#that does not smell like they care that much

[pucksandpower]

Under the Mistletoe

Lando Norris x Reader

Summary: Lando really wants you to kiss him under the mistletoe. Sounds normal enough, right? Wrong! So wrong

Warnings: 18+ content and description of an allergic reaction

The apartment is finally quiet. The muffled thrum of conversation and laughter that had filled every corner just hours ago has faded, leaving only the faint crackle of the fireplace in the living room. It smells like pine needles, spiced cider, and the faint citrus tang of your new body wash. You pad softly down the hallway in your slippers, the wooden floor cool beneath your feet.

“Lando?” You call, peeking into the dimly lit bedroom.

He’s there, of course, but the sight that greets you isn’t what you expect.

Lando is lying on his back, smack in the middle of the bed, arms folded behind his head like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He’s wearing nothing. Absolutely nothing … except for a single, strategic adornment. Tied with what looks like a strip of red ribbon, a sprig of mistletoe dangles provocatively from his dick.

“Seriously?” You stop in the doorway, blinking. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Happy Christmas,” he says, grinning like the Cheshire cat.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s an invitation.” He tilts his head slightly, his curls a messy halo against the pillow. “You’ve got to kiss me.”

“Oh, I’ve got to, have I?” You fold your arms, biting back a smile.

“Under the mistletoe,” he clarifies, as if that makes it any less ridiculous. “It’s the rules. I don’t make them.”

“You absolutely made this up.”

Lando shrugs, utterly unrepentant. “Does it matter?”

You stand there for a moment, torn between amusement and disbelief. “You know, normal people just leave cookies for Santa. Not …” You gesture vaguely at him, at the ribbon, at everything.

“Not everything has to be normal,” he says, his grin softening slightly. There’s something teasing in his tone, but there’s sincerity, too. “Come on, it’s Christmas. Don’t leave me hanging.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“And you love me for it.”

There’s no point denying it. You do love him — ridiculous, over-the-top antics and all. With a sigh that’s more for show than anything else, you take a few steps closer to the bed.

“Alright,” you say, pretending to consider. “Where exactly am I supposed to kiss you? The mistletoe’s not even …” You trail off, waving a hand vaguely in the air.

Lando smirks, his eyes dancing. “Where do you think?”

“You’re unbelievable,” you say again, but you’re already climbing onto the bed. The mattress dips under your weight, and Lando watches, clearly pleased with himself.

“You’re not protesting much,” he points out.

“Shut up.”

“You could have just stayed in the doorway, you know. Told me off or something. But no, here you are-”

“Lando,” you cut in, leaning over him.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

Your lips are on his before he can say anything else, cutting off whatever smug reply he had planned. His hands slide instinctively to your waist, pulling you closer as you kiss him.

It’s not rushed. The night has been long, full of people and noise and obligations, and this moment feels like a welcome reprieve. Lando’s mouth is warm, insistent but unhurried, and you let yourself get lost in it for a while, your fingers tangling in his hair.

When you finally pull back, he looks up at you, flushed and grinning.

“Good start,” he says, his voice a little breathless.

“Don’t push your luck.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

You raise an eyebrow, giving him a pointed look. “Really?”

“Okay, maybe a little,” he admits, his grin widening.

Shaking your head, you shift your attention downward. The ribbon, the mistletoe — it’s so absurd you have to laugh.

“Did you seriously tie this yourself?” You ask, running a finger lightly along the edge of the ribbon.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Fine, yes. Took me a solid twenty minutes, too. Those stupid YouTube tutorials make it look way easier than it is.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“And yet,” he says, his voice dropping slightly, “you’re still here.”

You meet his gaze, your laughter fading. The teasing, playful look in his eyes hasn’t disappeared, but there’s something else there now — something softer, more vulnerable. It’s the look he gets when he’s reminding you, without words, just how much you mean to him.

“Well,” you say quietly, “it is Christmas.”

“And you’ve got to follow the rules,” he murmurs.

“Right.”

The bed creaks slightly as you shift again, positioning yourself more comfortably. You lean down, pressing another kiss to his lips — gentler this time, more lingering. Then you trail kisses along his jaw, his collarbone, the faint dusting of freckles across his chest.

Lando lets out a soft, contented sigh, his hands finding your hips again. “You’re taking this very seriously,” he says, his voice tinged with amusement.

“I’m nothing if not thorough.”

“Lucky me.”

You glance up at him briefly, smirking. “You’ve no idea.”

When you finally reach the ribbon, you pause, your lips hovering just above it. Lando’s breathing hitches slightly, his grip on your waist tightening.

“Merry Christmas, Lando,” you murmur.

“Best Christmas ever,” he replies, his voice low and fervent.

And then, with deliberate slowness, you kiss him under the mistletoe.

You pause for a beat, the mistletoe brushing lightly against your cheek. Lando’s breathing is heavier now, his chest rising and falling beneath you. He’s trying to stay still, but his fingers dig into your skin, betraying how much control he’s losing.

“You alright up there?” You ask, teasing, your voice low.

“You know I’m not,” he mutters, his words strained.

“Good.”

And with that, you continue. Deliberate. Unhurried. Every movement of your mouth is purposeful, every touch designed to unravel him. Lando groans, low and broken, the sound rumbling through the quiet room like a storm on the horizon.

“Fuck, you’re …” He cuts himself off, his head tipping back into the pillow. His hands flex against your hips, as if holding you steady is the only thing grounding him.

“Say it,” you murmur, barely pulling away for a second.

He glances down at you, his hazel eyes dark and glassy. “You’re killing me,” he manages, his voice hoarse.

You smile, the corners of your mouth curving just slightly before you return to your task. Lando’s hands slip from your shoulders, clutching the sheets instead. He’s completely undone now — his breathing ragged, his head thrown back, his body trembling beneath you.

“F-fuck … close,” he stammers, his words tumbling out like he’s barely holding them together.

You hum softly in acknowledgment, the vibration of it drawing a sharp, involuntary gasp from him. It’s all he can take.

He breaks.

A strangled sound escapes his throat as his body tenses, and you taste the telltale musky warmth on your tongue. You stay where you are for a moment, letting him ride out the high, his grip on the sheets going slack.

When it’s over, you pull back slowly, swallowing before wiping at the corner of your mouth. One drop clings stubbornly to your lip, and you swipe it away with your thumb, catching Lando’s hazy, satisfied gaze as you do.

“You alright there?” You ask softly, your tone light but full of affection.

“Barely,” he mutters, his voice thick. He exhales sharply, his chest still heaving as he lets his head fall to the side, watching you with a dazed grin. “You’re-”

“What?” You tilt your head innocently, wiping your hand on a tissue before tossing it onto the nightstand.

“Perfect,” he finishes, his voice soft and full of something deeper than just the moment.

You laugh quietly, crawling up the bed to lie beside him. He pulls you close immediately, one arm draped over your waist, the other brushing back a strand of hair from your face.

“Was this your master plan all along?” You tease, resting your head against his shoulder.

“Maybe,” he admits, still catching his breath.

“And?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” He grins, leaning down to press a kiss to your forehead.

You roll your eyes but smile against his skin. “Merry Christmas, Lando.”

“Happy Christmas,” he murmurs, his voice heavy with exhaustion and contentment.

For a moment, neither of you says anything more. The only sound is the quiet crackle of the fire in the distance, and the world beyond the bedroom feels miles away.

Eventually, Lando breaks the silence. “So … same thing next year?”

You shove him playfully, laughing as his grin widens. “Go to sleep.”

And with him wrapped around you, the warmth of his love settling over you like a blanket, you do.

***

The morning light creeps through the curtains, warm and soft, a stark contrast to the frantic energy in the room. You stir awake first, stretching lazily until you feel Lando shift beside you, letting out a low, uncomfortable groan.

“Ugh,” he mutters, his voice muffled by the pillow. “Something’s wrong.”

“What do you mean, wrong?” You mumble sleepily, rolling over to look at him.

He doesn’t respond immediately, just shifts again, his body stiff and tense. Then he sits up abruptly, wincing as if every movement hurts.

“Lando?” You ask, more alert now.

“It … hurts,” he says, glancing down at himself. “Like, bad.”

You follow his gaze, and that’s when you see it. The redness. The swelling.

“Oh my God,” you say, your voice shooting up an octave. You sit up fully, the sleepiness disappearing in an instant. “What happened?”

“I don’t know!” He exclaims, his face a mixture of panic and embarrassment. “It was fine last night!”

“Well, it’s not fine now!” You scoot closer, carefully inspecting the irritated skin. It’s blotchy, bright red, and looks alarmingly angry.

“It’s swollen,” he groans.

“No kidding.”

“What do we do?” He asks, his voice bordering on frantic.

“First, calm down,” you say, though your own voice isn’t exactly steady. “Second … oh my God, Lando, do you think it’s the mistletoe?”

His eyes widen as the realization hits. “You think I’m allergic?”

“Do you have any idea where that stuff’s been stored? It’s probably coated in dust or pollen or something. Or-” Your voice catches. “Do you think you’ve always been allergic?”

“I’ve never, uh … put it on my cock before, so how would I know?”

The two of you stare at each other for a moment, panic simmering between you.

“We need help,” Lando says finally.

“Like … a doctor?”

“No!” He yelps. “We’re not going to a doctor for this!”

“Then what-”

“Call Jon,” he blurts out, cutting you off.

“What?” You ask, incredulous. “Your performance coach?”

“Yeah! He knows, like, medical stuff. And he won’t make it weird.”

You raise a skeptical eyebrow but grab your phone anyway, scrolling to Jon’s number. “Oh, this isn’t going to be awkward at all,” you mutter as it rings.

“Hello?” Jon answers, sounding far too chipper for the situation.

“Uh, hi, Jon,” you begin, exchanging a look with Lando. “It’s Y/N. Lando and I have … a bit of a problem.”

“What kind of problem?” Jon asks, his voice immediately shifting to professional concern.

“Well …” You trail off, glancing at Lando, who gestures frantically for you to continue. “It’s kind of … personal.”

“Y/N,” Jon says patiently, “you’re going to have to be a little more specific.”

You let out a heavy sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose. “Okay, fine. Lando’s … area is swollen and covered in a rash.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“… Come again?” Jon finally says, and you can practically hear him trying not to laugh.

“It’s not funny!” Lando shouts from the bed. “It’s serious!”

“Oh, it’s serious?” Jon repeats, his voice full of barely concealed amusement. “Alright. How did this happen?”

You hesitate, then mumble, “He … tied mistletoe to it last night.”

Jon doesn’t reply immediately, but the faint sound of him choking back laughter comes through the line.

“Can you help or not?” Lando snaps, his cheeks flushing red — whether from anger or embarrassment, you’re not sure.

“Okay, okay,” Jon says, his tone softening. “It’s probably an allergic reaction. Clean the area thoroughly, apply a topical antihistamine if you have one, and keep it elevated to reduce swelling.”

“Elevated?” You echo, frowning. “How are we supposed to-”

“Just do your best,” Jon says, clearly suppressing a laugh again. “And if it doesn’t improve in a few hours, you might need to, uh … consult a professional.”

“Thanks, Jon,” you say quickly, hanging up before Lando can yell again.

Lando groans, flopping back onto the bed. “This is the worst Christmas ever.”

“You’ll survive,” you say, grabbing the first-aid kit from the bathroom. “Now, let me see.”

“This is humiliating,” he mutters, but he doesn’t resist as you sit beside him, carefully applying the ointment Jon suggested.

“Hold still,” you say gently, your touch careful.

He winces but doesn’t complain further, watching you with a mix of gratitude and lingering embarrassment. After a few minutes, the redness looks slightly less angry, though the swelling is still noticeable.

Once you’re done, you sit back with a sigh, your hands on your knees. “Well, that was a bonding experience.”

Lando lets out a shaky laugh. “Yeah, not exactly what I had planned.”

You glance at him, your lips twitching upward despite everything. “So … was it worth it?”

He grins, some of his usual confidence returning. “Next year, I’ll make sure to have an epipen ready.”

You laugh, leaning down to kiss his forehead. “Next year, maybe let’s stick to normal traditions. Like cookies. Or matching pajamas.”

“We’ll see,” he says, smirking as he leans back against the pillows. “I’ve still got a whole year to think of something even better.”

“God help us all,” you mutter, but there’s affection in your voice.

And despite the chaos, as you settle back into bed beside him, you can’t help but think it’s still a Christmas to remember.

[mossangelll]

what arcane characters would be like at christmas!

inspired by @cosmicporos whose work is here <3

i’m in the christmas spirit and wanted to do a sillier post on what some arcane characters are like at this time of the year! once christmas and exams are over, i’ll get back to working through requests ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

Jinx:

jinx gifts you something homemade, maybe a scrapbook of all the things you did together throughout the year?

aw omg i bet she’s amazing at taking secret pics…there’s so many embarrassing pictures of you in there but you can’t even hate it when she doodles love hearts right next to them :’)

all the pictures inside would be meticulously dated with a corresponding memory to go underneath

she wants to show you how much she cares!

jinx would love anything you give her, but she would swoon if you got her materials to make more chomper bombs - she loves how accepting and enthusiastic you are of her hobbies

jinx’s favourite holiday activity is decorating!

she loves getting into a festive spirit where it’s seen as more acceptable to be goofy and childlike?

she’s very thrifty so i feel like most of the decor is stuff you guys make together in front of a warm fire while it snows outside hehe

makes cranberry and popcorn garlands which you guys end up eating by the end of the week

there’s just plain string all over the place 😭

obviously there will be christmas themed graffiti

instead of a star or angel on top of the tree, she makes miniature figurines of you two hugging to stick on top

she is incredibly down bad for you and loves the holidays because she gets to be extra sentimental

gets a stupidly skinny christmas tree that barely has enough branches to wrap decorations around but she wouldn’t have it any other way

jinx doesn’t want to take everything tooooo seriously

jinx’s favourite christmas song is i wish it could be christmas everyday

Vi:

vi gifts you your own leather jacket! it's second hand and a bit worn through but she tried her best

you always spoke about how much you loved her jacket and now you two can match

irons and pins on patches of your favourite bands all over the jacket

spends so much time into making sure it looks perfect for you

i can see you two wearing each other’s jackets a lot so you can smell like one another

best investment ever - now everyone knows you two are made for each other

she would love it if you gifted her boxing gloves in her signature colour!

vi’s favourite holiday activity is sledding!

she probably uses an old sled her and jinx made together when they were younger

it’s seen better days but she doesn’t want to give it up anytime soon

better wear a helmet in case the whole sled comes apart as you ride it 😭

she’s the kind of person to convince you to let her push the sled down a steep hill… she cheers as you scream in fear

when you asked her if it was safe she winked and told you to trust her 😐

big mistake but how can you say no to her???

you both land in a heap of snow at the bottom, laughing so hard you have to catch your breath as snowflakes melts into your hair

she rolls you around in the snow and kisses you for a loooooong time hehe

vi’s favourite christmas song is baby it’s cold outside

Ekko:

ekko gifts you a painting he made of you!

he’s very nervous when he does, watching for every little reaction on your face - he just wants to know that he did a good job and made you happy

how could you not like it? he captures your likeness so well it feels like looking in a very flattering mirror

you can tell how much love and thought he put into it

he would love it if you gifted him more face paint and hair dye - even better if you offer to do it for him!

ekko’s favourite holiday activity is playing in the snow!

snowball fights, building snowmen and igloos, making snow angels - all of it!

this guy LOCKS IN when it comes to snowball fights

honestly sometimes you want to say no bcs he gets a bit too committed and you feel like you’re getting hunted down 😭

but then he promises to make you hot chocolate when you get inside so it works out in the end

accidentally pelts you in the face with a solid snowball and his face drops

he runs over to where you got knocked over and is worriedly checking you all over to make sure you’re not hurt

that’s when you shove snow down his back and run away in a fit of giggles

he goes still before he starts to chase after you - you both launch snow at each other for house

yeah, you both get ill after that 😭

ekko’s favourite christmas song is santa clause is coming to town

Jayce: 

jayce gifts you jewellery he forged himself :3

i can see him dragging you along to the workshop, making you watch him be all sweaty and hot for hours (you’re not complaining)

if you ask what exactly he’s making there he brushes it off as a custom piece of equipment needed for his experiments - little do you know it’s actually gifts for you

when he does gift it to you he has the most smug look in his face

who else is doing gifts like him?? exactly 🙂‍↕️

he would love it if you gave him new tools he can use when he’s doing his forging!

jayce’s favourite holiday activity is making gingerbread houses!

mainly sneakily nibbling away at little pieces of you (you notice)

you two end up ditching the house and smear icing all over each other

he licks the icing off your cheek

you tell him how gross he is but he’s not fooled when you’re blushing and giggling at his antics

after you two finish your “break”, you get to work on finally completing the gingerbread house

doesn’t let you leave the kitchen until you’re done - he made BLUEPRINTS for the house

it ends up being more like a mansion when you’re done

he’s cheesing so hard when it’s done and he makes you pose with the house

he posts it on his instagram story with some dumb caption (“look at my sweet treat and the gingerbread house we made 😜”) and you only find out when your friends send it to you

jayce’s favourite christmas song is all i want for christmas is you

Viktor:

viktor gifts you customised skincare he made just for you!

he is more physics-minded but after hearing you complain about how all the products you tried just weren’t doing it for you, he decides to step up

spends so much time consulting chemists at the academy for help creating the products

“subtly” asks you questions about your skin so as not to give himself away

“your skin looks quite dry today, would you agree?”

says this in front of a bunch of people - you hate this man so much 😭

you’re so happy when he gifts it to you, you’ve never had someone listen so intently to what you talk about

you definitely cry into his arms and he’s a bit stunned but eventually holds onto you - you stay like that for a while

he would love it if you gave him fancy coffee to help him stay up in the lab!

viktor’s favourite holiday activity is going to the christmas markets!

loves the smell of cinnamon and cocoa in the air, loves how the cold air nips at his nose

the icy ground is a bit of a nuisance for his cane but he knows he always has you to help out, even if he hates asking ^^

makes you two look at all the lights so you can rate them

goes to basically every dessert stand and scarfs down an insane amount of sweet things in record time

likes to buy the weirdest snow globes he can find

viktor’s favourite christmas song is winter wonderland

Caitlyn:

cait gifts you a first-edition copy of you’re favourite classical novel! 

she had to pull a lot couple of strings to get it but she would do just about anything for you 

even though you’d be happy with anything she gives you, she places a lot of expectations on herself 

she stresses herself out over making sure you have the best christmas ever 

she would love it if you gave her clothes that she would actually wear, things she’s told her she likes - not just what she’s expected to wear 

cait’s favourite holiday activity is ice skating!

she’s honestly so good at ice skating you’re surprised it isn’t her job or something 

takes you skating on the frozen lake at her estate 

if you don’t know how to skate, she’s incredibly patient and teaches you the basics

she loves that you have to cling onto her so you don’t fall over 

if you know how to skate, she bashfully asks if you want to learn couple’s ice skating choreography with her 

has the time of her life doing lifts and jumps with you! 

