area. He can feel his senses tingle upon smelling a human nearby.

Kokushibo moves swiftly to your location, his hunger beginning to rise within him. Just by your scent, he could tell you are a woman in her younger years, and the closer he gets to where you are… his sixth sense revealed much more.

Without you noticing him, Kokushibo stands a few feet away behind you. He couldn’t believe what he could see with his sixth sense, but he knows that his eyes are not lying to him.

Kokushibo can tell without a doubt that you are a virgin.

A thrill runs in his veins and an unfamiliar urge is igniting within him upon knowing this. Kokushibo thought that people with rare blood are the only ones who can make him feel the excitement of consuming them. But you—you are awakening his humanistic urge that is supposed to be long forgotten.

Being a demon, Kokushibo did not think that it was possible for him to feel any sexual urge, especially, toward a human. For demons, humans are nothing but food and power source. Yet when your scent penetrated his nostrils, a tingling sensation runs through under his skin, and his instincts told him to have you.

Kokushibo unsheaths his fleshy sword from his side. Thinking to himself that after he absorbs you, he'll be back to his usual self—being composed and reserved. In just one slash, he knew he could end your life and he won’t be bothered by his humanistic feelings anymore.

You only became aware of someone else’s presence behind you when you felt a sharp tip pressing at your back. A gasp left your lips and your mind wondered who could it be. Your heart races its beat as you slowly turn your head to see who it is.

A louder gasp escapes from you upon realizing that the person who pointed his sword at you, is in fact, a demon. You tilt your face away to see him, he has three pairs of eyes that can’t go unnoticed by someone. His face has flame markings on the left side of his forehead and on the right side of his chin. He stands tall in front of you and his spiky hair is tied in a ponytail behind his head. He’s wearing a purple kimono with beehive patterns on it and partnered it with black hakama pants that are tied with a white cloth belt on his waist. Somehow, you felt admiration for his majestic features.

“W-Who are you…?” You asked as he pointed his fleshy sword at your face this time. Well, you guess this is where your miserable life ends.

Even as a demon, he’s polite enough to answer your question. “Upper Moon Rank One of Twelve Kizuki,” he saw how your face looks puzzled at what he said, “Kokushibo.” He was a little surprised that you did not run away screaming.

As someone who’s tired of living, you don’t feel scared anymore of getting killed by him. It’s not your wish to spend your time growing old in a world that only gives unfairness to you.

“Don’t worry, I won’t run away,” you said as you get up on your feet, “You can do anything to me. I’ve been ready to throw my life away anyway, Kokushibo.” You flashed him a genuine smile—something you haven’t done in a long time.

Kokushibo’s eyebrows twitch, “Do…anything to her?” He thought as he felt the shivers that run through his body, and the smile that you gave him only made his heart fall. He pointed his sword to your chest and he watches as you anticipated the slash.

You waited with eyes-closed, heartbeat racing but there’s no regret creeping into your chest. Then, you felt the sword swing across your body and the breeze of the night penetrated your skin. Slowly, you opened one eye to see what happened—only to see Kokushibo sheathing his sword back to his side.

When the wind flew again, it felt too cold against your body. Realization slowly sank in you as shredded pieces of clothing swayed in front of your eyes. You look at your body and found yourself…naked.

“I have permission to do anything to you right now,” Kokushibo catches your waist and pulled your naked body closer to his. His face inching closer to your neck and his other hand already caressing one of your breasts.

“A-Aren’t you—hng!” The feeling of his lips kissing lavishly on your neck made you hold off your question. You weren’t aware that a demon like him could be a pervert and would do sexual advances on his prey—this wasn’t what you expected. His sharp nails grazing against your back made you elicit a shuddering breath and caused you to push your chest closer to him.

Kokushibo slathers his tongue from your shoulder blade to your neck and it reaches until the back of your ears. “Your taste is addicting….” He paused upon the realization that he doesn’t know your name.

“Tell me…” Kokushibo pulled your chin to tilt your head and made you look at him, “...your name, human.”

“_______,” you answered without hesitation as you hold onto his shoulders and felt your heart flutter at his compliment. Your naked body presses close to him and you can feel a hard tent poking on your thigh.

“_______,” Kokushibo repeated as if your name is something he won’t ever want to forget. His hands ran all over your body as his mouth started working on your neck again. Your scent and taste against Kokushibo’s senses are enough to make him moan. He ran his fangs on the veins of your neck and the urge to bite you is so strong but his sexual urge for you is stronger.

The feeling of Kokushibo’s lips against your skin is ticklish and sensual, both feelings are something you never had before from someone else. You felt your body being guided to lay down on the grass where your shredded clothes are. As soon as your back hits the ground, Kokushibo hovers on top of you and seizes your lips.

“Hmng!” The sudden kiss caught you off-guard, making it hard to respond as his tongue invades your mouth. You can only release puffs of air and let him eagerly suck on your tongue—the sensation is electrifying.

Kokushibo keeps himself busy as he savors your taste in your mouth, not really minding all the saliva he’s been slurping from you. It has been so long since he ever kissed someone and he’s well aware that not even with his wife from before time, had awakened a such desire he’s been feeling for you. He doesn’t want to stop and his tongue pushes deep into your mouth—nearly reaching your throat.

You almost choked and your eyes filled with tears as you find it hard to breathe. With all the strength that you have, you pushed him away and moaned, “Ko-Kokushibo…”

There’s a trickle of saliva on the side of his mouth as he pulled away and the way you moaned his name made him feel a throb in his aching length. Kokushibo wiped off your stained cheek with his cold hand as gently as he could. He’s feeling too much ache between his legs that his clothing is making him feel more uncomfortable.

You watch as Kokushibo undress between your legs, he has pale skin but a muscular body, and your eyes were interrupted from lowering down your gaze when he hoists your legs in his arms. The dripping of your arousal in between your legs is being reflected by the moonlight, and the embarrassment snaps in you as Kokushibo leans in closer to your wetness.

Kokushibo inhales deep your arousal scent—too inviting for him. He felt your hips squirming away in shyness but he had no problem firming his hold on your thighs. His hands spread your wetness open and his sharp nails dug into your inner thighs at the sight of your tight hole. Every breath that he takes is heavy as he keeps himself in control.

You started to feel more embarrassed and insecure as Kokushibo stay in a daze with your virgin hole. But, every puff of air from his mouth feels too hot against your wetness that it’s taking effect on you too. Your soft hand reaches for his hand that’s holding into your inner thigh, “What’s… wrong?”

“I want to taste what’s dripping from you here,” Kokushibo’s knuckles caresses your folds and gently prod your clit unconsciously.

Before you could answer, you felt his flat tongue lathering on your wetness back and forth. The tip of his tongue rubbed on your clit and licking on your slit—causing your legs to spread further apart. Your hands hold onto his head as Kokushibo let himself drown in your wetness, and your voice sounds high and lewd from the sensation.

Kokushibo’s mouth works with hunger and your arousal coating even his chin as he pushes his tongue inside you. He slurps loudly and sucked on the nub his mouth had found—causing your legs to tremble against his hold.

“Ahhh~!!” You cried out in pleasure as you tug on his hair, “Kokushibo~! Your tongue—haa~!!”

The way you pulled his hair is not having any effect on Kokushibo, it only made him groan against your clit, as his tongue penetrates your insides. He can feel the soft pleats of your insides squeezing around the wet muscle of his mouth.

The further his tongue reaches inside you, the closer you felt yourself convulsing. Your legs shake around his head and your body gave in to the newfound ecstasy. You came undone in his mouth and your insides wetter than ever.

Kokushibo gulped all the secretions left in his mouth and he stare down at your heavily breathing state. He presses his shaft on your abused clit and you flinch away in sensitiveness. He had to hold your hips still as he started penetrating your tight insides.

You whined at the sensation of getting stretched apart, he felt hard inside you, and it feels impossible to take all of him. The brush of his pulsating veins in your slick walls is making your eyes roll in the back of your head.

“I can’t— ‘s too much.”

Kokushibo pulled your body up on his lap, to help you sink on him as he was just halfway in, “Don’t run away from me, _______.”

You felt his hands on your ass and your body swiftly pushed down to his length. You let out a cry of his name and felt a searing pain as you fully take him inside you. Tears freely fell from your eyes as you feel the pain—his length feels too hard and your insides still adjusting from his wide girth.

"Please..." You can feel the sting in your eyes as tears continue to trickle down and stain your cheeks, "Stop... Please, stop."

Unbeknownst to both of you, spots of blood from your torn hymen are freely dripping from your joined bodies together and staining the ground.

"I can't.” Kokushibo started to thrust, “This can't be over now, _______."

You cried out louder and had to bite on his shoulder to distract yourself from the pain. Your teeth sink into his pale skin and your fingertips scratch his back, as Kokushibo keeps your body moving on top of him.