wishes she could stay outside skating with you 

cait's favourite christmas song is underneath the tree 

Mel:

mel gifts you a holiday at your dream destination!

she has lots of money at her disposal and gifts you things all the time, so she really has to go above and beyond for this one

you complain about barely getting to see her due to her work on the council so she manages to get a week away with you!

has a whole itinerary planned out so all you have to do is sit back and relax

makes up for all the time she spent away from you by making sure you're both attached at the hip lol

she would love it if you gifted her one of those jars full of little notes with things you love and admire about that person!

mel’s favourite holiday activity is playing games by the fireplace!

at first, she’s off-put by the whole idea - she’s not a child

but deep down i feel like she’s quite lonely and yearns to feel like she really belongs somewhere, she’s just scared to be emotionally vulnerable

so when you come along she reluctantly agrees and finds that she really loves doing this at a time that reminds her of her estranged family

loosens up around you and feels like she can really be herself

she’s also very competitive so it adds more drama to it all

you guys definitely argue when you play charades or uno 😭

she makes it up to you by letting you win the next game even if it’s incredibly obvious

makes silly bets when you play - “if i win the next round you have to tell me what you got be for christmas”

she’s such a cutie

mel’s favourite christmas song is santa baby

Ambessa:

ambessa gifts you a spa day

honestly a bit of a self-indulgent present since her mind isn’t completely innocent with this gift

a spa day is a spa day however

she doesn’t celebrate christmas - it’s a useless frivolity that wastes precious time that could be used to train her army

she knows how much you enjoy it though so she makes an exception for you

you can tell her heart’s not in it but it’s sweet that she tries for you

she would love it if you made her an intricate meal with all her favourite noxian foods!

ambessa’s favourite holiday activity is making christmas cards!

well, she’s not the one making them

she just watches you make them

but she thinks the look of concentration on your face is quite endearing so she stays around to watch you make them

she’s surprised by how much effort goes into making them from scratch and she walks away with a new appreciation for your hobby

you could beg her to join but she’s just not gonna do it 😭

she likes you, but not that much

ambessa’s favourite christmas song is none of them unfortunately <\3 (she has a soft spot for feliz navidad)

Heimerdinger:

heimerdinger gifts you a jailbroken gaming console 😭

he spent precious time on that thing

doesn’t agree with doing things like that usually but it’s christmas

everyone deserves a treat every now and then!

hopes you’ll focus on your work at the academy more often if you have this

backfires in his face because you’re constantly on it now, oh well

at least you liked the present

he would love it if you you gifted him a song you wrote!

heimerdinger’s favourite holiday activity is secret santa!

he is SO bad at keeping his a secret 😭

he goes around the academy asking people about your hobbies, likes and dislikes

you know he has you by the end of the day lmao

he’s so cute you can’t even be mad

heimerdinger’s favourite christmas song is wonderful christmastime

AU!Claggor:

claggor gifts you one of his hybrid plants! 

this is a huge honour since they’re basically his children 

the one he gifts you was a seedling from the very first plant that managed to survive off the fissure gases 

gives you a whole speech on how to properly care for it (tells you the secret is to whisper positive affirmations to it every morning) 

he’s nervous gifting it you since it means so much to him, but he knows he can trust you to look after it 

it’s so sweet since he’s sharing such an important part of his life with you!

he would love it if you gave him cuttings from a rare plant you may or may not have taken from some rich piltie 

claggor’s favourite holiday activity is baking! 

he has his own apron and everything 

makes cookies and yule logs topped with marshmallows - he goes above and beyond 

makes enough to give out to family and friends 

he loves seeing people enjoy his labor of love, it makes him all fuzzy inside 

claggors’s favourite christmas song is it’s beginning to look a lot like christmas 

AU!Mylo:

mylo gifts you wool gloves!

you always complain about having cold hands so whenever you two are outside, your hands are always in your pockets

but he wants to hold your hand :(

so gloves it is!

two birds with one stone

he would love it if your gift was literally just a kiss under the mistletoe, he doesn’t ask for much!

mylo’s favourite holiday activity is scavenger hunts!

he’s another one who thinks certain activities are childish, but once he gets in the zone istg he’s shoving actual kids out of the way 😭

like i genuinely believe you would have to restrain him because he’s going feral over this

he needs to calm down tbh

probably loses to a five year old and sulks for the rest of the rest of the day

mylo’s favourite christmas song is a nonsense christmas

Silco:

silco gifts you expensive clothes and perfume/cologne

he’s got MONEY and i feel like he wants to make up for the fact that he’s never had much growing up, so he spoils you in all the ways you deserve

he rolls his eyes if you tell him you don’t want anything for christmas

as if he would let you celebrate the day empty handed

when you asked him for a big fir tree you got it, along with mountains of presents stacked underneath

way too many for one person

he watches you intently with a smirk on his face, loving the way your eyes light up with each present you unwrap

he likes having the satisfaction that only he can treat you like this

he would love it if you offered to inject his eye as a gift - he can’t really reject this, can he?

if you offered under any other circumstances, he would probably say no

silco’s favourite holiday activity is dressing up as santa!

ok hear me out

one day when jinx was younger she asked if she would see santa that year

and he just…dressed up as him?? and gave her presents??? and now it’s a tradition that’s stuck 😭

keep in mind jinx didn’t believe in santa at this point but he had no idea about this so he didn’t want her to be disappointed

his santa impression is just “ho, ho, ho” 😐 he’s so deadpan it’s hilarious

he has this tacky stiff beard and pillows stuffed under his costume

so when you find out about it, you beg to see it with your own eyes

it’s sooooo embarrassing for him but he loves making his favourite people happy no matter the cost

doesn’t let anyone else but you two and sevika see him like that

silco’s favourite christmas song is…the christmas song lol

Sevika:

sevika gifts you a custom-made gun, “to Y/N, from sev” inscribed on the handle 

she’s secretly whipped for you but can’t let anyone else know, how else is she meant to keep up her tough facade? 

teaches you how to use the gun - she doesn’t want you to be defenceless in the lanes, especially since you’re connected to someone like her 

her worst fear is someone hurting you to get to her 

she would love it if you got her a backup arm, god knows hers is always getting ruined considering all the fights she gets into 

sevika’s favourite holiday activity is watching christmas movies!

she rarely gets a moment to relax so when the holidays come around, she loves getting to chill with you on the couch 

you guys watch those awful hallmark movies and you spend the entire time complaining the the tv about how unrealistic and dumb the characters are 

she throws popcorn at the tv whenever her least favourite character shows up 

oooh i can picture you two sipping on mulled wine, sevika’s arm wrapped around your shoulders 

you’re basically snuggled into her lap and she lives for it 

would die if anyone saw her like that though 

makes it a yearly tradition to show you the picture she secretly took of silco dressed up as santa 

she basically glows inside when she hears your laughter ring out like bells 

sevika’s favourite christmas song is please come home for christmas 

Vander:

vander gifts you free hug vouchers lmao 

i see him as someone who values sentimental value over material possessions, so he came up with this genius idea >:)

you’re having a bad day? redeem a free bear hug!

you’re feeling sappy? redeem a free bear hug! 

you just want a hug? you don’t even need to ask! 

he was scared you would think he was just being lazy with this present but he’s elated when he sees you openly tearing up at it 

you both laugh at the christmas table over his present 

he would love it if you gave the kids a gift, it shows how much you care! 

vander’s favourite holiday activity is carol singing

except drunk (it’s for charity!)

drunk carol singing is good for the soul, or so he says 

i can imagine him and silco when they were younger wandering the streets, cheeks red with sappy grins straining their faces, belting out songs at the top of their lungs 

multiple people told them to shut up 

they just sang louder 

end up at the last drop where they have a karaoke session 

when he does get tips for his carolina, he uses it to help the most vulnerable people in zaun 

helping his people is his main priority  

vander’s favourite christmas song is let it snow

masterlist

[thrashkink-coven]

Super easy and cheap devotional acts for beginners.

A nice cup and some clean, fresh, water on the altar can often be all you need for daily offerings

Grow a plant on your altar, use your weekly watering as a devotional act. Hermes is currently helping my peace lily grow :)

Draw their sigil on your nails and then paint over them with nail polish that matches their color correspondences.

If you can’t acquire alcohol for your deities (wine, vodka etc) because you’re too young, white vinegar also works. The quality we’re looking for is the purification aspect. White vinegar is natural, antibacterial and never goes bad. You can leave it on your altar until it evaporates if you want.

If you work with a deity involved with self love like Aphrodite, investing a little more time into your skin care and scent can be very rewarding. Nothing super boujie, it can be as simple as getting some nice smelling lotion at the dollar store.

Food and water offerings don’t have to be external, especially if you’re in the broom closet and don’t have an altar. Reserve the first bite of your meal for your deity. Savour its taste while you think about them. Pour yourself a crisp glass of cold water and guzzle it as a devotional act.

Use a washable or dry erase marker to draw sigils on your shower wall for bath rituals. It’ll come right off when you’re done.

Tea bags are just bags of dried herbs. You can use these as offerings or draw sigils on them and burn them for witchcraft. No one is ever suspicious about a little tea. Adding a tea bag to your water offerings also gives them an extra kick.

A couple dollars at the thrift store will take you a long way. I love thrifting items because they’re usually well loved. I especially like thrifting spirituality books that past practitioners have written in. Sometimes my deities communicate with me through the books that are available on any given day. If I was just talking to Leviathan about the power of water and I see a book about Hydromancy, I know that he’s sending me a sign. Like, 90% of the books Lucifer has sent me popped up at the thrift store. Most expensive one was $7.99. (and I tag swapped it for 2.99 😊 thanks, Hermes-

and on this note, literally steal. Not from small local thrift stores, but I mean this with my whole chest, steal from Value Village. If you can sneakily swap a tag and get something for cheaper literally do it. Value Village gets all their inventory for free I literally do not care. Corporate thrift stores don’t deserve rights. I steal from Value Village as a devotional act to Hermes 😊 lmao )

If you don’t have money to spend on really nice paintings and posters of your deities for your altar, start buying books about them. It’s a double win. A book about Greek religion will certainly have multiple beautiful sculptures and paintings of Aphrodite that I can cut out and put on my wall. A book about angels might have a cool painting of Lucifer. Books about Goddesses, ancient religions, anthropology, astrology etc. You get the opportunity to learn, and if it’s a book you don’t particularly care too much for, you can take it apart for imagery. People ask me all the time where I got all of my paintings and pictures from. BOOKS.

Does your deity have a kind of complicated sigil that you love but you also kinda hate redrawing every other day? Sorry Cerberus (Naberius) I love you but that sigil is so complicated babe.

Learn how to block print! It’s very simple. You get a block of linoleum (usually pretty cheap, I think mine were like $5) , some ink (~$10), and a carving tool (varies depending), and make a sigil stamp! All you gotta do is draw your sigil and carve it out nicely one time. You can still bless it and imbue it with your energy, and you can easily put it on prayers, talismans etc.

Chalk is your best friend. Use it to draw sigils on the floor or wall that can easily be wiped away. You can imbue special chalk and use it for casting circles if you don’t like the mess of salt.

[chaos-vixen]

@starry-bi-sky AAAAAA it’s 1:01am

I’m reading all the dp x dc I can find

And I want more scenes!

Like- Vlad has a business meeting in the morning, so Danny is forced to stay at this fancy ass expensive hotel (small miracle that Vlad got him his own fancy master bedroom type deal) overnight. But before that, we need to leave the party >:)

The Gala was set to end for roughly another hour, maybe hour and a half.

Danny didn’t give a shit.

So what if people parted a little when he walked back into the room. He didn’t give a shit.

He didn’t give a shit when he locked eyes with Bruce across the room. (not with the same damn subtle furrow in his brow he alway had when he was concerned but in public)

He didn’t give a shit when Vlad gave him a thinly veiled stink-eye. (Damned piece’s shite! What right- what right does that smug self serving bit-)

He didn’t give a shit when Tim found him in the bathroom trying to cover at least some of that lingering smoke smell (Didn’t give a when Tim gave him some of his cologne– that it hid the smell decently. Didn’t give’a when he told Tim that he was “Just a bit tired, head’d ou’early”. Didn’t give’a when half way through his goodbye his accent slipped with a wet voice crack. Didn’t give’s when Tim looked him with something horribly close to pity, made worse by the undertone of understanding)

Didn’t give anything (no reactions. No evergreen left for that or caring) when Vlad saddled up to him at the exit wondering just where he was going.

Did’t give a blessed thing about the one paparazzi guy touching it out to see who the first to leave was, not the final flash (heh, just one bright flash of light-) as he stepped and followed the sidewalk to where the cars where, knowing that Vlad was probably seething behind him.

Danny felt numb all the ride back in the car, up in the elevator, and down the hall to their neighboring rooms. Where Vlad, in his infinite wisdom, poked the bear.

“You know,” Vlad started, in all his slimy evilness (yes evilness- sue him, Danny’s too tired for better adjectives), “Ypu have cost me quite a bit of grief tonight, first with the cameras, then wondering off, then with this! Why, it’s like you want me to stop lending a helping hand to your parent’s funds! Or my little nudge for Jazz’s tuition?”

Danny cares. He doesn’t care about much. But Jazz?

He looks Vlad dead in those greedy, self-important eyes, his breath fogs, his rage and grief weighing the air down, thick like blood, suffocating– “You touch her, you threaten her or what she loves, and you’ll face Rath.”

Then he turns on his heel and slams the door (albeit not too hard, it’s a hotel) firmly shut.

A glance to the bed, perfectly inviting and soft. The alarm on the bedside table reads 10:37.

Whatever logic is left in his frizzled brain says that a shower would might help, but the rest says that bed is way to comfy to ignore. The only good thing to come of being forced to travel with Vlad was that the beds were usually not too bad.

Danny ends up staying up late, time slipping away (‘Why are there so many cursed metaphors?’) surfing through florist after florist for the perfect selection (Jay had always loved red—they’d joke about what color their suits would be if they where one of the richy-rich— also the zinnias where weirdly hard to find), though honestly there weren’t as many florists as there typically would be for a city as big as Gotham.

‘Probably Ivy’s fault’ he thinks tiredly, glancing at the alarm 1:07 seems to jeer from its spot on the bedside table.

With a big stretch and a groan, he decides with a mutter, “welp. ‘M already dead anyways”, rolls off his bed and heads to the balcony for a smoke.

Just as he stands, a ding sounds from his phone.

And for one, ancient’s forsaken moment, his stupid, hopeful mind thinks ‘it’s him’-

It’s squashed the the parasite it is.

Jazz, checking in, seeing if he’s alright. He flips back down on his bed, send a quick reply, how he’s turnin’ in early. He doesn’t bother trying to say that the Gala ended early- even hundreds of miles away Jazz could sniff his bs.

He also should maybe sleep. She concludes the same.

And eventually (but not peacefully, never peacefully) he drifts into the darkness.

——————————————————————————————————————

The morning is bright- because idiot tired Danny didn’t bother to close the fucking curtains.

Thankfully, Gotham isn’t exactly early riser either (smog doesn’t let much sun in until it’s bright enough to stab through the cloud coverage). This allowed a peaceful and lazy wake up all up until the Thud Thud on his door. Clock reads 8:23.

‘Never too early for the bullshit is it, dear universe?’ He thinks bitterly, dragging himself out of bed, mentally trying to prepare for whatever this could be.

There, as expected, stands Vlad, with his usual smug self standing straight with a slight smirk- until he sees an unkempt Danny, still in his suit and that smirk drops to a distasteful sneer.

With an upturned nose, “Disgraceful, anyways, I’m headed off to a business meeting elsewhere in the city. Plan leaves at 3 o’clock.”

Danny gives a slight nod, and immediately shuts the door again. That enough frootloop, especially since he hadn’t even had caffeine yet.

The promise of drugs (the legal kind) has his mind finally figuring out a course of action: shower, dress, boy flowers … then a visit to Jay. A proper visit.

So, with a list of tasks in mind, he sets off to do just that

Unbeknownst to him, a certain revenant was just waking up after not falling asleep 3 hours ago.

I desperately want to keep writing- but my shift starts at 7:00 am tomorrow and it’s already 2:24 am! Plz continue this!

also quick headcannon(s)

Danny still smokes the same cig brand Jay use to carry, the first cig he ever smoked, Jay’s brand

Jay is heartbroken at this broken echo of who he knows and loves (/pl)(present tense because angst) crumbled by grief, pit back together given hope just to have it all ripped away again

Alfred wants to see his honorary grandkid

Since Young Danny insisted on helping with dishes

Aaaand it’s now 2:30am

I’m probably screwed a wee bit. Oops!

*2:32

Childhood Friends Danny and Jason

(cw underage smoking / smoking as a form of bonding) (cw Jason thinking Danny killed himself but its only for a moment) (cw depictions of murderous intent? Danny wants to murder the Joker and he's a little descriptive about it

This is… aha. Massive. Word count check: 9k+

this has probably been done before but hey, everyone loves a good trope and I wanted to share my take on this idea. 👏👏 So, Danny Fenton and Jason Todd being childhood friends. The Fentons lived in Crime Alley for a good long while during Danny's childhood. Nobody wanted to fund their research and Jack and Maddie struggled to keep any form of work for a multitude of reasons. Jack worked in construction due to his big build and Maddie had another job elsewhere.

Danny and Jason were friends during that time, really great friends. I'm not super solid on how they met yet but I do know it involves Danny committing petty crime and Jason deciding to jump in and help when he sees Danny struggling. Danny was distrustful (as all crime alley kids ought to be) but they eventually became thick as thieves, committing petty crime together.

While it's all too easy to make Danny the weaker one of the two with Jason protecting him, I actually really like the idea that they protected each other. Growing up (essentially) on the streets means Danny forcibly had to grow a backbone unless he wanted to get trampled all over. He is just as willing to scuffle with the bigger kids as Jason is, and he and Jason regularly fought each other whenever they needed to let off steam, or just because. They were a duo, having each other's backs in tough situations.

(Sometimes the pair of them would sneak out at night and try and get a glimpse of Batman and Robin while they soared through the air. It was like a game between the two of them to see who could spot the dynamic duo first. When they were a little older, Jason would steal his dad's cigarettes and share them with Danny while they searched for Batman and Robin)

So when Danny has to move away when they're eleven years old, it's pretty safe to say that Jason didn't speak to him for a week afterwards. Nothing Danny did could persuade him to otherwise, even when Danny insisted that it wasn't his fault and that he didn't want to move away either, but he didn't have a choice in the matter.

When the week was over, Jason climbed through Danny's window and sat in his room, dead silent and looking upset. he didn't speak until Danny fished out a stolen pack of cigarettes from his bed and handed one to Jason.

(It was a ritual they had where if one of them was upset about something but wasn't saying anything, the other one could then hand them a cigarette -- whether it be the one they were using or a new one -- and that would be an open invitation for the person to vent. The other one who handed him the cigarette wouldn't speak until the venter handed back the cigarette. Then back and forth it would go until the cigarette was gone.)

Jason ranted about how pissed he was about Danny moving, and they promised to try and stay in touch after he leaves. Neither of them had phones, but Danny was determined to send him a letters.

Danny moves to Amity Park and it's... an adjustment, that's for sure. He's angry, grumpy, upset, and every other negative feeling under the sun. He was going to a new middle school with new people he didn't know, away from all of the people he did know and away from his best friend.

(He does however keep his word about sending letters, and mails one out to Jason at the first opportunity.)

He refuses to get along with anyone, butts heads with the teachers, is combative, rude, and openly smokes in class -- which gets him plenty of detentions and a bad reputation. He speaks in a thick Gotham street accent and wears hand-me-down clothes that are too big and baggy on him. (His parents have yet to replace any of their wardrobes as they settle into their new life, and Danny is hesitant to spend the money to get new clothes.)

He only manages to befriend Sam and Tucker because one of the football kids was bullying Tucker and Danny stepped in. It was some blond jerk named Dash and when Dash threw the first punch, Danny broke his nose. Tucker found him later that day and reluctantly thanked him for his help.

Sam and Danny do not get along for the longest time. Sam questions Danny about his upbringing, his accent, his smoking. She judges him for talking back to the teachers despite doing it herself and for ruining his lungs with cigarettes. Danny tells her to fuck off, and when she tries to judge him and Tucker for not being vegetarian, he calls her a privileged brat.

Sam doesn't even look at him for two weeks after, and Danny refuses to apologize. Tucker is caught between a rock and a hard place as his old friend and new friend are feuding with each other.

They... sort it out eventually.

Danny and Jason send each other letters near religiously. Danny complains about Amity Park, and Jason complains about how Crime Alley isn't the same without him. Danny talks about the school and what he's learned, about Sam and Tucker, and how he's been getting into the astronomy books in the library. He steals Jason a book and sends it to him.

When Jason tells Danny that he was adopted by Bruce Wayne, Danny calls bullshit. There's no fucking way Bruce Wayne would even look at Crime Alley, regardless of his charity efforts towards it. But when he checks Gotham news later that week, he's hit in the face with every single news article announcing Bruce Wayne's newest ward; Jason Todd.

Cue freaking out. Jason talks all about living in Wayne Manor and what it's like there. He says that there's a monster library in a part of the house that Bruce says he has free reign over, and that Jason can have anything to eat as long as he asks Alfred to make it and it isn't a desert, and that he has his own monster-sized room that he got to pick out himself and decorate.

(When they both get phones, the first thing either of them do is add each other's numbers.)

When Sam complains about having to go to a Wayne Gala that her parents are dragging her to one weekend, the first thing Danny asks is if he can go with. It surprises Sam and Tucker; Danny was the last person they would have thought wanted to go with. HE hates the rich even more than Sam does. Danny stands firm in his decision, and refuses to elaborate.

"Besides." He says to Sam, with whom he's begun to get along with via 'the enemy of my enemy is a friend'. "Would you rather go alone or with someone you can tolerate?"

She brings him with and convinces her parents to allow Danny to come along, citing that she'll be on her best behavior if they do. They agree, and buy Danny a suit when he says that he doesn't have one of his own.

(He discovers that he hates wearing suit jackets and ties, but vests he doesn't mind. He doesn't like that he has to comb his hair back, but he does to make Sam's parents happy. They give him a crash course in etiquette that Danny's going to forget the next day, and soon enough off they go in a private jet to Gotham)

(he does not tell Jason he's coming.)

he feels mischievous and nervous as they touch down, his stomach swirling as Sam's parents usher them to a high-profile hotel that Danny's only ever dreamed about going into. He feels largely out of place as they walk through the lobby, and falls back on old habits: square shoulders, set jaw, make yourself look like the biggest person in the room.

They get ready in the hotel room, Sam's parents primp and preen for the night incoming, and Sam is dragged into it by her mother. Danny does only what's required of him, and fiddles with the sleeves of his fresh-ironed button-down that's been tailored to his body. He's itching for a cigarette, and didn't bring any with.

Sam's dad helps him with his tie, a bout of kindness that Danny doesn't think is one. Just obligation to prevent Danny from looking like a mess. Sam pesters him again about wanting to come, and his reasons for it, and Danny keeps mum.

He's stone-faced with anxiety as they get closer to the gala, and before they leave the limousine the Mansons rented Sam links arms with him. A form of solidarity that Danny needs as he squeezes their arms together and smiles weakly at her.

The paparazzi are loud, bright, and demanding, shouting questions over questions at them like overlapping tidal waves. Danny ignores them all and focuses on the front doors instead. Sam's parents whisper at the stairs that they are to greet the Waynes first, and Danny's heart leaps to his throat.

His heart is in his ears as they drift closer, Mister Wayne is preoccupied with another rich couple, smiling that charming billionaire smile that Danny saw on every billboard in Gotham, and then some in Amity Park. Getting so close to him feels unreal.

And there by his side is the one and only Jason Todd, who isn't even trying to hide the bored look on his face as he watches Bruce interact with the other adults. He's gotten taller in the year they've been away, and healthier. His hair looks like its been cut professionally and he doesn't look as street kid skinny.

Danny's arm, hooked with Sam's, tightens up, and he resists the urge to rush forward and hug Jason. He watches Jason's eyes sweep left, away from him, and then right, towards him. The air stills for a moment as their eyes lock.

Danny grins toothily at him, lopsided and playful in nature, and sees the moment Jason processes the sight before him. His arm starts slipping out of Sam's at the same time as an ecstatic smile stretches across Jason's face.

His lopsided grin fills out on the other end. "DANNY!" Jason yells, cutting off whatever Bruce Wayne and startling everyone within earshot. There's barely a moment for Bruce to look down when Jason shoves past him and runs at Danny.

Danny yanks his arm out of Sam's, "JASON!" He yells with just as much enthusiasm, and Jason nearly topples them right over when he collides with Danny. His arms wrap around Danny's shoulders, holding onto him tightly, and they're both laughing, spinning around like tops out of joy.

"You didn't tell me you were coming!" Jason cries, sounding accusing. Danny hugs him just as tightly, and laughs when Jason pulls away momentarily to punch his shoulder.

"I wanted it to be a surprise!" He defends, laughing between words as their spinning comes to a stop. They're both reluctant to pull apart, but they do and clutch the sleeves of their elbows tightly. "How could my best friend be adopted by the Bruce Wayne and have me not come confirm it with my own two eyes?"

"I sent you newspaper clippings!" Jason says, narrowing his eyes while his smile betrays his face. Danny quietly notices that his Gotham street accent is faded slightly.

"Oh that's what it was?" Danny's grin turns again, edging into a smirk. He feigns innocence, "I thought that was fire kindling." He has the newspaper clippings hung on the corkboard in his room, proud beyond words about his best friend.

Jason punches him in the shoulder again, hard enough to leave a bruise. "You jackass." He says, ignoring Danny's laughter even when he's holding back his own.

There's a soft, sharp clearing of someone's throat, breaking their attentions away from each other to the one that made the noise.

Bruce Wayne was a tall man, taller than Danny expected, and he looks exactly like his billboards. If less promiscuous than his perfume ads. Danny expects him to be upset with them both for disrupting his pretty rich gala, but instead he just looks gently amused, with an arched eyebrow. Overall though, he just looks fond.

Danny would be the first to admit that Bruce had taken in Jason as a charity case, something to fill the void after his other kid Dick Grayson finally moved out. But Danny’s a good judge of character — or he likes to assume he is — and those are not the eyes of a man who would take Jason in as a charity case. Those are the eyes of a man who actually, genuinely, cares about one Jason Todd.

The wriggly protective thing settles in his chest.

He doesn’t let go of Jason, but he does twist his smile into something a little more polite. Mister Wayne’s eyebrow arches higher, and he turns his blue-blue eyes onto Jason. “Who’s this, Jason?” He has that fancy Gotham Elite accent -- something that sounds like a mix between old transatlantic and faintly British -- that Danny's only heard in passing when he and Jason snuck up to the nicer parts of Gotham.

Jason stares at Mister Wayne, his grip on Danny tightens as his eyes flick to the other onlookers in the room. “This is Danny, B.” He says once his eyes turn back to Mister Wayne. “We grew up in Crime Alley together, he moved to Illinois last year."

Danny can see the uncomfortable expressions cross every rich person's face, murmurs sweeping across the room as soon their uncomfortable gazes turned judgmental and flinty. He's kept track of the tabloids after Jason's adoption, the ones calling him a charity case and looking down on him for being a street kid.

He inches a little closer to Jason, straightening up instinctively, as if they were back in Crime Alley and facing a pack of kids that didn't like them. He can see Sam's surprised expression from the corner of his eye -- he never told Tucker or Sam about where he grew up, although he's sure they had their suspicions.

He looks back to Mister Wayne and meets his blue-blue eyes, his smile has slowly begun to fade. Mister Wayne doesn't miss a beat however, and his smile stays plastered to his face. If anything, it gets a little softer, a little wider. "It's nice to meet you Danny -- Daniel? I'm so glad that Jason has a friend here." He holds out a hand.

Danny eyes him unsurely, and then takes his hand. "It's jus' Danny, Mister Wayne." He says, some of his old accent slipping through as he shook his hand firmly. He would have done it harder, but this was Jason's new guardian, and from Jason's letters he didn't sound too bad. "It's, uh, nice to meet you too. Jason's told me lots about you."

Mister Wayne's brows jump momentarily, he looks intrigued. He looks between Danny and Jason, and claps his hands together softly. "Well, Jay, how would you like to stay with Danny for a while, hm? I'm sure you too have a lot to catch up on."

Hope simmers in Danny's heart, and he glances to Jason to see that same hope on his face. "Really?" He asks, and Mister Wayne nods with a laugh.

"Of course! How could I keep two friends apart? Go on ahead, chum. I'll come get you when the gala ends."

And just like that, Bruce Wayne leaves Jason with Danny, diving back into a conversation with one of the rich gothamites and taking the attention with it as if he were the sun and everyone else a planet orbiting him.

Danny and Jason share grins, and throw their arms around each other with laughter. Danny is on cloud nine, pressing his nose into Jason's shoulder and breathing him in, fingers digging into the back of his suit hard enough to leave wrinkles in his jacket.

Sam demands answers when they finally, for real this time, pull apart. Why didn't he tell her that he was friends with Jason Todd!? Danny slings his arm around Jason's shoulders and keeps him close, and tells her that it was because he wanted it to be a surprise.

Sam's parents have unreadable expressions on their faces, part greed -- Danny is their in to the elusive Bruce Wayne -- and part disdain -- a Gotham street rat. Danny ignores them, they're unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

He introduces Sam to Jason, and Jason to Sam. And off they go to a corner of the room near the buffet table where they can eat and shit talk everyone else in the room in peace.

At some point in the night Sam is called back to her parents to meet some other fancy rich kids her parents want her to get along with, and Danny and Jason go off to the west end balcony to avoid anyone who may try and approach the new Gotham ward.

Danny hops up onto the balcony railing, kicking his feet as Jason pulls a cigarette pack out of his inner jacket pocket, and grins. "Don't tell Bruce," he says, handing the box to Danny first. "He's been trying to get me to quit."

"Hah!" Danny takes one just as Jason slips out a lighter. "That sounds like Jazz. She's been trying to get me to stop since we moved to Amity." Granted, she's been trying ever since she found out before they moved, but now she was even more insistent. "She hasn't found my stash yet."

At the end of the night when the Mansons are leaving and Danny has to leave with them, he walks back to Mister Wayne with Jason to tell him that he's leaving. Mister Wayne mourns his going, and tells him that he's always able to come visit.

"Any friend of Jason's is always welcome to the manor." He says with a blinding grin, pulling Jason close to his side and squeezing him tight. Jason's nose scrunches up, but he doesn't push away.

It becomes a new routine for them. The Mansons are all too happy to bring him with to the Wayne Galas (of which they start receiving more invites to due to their connection with Danny) and Danny is all too happy to spend the evening with Jason again. No matter what, they always end up on the balcony at some point in the night.

And, eventually, Danny is invited to stay at Wayne Manor either for a weekend or for a break. He jumps at the chance when winter break rolls around and his parents start their debate over Santa Claus again.

Danny and Jason stay up late into the night talking or playing video games during their sleepovers, and in the warmer nights they climb out and onto the roof to stargaze. Danny points out constellations - - things he can find in neither Gotham or Amity -- and rambles on and on about space.

There are plenty of times during the Wayne Galas that the event gets attacked by a rogue. More often than he'd like he loses Jason in the crowd, and has later stopped Robin or Batman in his panic to find him.

The first time it happened, he was in tears with terror. He grabbed onto Batman's cape, stopping the man from going back in as he babbled that his Jason Todd was still inside, that he disappeared during the chaos and he couldn't find him. Batman took his hands and calmly told him that he'd find Jason for him, and that he was sure he was okay, but he needed to calm down.

He found Jason later once everything had calmed down, and he screamed at him for disappearing during a rogue attack, if he ever did it again he'll kill him. Then he cried.

The second time it happened, Danny didn't even realize that Jason was gone until everything was already over. They'd been separated before the attack happened. He stopped Robin and Batman before they could leave, trying to keep his breathing under control as he asked again, if they had seen Jason Todd.

"That- that asshole keeps fucking ditching me when these things happen." His voice has an embarrassing wobble in it. "Please-- please tell me you've seen him, that he's alright."

Robin this time steps up to reassure him, that Jason Todd was out of the building. He got him out. "He's probably looking for you too, uhhh..."

"Danny" Danny says, and eyes him up and down. "You're the new Robin right?"

Robin stilled up, and Danny could understand it a little. He'd seen the thoughts on the new Robin online. He wasn't very popular at first. Robin nods curtly, and Batman was shuffled a little closer to him, almost protectively.

Danny grins at him. "Cool." He says, "Me and Jay used to sneak out onto the rooftops sometimes to try and spot Batman and the first Robin, we made it a game." He holds out a fistbump, "Thanks for doing what you do, man. I might not live in Gotham anymore, but I mean it. You're a living legend."

Robin looks like there's something stuck in his throat, and after a beat he returns the fistbump tentatively. "Th- uh, thanks." He stumbles out awkwardly, and then turns away, "Me and B- uh, better go."

Before Danny could even respond, Robin already had his grapple in hand and was grappling away. "You too, Batman." Danny says before Batman can follow.

When Danny sees Jason after that, and weight lifts off his chest and he hits him in the arm again. And then complains that he should have gotten Batman and Robin's autograph, it would have been epic.

By the fifth time it happens, Danny is cussing up a storm when Robin saves him, cursing out Jason and claiming that he needs to put that boy on a fucking leash. "We're a duo!" He scowls when Robin gets him outside, "I got his back, he has mine! I can't have his back when he's got no back to fucking have."

The eighth time it happens, Danny gets held hostage by one of the henchmen. He's become a recognizable friend of the Waynes, and when the Waynes are nowhere to be found, then the next best thing was up to offer. Danny isn't even mad this time around -- just relieved that Jason was fucking off somewhere where he couldn't get hurt.

Robin, however, seemed furious when he arrived, and broke the hostager's jaw with a single flying kick to the face. Jason found him rapidly quick soon after the situation had settled, and apologized over and over again.

Danny slings an arm around his shoulder and laughs that it was fine, Robin saved the day! His legs were shaking with the worn off adrenaline, something he tried to hide from Jason. "I'm just glad it was me instead of you, Jay." He grins. Jason looks like he swallowed a toad.

Jason stops disappearing as often after that, sticking close to Danny's side until the attack was over.

When Danny is fourteen, Jason dies, and his world unravels.

He calls the manor on a late night in April after Jason had stopped responding to his texts. Danny knew that Jason was just recently in a fight with Bruce, but he knows that Bruce loves Jason. He would know where he is, right?

When he calls, Bruce answers with a hoarse "hello?" as if he'd been crying all day, and Danny's blood turns to ice. The anxiety he'd been feeling beforehand doubles in size, and he feels himself stammering.

"Mister- uh- Mister Wayne? Um, I'm calling because Jason--" he hears Bruce inhale sharply on the other line, and his anxiety skyrockets into fear. "--hasn't been answering any of my texts and- and I'm gettin' real worried."

There's silence on the other end, and Danny feels a rock forming in his throat, gross and heavy like he was on the verge of throwing up. "Mister- Bruce? Mister B?"

There's a shaky breath, and then Bruce's voice crackles through the phone. "Um-- Jason, he, he's--" there's a sound like rustling, "he's been killed."

Danny's vision whites out with skyrocketing terror, his mind skidding to a stop. His body rapidly grows hot, and then chills, like a blacksmith striking a heated weapon. "What?"

When the phone call ends, Danny screams himself hoarse. Jazz and his parents come running into his room, his parents equipped with ghost weapons. Instead, they find Danny curled up in his bed, sobbing hoarsely.

Danny almost -- almost -- refuses to attend the funeral, nearly paralyzed with grief. Jazz coaxes him to go, to find closure if anything else, and he drags himself out of bed to go.

He feels numb the entire time. It's closed casket, so he can't even see him for one last time before Jason is buried in the ground. He's silent, and if he think he looks bad, then Bruce looks even worse, like he hadn't slept since Jason died and worse.

Danny grabs his sleeve before he leaves, and when Bruce turns to him with a dull look in his once vibrant eyes, he clings to him tightly. And cries. Bruce clings back just as tight, Danny feels tears drip into his hair.

"Who did it." Danny whispers, voice too hurt to speak any louder, when he pulls back. His fingers curl around Bruce's jacket tightly, desperately. His eyes hurt with tears. "You said he was murdered, B. Please, who did it."

Bruce looks down at him, and for the first time it really does feel like he's looking down at him. His face is blank, and his eyes close in grief. There is no answer, a silent no.

Danny's face twists up all ugly like, and he shakes Bruce's jacket. "Bruce, please. Tell me who did it."

Bruce refuses, his face full of grief.

Danny never returns to Gotham.

Prior to Jason's death and post their reunion, Danny had slowly begun to improve in school. He started caring more, he was putting in more effort, he was doing his homework and was actually enjoying class. There was the bullying from Dash and the A-Listers, but it wasn't anything he couldn't handle, he was ignoring them for the most part.

Come Monday after the funeral, and Danny breaks Dash's nose when he starts up with his shit. He withdrew into himself, and it was like he was back to square one again, except this time it was much worse.

Everyone knew Danny was close friends with Jason Todd. So when news of his death finally reached the ears of Amity Park, the students of Casper High School kept their distance.