Kokushibo groaned internally as he felt you bit on his skin… and he almost prayed to a god just to keep the mark that you made. But, it wasn’t possible, his healing ability already made your bite vanish.

“Kokushibo,” you sniffled on the crook of his neck.

“It will feel better, _______,” Kokushibo kisses your shoulder blade and continue to gently guide your hips in moving. He couldn’t focus on feeling the pleasure as you cry, but he knew that he couldn’t stay still as your insides grip on his length too hard.

Your insides adjusted fully as he keeps thrusting, soon enough, the pain you were feeling was replaced by a ticklish yet sensual sensation. You can feel that it became easier to take him in as you move above him, and your voice lets out erotic moans.

Kokushibo has his six eyes closed as he lets you move on your own, the pleasure in his body is getting stronger and stronger. His hands squeeze on your soft ass and his sharp nails unconsciously left scratch marks on your skin, due to his eagerness. He’s letting out deep groans and sighs as he lets himself be consumed by the pleasure.

You felt like a knot is getting twisted inside you and the more you move, the tighter it gets. “Kokushibo~ Hnngh!”

Kokushibo caresses your face after hearing his name, your face distorts beautifully for him as the pleasure intoxicates you. He wrapped one arm around your waist and move his hips, taking the lead with speed. He can feel your nipples brushing against his face as he bounces you on top of him.

Your hold on his shoulders tightens and it’s hard to keep yourself steady. You couldn’t think straight as the pleasure gets in your head. You felt your body giving up as another wave of surprise orgasm surged throughout your body.

Kokushibo felt your insides squeeze around him repeatedly—forcing him to pull out. He felt your body falls on him and your ragged breathing is apparent. He took in a deep breath, he had almost reached his high, and he intended to pursue it.

You felt being flipped to your back and Kokushibo from behind is pushing his shaft inside you again. A loud whine escaped your lips as you feel being full again, and he felt bigger in the new position. Your legs already shaking as soon as he started to thrust.

“Kokushibo~!! Unghh!!” Your hands gripping the grass and making marks on the ground as you take in his pounding. This time, he felt forceful and relentless—as if chasing something.

Kokushibo’s mind got clouded by the pleasure that he’s spitting out a proposal near your ear in between his moans, “Let’s live together, ________.” He moaned deliciously again, “Live together with me.”

Without thinking about it, “Yes! Kokushibo, yes~!!”

Maybe it was the pleasure you’re feeling that took your sense of logic away, but you know you won’t regret the choice you made.

Kokushibo dragged his hips once more before unloading thick strings of his warm cum and it painted your narrow insides white. All of his kept seeds bursting out inside you and making you full—literally overwhelming your womb.

You can still feel Kokushibo pumping inside you and your body could only take in all that he gave. Eyes rolling at the back of your head, hands gripping the ground, and your voice sounding lewd can be heard from a far distance.

Kokushibo stared at your limp state, while his desire is barely satiated. He took you in his arms and brushed away the strands of your hair from your face, “Take my blood and I’ll keep you, _______.”

You obliged. Finally, you have found someone who wanted you.

Before sunrise, you and Kokushibo are off to spend the rest of your demon life together. Leaving your shredded clothes on the ground and pieces of evidence of you losing your virginity. The marks on the ground and the spots of blood from where you were last night were founded by a man who’s out to fish in the river.

Since then, a legend of how you disappeared arises in your town based on the traces that you left. People believed that you were eaten by a demon as it was your fate for being unmarriable.

The legend of your disappearance was told to many young girls through generations and they feared having the same fate as you.

[serpentface]

The two greatest beasts found in imperial Wardin's waterways, the river drake and the an-nechoi.

River drakes are actually small freshwater leviathans, with their resemblance to crocodiles being a result of convergent evolution. Juvenile drakes live in small, loose groups, but breeding adults are solitary. Full grown adults of the size seen here are rare, and legends speak of river drakes who grew twice as large in ancient times. This may be rooted in truth, as many of Wardin's rivers have depleted in size orr are heavily trafficked, and territory that can sustain such a large adult is increasingly rare.

They kill humans less frequently than crocodiles (also widely found in this region) but tend to have an elevated place in the cultural schema, partly due to their rarity and partly due to their inconspicuousness (they give live birth and never need to emerge on land, and can live completely undetected in an area for years). It is actually juveniles and smaller adults who are more dangerous to humans. Big, older animals do not need to feed as frequently and tend to reserve feeding for seasonal river crossings by migratory antelopes. They spend most of their time expending little energy, often staying so still at the river's surface to bask that water plants collect on their backs.

Nechoi are a family of large omnivorous hooved animals, and an-nechoi are the biggest and most aquatic of the bunch. Their jaws are exceptionally powerful, used in intraspecific combat. They spend most of their day keeping cool in water (usually slow flowing rivers), emerging at night to feed. Most of their diet is plant matter, but they readily scavenge and opportunistically kill prey.

Adult males form territories stretching up to a mile or so from a riverside and will aggressively defend them against other males (and other large animals that compete for food). Females move freely between territories, flocking to males who control the largest and most bountiful stretches of land. While resting in water, they are comparatively unaggressive and will flock into mixed-sex groups (though males will fight even in water when in the presence of receptive females)

An-nechoi are considered very dangerous to humans. Most attacks on humans are a result of territorial aggression or defense of their young, but are occasionally predatory in nature (and they will usually eat their kill either way). They are also known for stealing catches from fishermen, and appearing at the kill sites of hunters on land to scavenge the carcass. They are rarely targeted in subsistence hunting, but are some of the most sought after game in recreational hunts, with a killing of a bull an-nechoi being a marker of status and glory for an experienced hunter.

[according2thelore]

after chuck dies, dean starts having pain in his shoulder. just his left shoulder. it's constant, and it throbs. and it throbs. and it throbs.

sam tries to buy something at the grocery store, and all their cards get declined. he tries to set up new cards when he gets back to the bunker, but suddenly tricks that have been working for ten years don't work anymore.

dean's ears ring when the room's quiet enough to hear. sam's jaw starts hurting from how hard he grinds his teeth in his sleep.

when they go on hunts, there aren't any more non-chain motels. no more local "riverside inns" or "quick sleep-n-stays" or "parkway motels." it's all motel six, motel six, best western, econolodges, motel six. places they've been staying their entire lives barely exist anymore. the rare local places like "philly red carpet suite" they do find are few and far between, and one foot in the grave.

sam gets an upper respiratory infection that lasts weeks. he can't seem to shake it. when they go to a doctor, their fake insurance bounces. dean gets stabbed in the leg by a ghoul on a hunt, and the scar twinges until he dies.

sam has internet connectivity issues that he's never had before, and has to rewire the entire bunker to access his basic files.

baby needs four time the gas she used to, and sam and dean notice that every drive across america seems to take hours more than before. it takes them five hours to dig up their next grave, and they get caught more than once.

for the first time in forty-five years, dean winchester gets actually, properly drunk, and he's laid out all day, throwing up miserably into the toilet.

sam has to get a brace for his back, years bent over tables and computers making the low throb in his spine ever-present.

they break into a museum to pull an artifact, and the cops show up in a matter of minutes, tripped by some silent alarm that they don't know the location of.

it's harder to get victims to talk to them on hunts. for some reason, no one seems to believe them anymore when they say they're FBI or grief counsellors or park rangers or restaurant investors.

it's not a lot, but it's enough for them to notice. the world doesn't work for the winchesters anymore. it doesn't revolve around them.

there is no author to make it easy.

[secret-smut-sideblog]

Black Out Days

Gale x F! Tav

18+ chronic pain, drug use (weed), unintentional aphrodisiac (slutweed), groping, dry humping, breast worship (f!), fingering (f!), body caging, roughness, sub/dom, tenderness

Tav's pain rising to an unbearable level, she indulges in some found herbs to find relief. But her sanctuary is laced with some heated side effects...

Masterlist

-

"Please, please I've had enough." She moaned, head resting against cool river stones.

The pain had been spiking over the base of her skull all day in excruciating arcs. It was all she could do to keep her eyes open, force her face to be impassive.

Between every horrible thing that had been happening to them, her chronic pain was her own burden to bear. She hadn't told anyone besides Halsin, the sweet man helped her as much as he could with what was available.

Nothing made her feel worse than being a burden, so she trudged on in silence. Still the leader they needed. Gods only know how she ended up in that position in the first place.

Crouching at the riverside, she gripped at slick stones, whimpering. Finally letting go of her lovingly crafted mask of health. Wanting to slam her insolent head into the earth, but knew that would offer no relief.

Scrambling hands reached into her pack. At the goblin camp, she had pocketed a jar of promising looking herbs.

She brought the unsealed jar to her nose.

Musky, sweet, near sulphuric.