That following Friday, Danny dies in the portal and comes back. A month later he becomes Phantom, the ghost-fighting ghost. the ghost Phantom wears his hazmat suit partially undone, showing a tanktop he didn't wear in death under the initial suit while the sleeves are tied around his waist. Vicious, glowing lichtenburg scars travel up his arm and neck and torso, covering half of his face while a pair of scientist-like goggles covers his eyes. He's bitter and angry, showing off his death.

Look at me, Phantom's form says, I am a dead child. Look at me look at me look at me. Mourn me. I am a dead child. LOOK AT ME. MOURN ME.

A few weeks later he enters the ghost zone and realizes that he could find Jason. And he spends a weekend scouring the ghost zone for him. He finds Gotham in the zone, and rather than finding Jason, he finds Robin.

Danny didn't know he'd died. And he flies towards him, asks him if he's seen Jason, reveals that it's him, Danny Fenton. Robin stares at him, mouth agape, and peels off his mask to reveal Jason Todd.

They both cry, and when Danny tells him how he died, Jason looks pale in the face. "You didn't- you didn't kill yourself because of me, did you?"

Danny fervently denies it. No, no. He didn't, he didn't. It was an accident. Totally unrelated. But enough about that, what the hell happened? Bruce wouldn't tell him anything at the funeral.

Jason clams up, his ghostly face losing its color, and Danny curses himself. He tells Jason that he doesn't have to tell him, he doesn't have to say anything. They sit in silence.

"It was the Joker." Jason says.

That's all Danny needs to know. He nods quietly. 'I'll kill him.' He thinks to himself, a stubborn set in his jaw. "Okay."

It had always been a plan; a thought wriggling in the back of Danny's mind ever since Bruce told him that Jason had been killed.

Not died. Killed.

Danny wanted the fucker dead the moment he realized it. He just needed to know who did it. He thinks Bruce knew it too, could probably see it in his eyes the moment Danny asked him who did it. He isn't sure if he should hate Bruce more for keeping it from him now.

They spend hours together, just soaking in each other's presence. Danny tries to take him through the ghost portal, to bring him back to the land of the living. But much like Kitty, Jason's form is tied to the zone. Danny promises to visit every day.

And he does. Or he tries to. The grief doesn't go away, but with the comfort of knowing that Jason was on the other side, Danny feels a little better. He tells Jason about being Phantom, and Jason helps train him. It feels like they're kids again and are fighting just because they want to. Its a bout of familiarity in a place that feels unfamiliar. All they need are cigarettes.

And then six months later he loses him again. Danny scours the ghost zone for him for the second time, and this time he doesn't find him.

His haunt is still in the zone though. He didn't move on. He's still here, somewhere.

Danny is convinced that Jason was in the Elsewhereness, and looks for him in between ghost fights and his social life. He visits Jason's haunt every day, knowing that Jason should be able to feel when another ghost enters his home. He does not show up.

(He never thinks that Jason came back to life, and Jason doesn't remember his time in the ghost zone)

When Danny is nineteen, Vlad Masters blackmails him into going to another Wayne Gala. Begrudgingly, Danny goes. He's taller than he used to be, having inherited his dad's monstrous height and his mom's leanness. He has piercings, some of them he got after a lost bet from Sam and Tucker, and he's given himself an undercut.

He still prefers vests over suit jackets, and he still smokes. A little less than before, he sneaks a pack into his pocket before he leaves, along with a lighter. Vlad gives him a dirty look the whole time - he knows.

"Don't give me that look." "That stuff kills, you know" "I'm already dead."

It's like deja vu when he arrives; an awful bout of deja vu, that is. The paparazzi is still as bright and loud and annoying as it always was, and they don't recognize him at all. Something he thinks of as a soft mercy up until one of the reporters asks Vlad who he is.

Vlad smiles and tugs Danny into the camera frame, "Why, this is my godson!" He crows, and shoots Danny a look that is downright smug I'm sure many of you may know him as Daniel Fenton?"

If looks could kill, Vlad would be ash. Danny isn't quite sure why he still agreed to this -- blackmail or no. He felt itchy being in Gotham; jumpy. He's never forgotten his vow to kill the Joker, in fact it was something he still desperately wants.

But the threat of Rath, the name he chose for his evil future self, haunts him just as much as his murderous intent. If he kills the Joker, would he stop?

Danny's almost afraid of what he'll do if he ever lays eyes on the Joker in person. He doesn't think he'll be able to stop himself from wrapping his hands around that stupid clown's neck and watching the light leave his eyes.

He pushes the thoughts to the side, and smiles lopsidedly as cameras and microphones flood his face, reporters yelling over themselves as they clamor to get a shot of the old Wayne family friend.

Danny turns and walks inside without answering a single question, flexing his fingers in and out of fists. Vlad gracefully hurries after him, and Danny can hear his glare burning into his back.

"You told me to come," Danny hisses to him once he's beside him, meeting Vlad's gaze piercingly, "not that I should play nice."

"Don't embarrass me, Daniel." Vlad hisses back, trying to look the upmost calm as eyes turn onto them. "I'll make you regret it."

"You embarrass yourself, fruitloop." Danny shoots back, walking away before Vlad could get a retort in. He sees Bruce Wayne on the other side of the room.

His heart seizes with nostalgia. He hasn't seen Bruce since Jason's funeral, hasn't spoken to him either. He doesn't know how to feel about him, but he'd been keeping tabs on Bruce both as himself and as Batman.

Danny's feet carry him forwards before he can think about it, silently weaving between the throng of rich people vying for his attention. It's only when he gets closer does he see the little shadow clinging to his side: Damian Wayne.

The newest little bird, Danny realizes, and stifles a smile at the surly expression on Damian's face as two older women coo over him. He reminded him of Sam, who had long since stopped coming to these things the moment she was able to.

The feeling of eyes on him turns Danny's attention away from Damian, and instead finds them back on Bruce's, who stares at him with a little furrow between his brows. As if he recognized him, but he wasn't sure from there.

Danny grins crookedly the moment he's within earshot. "Mister B!" He exclaims, slipping into what remained of his Gotham street accent. Recognition flashed in Bruce's eyes, and the man smiled widely. "Long time no see, old man."

"Danny," Bruce says, his name breathing out like relief. He slips between the crowd surrounding him -- who are now watching Danny -- and pulls Danny into a close hug. "It's good to see you again."

Danny hesitates for a moment -- he wasn't expecting Bruce to hug him -- and returns the gesture. "It's good to see you too, Bruce." He admits. Bruce was still using the same cologne that he did when Danny was a kid. He blinks heavily.

He pulls away quickly, clapping Bruce lightly on the shoulder as Damian quickly latches onto his father's side again. Damian glares daggers at him, fingers digging into Bruce's pantlegs like a possessive little kid.

He made Danny's ghost sense tingle in the back of his throat, creeping up slowly like a spider before stopping suddenly before it reached his mouth. It hummed, and then disappeared.

Danny smothered a frown. Since when did Batman work with ectoplasm? “This must be Damian." He says to Bruce, and holds out a hand to Damian -- he doesn't crouch, he had a feeling that Damian would be less than appreciative if he did that. "You've really expanded the nest since the last time I saw you."

Damian's eyes narrow at him. Bruce laughs lightly, "Ah yes, Tim is around here somewhere. I'm sure you'll see him soon."

"Father," Damian says, his voice layered with an accent. He glares up at Danny with piercing green eyes. "How do you know this man?" He sounds distrustful, Danny respects that and drops his hand.

"This is Danny Fenton." Bruce says, and Danny lets him introduce him. "He was Jason's friend."

An expression similar to bewilderment flashes briefly over Damian's face, and he eyes Danny in disbelief. "Todd had friends?"

Oh. So that's how he wanted to be. Bruce had a little elitist on his hands. Danny's smile drops like a deadweight, and any lingering endearment he had hardens like ice in his chest, fury slowly taking its place like a flickering candlelight. "It's not polite to speak ill of the dead, Mister Wayne." He says coldly, his voice made of chips of ice.

Damian blinks, the disbelief disappearing from his face. The closest thing to a recoil Danny thinks he's going to get. He doesn't care. No one speaks about his best friend that way.

"I grew up with Jason, actually." He continues, breathing in slow and deep, trying to keep the ghostly possessive-protective-rage under control. "I was his best friend."

He turns, almost robotically, towards Bruce, and tries not to look so angry. "I'm going to go find Tim, Mister B." He says, and tries to offer up a weak smile for the man. It comes out as a grimace instead.

"And..." he pauses, flicks his eyes towards Damian, and then looks at Bruce. "I'll... try and keep in contact, B. Tell Dick I said hi, alright? I'll see you in a little bit."

Bruce nods, looking vaguely disappointed and sighing slow through his nose. Danny walks away as Bruce turns to address his youngest, and doesn't bother listening in on what he has to say.

He does, eventually, find Tim Drake. He spots him in a crowd instantly - it's hard not to, and he makes his way over to him. He's not sure Tim Drake would recognize him, Bruce didn't at first and Danny had been around him constantly.

Except Tim Drake does recognize him, much to Danny's surprise. They lock eyes and Tim immediately makes his way over to him. "Danny Fenton!" He says and stops in front of him, "What a surprise, we weren't expecting you tonight."

"Tim Drake," Danny replies, smiling a little as his earlier hurt begins to fade away. "I'm surprised you know me."

"There are pictures of you in the manor with Jason." Tim explains, stuffing his hands into his pockets with an easy-going smile. "It's hard not to know you."

"It’s hard not to know you too,” Danny retorts, a sly smile slowly spreading across his face. “Although you’re a lot taller than you used to be, when you were lurking around Bruce and Jason and I.”

Ohhh Danny recognizes him alright. One part due to all the news articles and tabloids on him after he was adopted by Bruce, and the other part because he remembers the little shadow lurking near plants pots and table legs that used to follow him and Jason around at galas just like these.

Knowing that Jason was Robin, he wonders if Jason knew he was there too.

The effect is immediate: Tim’s eyes grow comically large, and a red tint glows at the tip of his ears as he shrinks back like a turtle trying to hide into its shell. “You— you noticed that!?” He hisses.

“I did!” Danny grins, large and wide, stifling a laugh as the red tint spreads over Tim’s cheeks and nose. He looks mortified. Danny coos. “Aww, I thought it was adorable that Jason had a little shadow. I’m sure he would have loved you if you had just come over and said hi. He had a big soft spot for kids.”

Tim snorts and it— it almost sounds derisive? “Sure he would.” He looks sad, and the mirth in Danny’s chest shrivels up like a flower without light. The smile fades from his face, and all that’s left is a strange, staunch reminder that Danny and Bruce weren’t the only ones that probably mourned.

He touches Tim’s shoulder lightly, “Hey, I’m sorry.” He says, trying to look as apologetic as he feels. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I’m sorry, I miss him too.” Like a fucking limb he missed him.

There’s something that flickers in Tim’s eyes, passing through too fast for Danny to realize what it is. He assumes its gratefulness, because Tim relaxes a little and offers him a weak little smile. “I wish I had talked to him.”

Danny sees an out and takes it, he forces out a short laugh, grinning widely. “I can tell you all about him if you’d like,” he offers, “I told Mister B I’d keep in touch anyways. I’ve missed him and Alfred quite a lot in the last few years.”

“Not Dick?”

“That dipstick wasn’t around often enough for me to form any sort of emotional attachment to him.” Danny says in a half-complaining tone, placing his hands on his hips. “Although I did like his puns.”

Tim snickers, “I’ll tell him you said that then. Nobody likes his puns.”

“Go on ahead,” Danny grins, laughter swirling in his chest and making his core thrum with warmth. Damn, he’s missed this family. “I stand by my decision. Puns are funny.”

“Let’s get a photo then.” Tim says with a hand already fishing in his pocket for his phone. “He’ll be devastated to know that you were here and he didn’t get to see you.”

“Sure.” And Danny sidles on next to Tim, throwing an arm around his shoulders — and making a noise of surprise when his arm was able to fit comfortably — as if he was just resting it on a counter.

He totally forgot how tall he was compared to Tim. Forgot that he’d been looking down the entire time they’d been talking. “Why’d I get my dad’s height.” He complains, and bends his knees as Tim raises the phone with the front-facing camera on.

Tim snickers under his breath, and takes the picture while they’re both smiling wide. Danny immediately stands up, and peers over Tim’s shoulders to look at the picture.

It’s a good one, with the fringe of Danny’s curls falling slightly over his left eye and making the dimple on his right cheek more prominent. He could see the barely-there smattering of freckles he had across his nose, the ones that became more prominent when the sun was out. His smile was lopsided, Danny’s favorite kind of smile.

He whistles lowly, “That’s a good one,” he says aloud, and smiles impishly at Tim when he looks at him. “You should send that one, I look hot in it.”

Tim snorts, his ears reddening as he looks down at his phone. “Yeah sure, no problem.” He says quickly, and Danny looks away when he pulls up the messenger app. He’s never felt comfortable looking over people’s shoulders when they were on their phone.

“I’m gonna go take a smoke break.” He shoves his hands into his pockets and curls his fingers around the box and lighter inside. “I’ll—“

“Be on the west-end balcony.” Tim finishes, the red in his ears darkening as he glances up from his phone to smile embarrassedly. “I know.”

Danny snorts, “Okay.” His voice is thick with amusement. “Let me know how Dipstick reacts, alright?” He backs up slowly, awaiting Tim’s response. Tim merely waves a hand at him, a weak gesture of “yeah yeah” that makes Danny grin before he flips around and marches towards his favorite smoking balcony.

———————

(Tim pulls up the family group chat and loads the selfie into the text bar. His face feels warm with embarrassment even as his thumbs fly across the screen.

Tim: look who i found at the latest charity gala :) [image]

Hee awaits eagerly a response, and finds he doesn’t have to wait long. Dick’s thought bubble appears on screen, then Cass’s — of which it only exists for a moment before disappearing.

Dick: holy shit, is that who i think it is?

Tim responds quickly, and his message sends.

Tim: yep. He wanted me to tell you that he thinks your jokes are funny.

Dick: they are funny

Tim rolls his eyes and thinks for a moment, really thinks. He weighs his pros and cons. And then his fingers fly across the screen again.

Tim: hey Jason are you not gonna say anything?

There’s no response for all of thirty seconds — of which it stretches on to an uncomfortably long minute — and then Jason’s thought bubble appears.

Jason: what do i have to say to a bunch of idiots blowing up my phone in the middle of patrol?

Tim: harsh. do you recognize the guy in the photo?

Jason’s response is instant. Too fast for him to have actually looked at the photo itself. He’s just trying to spite Tim then. Tim doesn’t care, he has the upper hand here

Jason: no and I don’t care, i have patrol

Tim knows he didn’t look at the photo, and yet he can’t help stifle a shit-eating smile and feign innocence

Tim: really? You and Danny used to be so close, color me surprised

His teeth dig into his lower lip, he doesn’t need to in order to hide a smile. But it gives him something to do. Jason is worryingly silent for a long, long time, and Tim can almost imagine him staring long and hard at the selfie. Tim knows he will be later.

Finally, Jason’s text bubble shows up. It exists for a long time, before finally Tim’s phone buzzes with his message alert.

Jason: that’s danny?

Tim feels all too gleeful. Smugness swirling in his chest like kicked up sand as he types his response: yep! Apparently he showed up today, although I’m not sure with who since I don’t see Miss Manson around here.

Damian: Father says to get off your phone, Drake. We are at a Gala and your behavior is most unbecoming

Tim: can it demon spawn, I was just telling Jason that his friend Danny is here

Damian: He can’t be too important if he doesn’t even know Todd is alive

Tim: how would you know that?

Damian: When Father introduced him as Todd’s friend, I expressed my surprise that Todd even had friends, considering how unpleasant he can be. Fenton became quite cross with me after that and quickly excused himself thereafter

Dick: you said what!? Damian that’s not okay

Damian: Father made that quite clear after Fenton left in a huff. My mistake for thinking that Todd had told his ‘supposed best friend’ that he was alive.

Dick: he didn’t even tell us we were alive at first

Damian: He did eventually, didn’t he? Clearly Todd doesn’t seem to care too much about Fenton if he hasn’t even informed him of his being alive at this point.

Jason’s thought bubble quickly pops up, and then dissipates, then pops up again. Tim quickly pockets his phone before he can see Jason’s response. He doesn’t feel smug anymore, just uncomfortable.)

———————

Stepping out onto the west-end balcony feels like a blast from the past. A painful one at that. Danny’s fingers dig into his cigarette pack, and he pulls it out with a sense of bittersweet familiarity.

It feels like a lifetime ago that he once stood here with Jason. The package clunks dully as his fingers scrape against the side, and he fishes a cigarette out of the box before stuffing it back into his pocket.

“Quite the night isn’t it.” He says to nothing, to ghosts of the past, to himself. He turns and sits on the railing, sticking his legs out like a tripping hazard while Gotham’s hot city wind blows through the air.

He looks up and only sees the ugly pollution yellow sky looking down at him. It’s an unfamiliar feeling to him. He loves the stars and yet when faced with a smog that covers it, he feels more at home.

Danny’s fingers find the lighter, and with a few clicks a small open flame appears in existence. There’s a poem here, he can feel it. But he feels too tired to find it.

The cigarette lights, and the lighter dies in response. Returning back to his coffin-like pocket until he needs to use it again. He pulls a leg up, resting his chin on his knee with a heavy, tired sigh.

He soaks in the sounds around him. The ugly city warmth nips at his jaw. The music inside is muffled by the force of two glass doors and walls on all four sides, and Danny can hear late night traffic coming by on the road nearby. It’s a special kind of ambience you can only find on the west end balcony.

Half a decade ago, Danny had played a part with that ambience with Jason. Now it was just him, and Jason was nowhere to be found. It left a hopeless kind of feeling in his chest. An all-suffocating kind of fear that filled him head to toe with an intensity only ghosts could have.

His body winds up like a spring, and Danny holds his breath. When he exhales two minutes later, the spring stutters and jolts, and his body relaxes with a tremble.

He misses Jason. He misses Jason.

Ghosts are emotional creatures. They feel it from their crown to their soles. And emotional wounds never really heal. They scab over and fester, waiting to be picked at again and again so it can bleed as fresh as it did when it first opened.

Danny’s grief is never going to go away, he thinks. It’s clung to him like a parasite; shaped him and molded him. The wound was too close to him when he died, and now it will stay with him forever.

He opens his eyes when his ghost sense tingles, a heavy feeling in his throat that is neither nicotine nor grief. It’s just like Damian’s, but stronger. Potent. Older. It reaches the top of Danny’s throat and sits at the base of his tongue, like a hand about to suffocate him.

He looks up, cigarette hanging off his lips, and the Red Hood drops down beside him. He stands in the same spot Jason once did, and that alone makes the ghostly core in Danny seize possessively.

Don’t you dare stand where he stood, it hisses, coiling around his lungs like smog. Danny grits his teeth and feels his ghost sense evaporate. He pulls the cigarette out of his mouth, and nicotine smoke pours out like a cheap version of his ghost sense.