Yes, praise the Gods. Halfling weed.

Packing Halsins borrowed pipe, she leaned back on haunches, the new movement making her stomach spin threateningly. If she could stretch this supply out it could sustain her, at least until she could slip into to an apothecary.

Flicking her fingers, she brought a small flame to the bowl. Breathing in slowly.

As soon as the smoke met her lungs, a spreading warmth caressed up the back of her spine. Gentle fingers splaying up, cradling the base of her skull. The agony dulling into a veiled hissing. Still crouched in the grass, but far from where she sat.

Tears of relief fell down her face. Gods, she could breath again. Body pulled down deliciously yet so much lighter.

She sighed, leaning her head back. Taking a moment to get lost in the crisp night air, the sounds of moving water, insects calling for one another in the dark. Finally able to perceive more than her anguish.

Standing, she headed back towards the orange point of their campfire. Body awash in calm.

As she re-entered their little world a new sensation sidled up to her spreaded peace.

A soothing heat slipped down her front, pressing an insistent touch inside of her pelvis.

Oh.

Kneeling near the campfire, she examined the jar more thoroughly. Lifting the bottom, she found a small scuffed label written in scratchy hand.

Halfing Weed; Succubus Spittle 5%

Hissing a breath between her teeth, she closed her eyes in defeat. Fucking goblins.

Slick already pooling between her legs, she groaned in frustration. Of course her savior came with a demand.

Already, she knew this was not nearly enough to deter her from the alternative. But it didn't make it any less vexing.

Hips already rocking against nothing, she was infinitely thankful that the camp had turned in for the night. Even Astarion off hunting for a few hours, at least.

Especially him, she knew he had the skills she needed in this moment. But she didn't want to do that to him. From one veiled mask to another, she could tell he didn't want her that way.

Dizzy with heat, she rose to head to her tent. More than willing to deal with this desire alone. She had a sure hand and a vivid imagination, it would be an easy burden to bear.

Her infatuation with the wizard could be tonight's theater of the mind. Wide shoulders, soft brown eyes, hair that brushed against his clavicle. The veins in his forearms when he pushed up his sleeves, large hands twisting and pulling with blue magic.

She moaned, and clapped her hand over her mouth.

Reign yourself in, Tav. Gods.

As if summoning him from her salacious imagination, he emerged from his tent.

Drowsily greeting her, he wandered towards the water pump, kneeling next to it. Pulling the lever, he opened his mouth and started swallowing what of the divulge of water he could catch.

She stood stock still, watching this innocuous moment like a wolf watches a rabbit. The desire pooled in her pelvis boiling over.

Wiping his mouth, he rose back to feet. Seeming to fully see her then.

"Tav, you alright? You seem a little flushed, in a haunted type of way."

Gods forgive her for what she was about to do.

Taking his hand, she wordlessly pulled him into his tent.

"What-" Her body cut him off, pressing hard into his.

Running her hands up his taut back, she buried her face into his neck. The curve of his waist bending up into shoulders making her moan softly.

He was so warm, so solid against her pushing. Smelling of old books and leather. Her hand rising to tangle into his hair, tugging gently.

His body seemed to go weak then, gripping onto her for support.

"Tav, Gods..." He shivered.

His voice bringing her back to herself for a moment, she made to pull away. But his hands held her anchor to him.

"Please, don't stop." He pleaded.

Like a flint sparking, she dove back in. Hips fluid and insistent against his. Gathering his sleep shirt in her demanding hands. Pulling his head back to release his neck to her. Pulsing, biting, suckling into the soft flesh.

The herb removing all inhibition, she was a growling animal against him. Hands pinning and pulling, mouth hungry and salivating.

He fell to knees, and she followed him down. Straddling over his lap, licking an obscene line up his panting throat.

His length already a pillar pushing against her. Hands catching her writhing hips, pulling them flush to him.

Her head fell back then, the friction Gods sent. The slick already pooled in her underclothes welcoming him.

Something seemed to snap in him.

His hands wrenched her sleep shirt over her shoulders. Caging over her body, pushing her down on his bedroll.

"Yes," She moaned, falling open for him.

His mouth pushed into hers, gripping the back of her head.

The heat coming off of him was making her head spin. Intoxicating her body into liquid, crashing against him in waves. All smothered soft calls and silent demanding mouths.

Tangling into him like it was all she knew. All her body could know was getting as close as she could without being inside.

He hitched her leg up over his hip and ground down hard. Groaning in the back of his throat. Chest lit up purple, eyes glowing.

Concern arced through her stifling heat.

She cupped the sides of his face, bringing his eyes to hers.

The question in her eyes reached him. Hips still pistoning, he nodded.

"Please, I want to."

"Then take what you want." She gasped out, leading his head down.

He dove on her breast, licking her hard tip into his warm mouth.

"Fuck," She hissed, back arching.

She tried to reach for his sleep pants but his hand caught her wrist, forcing it above her head.

Pushing her underclothes down her hips, he rubbed hard against her clit. Blurring his hand.

Choking out a moan, she writhed helplessly. His body keeping her pinned and open. Splayed fully against him.

His mouth switched sides, taking up her soft untouched breast. The slurping suckle his tongue pulled against her peak making her mewl.

"Please, Gale. Inside." She pleaded, bucking her hips as much as his hold would allow.

He pushed two fingers inside her, moan muffled against her flesh.

"You're so wet," He groaned.

"You. All you." She moaned, sentences and their structures utterly lost.

But those words must have been more than enough. His fingers began slamming inside her, hooking towards her navel.

Her head fell back, gripping his head to her breast. The force of his fingers rocking her back and forth.

He was the tide and she a ship, unanchored and tossing through the waves.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" She whined as the pressure in her pelvis tilted up, threatening collapse.

He pulled her engorged peak between his teeth and she was thrown overboard.

Her legs arched up, clamping around his hips. Back bending, the force of the pleasure striking through her was near agony. Completely stealing her voice away, only gasping out choking silent cries. The herbs making her reach new heights, unwinding like a tapestry pulled. Clenching hard enough around his fingers to make him groan.

She collapsed under him, head lolling. Eyes glazed and rolling.

He pulled his fingers from her, licking them clean. Leaning down to nuzzle into her neck, his beard tickling her.

"You didn't-" She started weakly.

"With the state of the orb, I think it's in all of our best interests if I obstained."

"Besides," He hummed, kissing under her jaw. "Your pleasure has more than sustained me."

"Though I am curious, what brought on this most welcome intrusion?"

She hesitated. Not wanting another person, especially him, who has so much to hurdle over already, to worry about her.

"It's this... pain I have. I found some soothing herbs and they helped. A lot actually. But with other effects."

She pulled the small jar from her strewn trousers, handing it to him.

Immediately he flipped it over to examine the bottom, and she groaned in embarrassment.

"See, that's exactly what I didn't do."

Grabbing for her shirt she instead landed on his, pulling it over her head.

He smiled at her, eyes lit up with appreciative glint.

"Ah, of course it looks better on you."

"Cozy." She sighed, the velvet material warming her through. Sleeves swallowing her hands.

He reached inside her pocket and retrieved the pipe, sparking up his fingers and bringing it to his lips.

Seeing her shock, he smiled.

"You're not the only one fighting pain." He knocked his knuckles on the burned circle in his chest.

"Besides, you seemed to be in a peaceful state. I'd like to meet you there, if you'd allow me."

"Deal." She smiled, sliding on knees to sidle up close to him again. "But only if you let me stay the night."

"Oh, you drive a hard bargain." He smiled at her, scrunching up his nose in that playful way that made her heart gallop.

As soon as he breathed in, she held his chin in her fingers. Pulling his mouth to hers, breathing in the smoke as it left him.

Starting to relax, he pulled her down with him. Sighing contently as she snuggled into him.

"Oh, careful. I could get very used to this."

~

[mixelation]

more (a)synchronicity. the meetcute <3

ummm okay so one thing to remember is that minato has met tori TWICE and simply does not remember her because he hasn't realized she's the main character. but she remembers him. not fondly.

*****

There was a platoon of Kumo-nin squatting in a small riverside village. Minato killed them, as part of his general orders to keep enemy ninja out of the smaller countries as much as possible. He also found that getting on civilians’ good sides made his life easier. If he was lucky, they’d tell him some info and offer him food and lodging. 

He killed the first three Kumo-nin almost instantly when they came out of a home to confront him. The fourth and fifth took a couple minutes to hunt down, as all the villagers ran around and screamed and fled into their houses. The seventh had taken an old lady hostage in her own home, which was just pathetic. Minato caught the old lady as the Kumo-nin’s body fell. 

“Hey,” he said, putting her back on her feet. She was shaking, and he had no idea if that was just an old lady thing or she was upset. He smiled his most harmless and disarming smile at her. “Are you alright?”