“Red Hood.” He says plainly, his free hand coiling and uncoiling like cat’s claws against the railing. “A surprise to see you here.”

Danny knows through process of elimination who most of the Gotham vigilantes are: Dick is Nightwing, Bruce is Batman, Tim is Red Robin, Damian is Robin, and Cass is Orphan. There are a few who he doesn’t know, however. Like Batgirl and Red Hood.

It’s fine, he doesn’t need to know. Danny of all people understands the importance of a secret identity.

Red Hood doesn’t say anything, just stares at him as if he’s a deer in headlights. His body all tensed up like he isn’t sure what to do now that he’s here in front of Danny. Like he wasn’t expecting Danny to be here at all.

Danny’s brows furrow. “Sorry, am I in your spot?” He asks, and begins to push off the railing. “I didn’t think vigilantes used the Wayne Hall west-end balcony, I can leave if you want.”

He’s already begun to move towards the door.

The Red Hood lurches in his spot, “No!” He yells, and Danny stops in place with raising eyebrows. Red Hood’s fingers cringe, and he straightens up.

He’s shorter than Danny, he notes. Which isn’t much of revelation. Everyone is shorter than Danny.

“No,” Red Hood repeats, sounding sturdier than before, “No. You’re fine. I’m just stopping here for a quick rest before resuming patrol.”

…Danny doesn’t question it. It’s none of his business about other vigilantes and their practices. He shrugs and breathes out more smoke, “Alright.” He says, and walks back over to the railing to sit on it. “I’m Danny, by the way.”

The Red Hood nods, and a silence falls over them. Danny doesn’t care enough to make it feel uncomfortable, but the Red Hood seems unsettled by something. Lost in thought. He leans his back against the railing similar to Danny, and then switches a few seconds later to a new pose.

He does it again, and again, and again. Until finally he flips over and leans his stomach against the railing, arms resting against it. It is starkly like what Jason used to do, and Danny stares at him long and hard.

He frowns. And says nothing.

When Danny’s cigarette is nothing more than a butt of nicotine, he crushes it in his hand and watches the ash flutter down to the ground. The heat stings his hand, but its nothing his ghostly healing can’t fix.

The Red Hood is already holding out another one when Danny’s hand drifts to his pocket for the box.

Danny stares at him, sudden wariness opening up like floodgates that sit at the bottom of his stomach.

His frown deepens, his eyes flicker up and down at Red Hood. His hands hover over his pocket. “I have my own.” He says, and watches subtly as the Red Hood hides a wilt. As if he’d been expecting Danny to take it.

“Alright.” The Red Hood says, trying to sound unbothered. He retracts the cigarette away from Danny, quiet all the way. He’s looking away.

Danny plucks the cigarette out of his hand, startling the Hood enough that Red snaps back to look at him. Danny yanks his lighter from his pocket. “I won’t say no to a free cigarette.” He says, slightly muffled with the stick between his teeth. It lights.

Silence falls over them again, and when one minute stretches into five, whatever hope that had been digging into the shoulders of Red Hood finally pulls away and leaves him slumping subtly.

‘A ciggie for your thoughts?’ Nine year old Jason Todd whispers one night with an impish grin, holding up a cigarette pinched between his two fingers. ‘I stole it from my old man. He won’t even notice its gone.’

Danny is halfway through it when he speaks. “The Joker killed my best friend.” He says, and watches from the corner of his eye as the Red Hood flinches. Is he startled by Danny speaking, or startled by the bluntness of him starting?

“He beat him to death.” Danny continues, staring stone-faced away from Red Hood. His grief claws up his lungs and burrows into his heart again. His fingers dig into the railing. “He beat my best friend to death.”

The Red Hood is silent, his body as still as the grave. Silence stretches out between them both, and like he’d been thinking, the Hood finally speaks: “How do you know?”

He’s not holding the cigarette, he broke his and Jason’s rule. Danny bounces the stick between his fingers. “His ghost told me.” He says, taking a trembling breath. “His ghost told me so, before he disappeared.”

The Red Hood says nothing, and Danny gathers his thoughts. The ones that had been buried deep next to his core, shoved down ever since Danny learned of Rath and a terrible future where a world is destroyed by one ghost’s hands.

Danny has never said it out loud before. His face scrunches up briefly, and then smooths out when his eyes squeeze shut. “I’m going to kill him, Red Hood.” He murmurs when he opens his eyes, turning his face toward the vigilante. The sound is sucked out of the air.

The Red Hood stares at him, but he doesn’t say a word. Danny pushes on, teeth grinding into teeth as he flips his silvery scarred hand back and forth. Palm up, palm down. “It’s why I haven’t been back to Gotham in a while.” He admits, voice still quiet. “If I see the Joker I will kill him, and I won’t feel bad for it.”

“Not today though,” he says, and closes his hand, “today I’m here on a favor to Vlad Masters. Then after this I’ll go visit my friend. I need to apologize for not seeing his grave in a while. I’ll have to stop by a florist to see if they have any zinnias. Jay likes those.”

He takes out the cigarette in his mouth and breathes out one last cloud of smoke. And then he crushes the cigarette stick under his foot and walks back inside.

[robo-writing]

hello! i usually just read your fabulous writing but i’ve had this stuck in my head for a while and i really like how you write logan. and i’m also not sure if anyone has asked this before 😭

i really love a pathetically in-love logan... the only thing that can get through the adamantium wall of a man is his sweet wife. him coming home from work straight to bury his face in his wife’s chest and neck to sniff her our as she tells him about her day. him also being like this in their intimate life 🫠 augh im sorry this is eating away at my brain.

I’m a wife guy Logan truther, the entire beginning of origins is just MWAH. (Headcanons below)

First thing he does when he gets home is take his shoes off. The second thing he does when he gets home is search for you.

It’s a good day when he gets to kiss you after work (which is every day), it’s a great day when you offer to take care of him too.

He’ll burn in hell before admitting to anyone he likes wearing your fuzzy spa-care headband, and he’ll burn a second time before big bad Logan admits his favorite smell is whatever the fuck’s in your moisturizer.

Hell, he didn’t even know what moisturizer was before he met you.

Even better is when you gossip with him as you’re shaving him

God, he REALLY enjoys when you shave him

It’s an excuse to sit you on his lap because “How else are you gonna get a good look sweetheart? Need you nice and close, gotta be accurate.”

Sometimes he’ll flinch and pretend you cut him, only to pull away with a shit-eating grin

That usually gets him a slap to the chest, but hey, it’s a LITTLE funny.

You also like to gossip with him—jobs, friends, whatever’s been happening with you—all while massaging his face with whatever funky concoction you’ve got in your hands (Toner baby, it’s toner)

“So, Jane got that promotion she was asking for,” you grin, and he knows whatever you’re about to say next is gonna be juicy.

“And she got it because she caught the boss cheating on his wife.”

It’s almost comical how wide his eyes get. “You serious?”

“As serious as a heart attack.”

“Fuck,” he chuckles, making sure to keep you comfortable while he sits back. “Tell me more.”

It’s not all one-sided, sometimes he comes home and just has this inexplicable need to be next to you.

If you’re cooking, he’s standing behind you, grabbing ingredients and handing them off with a smile.

If you’re watching tv, he pulls you up and into his arms, making sure he can bury his face against your neck.

If you’re in bed asleep, he quietly slips his clothes off and gets under the sheets with you.

(18+) Even when he’s in more of a frisky mood he can’t seem to get enough of you, letting his hands roam across your torso, fingers bleeding lust as they grab at your soft skin

He likes to whisper all the things he thought about while he was gone—your sounds, your touch, your taste

And he’ll recite it all while his fingers play with the waistband of your panties

“Missed you sweetheart, missed you so much,” he mumbles, before letting the pads of his fingers slip beneath the fabric and play with the wetness that gathers on them. “Can tell you missed me too.”

[jakesyluslly]

mr crawling 𖹭 my headcanons

SFW/NSFW

𖹭˙ he loves it when you play with his hair, it's like therapy for him. when you decorate his hair, tie a bow and tell him he looks cute, he gets all wiggly inside

𖹭˙ he's obsessed with being close to you. he's always behind you wherever you go. sometimes you see him poking his head out of the bathroom door and giggling at you

𖹭˙ he must be in contact with you when he sleeps. if he can't feel you, he starts to get anxious and panic. you are what is good for him, not sleep

𖹭˙ he loves to watch you cook. especially when you make a cake, he can't wait to lick the icing off the spoon. he'll do anything to help you, even just leaning his head on the counter and watching you makes him happy

𖹭˙ he thinks of you more than himself, he always puts you first. he focuses entirely on giving you pleasure during sex. he does what you want without hesitation. your pleasure means his pleasure

𖹭˙ he's incredibly gentle with you. even when he touches you, it's as if he's touching porcelain. when he sees you chopping something with a knife, he panics around the room and feels the need to constantly check on you

𖹭˙ he loves to wash you, it's one of his favorite times with you. he washes your hair so beautifully and gently that you feel yourself melting under his hands. sometimes he places feather-light kisses on your wet skin, he tries to show how much he cares for you at every opportunity

𖹭˙ he never leaves your side during your period (as if he normally does), he takes care of whatever you need. he can't stand your cramps, he tries to comfort you by stroking your hair and stomach. he doesn't let you do anything during your period, he does everything for you

𖹭˙ he's even jealous of animals. once he saw how happy you were petting the cat's head. when you came home in the evening of the same day, he was waiting for you at home with cat ears. he begged for your attention, acting just like a cat

𖹭˙ aftercare is much more important to him than sex. he hugs you and caresses your naked and sweaty back in circles. he presses his nose to your neck and inhales your scent. he runs his fingers gently through your scalp. he massages your thighs. he kisses you all over your body. he likes to kiss your palms by smelling them. he cleans you well (with his tongue)

𖹭˙ he loves to take care of your hair as much as you love to take care of his hair. ever since he learned to braid, he can't stop braiding your hair. he decorates it with colorful barrettes, holds your cheeks and shouts “cute, cute!''

𖹭˙ sometimes he wakes up from sleep just because he needs to kiss you. you feel soft kisses on your cheek, forehead and chin while you sleep

[leeknow-thoughts]

𝅄  ׅ⊹ ۪ ꣑୧ dance of the sugarplum fairy

𝝑𝝔 l.mh x f!reader

𝝑𝝔 synopsis : Minho believes in fact over fiction. He's a scientist. It's practically in his blood. You're as much of a scientist as he is, hell, a better one than him at that. Yet, you still find wonder in the holidays. While you find wonder in presents and twinkling lights. Minho finds wonder in you. Could a confession gone wrong end up going right for him? Could you reciprocate his feelings that he's been pushing down for years and years?

𝝑𝝔 warnings : chemistry professor!minho, chemistry professor!reader, f!reader, mutual pining, christmas in a non-religious way, crying (in a sappy way), jisung! cameo, tooth rotting fluff, smut got mixed in with my fluff??, no clear dynamics, but minho is mommy (sorry guys act fucking surprised), mommy!kink, shower sex, p in v (unprotected, pls don't do this!!), pet names, pls lmk if I missed any warnings!!

𝝑𝝔 note from the author ! : Calliope once again indulges in soft!minho and doesn't apologize for it >_< I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season and that all who celebrate Christmas get exactly what they wanted!! :3

You're as reactive as Fluorine, and Minho wishes he didn't think of you chemically the way he does. He wishes he didn't immediately think of you when he thought of work and his experiments and the fucking teaching position he held. He wishes he could just think of you for you and he could go fuck off for all he cares - having a crush on his coworker.

And you're humming along to the song playing over the radio - some Clario song, he only knows who that is because you love her music. Honestly, he thinks you like music more than you like chemistry - so why did you choose to do this for a living?

You surely weren't a bad singer - Minho had heard you sing, it puts the harked herald angels to shame if he does say so - and you certainly were pretty enough to be famous.

Pretty was an understatement, you were the most devine creation to walk this earth. There's no way in his mind that he can conceptualize that you breathe the same oxygen as him - to him it was a privilege that he got to see you at all.

You were sought after, every fucking college in the nation wants you to work for them, yet you stay here. It wasn't like the place you work at is bad, it's MIT for Christ's sake, but Harvard has been asking for you for years.

He's almost offended by it, colleges treating you and all your brilliance like a tradeable Pokémon card.

Speaking of Pokémon, you're watching it on your phone as you finish up a lab report. How you can listen to music and watch a show and write a detailed report baffles Minho, but he doesn't question you because you're you, and he's the utter fool in love with you.

"You're spacing out Minho," your voice graces his ears, fuck, was he staring at you? "You look like you need a coffee, let's go get a cup, I'll pay."

You smile that sweet smile and talk in your sweet voice any longer and he's sure he's going to go insane. You're letting your hair down and it falls just right, framing your face perfectly. You had curled it that morning, and worn a perfume that smells like autumn.

He knows it's ridiculously foolish to consider something a chance that is nothing but stolen glances and blush stained cheeks and private thoughts. He can't help it.

"I think Jisung needs to start letting you get some sleep, you're zoning out so much," you hum with such concern, and he crumbles.

He feels almost dirty. Dirty for the thoughts he has of you. Dirty for the reason he isn't getting much sleep. Thinking about you in ways that would terrify a Catholic, or hell, even an atheist.

"'t's not Jisung," he slurs his words together.

They become a wet mix of vowels and articulations when he's talking to you. He hopes he doesn't sound this fucking dumb when he is teaching.

"Maybe you're sick," you tilt your head.

It's a habit you have, tilting your head when you make a statement. He finds it endearing. It was one of the first things about you that he perceived as such.

"'m fine, promise," he brushes off, "'nd I don' need any coffee."

"Well, you better wake up before the festival," you sigh, and he hates to think he let you down.

The festival, fuck, that is today. Each year the college throws a winter festival for the students, a lot of sororities and fraternities set up booths and the cafeteria gets turned upside down with decorations. The faculty's Secret Santa too, shit, he hasn't wrapped his gift. He really doesn't hate the festival or the idea of it, it keeps him young. He just doesn't know if he is gonna be able to stay around you any longer.

"Who did you get for Secret Santa?" you ask, taking a seat at the table, returning to your lab reports.

"Jus' Lix," he hates how drunk he sounds, "what about you? You always go above and beyond in the gift department."

He would never lie to you, you do go above and beyond with gifts. Each year, you go all out, spending a ridiculous amount of time and effort when it comes to the gifts you buy for people.

"Can't say unfortunately," you whisper, "or else it wouldn't be a secret."

You give him a smile that makes his stomach do a flip. "But I did get you something," you perk up.

You walk over to your bag and pull out a wrapped parcel, and carefully hand it over to him. "Thought you'd like it, took forever for it to ship over from overseas."

Minho examines the neatly wrapped box, wrapped in pink wrapping paper with a pink bow tied on top of the box. "Thank you," he sounds breathless.

He opens it carefully, and is met with a white box. He pulls the lid off and pulls out the cloth that sits on the bottom of the box. Revealing a white lab coat. The fabric is crisp and ironed. In the corner the text 'Dr. Minho Lee, PhD' is embroidered in black. Underneath the lettering is another embroidered patch. Instead of his name though, it's his three cats. Each of the cats looks identical to their real counterparts. "Sorry if it's stupid, I-" you apologize, "I just- I dunno-"

Stupid? It's the most thoughtful gift he has gotten in a long time. It comes from your heart, how could it be stupid.

You're the most beautiful and thoughtful person he's ever met. I love you, loved you for so long, he thinks to himself. He's so moved he almost feels like crying.

"Minho," you're quiet, stunned into silence.

He just realizes how his mouth has betrayed his mind, and his legs are moving with a panic.

The air is so damn dense as he sprints down the hall from the lab. The white fluorescent lights taunt him with their hum as he dashes away. Away from you, away from the chance that was all in his head.

He is gripping at the tie around his neck. He sees no comfort in the double doors out of the science lab, he is running without reason.

He breaks through the double doors and is soaked almost instantly. The snow is heavy and it patters against his body.

His legs stop moving, and he just stands there. In the snow. Terribly cold and terribly wet. He could curse God, but he doesn't believe in Him.

The doors behind him open and close. Doom blooms in his rapidly rising and falling chest. "Minho," it's you again, "Minho, you'll catch a cold."

His legs are frozen through. He couldn't move if there were a bear chasing him. He can't speak either. He's rendered silent. "Minho, it's about fucking time you confessed, b-because I-I l-love you too."

He can suddenly find the strength to face you.

When he does, the first thing he notices is your face. Mascara has soaked your cheeks, tear stains evident. "Y-huh? Wh-why are you c-crying?"

"Because I fucking love you," you sound weak- Minho never heard your voice sound so scared, "a-and you love me too? Did you mean it? You love me too?"

You're equally as soaked by the snow as he is. Your arms are crossed over your chest. He moves before he thinks, there really is nothing to think.

Hypothesis : you want him to kiss you. And according to the scientific method, he must test his hypothesis.

He's putting one foot in front of the other and moving to you. He wastes no time, simply cupping your face and pulling you in for a kiss.

Sparks fly like shown in movies, his lips feel tingly and he can feel his heartbeat in every bone of his body.

Your lips are even softer than he imagined. Soft and molding against his own in ways that make him dizzy.

Like throwing a block of lithium into a pond, he feels like he may explode. Every atom in his body is undergoing a chain reaction that is so right he would never stop it.

"Love you," he's mumbling against your lips, "loved you for so long. You're everything I've ever wanted."

Tears brim his lashes, they nearly fall, but he is too elated to cry. "Minho," your voice is muffled by the sloppy kisses you're placing on his lips. You let out a groan and Minho's composure crumbles.

"Always been you," you hum, "since I met you, no one else."

All he had known until now had been decomposed and resynthesized. Like a chemical equation. He hates that he still thinks of you chemically.

Yet, he'd count every atom in your body so he could find out why you're so you. He's tear apart the heavens and the earth and chemically rearrange them just to see you smile.

Your bodies are melting together, forming a mixture of desperation, love, and lust. His hands are gripping every inch of your soft flesh available.

"Minho- mhm- take m-me home," you whimper into his mouth.

He kisses you one last time. He knows he will have this life, and the next to kiss you, he's in no rush.

His eyes finally open again, and he swears he has never seen a more beautiful sight. Your makeup is running down your face, and your lips are kiss bitten. Your body is pressed against his, and your hands are cupping his jaw. "H-home?" He stutters like a little kid.

"Your house," you grin, and he swears there's a mischievous glint in your eyes, "unless you don't wanna see me naked?"

If his jaw hadn't been on the floor before, it definitely was now. "God," he groans, "c'mon."

He's pulling you along with him, in the pouring snow, to his apartment. "If I catch a cold because of you, Lee Minho," you vaguely threaten.

"Then I'll nurse you back to health," he immediately replies.

You're both placing one foot in front of the other at a fast pace. When he sees his apartment around the corner, his heart thumps rapidly in his chest.