He didn’t hear her answer— which didn’t really matter, because no one looked into his nicest smile and didn’t think they were okay— because someone stepped into the doorway. 

Like most of the homes in the village, this woman’s house was a single room. The Kumo-nin had darted in here at random and left the front door open. Minato turned, expecting to see a village leader or warrior. That’s usually who came and talked to him, before he could properly trot out his charm. Civilians were often terrified of ninja, especially in the small countries where they could be attacked or displaced by their wars at any moment. 

It wasn’t a leader or a fighter in the doorway though. It was a young woman, who watched him with curious dark eyes. Her dark hair was pulled back tightly, and the only thing that seemed slightly remarkable about her was that her frayed dress was an uncommon style to this area. 

“Hi,” Minato said brightly, friendly as can be. “Um— I just saved your grandmother here from those nasty ninja...”

“She’s not my grandmother,” the woman replied. She leaned against the doorframe, casual as could be. “But thanks, I guess. You’re not a nasty ninja too?”

“I’m a ninja,” Minato confirmed. He winked performatively at her. “But I’m not nasty. I’m from Konoha.”

She snorted, unimpressed. Well. He supposed his charm couldn’t work on everyone. 

The old lady was still shaking terribly. Minato helped her into the big plush chair she had at the foot of her bed. As he did this, an older man he’d bet was the village leader appeared at the doorway, and the woman explained, in a surprisingly bored drawl, he was Konoha and that he’d killed all seven Kumo-nin. 

The seventh one’s body was still in the middle of the room. Minato stepped over it to greet the leader. 

“Is everyone alright?” he asked first. The leader boggled back at him. The woman just raised her eyebrows. 

The leader had barely acknowledged her. Minato was drawing a blank for what her role might be. Not important, not impressed by ninja, even charming helpful ninja… Village weirdo?

“I’m Minato, a Jounin of Konoha,” he introduced himself, jabbing his thumb at his headband. “Those ninja that were harassing you were Kumo. As your ally, I’m happy to—”

“Konoha isn’t our ally,” the woman said, eyes meeting his. A tiny smirk crossed her face. “You’re on the Grass side of the river. The Kumo-nin were our allies.”

Minato had known this. He introduced himself as an ally to basically all civilians in the smaller countries, to help with his friendly persona and promote Konoha’s image. People rarely called him out, because during this war, ninja were almost uniformly horrible to civilians outside of their homelands. A lone handsome and friendly Konoha-nin was almost always anyone’s preference, even if their country was technically at war with Konoha. 

“Also— why do ninja always talk like we have no idea what their hitai-ate mean?” the woman asked.

Well. It had never occurred to Minato that people in a backwater town might be well-versed in ninja customs. 

“Reina…” the village leader said, shooting the woman a warning look. Then he turned back to Minato. “The Kumo-nin were stealing our food, disrupting our work, and harassing our women. We’re thankful you got rid of them.”

Minato smiled. Reina rolled her eyes and walked away. 

The leader went on to say that he would happily host Minato for the night as thanks, but he would have to report the attack to Kumo. He apologized that the message would likely reach the nearest administrative camp quickly, only giving Minato a few days to vacate the area before they were alerted. 

“It’s okay,” Minato said cheekily. “I’m fast.”

The village buzzed to life after that. The Kumo-nin bodies were moved, rolled in cloth and lined up in the shade of the town square in case Kumo wanted them. Villagers rushed about, checking on friends and family. The old lady’s actual grandson bowed deeply to Minato in thanks. 

Minato sat on the edge of the bone-dry fountain in the middle of the square, watching all this. The villagers seemed a little jittery around him— eyeing him in evident fear whenever one scuttled past— so he didn’t want to do anything that might scare them. It was boring, but he obediently sat still and tried not to bounce his leg too much all day long. 

The village leader’s wife came over and introduced herself, and then offered Minato with some onigiri to snack on. He asked about the old lady and was assured she was fine. 

“I wouldn’t mind,” Minato said, turning up the charm as he accepted the riceballs, “chatting with you and your husband about anything interesting going on around here.”

“Around here…?” the wife said. “The most interesting thing is you.”

She smiled bashfully. Ah, well. At least his charms were working on someone. 

“No other ninja?” Minato pressed. 

“Oh,” the wife said. “Well, I’ll ask around. My husband will surely tell you more at dinner.”

She left. 

The sun lowered in the sky, and the village calmed. Reina sauntered over to him. 

“You look bored,” she said. “Do you want to do something useful?”

“Sure?” Minato replied, half-convinced she was going to tell him to go clean something.

“Don’t worry,” she said, and finally offered him a real smile. “It’s interesting.”

Minato hopped to his feet. 

Reina led him through the village, seemingly completely unbothered to have a ninja at her back. Civilians were like that, he guessed. It was weird, but it wasn’t suspicious. He watched the bun at the back of her head loosen ever so slightly with every step as she marched down the main road. 

(Improperly tied hair… also a very weird civilian thing.)

“There’s a ninja paper down in the river,” she explained as she walked. “I noticed it a few days ago. I guess the Kumo-nin put it there, but I don’t know why.”

“Ninja paper?” Minato asked.

She turned slightly to look at him with one eye as she walked. 

“You know the… special paper.” She drew a few random circles in the air with her finger for him. “With the squiggles?”

That was, actually, potentially, extremely interesting. It could be evidence left by their mysterious fuinjutsu user. It could be the final clue Minato needed to find them. 

Or, more likely, given the mystery fuinjutsu user tended to paint or carve onto natural objects, it was just one of the Kumo-nin’s fishing traps. But it could be a clue. 

They passed the border of the village, and the cobblestone street turned to a packed dirt path. Minato quickened his step slightly to walk next to Reina. 

“Is it doing anything?” he asked. 

She gave him a look. “Doing anything…? Don’t they just explode if you step on them?”

Not doing anything then, okay. So she just thought it was a safety hazard she’d need another ninja to get rid of. 

“You said it was in the river?” he prompted instead. 

“Yeah, it’s in the water,” she said. “It’s like… um…” She made a few hand gestures which were meaningless to Minato, and then had the grace to look embarrassed. “Well, you’ll see.”

The path rose over a slight hill, and then they could see the river down below. It wasn’t very big or impressive here, but a lot of trade traffic would come through here in peace times. The banks were manmade stone walkways, to aid with the horses than sometimes lead boats. 

“It’s up there,” Rein said, pointing. She stepped off the path to make a more direct route across the grass down to the riverside. “I marked it so I could find it again.”

They walked maybe thirty minutes. Minato didn’t mind. The breeze was nice, and this area of the country was all open fields, meaning he could see down the river for what felt like miles. It would be sunset soon, and the sun was already glinting off the water in pretty ways. He still preferred the shade of Fire Country’s forests, but it was nice to be able to see so far every once in a while. 

He did try to talk to Reina, as they walked. She didn’t seem like she had much to say about the maybe-seal she was walking him to, but a good shinobi was always fishing for information. 

She seemed cagey at first, but with some light, half-joking flirtations that made her make unimpressed faces at him, he got her to open up about her life. She complained the village had nothing to do and that she had to walk to another town if she even wanted to buy a book. When he asked why she didn’t leave, she looked at him like he was stupid. 

He was almost starting to take those looks personally. 

“Because I have no money, and ninja are shooting fireballs at each other all over the place,” she said. Then she looked away, kicking a pebble down the embankment and into the river. “Plus someone has to raise my little brother.”

At some point, Reina’s bun loosened to the point where she had to take it down. 

“Ugh,” she said, pulling the tie and then shaking out her hair. “Did you know war can make hair tie shortages?”

She held up a deformed elastic tie for him, as if making some sort of point. 

“Why don’t you just… use a ribbon?” he tried. He knew Kushina liked the elastic ones because she was always complaining about snapping them, but Kotone had only ever used cloth ties. 

Reina stared at him like the thought had never occurred to her. Minato smiled uncertainly back. She was a village girl. Surely she knew about traditional hair ties? Or pins? What were hair pins for? He’d picked them out of lovers’ hair before. They must have been doing something. 

Minato suddenly felt like he’d only ever known two women in his entire life. 

“Your hair is curly,” he observed, and then immediately felt deeply stupid. 

“Oh,” Reina said, a hand resting where her hair fell over her shoulder. It was quite long too, although not as long as Kushina’s. It was also clearly tangled and unwashed. “Well, right now it’s more like a mess…”

“I think it’s pretty,” Minato said, flashing his best, most charismatic smile at her. “It suits you.”

He wasn’t even lying. It really did make her look like the village weirdo, suiting her perfectly. 

She turned away, her cheeks clearly pink. 

Ha! Gotcha, Minato thought. Finally. 

They came to the right part of the river a few minutes later. Reina had stacked up a tower of flat river stones right at the edge of the embankment. Minato stood next to the tower and peered down into the river. It was only maybe knee-deep at the edge, and the water was clear enough that he could easily make out every stone at the bottom. 

“It’s further out,” Reina said, pointing. 

Minato watched her over his shoulder as he stepped out onto the water, waiting for her look of wonder as she realized what he was doing. Instead, she just sort of smiled blithely at him and squatted next to the rock tower. Minato felt bizarrely disappointed. 

What are you expecting, Namikaze? Minato chided himself as he plodded out across the river. What had he become, that his ego needed him to be able to impress this random civilian woman? She’s just the village weirdo. Who cares if she doesn’t think you’re charming?

He spotted the “ninja paper” soon after. It was a standard tag tied to a kunai wedged in the rocks below, waving gently in the current. Minato squatted, squinting down at it. He couldn’t make out the actual seal on the tag, but it was the wrong shape for an exploding tag. 

“Well?” Reina called. “Aren’t you going to go get it?”

He turned his face to look at her. One of her hands was absentmindedly tracing a pattern over the top rock of the tower. She was watching him eagerly, more eager than she’d been all day. 

“Go on,” she said, a nearly flirtatious tease in her voice. “Dive down and get it, Konoha.”

“No,” Minato said slowly. Something was wrong. “It could be a trap. Reina, how did you see it all the way out here?”

“Hm?”

He stood fully. His hand twitched at his side, itching for a kunai. But— no— she was a civilian. He didn’t want to scare her until he was certain. He could still get info out of her village, and he’d make that job a lot harder for himself if he freaked out their weirdo. 

“The ninja tag,” he said. “How did you find it?”

“Oh,” Reina said, blinking at him in what seemed like full understanding. 

Then her little smirk was back, sure of herself in a way that almost looked dangerous. The setting sun glinted in her hair, caught in her curls and turning them almost red. She pushed the rock tower over, the stones plopping into the water. 

Minato did not react immediately, because she was just a civilian tossing some rocks in the river. But then, suddenly, he was underwater, and the water was boiling. 

The pain kept him from reacting immediately. Every inch of his skin lit up in pain. There was a force sucking him down, preventing him from moving his limbs and escaping the way his brain was demanding. He squeezed his eyes shut to protect them and grabbed mentally for any Hiraishin marker. He had no idea where the one he picked was— his brain was confused and screaming at him about the pain and he couldn’t tell which way was up or down. 

Then he was on land, cold air on his blistering skin. He took a deep, calming breath. Everything hurt, but now it hurt in a way he was more accustomed to. He could focus. He was in an empty field. The civilian woman had tricked him— had— had— he had no idea what she’d done. He didn’t know anything that could make that happen, except maybe a very creative and pissed off Kiri-nin. 

He teleported to the Konoha hospital next. Leaving a marker there had seemed like a convenient idea to him when he’d done it, but he’d left the marker in the room he’d been staying in when he’d made the decision. The nurse currently in there screamed. 

He got immediate medical treatment, though. 

Kushina came to visit him on the second day of his hospitalization, and he succeeded in not crying in front of her. She succeeded in holding back on making fun of him for being a light shade of pink. 

“Stupid,” Kushina told him from her seat by his bed. “You’re lucky you didn’t boil your eyes out of your head.”

He’d gotten out quick enough he’d done no permanent damage to himself, at least not with Konoha’s medical intervention, his medic-nin had said. He hadn’t corrected her that any damage done to his person would have been inflicted by a random civilian woman. The report he was going to have to write on this would be embarrassing enough. 

If he’d been in the water much longer, he'd have been at risk for boiling his organs, including his brain, which not even Tsunade-hime could undo. He was certain this would have happened if he’d listened to Reina and dived for the tag. If he’d floundered for a minute more, he’d be literally coked. 

“I think it was the fuinjutsu user,” Minato explained to Kushina, after he’d filled her in on the whole story. Talking hurt, because he’d damaged almost all of his skin. “The village weirdo must have… figured out how to use the seal, or they taught her how, or something.”

“All that in one little seal, though?” Kushina asked. Her brow was furrowed, like she was trying to figure out a puzzle. 

“It’s not impossible,” Minato said, but Kushina looked doubtful. 

He was inclined to believe her doubt. Jiraiya liked to brag that Minato was a fuinjutsu master, but the only thing he had on Kushina was more experience in space-time fuinjutsu. If she disagreed with him on anything else, well, she was probably right. 

“How have you been?” Minato asked. Kushina puffed up her cheeks and exhaled. 

“I spent ten hours yesterday decoding a report,” she said. “I swear to every god there is, training genin was better than this—”

Minato relaxed back into the lumpy hospital pillow to listen to her rant. Kushina had recently switched to a purely office role for a pay bump, and because she wanted a break from training “brats” up to be battlefield ready. She’d thought she’d be spending all her time on fuinjutsu development, but she was frequently being saddled with administrative odd jobs. This was, to Minato’s understanding, just something that happened now due to the war. More and more able bodied shinobi were being sent out, and so there were fewer people to do the gruntwork at home. 

“If you're bored,” Kushina said, suddenly brightening up. “You can decode reports, and I can go back to trying to figure out a water purification seal that also fits in a canteen.”

She came back later in the evening with a convenience store bento (which was vastly superior to Minato’s hospital dinner) and a stack of coded reports. 

“Have fun!” she cooed. 

Minato thought about just not doing the work, with the excuse that he had burns on over 90% of his body. But… he was bored. 

Needless to say, when he was finally released a week later, he was itching to do something, even if he’d been warned off anything but “light” exercise. Interrogating a civilian would be light, wouldn’t it?

At least one of his markers was still in the village in Grass Country, left on one of the kunai he’d used in his initial attack. He dressed in his uniform, double checked his weapons, and went in. 

He landed on a table, which groaned and shifted under his weight. A man with a Kumo hitai-ate was two feet away from him, and he let out a sad muted scream of surprise. Minato slit his throat before he could properly finish his yell. 

There were two other shinobi in the room, but they were both dead a second later. 

Minato took a moment to assess the situation. The room matched the same style of single-room home as the village, so he probably was actually there. The rickety table held all three kunai he’d left behind: one of his Hiraishin ones, and two standard issue ones. There was also a scroll unraveled, where someone had evidently taken notes on the incident where he’d killed seven Kumo-nin.

Annoying, he thought, lips thinning. If Kumo was using their brains, they’d have sent more than these shinobi. Minato spun a kunai in his fingers a couple times, preparing for a fight. This still counted as light exercise, right?

In the next ten or so minutes, he combed the village and hunted down and killed a grand total of fourteen more Kumo-nin. His heart rate was barely elevated by the end of it. No way his medic would be mad at him. 

When none of the villages came out to speak to him, he went to the house of the village leader and knocked on the door. 

“I need to speak to Reina, please,” he said. As an afterthought, he smiled. 

“She’s gone,” the leader said, clearly nervous. 

Minato raised his eyebrows. “You really don’t want to be lying to me,” he said. 

“N-no,” the leader said, putting his hands up defensively. “She really is gone. We thought she left with you.”

Minato narrowed his eyes. “A young woman just disappeared with a ninja, and you didn’t follow up?”

“I…” The leader was fidgeting now. “I apologize if she offended you. She’s not one of us. None of us know who she is or where she came from. If she did anything, it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

Minato stared. What the fuck?

“P-please,” the leader said. “Kumo is already fining us for the other shinobi you killed. We can’t afford—”

“Tell me more about Reina,” Minato pressed. 

He didn’t care about the leader’s cowering or begging that he just leave them alone. He was done trying to charm and play nice; he’d already killed too many ninja in this village. No amount of smiling and happy words would redeem him, and he was feeling too impatient for that today anyway. 

Reina, apparently, had shown up only a few days before the Kumo-nin, claiming to be a distant relative of a recently deceased elderly man, sent to clear out his things. She’d presented his death certificate as proof. She’d been living in the man’s home and hadn’t spoken much to anyone. Everything she’d said about her life in the village to him had been a bald-faced lie. 

“Anyone can get a death certificate,” Minato said. “That’s not proof. Why did you trust her?”

The village leader was clearly upset. His voice shook as he spoke. 

“We didn’t… we didn’t think like that…” 

Oh good, so the whole town had just believed her story with zero follow up questions. 

The village leader seemed to realize how little MInato thought of him. He tried, “She was useful. She wasn’t afraid to speak to the ninja for us. We never questioned her.”

Minato asked some more questions, but the leader had nothing else to share. Minato made him show him the old man’s home. When he told the leader he no longer needed him, the man ran from him. 

Minato searched the house. For a place she was supposedly cleaning out for several weeks, there were still a lot of things left behind, to the point that it was unclear if Reina had taken anything at all. Minato found no valuables, so either she’d taken them, or the man had none to begin with. She had… eaten all of his nonperishable food?