He doesn't struggle with the keys even though his hands are shaking beyond reasonable doubt. The warmth and comfort from his home is nothing compared to that which he gets from you.

He's stepping inside and pulling you in with him before slamming the door closed. A sudden fear rises in his chest, and any semblance of what to do next faded from his mind.

You notice this, you notice everything. "You okay?" you press your body against him.

You're both soaked from head to toe in cold water, yet you're so warm against him. "I-I?" he's stunned, like a dear in headlights.

You try and fail to hide the disappointment in your tone when you say, "do you not want t-"

He doesn't even leg you finish the sentence, "-I do. I do. I do. I-It's just not supposed to hap-happen like this."

"Please explain?"

"I - I have pictured, I've thought about us- us doing this, and I-I feel like I'm doing it wrong," you search his eyes for a clue as to what he means, "I mean-I just thought it would be so much more, romantic. N-not the confession, the- I just want to make it perfect for you."

"And how would you do that?"

"With rose petals and red wine and candles and-"

You shut him up with a kiss that is broken all too soon for Minho's preference, "you're such a dork, oh my god," you sigh playfully and hit his chest lightly, "I don't want roses or red wine, or candles. Minho, I want you. That's it."

"I-I," he stutters and can feel his cheeks heating up, "w-we should hop in the shower?"

"Excellent idea," you smirk.

Minho takes your hand in his and leads you to his bathroom, "sorry for the mess," he apologizes but knows that you won't mind.

He takes his eyes off you for only a moment to turn on the warm water, and when he turns back to you, you're halfway undressed. He swears he's never seen anything as beautiful as you.

You with your shirt and skirt in a heap on the floor, the only thing covering you is your underwear. Black cotton panties with lace hemmed on the side and a matching black bra.

You're reaching behind your back to unclasp your bra when he speaks up, "let me."

You smile at him and turn around, Minho's lips ghost down the side of your neck while his hands busy themselves, taking off your bra. He kisses down the back of your neck and your body shudders against his own.

You eagerly flip around and press your lips against his own. Now it's your hands that are pulling at his soaked shirt. You break the kiss but only for a moment, only so you can take off his shirt.

"Mhm," you moan into his mouth and Minho's grabbing at your sides like a madman.

His fingers hook under your panties and pull them down your legs.

And he finally gets a good look at your most sacred parts. They're more beautiful than his mind has ever painted them to be. Your breasts are soft to his touch, not too big nor too small. And your cunt, it looks tastier than a Sunday dinner in his eyes. His eyes rake down your happy trail that connects to your neatly trimmed bush and he wants to kiss it. He wants to kiss every inch of your skin.

He pulls down his boxers with his pants, and his semi-hard cock aches to be touched, to be inside you. You take his hand and step under the stream of water. He follows.

He'd follow you anywhere.

Hot water brings life to his cold skin. He's wrapping his arms around you, and his lips push against your own. "Where's the scar from?" you mumble the question between kisses.

"Had surgery wh-when I was a kid," he only stumbles over his words because your hand wraps around his cock and starts to slowly pump him.

He's so sensitive it hurts. Hurts all over. His body writhes at its own accord. "Your cock is so fucking pretty," you hum.

The words are filthy, but they sound as holy as the Pope's because they're said by you. "Baby- I-" you're so good at making him feel good.

Had you done this with someone else? Had you jerked them off in their shower? Had you ever brought another person this much pleasure?

Jealously pools in his chest at the idea of you with anyone that isn't him. "W-why are you so good at this? I-I just, please, wanna be the last. Can't handle the idea o-of you doing this to anyone but me," he confesses.

His sudden confession makes you falter and he tries to read the expression on your face, "last time I did this was before I met you, there's never been anyone since I met you. You were always gonna be it for me."

He almost sinks to his knees he feels so stupid. "D-do you want me to prep you?"

"There's no need, I promise," you smile at him.

You flip around, your body is pressed against his shower wall, the warm water hits his back and he swears he's never been more comfortable in his whole life.

He holds his cock in his hands and lines it up at your entrance. "You ready?" He can't help but sound a little cocky.

"God, Minho, just put it in," you whine.

His knees falter when he finally presses inside you, your walls are warm, inviting. You were right, you didn't need any prep.

"Oh, God," he groans even though he only has his tip in, "fuck, don't know how long I'm gonna last."

"Don't worry," you hum, a sharp squeak leaves your mouth when he stills all the way inside you.

He's buried so far in his cock is pressed up against your cervix. A shiver runs through his body when he finally thrusts inside you. You're tight and warm and so soft.

He's desperate, with every thrust of his hips he is losing every drop of his composure.

"Harder," you beg, "fuck me like you mean it."

His hips slam against your own, and you let out cries of pleasure as your body convulses against his own.

"Love you," you repeat the words like a mantra, they tumble from your lips with every thrust of his hips.

His hand wraps around your body and finds your clit. He would die if he didn't make you cum first. "Ah, jagi," he moans.

"Ah, Min- mama," you don't even realize what you're saying.

Mama? That was new, but he wouldn't protest. Not to you. Not in a million lifetimes.

"Mama, hmm?" Minho whimpers, "you wanna call me that?"

"Mhm," you nod your head furiously, "love you so much!"

How he loves you too.

His hand glides down your body and finds your swollen clit, he rubs it tenderly as his hips stutter in their movements. "Mama!" you squeal, "gonna cum!"

Minho can't warn you before he cums. He swears on everything he knows, this was the best sex he's ever had. His body convulses against yours and all that can be heard is the water hitting the shower and the both of your debauched breaths.

"Love you," you whisper.

Minho places a kiss on your spine, "I love you so much more, jagi. Merry Christmas."

[sheepispink]

Idea by @isabellaswiftie13198987

COD MASTERLIST

“This isnt a normal massage Si,” You hum, moving to practically straddle his legs as he lays face flat against the bed. What day of work wasnt long for him? He practically ended up like this more days than one and you were determined to see him a little more relaxed, even moreso that it’s the weekend tomorrow. “Oh? This a premium massage, hm?” He grunts, his head only shifting slightly to peer back at you before he lets his nose brush the duvets again. They smell of you— everything does, the towels, the couch, the bed, his clothes too. The only thing left untainted was his uniform; though now you had mercilessly pulled it off of him, perhaps that’d be infected too.

“Hm, sort of.” Slowly you graze your hands along the expanse of his back, something you’ve grown to forget the feel of. It’s warmer than you remember, rougher too with some new scratches near his waist. Even with the painfully differing colours of all of the bruises, it’s like a brand new map to explore, and to comfort him for. It cant be easy to change this often, whilst the rest of him is supposed to stay the same. So tonight, it’s your turn to re-mould him into the man you know and love—he just has to relax, and enjoy your show.

“You see, first you gotta knead the dough.” His fists clench when you start at his shoulders, pushing your fingers into the thick muscle and forcing the knots out. One hand on each shoulder, you continue, slowly moving closer and closer to his neck until finally his shoulders relax properly, the bed squeaking slightly as he lets the air take his tension. Now you move to your knuckles, dragging them down his back to the base before slowly working up. Your knuckles push and drag against his skin, occasionally stopping to really put pressure on a spot. When you reach his lower back, where his muscle is a tiny bit pudgier, your knuckles press in and tension flickers through him. “Love—“ But you’re too fast, pushing the heel of your palm into the muscle until he lets out a shaky sigh.

”Lord..”

“There was a lot of dough there, gotta knead it out.” You muse, carrying on your little journey to work out every ‘large piece of dough’ or rather the knots in each muscle until he quite literally has melted against the bed.

His arms aren't flat at his sides anymore, no he had to stretch them forward before he completely lost feel in them too. After all, your hands were way too good at getting him to this state. “You done?” He grumbles, voice noticeably softer but still a little too gruff for your liking and so you quickly shake your head, leaning down to press a kiss to the curve of his ear. “Who just has plain dough? That’s disgusting Simon.” Your cheeky remark makes him grunt again, and you snicker, grabbing some creams from the dresser. His back was dry, likely from lack of water, but definitely from lack of care. It’s not like you ever let that last too long anyway; as long as you were around he’d be a pillow princess every night.

You squeeze a dollop of moisturiser, the cold substance making him shiver but you don't take too much notice, spreading it from the top of his shoulders down to the waistband of his boxers. Your thumbs press in again, dragging across his waist to his sides and then up along his spine too. “This is freezin’, you’re trying to kill me now.”

“Hmph, fine i’ll warm you up. It’s time for the cheese anyway.”

You huff, patting his skin to maximise the absorption of the cream. But what confused him was the “cheese”. What were you going to do? It made no sense to him in the slightest, were you gonna just punch him or something?

He feels the first touch, dangerously light against his neck, and then it grows warmer and warmer as it grows lower. Your warm breath fans against his back, soft touches of love left against every inch of his spine. Your hands hold his waist, affectionately grabbing his muscle as you continue your path. His bruises get all the more pecks, making him twitch again, almost squirmish, but he can't swat you away when you just feel so, so good. Carefully your nails drag against his skin, definitely not enough to hurt but enough to make him shift beneath you, eyes flittering against the bed. “Don’t think there’s enough cheese, Sweet’art. You know I like extra.”

You giggle, happy he’s finally going along with your plan and you nod along, returning to his shoulders to leave your mark there too, kissing and scratching the skin in a way that makes way too many sighs leave his mouth.

“Mm… we're all done?” He can only mumble now, eyes drooped and likely about to fall asleep if not for the fact that he does not want to let this end, ever. “Pepperoni first— they’re frozen, sorry.” This time the touch is icy cold, but it quickly fades out to a numbing feeling. You have icy hot gel in your hands, which you rub into the bruise, making a circle on each one that litters his back. His fists unravel now, slowly gripping the pillows above instead. It’s almost adorable how easily he gets all mushy from your touch, just a simple massage. “Uh huh.. and what now?”

“Baking time.” You lean down more on his back, the warmth of your body invading his. Slowly you blow across his back, and he can't help but squirm a little, the feeling ticklish but comforting nonetheless when he feels your legs against his. When he feels your arms wrap around his middle, and your legs properly encase him, he doesn't even bother to raise a brow, instead using the last of his strength to turn himself over and pull you in properly. “We need all the warmth we can get for the best pizza.”

He murmurs into your ear, giant arms clutching around your body and swallowing you whole with his presence. He pulls the covers firmly over the both of you, entangles your legs and buries his face deep in your neck. “A shame really, you smell like a real meal, love.” You can only giggle and kiss his neck again, making sure your arms are wrapped as tights as his are. “Baking time lasts the whole night, didnt you know?”

“Well if you’re the oven, then i gotta make sure you’re the right temperature too.” His lips shut you up before you can respond, eyes all drooped and exhausted. Seems the pizza was perfectly made today.

[outerhills]

hiiii i just found you and i am OBSESSED!!!! if you would like to, can i get an idea of how a morning with your new earthy!pouge!reader and jj would go? i feel like her morning routine would be PEAK and jj would just kinda be there 😭

AHHHH, THANK YOUUU 🥹 i'm finally writing after so long of not doing so. its also a big change for me cause i used to write k-pop fanfics, now writing for outer banks instead 😭

spiritual pogue!reader wakes up early; early enough to see the sunrise and hear the birds hum. jj looks peaceful, so she wont wake him up just yet, maybe in a few minutes.

he'd stay over after being drunk the previous night, despite the soft movement he heard early morning as he tried to continue slumber.

running the shower, she'd set the water as cold as possible, before moving to change the water in the humidifier and switching essential oil scents.

she'd whisper, "jj, not that you care, but i have vanilla, fresh linen, lemongrass, palo santo, sandalwood, peppermint, eucalyptus, coconut, oran-"

"vanilla, you always use that one," "okay but shouldn't i try something differ-," "just use that one," "okay."

she's indecisive, so she won't talk his ear off about it.

"are you coming in the shower? scratch that, no options, you're coming."

very often, she'd try to adapt him to her shower habits but it never sticks for long. however, it was a stepping stone when he finally regularly began using lotion after showering. her skin was always soft, and he wanted the same for himself; which of course the other pogues teased him for since he began to always feel as soft as someone's new born baby.

spiritual pogue!reader would wash all over using sensitive skin body wash, and then uses a coconut scented body wash right after, and various body scrubs, depending on what scent she's going for that day.

double cleansing is ESSENTIAL. everything is cleaned twice. body, face, teeth, everything. shea butter lotion all over her body, followed by vaseline immediately after. then, whatever perfume she's currently using after.

while jj loves the benefit of feeling how soft she is after, and the island smell she emits, he does not follow suit. he washes, he gets out. he brushes his teeth, and he leaves the bathroom. it's already bad enough for him that the water is freezing cold, he leaves the extra cleaning to her; but he does enjoy picking out her outfits, this morning going with a bikini patterned with leopard spots, and dark washed denim shorts.

"j, there's coconut water in the fridge, drink it. plenty of electrolytes for all that excessive drinking," she'd joke, pouring them both glasses, and deciding on breakfast. "hey, no judgement, any excuse to crash here," "you don't need to kill your liver to stay over, my home can be yours too." he'd look at her longingly as he sits on the sofa, holding his arms out to bring her in for a tight hug, which quickly shifts to her straddling him, his hands on her lower waist as they kiss sloppily.

"again, please," and she'd kiss him once more, her palms on resting on his cheeks. "okay, no more for now, lets go swim; i already have much to do today, like-"

"the same organized day you always have. not this time, you're gonna live spontaneously like me for the day. wherever it takes us."

[mandalhoerian]

forced proximity | baking | wild west au ❅ Leon Secret Santa ( @leonsecretsanta ) ❅ gift for @bonesnplywood !!

summary: When a wagon mishap in the middle of a snowstorm leaves the new sheriff Leon Kennedy stranded at the local bakery, he’s reluctantly pulled into a lighthearted afternoon of decorating gingerbread cookies with the town’s spirited baker, you.

word count: close to 5K, read on ao3

note: AMBER ITS ME!! YOUR SECRET SANTA!!! THE WORST PERSON THESE TROPES COULD POSSIBLY FALL INTO THE LAP OF!!!! I've never in my life joined an event like this or written about christmas (jingle halal everyone), and i was doomed from the start because wild west is something i know absolutely nothing about 😞 so i had to make insane research on the topic for this, and i mean, "insane" research <2 me>, because i've had to look up things such as sugar, icing (did it exist? what about hot chocolate. plot twist, IT DOES), what they baked, how non-commercialized christmas was like back then, and overall about frontier towns, and i swear i was on the verge of tears about to drop out THIS 👌 CLOSE 😭😭😭 I hope I was at least able to catch the vibes and it's enjoyable, please excuse any mistakes or weird stuff overall that doesn't fit, i tried.... merry christmas!

Christmas around these parts was a quiet affair, mostly celebrated by children and the devout few who filled the pews of the old church on the hill. There were no garlands or ribbons strung up, no carolers wandering door to door. Folks didn’t have the time or money for all that fuss.

Instead, Christmas was something simpler. Something humbler. A rare pie cooling on a windowsill, the smell of woodsmoke mingling with fresh bread if a family could spare the flour and sugar, stockings, little more than patched-up socks, hung over fireplaces with faint hope... Sometimes, if the weather allowed, neighbors gathered for a pot of stew or shared biscuits, squeezing together at too-small tables and swapping stories to warm the room better than the fire ever could.

And yet, you, neither a dutiful churchgoer nor a small child any longer, cared more about this holiday than most. Actually, scratch that. “Cared” didn’t begin to cover it.

You lived for Christmas.

Always had. Ever since you were small, the holidays had lit something in you. All of them mattered, but Christmas? That was special. It wasn’t just the crisp air or the smell of pine needles in the bakery where you grew up. It was the whole season, the way December turned the world into something softer, kinder. Your father had seen to that.

Every year, he’d throw open the bakery doors to the orphanage down the lane, baking for the children who had no family to celebrate with. The evenings were loud with laughter, warm with the smell of bread and cakes, and rich with your father’s tall tales spun at the dinner table. He’d send those kids home with free loaves to last them through the winter, and no matter how much the townspeople complained about the expense, they’d show up to help--eventually. Even the grumps couldn’t resist the sight of those kids, faces bright with joy, or the way the bakery felt like the heart of the town in those fleeting weeks.

Of course, none of that magic happened on its own. The ingredients alone were a fortune, especially now, and it had taken some creative wheeling and dealing to keep things running smoothly. Mayor Irons had been easy enough to bribe, an extra haul of your famous sweets for his office, a special stash of sugar sticks just for him. The old sleazeball had learned long ago not to ask questions, especially when the end-of-month "bonus" arrived. It was a necessary evil, one you barely had to think about anymore.

This year, though, was different. The snowstorm had rolled in fast, blanketing the town in thick, sparkling drifts that clung to rooftops and piled high in the streets. It was beautiful in the way all fresh snow is, softening the edges of a hard world. But this wasn’t the gentle, picturesque snowfall from a child's drawing. This storm had teeth. Roads were already impassable, and while the bakery’s ovens burned bright and warm, you couldn’t help but worry about what would happen if the storm kept on. Business had slowed to a crawl, but you weren’t about to close the shop, not with so much left to do before the Christmas festival. The Mayor needed his payment. 

Your gaze drifted to the empty shelf behind the counter where sacks of flour and sugar were meant to sit. Supplies that should have arrived hours ago. Supplies you needed for the dozens of gingerbread cookies and other desserts.

Your father had thrown in the towel hours back, muttering that it was pointless to keep the place open when there was nothing left to sell. You, stubborn as always, refused to leave. The wagon train will come, you’d insisted. You weren’t about to trek home in this snowstorm, anyway, and someone needed to mind the fire. But as the wind howled against the windows and the blizzard thickened to a near whiteout, you were beginning to think your father might’ve had a point.

Then, the bell above the door jingled.

You jolted, spinning around.

"Finally," you muttered, brushing flour-dusted hands on your apron as you turned. "Come on in! You're lettin—"

The words caught in your throat.

It wasn’t the deliveryman standing there, but the sheriff—Leon Kennedy—silhouetted in the doorway like a figure out of legend. His wide-brimmed hat, damp and battered, was barely clinging to his head thanks to the string knotted beneath his chin. On his shoulders, six sacks of supplies were stacked so high it made him look almost absurd in the middle of your little bakery. Snow clung to his coat like he’d wrestled a blizzard and won, but that didn’t stop him from nudging the door shut with the heel of his boot and stepping further inside. The quiet thud of those sacks hitting the wooden floor sent a plume of cold air swirling around the room.

You blinked at him, dumbfounded.

“Sheriff?”

Leon straightened, dusting snow from his coat with broad, deliberate swipes. “Sorry I’m late.” He nodded to the sacks, as though hauling half a wagon’s worth of supplies on his back through a blizzard was the most normal thing in the world.

“Where’s the wagon?” you managed, trying to peer through the frosted window before turning back to him.

“Broke down a mile back,” he said, his voice roughened by the cold. “Axle snapped.”

Your stomach dropped. “A mile? In this weather?”