There were a couple of items of women’s clothing tossed into a laundry basket, and a mug decorated with cutesy cartoon crabs on the table that Minato doubted had belonged to the old man. There were still a few sips of coffee in the mug. Minato poured out the coffee and stored the mug and the clothes in a scroll. 

He went down to the river next. It only took a few minutes at ninja speed, but with the stone tower now gone, it took him a while to relocate the site where she’d attempted to boil him alive. He spotted the kunai eventually, still wedged into the bed of the river and sporting a tag. 

Minato was hesitant to stick his hand back in the water, even if it was now a completely normal temperature. He’d taken a fire poker from the old man’s home, and he used it to hook the kunai and pull it up. The water wasn’t deep; he probably could have stood up if he hadn’t been busy being boiled. 

The seal on the kunai’s tag was nonsense. It literally did nothing but move chakra around inside of it. That was, it would do nothing but move chakra around if it had any chakra in it at all. 

Minato walked back to shore and sat on the stone embankment, feeling completely flummoxed. The tag was completely nonfunctional. 

So, Reina was some sort of run-of-the-mill conartist, but he didn’t understand what her goal had been, or how it connected to the mystery fuinjutsu user. Maybe the Kumo-nin occupying the town had disrupted her plan? But who had made the boiling trap, and how had she known how to activate it? The mystery fuinjutsu user had a history of helping civilians. Had they told Reina she could use it on the Kumo-nin, and instead she’d decided to use it on Minato?

He turned that last idea around in his brain for a while. Setting a death trap for ninja was pretty consistent with the mystery fuinjutsu user’s MO. But seven ninja was more than they usually went after. They did not seem to care about confronting high-ranking ninja, but they usually isolated ninja before acting; for whatever reason, they were opposed to facing multiple opponents. Besides, Minato could not see how this trap would even work on seven people. 

And how had the trap worked at all?

Minato sat cross legged on the embankment and closed his eyes, focusing on replaying the moment in his mind. 

He thought of Reina, in her out of place dress that was out of place because she was. He remembered her coaxing him to dive, and then her face when he’d asked her how she’d found it. 

She hadn’t been afraid. He thought about her eyes, wide with understanding, her lips slightly parted. That wasn’t the face of a woman realizing she’d been caught in her own trap. That was her realizing she’d won. 

She won, Minato realized. She’d won the second he hadn’t drawn a weapon, and she’d known it. She’d known exactly how the trap worked, and exactly how ninja worked. She couldn’t be as fast a ninja, but she knew how to take advantage of a moment of hesitation. 

No, she won before that, Minato decided. She’d won when she’d gotten him on the water and told him to dive. If he’d not found her suspicious, he might have dived, or he’d be distracted getting the kunai, and she would have activated the trap and maybe killed him. If he’d found her suspicious, she could choose not to activate the trap, and he would have pulled up a useless kunai and left her alone. The worst that would have happened is that he’d found out she’d made up a brother for some reason, but he’d have no reason to be personally offended over that.

But instead of any of those options, he’d found her suspicious and then hesitated like a damn fool, and she’d recognized her opening. 

He thought about her triumphant smirk, about how her curls had framed her face, how the sun had lit her eyes up a warm brown. 

Then she’d dumped her rocks in the river. 

Minato pushed down his nervousness over the water and stepped in, picking up rock after rock along the riverside. 

An hour later, he had four rocks with half-faded seals painted on them. 

This was a really creative but nasty trap, he had to say. This would have killed most ninja. 

It was... almost exciting. He hadn't lost to anyone in forever.

He got out his storage scroll to add the rocks to the things from the house. It was dangerous to seal a seal into another seal, but the chakra on the rocks was long faded. They wouldn’t be boiling anyone alive. 

He frowned at the rocks as he put them away one by one, mentally cataloging his first impressions of them. 

Even if Reina was given the trap by the mystery fuinjutsu user, why had she been so confident about how it worked? It was clear now that she was comfortable around ninja and had probably worked with them before, but… 

On a hunch, he unsealed the mug. He turned it over in his hands. Cartoon crabs marched around it in rings, and every few crabs was a heart. 

Village weirdo, Minato thought, almost affectionately. Then he flipped the mug over. 

On the bottom, drawn in a practiced hand, was a seal to keep the mug warm. 

Ah, he thought.

Reina was the mystery fuinjutsu user. 

[bizzybee280yt]

i played frontiers of pandora and had a category 43259423854 autism moment

i love my ikran. Katir is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. precious pink baby demon dragon. i’ve got her fully dripped to the gills with sarentu heritage stuff, it’s so fucking great. i love her.

so, who becomes Olo’eyktan and Tsahik of the Sarentu? Nor fucked off after killing Alma’s avatar, Teylan’s a whiny little piss boy and Aha’ri is fucking dead. So’lek can’t be leader, he’s not Sarentu. Ri’nela would be better as a Tsahik seeing as she deals with things around the base and offers council, which is like the stepping stones to leading the clan spiritually. That means that… I’d be Olo’eyktan? considering i led the attack at Mercer’s base and hunt very well and got all the upgrades and tarsyu shits, and all the bellsprigs and shit.

If i’d be Olo’eyktan and Ri’nela would be Tsahik, does that mean we become a mated pair? dialogue from one of the npcs in the game shows that homosexuality is a thing among the Na’vi, with one of the riverside uninteractable people (who is a woman) talking about not being able to talk to this one girl she likes (which was so real of her to say)

So, my dumbass (female) and my ultimate girlboss wife (Ri’nela) leading the Sarentu into greatness when we were once a dying clan?? sign me the fuck up yes MA’AM

i’d kill a palulukan for Ri’nela, on god

also i feel like the way the RDA say “Na’vi” feels like a racial slur, like how people say “Arab” incorrectly to use it as a slur. i really like how this game showed how much the RDA were the bad guys, but reminded us all the time that they’re human. they are human people. the same race as me. i can’t hide behind my mask of being Sarentu when reminded that this is what humanity would be like if put on Pandora.

the way Mercer said that the Na’vi things, like Ri’nela’s feathers or the Songcord from the mother, were ‘dirty’ or ‘primitive’ or ‘foolish’ made me have a immense realization that these tactics were used during the assimilation of north americans into society. only this time, the Na’vi were able to escape.

i feel like the story of humans and Na’vi is like that of the native americans, only the Na’vi won back their land when the native americans didn’t. hunting the tulkun and zakru? just like the bison being mass hunted. TAP? boarding schools.

it feels so jarring to remember how badly white people have absolutely fucked over every other race in the ass sideways on the lord’s altar whilst saying “it’s all God’s will”

…

so yeah, i had some fun analyzing and playing this game. symbolism is my autistic special interest

[balkanradfem]

I just had an Experience in the water.

Heading home from my garden where I re-planted new tomatoes (because my original ones all got destroyed by the frost, RIP), I was feeling a little dizzy, light-headead and woozy. I figured putting myself inside the cold river was the best solution for all of these things, so I changed my course to the secluded edge of the fields, where trees and bushes were guarding the ground. And, if one was not afraid of slipping and rolling down, water could be accessed as well.

I hid myself into the bushy riverside area, got most of my clothing off and slowly tipped inside the river. It was colder than usual, due to the recent frosty days, so it took me a few tries to get myself completely submerged. I usually make sure nobody can see me; this time there was a small group on the other side of the river, but they seemed to be children, and I don't believe they had noticed me at all.

I was having a great time up to my neck inside the icy water, when something hit the back of my thigh. A log must have somehow bumped into me, I thought, and I turned around trying to see it in the water, when something poked its head out and swam around me. A dog somehow swam here, I thought even more confused, but then she turned her head around, and looked at me, and I realized it was a beaver! A whole big grown up beaver was right next to me, looking at me! I gasped and stared mesmerized, while she stared back at me good-naturedly, for a good few seconds, both of us in shock. Then she turned to swim away, but I couldn't watch her departure because something else got my full attention. A big bird was flying right at me. I saw the big wing span before I saw the head, and it was – a heron. I was immediately thrilled by this, because herons will not come close to me, I had herons offendedly fly away if I so much as looked at them from 500 meters distance. This one was already so close! Come to me, I thought with satisfaction, but then, already so close, the heron realized I was there, and changed direction mid-flight, flinching away from my offensive presence. It made a big circle to the other side of the river instead. I could still see it from up close!

Also during this entire encounter, I was almost completely naked, was only wearing my underwear. The animals were also not wearing anything so we were all even. I've never seen a beaver, or a heron, from such short distance before. I don't think this kind of thing could happen in the warmer months, I think the animals only relax this much in the river when the water is not very human-hospitable, so they don't expect to run into a whole human being while chilling on a Saturday evening.

My first interaction with a beaver was an underwater headbutt! It wasn't strong, but I can still feel the place on my thigh where she bumped into me, it was so damn cool.

Now, the mystery remains: why were both the beaver and the heron heading for this exact location, at the same time? My first thought was that maybe heron was hunting the beaver, but it doesn't make any sense, the beaver is way too big to be prey. Then I thought, maybe all of this was a coincidence. Maybe the beaver was just there to get some of the floating logs, because she needed some building material. And the heron was using this spot as her usual chilling place, and I rudely occupied it before she could land there. But then it hit me.

They were heading for the same spot, at the same time, because they had a meeting. They were secret friends, and this spot was their hangout spot. They were gonna chill together and discuss recent river news. I sadly was not accepted into their friend group as I was the wrong species and also did not announce that I would be there. I scared them away, my only hope is that they had a chance to gossip and rant about me later.

[yuesgirlfriend]

of birds and honey

(simon "ghost" riley x reader) medieval AU

part 1/part 2

Mass in the early morning is, like most things in this mortal life, something to be silently suffered, on your knees with your hands clasped. 

The chapel is chilly in the hour where the sun has barely peeked over the horizon.  As the priest drones on quietly in Latin, she clasps her rosary and attempts to focus on his words. Incense hangs heavy in the air, cloy and sweet smelling. The birds chirping outside are louder than the priest.  You should exercise more caution, when listening from rafters and castle walls like a little bird.

She does not glance to her left where the hungover knights sit, irreverently chatting amongst themselves, crowded together on the pew. And she does not feel the skull-faced (Ghost, she had heard the Scotsman call him) ones dark eyes follow her when she steps up to receive a blessing.  Instead, she focuses on the gilded, shiny cross resting on the wall above the priests head. Strange that the only display of finery in the modest chapel would be what killed the Christ, rubies dripping off it like his blood. 

Delight thyself also in the Lord; And he shall give thee the desires of thine heart, the priest mutters, making the sign of the cross above her head. What are the desires of her heart, she wonders. Are they as they should be?

Sundays are slow days, in her fathers castle. Those who labor in the fields put away their plows, servants do as little as they can get away with, and her father spends the day hunting and resting. With her maids and father distracted and relaxed, she’ll slip away to walk the grounds, down to the edge of the wood to practice balancing on fallen logs. If she is stopped and inquired after, she claims it is to meditate on the message of mass. 

On the Lords day, she does not feel like a fine lady, or a forgotten child- she can walk by the edge of the river and climb trees until the sun sets and the restlessness in her heart is sated. 

Today something urges her to strip down to her linen smock and climb down slippery tree roots into the river below. The water is ice cold, numbing her toes until she can scarcely feel the mossy stones they glide over. Involuntary shivers wrack her body. 

She sinks lower and lower until the water reaches her shoulders, then her ears, then over her head. Scrubbing a hand over her scalp, she relishes the way her hair floats in the water around her face, like long grass in the wind. She holds her breath until she feels ready to burst before she resurfaces. 

When she does, a skull with dark eyes is there to greet her. 

She gasps and kicks back in the water on instinct before recognizing him. Annoyance and something bashful takes fears place. 

“I nearly mistook you for a river otter, lady.” Even in the privacy of the wood, he wears a cloth mask with an embroidered skull emblem and a hooded cloak, revealing nothing but his coal-dark eyes. In his hand is a bow, and on his broad shoulder a quiver.  He must have been hunting. 

“Then I pray you do not shoot me for my skin, sir.” 

He kneels down as if to get closer to where she wades in the water. A chill goes up her back. It must be the cold. 

“I’d never slay a naiad, lady. Wretched luck would befall me.” How can a voice, so harsh when ordering his men, suddenly sound as mellifluous as the river she swims in? How can a ghost look so very corporeal and present before her? 

She only responds by tilting her head, wondering where he learned of Greek, pagan spirits. 

He clears his throat, standing straight. “Your maids were askin’ after thee, before I left.” He readjusts his cloak. “Get out before you freeze, and I will escort you back to the castle.”  

Defeated, she sighs and turns, climbing up the slick roots on the riverside where her discarded garments wait. So much for an afternoon of peace. 

She is squeezing river water from her shift when she realizes the immodesty of the situation- white, soaking wet linen does little to hide the curves of her body or her nipples, pebbled from the cold. 

Peeking  under her damp hair, she expects to see him shielding his eyes or cowering away at her lack of modesty. Instead he is leaning against a weathered tree, toying with an arrow, appearing bored even as his eyes track her every move. Every bit a hunter. 

She should be aghast. She should scamper behind a tree or imperiously demand he turn his back to her. 

She ignores the things she should do, and instead bends at the waist to wring water from her skirt, tilts her head back to comb through her long hair with her fingers. Layer after layer of the dry, simple clothes she wears on these excursions are on next- her kirtle, her belt and pocket, her surcoat and woolen cloak. Last are her stockings and leather shoes . 

She rests on a tree stump and struggles to fit them over her wet skin, the wool catching. All the while the knight stands and watches her, even when she hikes her skirts up to her knees. To better access her shoes, she tells herself. 

He carefully steps on the river stones and reaches the other side without so much as a drop of water staining him, until he is looming over where she ties her laces, eyes trained on her ankles.  

She starts her way back to the castle, ignoring the hulking shadow of a man behind her, plaiting her hair as she walks. Humming, crunching leaves beneath her feet, trying to enjoy her few moments of freedom before the week begins anew. Trying her best to not think of the way the Ghosts eyes felt on her, as tangible and real as the water droplets slipping down her back.

[voraciousvore]

Giganterra (Chapter 53)

Prologue/TOC | Previous (52) | Next (54)

Content Warning: Soft safe unwilling vore, mild sexual themes, vulgar language

Word Count: 2.4k

------ Chapter 53: Lost ------

While the rest of the hunting party retreated to the castle, the greyhounds and their master sought to catch Martin and Candy. They lost the trail at the river. They crossed to the other side and searched, but when the hounds were unable to pick up the scent, the trainer guided them back to the river. He surmised, correctly, that Martin swam downstream, so he sent the hounds on a path along the shore to find him. 

The dog handler had to abandon his horse as the trees grew closer and closer together. Eventually, the riverside became impassible for even the dogs, overgrown with dense webs of thorned brambles, trees, and mud, so the trainer was forced to backtrack and return to the opposing shore. He doubted the knight would be foolish enough to exit the water’s flow so close to the castle, so he continued south through the town. No sightings or sign of the knight materialized, so he trekked into the woods beyond. 

There, he struck gold. He discovered the knight’s gauntlets and supplies, washed up in a tangle of vines. However, the dogs still couldn’t pick up the scent. They wandered aimlessly through the trees, chasing squirrels and marking their scents with pride. The hunter figured the dogs must be too tired after the prolonged journey, which had taken several hours, so he rounded up the animals and went back to the castle to report to the king.  

King Richard brooded on his throne, fuming. He’d lost both his favorites, Millie and Candy, not to mention one of his most esteemed loyal knights. He didn’t understand why Martin betrayed him, except out of envy and greed, to take one of his pets for his own. He observed coldly as Hunter repaired Ajax: stitching up his wounds, refilling his veins with facsimile blood, and infusing fresh magic into his animated corpse via stones, potions, and muttered incantations. Joey stood next to the king, filling in as his personal guard while Ajax’s body was repaired. His cut had been tended to. As he suspected, it was shallow enough to heal quickly with the potion, though the scar still ached. Leon stood stiffly at the king’s left shoulder. 

The king perked up when the dog master, his breeches and boots wet and splattered with grime, marched into the throne room. “Did you find her? Did you slaughter the traitor?” Hardon inquired eagerly. 

“Um... no.” The king clenched his fists in anger on the arms of his throne, causing the handler to cower back. “B-b-but I found some of his gear in the river south of the castle! I had to turn back because the dogs were unable to persist, due to fatigue.” 

“Worthless mutts! Execute them all!” Hardon bellowed, slamming down his fist. The trainer blanched, too dumbfounded to form a protest. 

Leon leaned over and whispered in the king’s ear. “Your Majesty, do not allow your temper to cloud your good judgement. It would take time to replace all those well-trained dogs. For now, send Chester.” The king grunted with annoyance but executed the command. “Show Chester where to search. And if you can’t find her and bring her to me, it’ll be your head!” The trainer bowed and rushed out. 

Next, Hardon sent a servant to fetch the royal blacksmith. He arrived within minutes, wiping the soot from his gloves onto his shirt. “Blacksmith! I need you to craft an iron helmet for my guard! One that can’t be removed and completely covers his empty eye socket!” The blacksmith didn’t question the strange order and measured Ajax’s skull to determine the correct size. 

“I’ll have to weld it directly to his head. Or bolt it on,” the blacksmith stated. 