“Figured I’d at least bring what I could carry.” He kicked the snow from his boots, each thud matching the quickening of your heartbeat. “Rest will have to wait.”

You stared at him, then the sacks of flour and sugar piled on the floor. He’d walked through a goddamn blizzard. A mile, uphill, no less—you didn’t even need to ask to know that was the case. You opened your mouth to say something, but all that came out was a breath of air. Finally, you croaked, “I… Thank you.”

Leon just nodded, like gratitude was something he shrugged off the same way he shook snow from his coat. “What needs doin’?” he asked, glancing toward the empty shelves. “Looks like you’re behind.”

You’d just watched the man shoulder a blizzard and a mile of snowbanks, and now he wanted to help you restock?

Your gaze flickered to him—to his reddened cheeks and the tips of his nose, glowing like embers from the cold. The dark leather of his duster was soaked through, clinging to him like a second skin, and the snow gathered on the brim of his hat had begun to melt and drip onto the floorboards.

“Hold on a second,” you said, recovering your wits as you marched around the counter. “You’re half-frozen, Sheriff. Give me that coat before you catch your death.”

Leon’s brow quirked faintly, his lips twitching into something close to a smile. “I’m fine.”

“The hell you are.” You grabbed the hem of his coat, already tugging it off his shoulders before he could protest. The leather was heavier than it looked, soaked through and frigid to the touch. Jesus.

Leon let out a small, huffed laugh, raising his arms in surrender as you worked the coat free. Cedar, you thought absently, catching the scent that clung to him, warm and woodsy even beneath the chill.

“Sit down and warm up,” you ordered, pointing toward the small table near the fire. “You're not going anywhere in this weather.”

“And the shelves?” he asked, ever the dutiful sheriff.

“None of your damn business. You just carried half the territory’s worth of flour through a blizzard—I’d say you’ve earned five minutes.”

Leon’s smile turned genuine then, soft around the edges, and for the first time since he’d walked in, you saw the faintest hint of color return to his face. He nodded, boots thudding against the floor as he made his way to the chair.

As you turned back toward the sacks of supplies, already mentally calculating how much work lay ahead, you couldn’t help but glance over your shoulder. Leon was sitting by the fire now, elbows resting on his knees, hat in one hand and gloves dangling from the other, his gaze distant as he watched the flames. He looked tired. More tired than any man who’d just hauled a mile of flour and sugar should look, but there was something steady in the way he sat there, unshakable, like no storm could ever touch him.

You exhaled softly, shaking your head as you rolled up your sleeves. Christmas was comin’ whether the snow liked it or not.

You busied yourself at the counter, half-focused on the dough you were rolling out and half on the quiet presence of the man. After a while, the silence stretched like the dough underneath your hands, broken only by the occasional crackle of the fire and the soft thud of your movements against your work surface.

He wasn't very talkative in the first place, you knew as much, thinking that perhaps you could have accomodated him better instead of throwing yourself immediately into work the moment you'd gotten what you'd been waiting for the whole morning. The awkwardness that stifled the bakery was bothersome enough that you chanced another glance at Leon, and caught him watching you, eyes briefly darting to the counter before returning to the oven. 

“You decorating all those yourself?” he asked finally, nodding toward the trays of fresh-out-the-oven, undecorated gingerbread men to the side that were cooling off.

You blinked, pausing mid-roll. “I was planning to, yeah.”

He stood, rolling his shoulders as if testing how much energy he had left after the trek. “You’ve got a lot of work left. Might as well make myself useful.”

Your brows rose in mild surprise, but you quickly recovered. “You’ve already done more than enough.”

“Storm’s not letting up anytime soon,” he said simply, moving closer to the counter. “Might as well pass the time doing something.”

He put as much intensity into the staring match that followed as he would into a gunfight. It was inevitable that you'd lose. 

Finally, you reluctantly handed him an icing bag, unable to hide the smile tugging at your lips. “Alright, Sheriff. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Leon took the bag, turning it over in his hands like it was a tool he needed to get a feel for. “Fair warning,” he said, “I’m better with a six-shooter than whatever this is.”

“It’s just icing. Start slow and gentle. No sharpshooting required.”

“Good,” he replied dryly. “Would hate to accidentally take out a gingerbread man.”

Was that... a joke? Did he just make a joke? 

You stepped closer to him, catching the way his hands dwarfed the small icing tube as he held it. His brow furrowed in concentration, the usual stoic expression on his face betraying just a smidge of uncertainty. There was something endearing about seeing him like this, someone so strong and sure reduced to puzzling over frosting.

“Here,” you said softly, placing your hands over his fingers, which twitched beneath yours, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, he stilled, letting you guide him. The warmth of his skin seeped into your palms, and you found yourself acutely aware of how close the two of you were.

“Hold it steady,” you murmured, your voice dipping low and deliberate, as if sharing a secret. “The trick is even pressure. Like this.”

You shifted your grip slightly, your thumbs brushing against his knuckles with a deliberate slowness. His hands, so large and steady, seemed to falter beneath your touch, the tiniest twitch betraying his awkwardness. You caught the faint hitch in his breath and felt the way his shoulders stiffened, as though unsure whether to lean into your guidance or escape it entirely, yet together with you, he squeezed the tube gently, a neat line of icing trailing onto the cookie below. He wasn’t focused on the cookie, though—not really. The way his hands followed your movements made it clear he was hyper-aware of the closeness, unsure but not resisting. Feeling the heat rise to your face, you quickly changed tack, pulling your hands away with a light laugh.

"You’ve got it from here," you said, stepping back slightly and gesturing to the cookie in front of him, your tone bright and easy.

Leon exhaled slowly, his breath brushing the side of your face. “Guess I was pressing too hard.”

“Most people do,” you replied, glancing up at him briefly. His focus was in front of him, but his jaw was tight. You could feel the tension in his shoulders despite him admitting what he'd been doing wrong. “Relax your grip a little.”

You adjusted his hold, guiding his hand through another clean line of icing, your bodies aligned as if the two of you had done this a hundred times before. When you finally released his hands, the absence of contact felt oddly stark... Thanks to the cold weather, no doubt. 

“Think you’ve got it now?” you asked, stepping back slightly, though your heartbeat had yet to slow.

“Think I’ll need a little more practice.”

That sounded suave at the time, but he was right, in the end. Leon’s first attempt at decorating was, to put it kindly, a disaster.

The icing tube seemed to have a mind of its own, spilling a shaky, jagged line across the gingerbread man’s torso. His frown was growing deeper by each passing minute, and he was constantly adjusting his grip, but it only got worse. By the time he set the tube down, the poor cookie looked more like a battlefield casualty than a festive treat.

You couldn’t hold back your laughter. It bubbled up, light and genuine, as you reached over to inspect his handiwork. “Well,” you said, biting back a grin, “it’s… unique.”

“It’s terrible,” Leon muttered, a touch of color rising in his cheeks as he glanced at your much neater designs. “Maybe I should stick to chasing outlaws.”

“Aw, come on,” you teased, nudging his arm. “You’re just gettin' started. Besides, this is supposed to be fun, not perfect.”

He gave a skeptical huff but picked up the tube again, determined to try. How earnest. You leaned closer, pointing out how to apply even pressure, your hands brushing his as you demonstrated even though you didn't really need to do all of that. Something about enjoying a skilled grown man being awkward about something you were good at and wanting to enjoy moments of making him fumble. 

“There you go,” you encouraged as his next attempt turned out… well, marginally better. “See? Not bad for a first-timer.”

"I feel bad for whoever this will be eaten by," he muttered, referring to the misshapen abomination in his hand that could hardly qualify as a 'person.'

"It's the Mayor," you blurted out without thinking, causing a choked laugh escape past his lips, surprise lighting up his handsome features.

"Really?"

"Yep," you grinned, winking conspiratorially at him. "You're helping me bribe the man to invest more on Christmas. Gotta throw in some of your... specialties in there for good luck."

"You're trying to get me fired," he deadpanned, as dry as the wood stacked by the hearth. "And blacklisted."

A loud laugh tore itself out of your throat, warm and melodious in nature. He looked oddly pleased at having brought it out of you, the corners of his lips twitching up minutely before returning to its neutral position. God, how cute! You wondered what other expressions you could draw out of him if you tried. It wasn't fair how handsome he was when he smiled like that, a real smile, with actual emotion. That tiny change softened the harsh line of his mouth and eased the shadow of exhaustion from his face, making him look like a completely different person, like another version of himself who existed behind closed doors. The image stayed burned into your mind's retina as you resumed decorating the cookies with your nimble fingers, sneaking glances every so often, studying him from beneath your lashes.

You wanted to know more about this man. In a way, this snowstorm had been a good thing. 

“So,” you started, reaching for another cookie to decorate, “what made you take the sheriff’s job? Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t strike me as the type who’d want to babysit a town like this.”

Leon glanced at you, his hand pausing mid-squeeze. “What makes you say that?”

“Oh, ya know.” You gestured vaguely at him, smirking. “That look. Like you’ve seen too much of the world already and don’t trust any of it.”

He let out a soft, humorless laugh. “You’re not wrong.” For a moment, he focused on his cookie again, the silence stretching between you both. Then, quietly, he added, “I figured it was time to slow down. Maybe try something simpler.”

You arched a brow. “Simpler? Sheriff in a town like this? You must not have heard about all the trouble this place sees.”

“I’ve heard,” he said, glancing your way with the faintest hint of amusement in his eyes. “Still beats the alternative.”

The weight in his voice gave you pause. You didn’t press, sensing there were things he wasn’t ready to share, and not your place to know in the first place. Instead, you held up one of your finished cookies. “Well, here’s to slowing down. Even if it means spending your days wrestling with icing.”

“I’ll take it over the wrestling I’m used to,” he said, his lips twitching into a soft smile as he picked up another cookie. "Already like this better. It's nice working with someone like this. Having a calm evening instead of the usual shit I'm doing. Christmas cookie decorating. Who'd've thought, right?"

"That sounds lonely, Sheriff."

A strange, distant look crossed over his face momentarily, something melancholic and longing flitting across his face before it vanished again under the cool mask you were familiar with.

He let out a small, sad sigh. "...Yeah. S'pose it is."

"You know... Christmas is all about coming together. Starting fresh. And sometimes taking a little break from reality to enjoy yourself," you added thoughtfully, trying not to be too on the nose about what you were trying to convey. "We all need a little grace. Especially around this time of year."

He snorted softly at that, amused.

Your hand moved quicker than your mind could react, bringing the piping tip dangerously close to his mouth. "Care to repeat that?"

Leon blinked, momentarily stunned. "Christmas suits you," he repeated, more brazenly this time, daring you to follow through with the implicit threat. "All warm and welcoming." He leaned forward, almost challenging in nature. "Like this bakery of yours."

"Oh, well—" your ears burned hotter at the implications. If anyone saw you like this now, you would've been done for.

You cleared your throat, attempting to keep yourself composed even as Leon's stare bore a hole through your skull. The damn man was just teasing you, looking smug as fuck for figuring out how to make you flustered for once.

"You better watch your pretty mouth, or else I'll decorate it shut instead."

Leon threw you his most innocent, butter-wouldn't-melt smile, and oh—was he laying it on thick just to rile you up. He seemed to have recovered from earlier, all broody and cold-shouldered as he usually was. This new, playful side of him was going to kill you before the day was over, you were absolutely certain of it.

"Maybe next time," he said simply with a nonchalant shrug. 

The man had some nerve. Just the mere implication made your head spin. Did he mean it? Was he flirting? What did that mean for him? For you? You thought back to the few times you'd seen him around town—the polite smiles and nods exchanged at a distance; the brief conversation when your order went missing; the sudden appearance this afternoon that saved your day—and wondered why things were so easy between you despite how limited the interactions. Maybe because you knew each other well enough in name only, without the addition of many personal details beyond those spoken on a passing basis. Or maybe there was something deeper and unspoken that existed between you two ever since that first interaction at the saloon several weeks ago. Maybe you weren't imagining the subtle, shy looks, the hidden smiles, the way he tended to linger by the doorway to watch you work long after he ran out of excuses to be there anymore.

You shook away such thoughts and returned to decorating, not sure what to say in response.

"...Do you ever get the temptation to have any while you do this?" He asked all of a sudden, changing the topic abruptly. "Or wait til the last batch gets done and then have them?"

"These are for Christmas!"

"They are for the Mayor."

You couldn't help but giggle, especially since he said that like someone else would talk about some slimy thing on the bottom of their shoe. "For Christmas's sake."

"Would you eat one? Any of these ones I did?" There was something almost like playful disappointment there, in his tone. "I think we need to do some... quality testing before deciding to send them off to my employer and risk my job while we're at it."

There were very few times Leon Kennedy was described as an optimist, even fewer times he could be considered amusing (the townsfolk seemed convinced he wasn't capable of joy), but hearing him make a joke regarding his 'employer' with you made something flip inside your tummy. It didn't take long for you to cave, popping the partially iced gingerbread man into your mouth.

And that's how both of you ended up sitting down and devouring the whole batch, with two cups of steaming hot chocolate courtesy of yours truly. In true Christmas spirit, Leon even suggested making a gingerbread house from scratch in the shape of the mayor's office (complete with a gingerbread dog) and helping you with the baking process.

At this point, neither of you cared about decorum—the sheriff's sleeves were rolled up high on his arms, and you'd shucked your apron ages ago. Between the pair of you, you had enough raw dough in your mouths to sink a ship, but it was delicious, and your stomach was full of warm gingerbread and sweet cream. All that was missing was eggnog and a roaring fire, and it really felt like Christmas. His company, too, was surprisingly pleasant. Though Leon was quiet—always quiet—he listened attentively to your chatter while you kneaded the dough and he mixed the sugar and eggs while occasionaly going in for the hot chocolate, which was quite endearing for a man you hadn't seen with any beverage other than some sort of alcohol at the saloon.

You leaned against the counter as Leon poured another mug of hot chocolate, his sleeves still rolled up and his hair slightly mussed from pushing it away too many times so it wouldn't get in his eyes while he worked. The snowstorm had calmed some, but the wind still howled outside, leaving little to do but bake another batch of cookies and fruitcakes to pass the time—and keep the shop warm.

“So, about that axle,” you started, reaching for the bowl of flour. “No one told you it was shot?”

Leon shook his head, his expression almost sheepish. “Guess I didn’t ask the right questions. Higgins just said it was ‘good enough.’”

You snorted, scooping flour into the mixing bowl. “‘Good enough’ by Higgins’ standards means it’s one bump away from falling apart. The man’s been patching that wagon together with spit and stubbornness for years.”

Leon’s lips twitched in a faint smile as he leaned against the counter across from you. “Noted for next time.”

“You’re lucky it lasted as long as it did. But you’ll get used to that around here. Everyone’s got their quirks, and most of them involve cutting corners where they shouldn’t.”

“Yeah?” Leon’s tone invited more, his eyes steady on yours as he sipped his hot chocolate.

“Oh, definitely,” you said, grabbing the sugar. “Take Mrs. Winslow, for example. Sweet old lady, bakes pies for half the town out of the goodness of her heart that it's bad for my business, but did you know she’s the reason the post office closes early every other Thursday?”

Leon blinked. “I… can’t say I did.”

You grinned, leaning in conspiratorially. “She’s been having a years-long feud with the postmaster’s wife over some quilting contest back in ‘64. The poor postmaster just shuts up shop early to keep the peace whenever she’s around.”

“Jesus…”

“And then there’s Old Man Miller. Nice fella, always has a good story to share, but he’s also the same guy who thinks it’s a bright idea to milk his cows at midnight to ‘beat the rush’ at the market in the morning.” You laughed, remembering the sight of Mr. Miller stumbling bleary-eyed into the bakery, smelling distinctly of barnyard. “And let me tell you, that man’s cheese tastes like the butt crack of dawn on a Monday morning itself.”

Leon chuckled, shaking his head. “Sounds charming.”

“It is. Charming and... a little crazy, to be honest. But that’s the kind of place this is. We’ve all got our stories, and we’re all a bit touched in the head. Except me, of course. I’m the picture of sanity. Why, just yesterday, I had a completely normal, rational conversation with my sourdough starter as I fed it. It agreed wholeheartedly.”

“I see the resemblance,” Leon joked, his posture relaxing as he took over the task of adding eggs to the bowl, his fingers moving deftly and confidently. “Did the sourdough give you any tips for dealing with the townsfolk, or is that a trade secret?”

"Ah, wouldn't you like to know," you teased, laughing along. "But honestly, the best advice I can offer is to roll with the punches. This place will drive you nuts if you try to understand it. Just let the weird wash over you, and eventually, you'll feel at home."

Leon paused, considering your words. "That might take a while."

“Here's some secrets to keep up... There’s old Tom over at the smithy. He’ll fix your horseshoes for half price, but only if you promise not to bring up the time he accidentally set fire to the mayor’s porch.”

You glanced up to find his eyes crinkling slightly at the edges.

“And let’s not forget about the Reverend,” you continued, emboldened by the sight. “Bless his heart, but he’s been known to sample a little too much of the communion wine. You’ll know it’s happened when he starts quoting Shakespeare in his sermons.”

Leon nodded wisely. “Duly noted. Blackmail Tom, steer clear of the reverend during happy hour. Got any other wisdom to impart, town sage?”

You tapped your chin thoughtfully, enjoying the playful back-and-forth. “Well, if you ever need a favor from the schoolmarm, remember that her favorite flowers are peonies. And whatever you do, do not play poker with the Doc. The man can cheat like no one's business, and no, he's not above using his medical degree to his advantage. Also, avoid the butcher on Tuesdays—he's extra cranky after haggling prices with the ranchers. Oh, and never, ever bet against the blacksmith in an arm-wrestling match. Trust me, I learned that the hard way. Poor Billy. That boy won't learn his lesson anytime soon."

"What about the town baker?" he asked, his tone light, a hint of curiosity in his question, his focus on the dough in front of him, his fingers kneading the mound of flour, butter, and sugar. "Any secrets worth knowing?"

You quirked a brow, a sly smile playing at the corners of your mouth at him taking the first step that he'd been circling for quite some time. What would he have done if you weren't good with signals? Nevermind, though, you liked this brand of shy men. "Well, now that you mention it, there is one thing..."

Leon paused, his hands buried in the dough, his muscles flexing beneath his shirt sleeves. He looked at you expectantly, a glint of intrigue in his otherwise impassive demeanor.

"The baker," you said in a hushed tone, leaning forward as if sharing a secret, "has a weakness for a handsome, helpful sheriff who knows his way around a bag of icing. Especially one who's willing to brave a snowstorm to deliver her supplies personally."

The blush that crept up Leon's neck was immediate, his cheeks turning a delightful shade of pink. You couldn't help but bite your lower lip, finding his flustered state absolutely adorable. His grip on the dough tightened momentarily, and he averted his eyes, his lashes fluttering as he tried to compose himself.

"Ah," he managed, his throat bobbing in a nervous gulp.