“Very well. Hunter, go with him to the forge and finish your business there.” Hunter glared disdainfully at the dirty blacksmith but accompanied his own freakish creation to the smithy.  

The king grumbled something under his breath and shifted with dissatisfaction in his chair. Out of habit, his fingers traced the cord of his necklace, but he only became more incensed when he felt the cold metal of the empty clasp, bereft of warm living flesh. 

“Leon! Bring me a big slice of vanilla bean cheesecake! Topped with caramel!” he demanded. “And put every damn human in the kitchen on it!” 

“Sire, your royal food taster is currently absent-” 

“I don’t care! You taste it for me!” Hardon snapped. “It’s not as if he’s not expendable!” Leon bowed and scurried out of the room like a rodent. 

He burst into the kitchen and announced the king’s request. The chefs dropped everything to fulfill the order. Chef Cruor gathered all the humans except for Addison and sprinkled them on top of a gigantic slab of cheesecake. As usual, he had to shove Eren into the slice up to her chin when she refused to settle down. She yelled at him until he buried her under a mountain of whipped cream and drizzled caramel in a fancy swirl over the confection. He handed the plate to Leon. 

“What about that one?” Leon asked, pointing at Addison. “He did say all the humans.” 

Cruor snarled like a feral beast and blocked Addison’s tank with his mass, which Leon couldn’t help but notice seemed to be expanding in width, though he was too polite to point it out. “Touch her and you’re dead meat!” 

“But the king said-” 

“I don’t give a damn what he said! You even think about touching her and I’ll rip your fingers off with my jaws!” Cruor bared his teeth wide enough to reveal a double chin. A wild flash shot through his violet eyes. 

Leon realized he was deathly serious and backed off. “Okay, okay, this should be enough,” he assured the chef, backing out the door. He strode down the hall with a shudder. He glanced down with misery at the multitude of humans trapped in sticky caramel on the giant cheesecake. They gazed back up at him with misery, fear, and condemnation. The tragic sight drowned him in an endless sea of loathing, both for the king and himself. He wanted to grab up all the humans and set them free. He wanted to douse the cake in poison and watch with glee as the savage king died an excruciating death, choking on his own vomit and blood. He wanted to run away from it all—but he knew he couldn’t. He wouldn’t be able to get away with any of it. He was trapped.  

He presented the king with his dessert. Hardon took the plate, licking his chops with ravenous hatred. “Which one of you would like to be my new favorite?” he questioned aggressively. The humans shivered with terror, too petrified to answer. Living in the kitchen was ghastly enough, but they all knew what the perverted giant did to helpless tiny women behind closed doors.  

He plucked each victim out of the cheesecake, one by one, and played with them in his hands. He rolled them around in his fingers, prodded them with his fork to test how they would respond, and licked them clean, before popping them in his mouth. He savored them thoughtfully, sucking and slurping, pressing them into his teeth and the inner walls of his cheeks, before swallowing them down. 

As much as he enjoyed their varied flavors, their fear, and their ceaseless squirming, his wrath increased with every swallow. They were fine and delicious, but none of them were Candy or Millie. None of them were of a high enough standard to qualify as his favorite. After eating five or six of them, he reached the last little morsel, Eren, still buried in cheesecake. He picked her out, amused by her futile thrashing and cursing as she punched his fingers. 

“Saucy little minx, aren’t you?” he remarked with amusement.  

She glowered at him. “Go to hell, you revolting beast!” Despite her attempts to sound fierce, her voice was small and squeaky in the vast hall. 

The giant chuckled. “I like girls with some fight in them. How would you like to be my new favorite?” 

Eren turned white as paper. Her rebellious spirit was dampened in a flash as she realized the error of her ways. She hadn’t anticipated that type of response from the dangerous king. She curled up her arms and trembled. “N-no thanks.” 

Joey, standing on one side of the king, felt dreadfully ill as he watched the display. He was powerless to do anything, surrounded by people and guards in the throne room. He could only stare in horror as the tiny people disappeared down the king’s gullet. He recognized Eren, the brave woman, and crumbled internally when he saw her reduced to such a state. He wondered to himself, if given the opportunity, if he’d be courageous enough to throw it all away like Martin did. He wished he could save her from such a gruesome fate. He regretted going against his better judgement and not taking more decisive action when he had the chance. 

Eren glanced over at Joey. The hard edge of defiance in her eyes softened. They shared a snapshot of connection before Eren was forcibly engulfed in the king’s hungry maw and swallowed. Joey turned his head to the side, sickened. 

“Is this all? This is the best we have?” the king complained as he stewed in his rage. “I might have to place another order with Minimaterra for some fresh meat.” 

“Oh, it’s a bit soon for that, isn’t it?” Leon hastily interjected. “If you ask for tribute too often, the quality will decline.” 

The king, as he listened to Leon, stared down at his half-eaten dessert. The fury festering inside him grew exponentially by the second, until the inferno within became intolerable. He erupted like a volcano, bellowing with intense vitriol, “Why am I surrounded by IDIOTS?! GODDAMMIT!” He stood up and hurled the plate across the throne room, shattering it with a dramatic crash. The room went deathly silent as everyone stiffened. “FIND HER!” he commanded, before storming off. 

In the coming days, Martin and Candy failed to materialize, since both Chester and the dogs were unable to pick up the scent trail south of the castle. The king was enraged and spent most of his time terrorizing his servants and sexually harassing the maids. Fortunately, Joey was relieved from guard duty once Ajax was fully restored. Besides his fresh stitches, Ajax was also equipped with a heavy iron mask that covered most of his face and clamped around his head. The device was a modified torture implement from the dungeons, with the lock welded shut and the chain hanging off the base of the skull shorn. An extra sheet of metal was added to replace his eyepatch, so that nobody could tear the magic runic stone animating his body out of his head. He had no more weaknesses. 

Joey felt lost without his mentor. He was torn between his loyalty to Martin, his duty as a servant to the royal family, and the code of chivalry that demanded he help a maiden in need, all critical foundations of knighthood. He couldn’t navigate the complex web of his responsibilities and what was morally right. He couldn’t read in a book what he was supposed to do in his specific situation. He wasn’t sure what he could do. He didn’t have Sir Maneater anymore to guide him and bestow great advice and wisdom. He wandered aimlessly in a maze of confusion. 

His anxiety spiked when the king commanded him to take over Sir Maneater’s role as instructor and resume the prince’s fencing lessons. Since the incident with the lemonade, Joey had avoided Ronny like the plague, limiting his interactions to sparring with his face covered so he didn’t have to talk or make eye contact. He hadn’t spoken to the prince more than the absolute bare minimum. Ronny hadn’t retaliated against him, but Joey still feared angering the volatile prince. 

He waited anxiously in the courtyard next to the stables for Prince Ronny, twirling his sword, digging his heels into the dirt, and polishing his glasses on his white outfit. Joey flinched, startled, when the royal made his appearance and advanced towards him with purpose. As usual, Ronny’s dark irises were hard and cold, his features haughty and aloof, and his figure sharp enough to be cut from stone. 

“Your Highness!” Joey scrambled into a low bow. 

“Let’s get this over with,” Ronny grumbled. 

“Y-yes, of course, Your Highness,” Joey stammered. “Let’s start with our usual warm-ups and stretches.” Joey was jittery and ungraceful as he went through the motions with Ronny in deafening silence. He couldn’t bear to look the prince in the face, staring stupidly at his shoes or hands instead. When it came to actual instruction, he could barely manage to squeak out a few words without stuttering like a fool. He tried to demonstrate a pattern of footwork and ended up tripping over his feet instead. 

Ronny huffed. “Are you going to be weird and awkward for this entire lesson?” 

“S-s-s-sorry, Your Highness!” Joey bit his tongue and grimaced. 

“Just—stop that! It’s so irritating! Is this about that whole lemonade thing?” the prince questioned gruffly. Joey chewed on his lip, sweating over the mere mention of his transgression. “Because I don’t give a fuck, you know.” 

“R-really? You’re not… mad at me?” Joey asked, incredulous. “I figured you’d want me flogged and quartered for what I did.” 

“Perhaps at one time, yes. But Tanya tells me I need to learn clemency. And... to control my childish tantrums,” Ronny admitted sheepishly. 

“Who’s Tanya?” 

“Never mind,” the prince grunted. “It’s not important. Let’s just keep moving.” Joey resumed the lesson, stronger this time, as he gradually regained his confidence. By the end, he was almost back to his old self. Ronny was in a hurry to leave, since he wanted to wash up and get back to Tanya, so he didn’t stick around for chit chat. Joey sighed in relief as he watched the prince go. He wasn’t about to get destroyed like he thought. Maybe the prince had a glimmer of magnanimity somewhere in his cold heart after all. 

Chapter 54

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