You nodded, the grin on your face growing wider. "Mhm. She would love it if on Christmas Eve, that certain sheriff stopped by the bakery to pick up her special order. Maybe even have a drink together. To thank him for all his help, of course. If he's not busy, that is."

Leon cleared his throat, his tongue darting out to wet his lips, his attention still fixed on the dough before him. "I... I'll be sure to check my schedule," he managed, a slight tremor in his deepened voice.

"Good," you replied, straightening up, satisfied with his response. "Now, enough chit-chat, Sheriff. Let's get these gingerbread men in the oven so they can rest and bake, and we can have more hot chocolate and relax in the meantime. How does that sound?"

"Sounds like a plan," Leon agreed, his shoulders relaxing somewhat, though his ears still burned a rosy red.

[caeliuluru]

reciprocity, the heart

Summary: You get married to your lover, Xavier, an alpha. The both of you bask in the afterglow of your wedding night. Tags: alpha xavier/omega MC, top xavier/bottom MC, female MC, aftercare, FLUFF, but implied (although very obviously referenced) bedroom activities, implied subspace on MC's part

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Pure bliss is all you can feel in the afterglow— your heartbeat in sync with Xavier’s, breaths intermingling in the space of your bedroom. Your hands run down the long, red marks you’ve left on your husband’s back as a result of your lovemaking, while he plants gentle kisses along the fresh bond mark on the side of your neck. 

“Alpha… Xavier…” you whine softly. You’re still coming down from the very high cloud he’s sent you to, mind all hazy and too pleasured to think straight. 

He smiles against your skin, satisfied. “Still sensitive, love?” Another nuzzle across the space between your neck and shoulder. He moves his hands across your sides, soothing you as his knot deflates. The air thrums with the affection between you both. He’s pleased, the smell of lavender and cedarwood in the air. The two of you spend a few more moments in comfortable silence before he decides to move again. 

“I’ll pull out now, okay?” You nod, and you smile at him, dazed, but very much relieved. 

A soft moan leaves your lips as he parts from you, shared release sticking to both your bodies and dripping to the towel you left on the bed. Your hand shifts to squeeze his, trying to ground yourself. God knows what time it is— after all the guests had left and had given their well-wishes, the two of you rushed to the hotel room, with matching rings on your fingers. The nearby late-night cafes near your suite had quieted down, and the few city lights from the window and your nightlamp cast their gentle light across your face.

You’re beautiful, he thinks. He lifts your hand to plant a kiss on your palm. It’s a stroke of luck written in the stars— to see every expression and version of you. He promised to find you in every lifetime, and he’s still in disbelief— you’re right here in front of him. Whether you’re breathless and blissed out, or composed and focused, you’re beautiful. Xavier doesn’t think he deserves the way you look at him— like he’s hung the moon and stars just for you. He would, had he the power to. For now, he can promise this: he’ll protect you, take care of you, and hold you close for as long as he can. The mark and the ring is a promise to make you happy for the rest of your time together. This time, he’s staying by your side.

His eyes sparkle with so much love that you’re taken aback for a moment. You can’t tell what he’s thinking. So instead of asking, you press your lips to his in a passionate kiss, and he chuckles, kissing back.

I don’t deserve this. And yet, you chose him.

“My pretty,” a kiss to your forehead. “Gorgeous,” another to your cheekbone. “Girl.” Right cheek. “My love.” A sweet kiss on your lips. “My star,” Another right on the tip of your nose. “My wife, so good for me.”

“Xavier…” you pull your lover in for a hug, wanting to remain near him. You sigh as you breathe in his scent. If this is what it’s like to be bonded— claimed for life— then you don’t want to let go.

He brings his hand to your face, gently stroking your cheek, and smiles. Because just as much as he loves to bring you to heaven, he’ll be your ground, take you down safely.

“I’ll get you water, okay? Then after that, I’ll draw us a bath, and get you clean. How does that sound?” The words settle into your mind, sinking, before you finally comprehend them and nod. He kisses your palm again before he gets up slowly and leaves for the kitchen.

A few minutes pass. As the fog begins to clear, the stickiness between your legs becomes much more apparent to you.

Ah… what a mess.

And Xavier… he’d come back, wouldn’t he? The air feels too cold, all of a sudden, and you feel a dull ache in your limbs. You stretch your arms a little, adjusting our position on the bed so you can sit up. But you know you couldn’t stand if you tried. Where is he? You want to hold him, and be held in return while your brain is still on its way down from the high you’ve experienced. The left side of your neck stings a little, and you hiss when you touch it briefly.

Right on time, your husband comes into your shared bedroom with a jug of cold water. A look of worry crosses his face, and he immediately moves closer to check on you.

“Are you… hurt? Was I too rough?”

You shake your head and cough before you start speaking. You really could use the water that Xavier brought. “It’s nothing… the mark just hurts a little, but I’m okay. My fault for touching it when it’s fresh.” Knowing how he gets, you give him a reassuring smile.

The frown remains.

“Xavi, I’m okay, I promise.”

To calm him down, you rub your nose lightly against his and release some of your scent pheromones. The familiar blend of vanilla and lavender is a a warm blanket over his worry, wrapping around it and letting him know you really are alright.

“I’ll get you some ointment later,” he quietly says. Sometimes you think he worries too much about you, but nonetheless, you appreciate his care. It’s cute, and very much Xavier, how he still looks out for you in times like these. Xavier then lifts the jug to your lips, and you take the cue, drinking from it. “Careful now, don’t drink too fast.” He lets go of the jug once you grip it yourself. As you drink, he gazes at you fondly, hand lifting to smooth your hair a little. You don’t need to look in the mirror to see that you’re wrecked, love bites all over you, but unbeknownst to you, you’re a picture of satisfaction. Xavier glances at the mirror, then back at you. So, so pretty. My mate. All mine. Does she know I’m all hers?

From the corner of his eye, he spots the mark he asked you to leave on him. It’s not going to last, an Omega doesn’t have the same canines an Alpha does. But it doesn’t matter. He wants you to know he’s all yours just as much as you’re his.

When you’re finished, you set the almost-empty jug on the side table. “Ready?” Xavier reaches out a hand to you and asks. Confused, your eyebrows knit together, wondering if he really did expect you to be able to walk after he essentially pummeled you into the bed.

“I mean, I can try walking— wait!”

Suddenly, his hand loops around your legs and torso, lifting you in a bridal carry, and the two of you laugh as he brings you to the bathroom.

“Idiot.” Your eyes crinkle as you tease him. “Making me think that I’d have to walk when you know I can’t.” Xavier smiles cheekily and sets you down on the edge of the bathtub before grabbing a washcloth, bringing it under the sink. “I’d never do anything of the sort. Now that I’m your husband, you should always presume kindness on my part,” he quips.

“Do you want me to clean you up or would you rather do it yourself?” Always mindful, always caring of your boundaries, even if he wants nothing more than to be close to you.

“I don’t mind. C’mere.”

He then brings the washcloth to your center, cleaning up the worst of the mess. He runs the rag gently, eyes growing just a shade darker as he cleans the evidence of your… previous activities. Cute.

“You’re trying not to laugh.”

“Am not.” You stifle another giggle.

“Mhm. Just as much as hotpot is served cold and you stop staying up late .”

The corners of your lips turn up in a grin Xavier knows all too well. “And the reason why I’m up late tonight is right in front of me!” At that, you squish his face, gently shaking his head. Even if his face is puffed up because of you, his blue eyes gleam with a joy that’s reserved for when he sees you happy.

After you let go of him, he swipes your inner thighs a few more times, then quickly turns to get the bath ready.

You watch him, pouring the bubble bath mix into the water. My alpha, you think. Xavier is all strong and aloof on the outside, when he’s out on missions with you. People at the Association marvel at his mysterious aura and skill in killing Wanderers. Whether or not he clocks in at HQ, you hear people talk about him, about how the Association’s poster boy is so handsome, but barely mingles, asking questions like “How hard does he train?” and “Does he have a partner?” They don’t even know about the off-the-clock trips he takes to the No-Hunt Zone. And now, said most feared hunter is married and mated to you, preparing a bubble bath, making sure the water isn’t too cold nor hot. He reminds you to take breaks, and invites you to read comic books and stargaze when you can’t sleep. Of course, you can’t forget about how he brings you pleasure and pain in equal measure, right where you want it, and takes you back to Earth after. The dim light of the bathroom and the sound of running water add to the lull of the scene. A warm, fuzzy feeling rises in your chest, and you gaze fondly at him. My mate. Does he know how lovely he is?

Absentmindedly, you reach out to trace the scratches on his back, as if to remind yourself that the man you’ve been thinking about is very much real and in front of you.

“Ow,” he shifts slightly. Oops. As an apology, you kiss the red marks softly. “Sorry…”

“It didn’t hurt that much.” “Still. I was just… lost in thought, or something.” He closes the tap, and the two of you get in the bathtub. You adjust to make room for him, backside facing his chest. In the water, his hands automatically wrap around your waist, and he kisses your bond mark again. The two of you ease back into the comfortable lull a shared night bath provides. It’s warm and quiet, the water on your skin refreshing. You sigh. All is right in the world.

“Are you okay?” Xavier pipes up.

“Mhm. Good. Very good, in fact.” You lean back on his shoulder as you soak, trying not to fall asleep as Xavier nuzzles into your neck.

After a while, he squeezes your hands to rouse you from your semi-nap. He adjusts and sits up, grabbing the shower head and shampoo to wash your hair. His hands are firm, yet they rub your scalp in a way that makes you shut your eyes in calm bliss. When he finishes, you turn around to take the showerhead from him.

“Could I… wash your hair too?”

Your partner’s eyes crinkle as he lets out an airy laugh, because of course you’d ask, never content with being the only one doted on in the relationship; it’s fair that you show him how much you love him as well. He hums as you lather the shampoo in his scalp, fingers applying just the right amount of pressure, and right here, he thinks, is home. Anywhere you are is where he’s happy, content — whether the two of you are in the regular life-or-death situations you subject yourselves to as Hunters or are out relishing time as normal people, passing by the park on the way home from a busy day, having dinner together— and now you’re bound together for the rest of your life.

“I love you,” he says softly, and leans his head back.

“Sappy.” You chuckle, and kiss the matching mark on his neck,

“Isn’t it normal for a husband to tell his wife that he loves her?” Oh. There it is, the pout and the puppy dog eyes you know so well.

You wash off the last of the suds from his silvery hair and acquiesce to your adorable husband. “Okay, okay. I love you too.”

The water’s gone cold already, and Xavier kisses your temple before he leaves the tub. You soak for a few more moments before he returns, dressed, carrying with him one of his shirts, your underwear, and pajamas. He carefully dries you off, making sure the towel is especially gentle around your bond mark, and dresses you before carrying you back to the bed. The towel you’ve used and the top bedsheet are in a pile somewhere in one of the suite’s closets, and his suit and your gown are folded somewhere on top of the luggage. He sets you gently on the plush bed, before pulling the covers over you and himself. On instinct, you snuggle into him, cozy.

“Xavier, thank you.”

He responds by pulling you closer and kissing the top of your head. “I should be thanking you.”

“If we keep this up, we’ll never stop.”

“Isn’t that why we got married?” He hums thoughtfully, this time another song, one he had played for you on the piano years ago, as he strokes your hair.

You pull yourself up, nuzzling and sniffing at his neck sleepily.

“I still smell like you, if that’s what you’re worried about.” “Mhm, I just… want you near.”

Any more closer and Xavier is positive that you’ll merge yourself into him, but he remains silent, as maybe the idea doesn’t sound bad at all.

By a stroke of luck, the stars aligned to bring them together, him and his starlight. Your breathing slows as you begin to fall asleep.

“I love you, Y/N.”

You smile. “I love you too, Xavier.”

The two of you drift into the land of dreams.

⊹˚₊‧──────────‧─────────‧─────────‧──────────‧₊˚⊹

A/N: this is the most self-indulgent thing i've ever published. man. anyway stay hydrated friends. merry christmas :3

[starshideurfics]

Thirsty Thursday - Stevie’s Garage

steddie, omegaverse, 1960s, omegas entering the workforce, single parents, cw: vague references to suicide

Steve liked working with his hands. As a child that meant playing with lincoln logs and tinker toys, after he presented it meant baking a sewing. Then his no-good, two-timing alpha left him for his secretary, with two pups, Danny (6) and Jenny (7 1/2). Steve won full custody in the divorce, and at least his ex pays his alimony on time.

But it isn’t enough to live on, not with the mortgage and the kids. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to worry about the house falling apart; he’s been doing home repairs the entire time, learned to change his own oil in his car, can fix a flat tire with ease.

More and more omegas are driving now, and Steve figures they would appreciate service from someone who won’t talk down to them. He gets a loan from his aunt, a maiden omega who invested well, and opens his own automobile service station: Stevie’s Garage.

Robin helps him get set up: painting the sign, ordering supplies, answering phone calls, while Steve gets under the hoods and gets his hands dirty.

He does well enough that after the first month he puts an ad in the paper to hire a second mechanic. He figures it will take a while to find an alpha (or even a beta) who can stand working for an omega.

Much to his surprise, a man with dark curls and a shy smile comes by later that week asking if the job is still available. Steve has Eddie check the car on the lift, and he finds the loose fan belt in a couple minutes, changes it out.

Steve hires him on the spot.

It turns out Eddie’s got a pup, too. Carrie’s in Danny’s class at school, and all Eddie will say is that her mother isn’t around anymore. Steve doesn’t pry. It means the three pups ride the bus to the garage after school and play together there until the workday is done. Jenny’s bossy, a bit feral, and loyal to a fault. The first day Carrie gets off the bus with them, she asks why she isn’t going home to her mom, all childish bluntness.

“Mama died in the bathtub when I was really little, then I went to live with Daddy,” Carrie answers, just a statement of fact.

Steve’s glad he didn’t pry.

After that, Jenny is as protective of Carrie as she is of her brother.

Three months after he hired Eddie, Steve admits to himself that he likes the alpha. More than likes him. Eddie smells nice, and he’s gentle with the pups, never raises his voice in anger—only in excitement or fear—he tells jokes and stories to pass the time, sings along with the radio. But mostly, he looks at Steve like a starving man looks at bread when he thinks the omega isn’t looking.

Steve wants to feed him.

They both have engine grease under their fingernails, are covered in heavy-duty cotton, Steve’s hair is under a kerchief; there is nothing particular sexy about the moment. But Steve can’t wait any longer, and he presses up against Eddie, pins him in place and kisses his mouth.

“I’m dead, yeah? The lift fell and I was crushed by Mrs. Wheeler’s Bel Air, and I’m dead,” Eddie babbles when their lips part.

“Not dead,” Steve replies with a grin. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Steve leans in for another kiss, one that Eddie deepens, his tongue slipping easily between parted lips. “I’ll need to get Robin to babysit.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, Munson. You’re taking me out dancing.”

✨✨✨

Steve answers the door with his housecoat still on, crouching down to say hello to Carrie first, the pup throwing her arms around his neck. “Head into the living room, honey, the kids are doing a puzzle with Robbie,” he says, watching her scamper past him into the house. He turns to Eddie with a soft smile, “Just give me a couple minutes and I’ll be ready to go.”

“Yeah, sure,” Eddie agrees, smile just as soft.

Steve disappears to his bedroom, and Eddie waits awkwardly in the doorway. He hears laughter from deeper in the house, followed by Robin saying, “Hey there, Care-Bear, come sit by me.”

He’s ruminating on how nice it is to have people who adore his kid as much as he does around, to give her that big family feeling, at least a little bit. Then Steve comes down the hallway wearing a proper dress, and Eddie quite literally stops breathing.

Dressed to the nines, Steve is a revelation, but he simply takes Eddie’s hand and says, “So, where are you taking me?”

“Enzo’s,” Eddie answers, no longer worried that it’s too much. Steve deserves the nicest restaurant in town for their first date. Steve deserves the best of everything.

Not that either of them has fancy tastes, not knowing what half the things on the menu are. Eddie gets spaghetti and meatballs, and Steve gets a chicken dish with some kind of red sauce. They talk and trade bites of food, both careful as they eat—Steve due to a lifetime of practice, Eddie because he realized as soon as the waiter took their order that he’d made a mistake and that leaving without marinara on his shirt would be a miracle.

After, he tells Steve to order dessert, and they split a tiramisu. Eddie pays the bill without really looking at it, having kept a tally in his head of the prices by habit, leaves a nice tip, and helps Steve up from his seat. “Ready for that dance?”

Steve smiles and nods, following Eddie to the dance floor. Enzo’s has a live band on the weekends; “Unforgettable” by Nat King Cole starts just as Steve steps onto the parquet dance floor, his arms settling easily around Eddie’s neck. “I love this song,” he murmurs as they start to sway.

“Makes sense,” Eddie murmurs, “You’re certainly unforgettable, Steve.” They’re silent after that, moving to the music, bodies pressed close. A new song starts, and they keep swaying, dancing merely an excuse to hold each other in public, to trade small kisses.

“Robin’s planning to spend the night at my place,” Steve says once they are safely back in Eddie’s car.

“Oh?”

“We still have plenty of time…”

“Steve?”

“Take me back to your place, Eddie.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice, driving on autopilot, as Steve rubs his hand up and down Eddie’s thigh.

Steve pounces on him as soon as they get through Eddie’s front door, kissing him hard and reaching for his belt. They shed clothes down the hallway, until they reach Eddie’s bedroom, leaving the lights off, everything illuminated well enough by the nearly full moon.

Eddie stops breathing again. Steve is a vision in only his slip, white satin and lace showing off so much more of his skin than Eddie’s ever seen. Carefully, he reaches out, suddenly nervous—a crass, unworthy man standing before the loveliest omega on earth—and pinches a bit of fabric at Steve’s waist, afraid to touch more.

“Hey,” Steve whispers, placing a hand over Eddie’s, “It’s okay. I’m still just me. Not gonna break, Ed.”

Everything after that is slow and sweet. Perfect.

Eddie cries tears of pleasure as he sinks into Steve’s wet heat. Steve mewls at being properly knotted for the first time in years. They fall asleep tangled together, the most relaxed either of them have felt, possibly ever.

Steve wakes early, before the sun is up. Eddie stirs beside him as soon as he moves, and Steve is happy to take a couple minutes to kiss.

There’s plenty of time to get home before the pups wake.

✨✨✨

Big thanks to @itcanbepalped for sharing the inspo with me and then riffing for a bit! Love you, Mads!!!

[thequeenofcupps]

Bottom!hazard x fem!reader

SMUT!!!

MDNI!!

₊˚ ‿︵‿︵‿︵୨୧ · · ♡ · · ୨୧‿︵‿︵‿︵ ˚₊

A/n: DUDE I HADDD TO START WORKING ON THIS AS SOON AS I GOT THIS REQUEST but fair warning it is 2 am for me rn so it might come out like tomorrow or today I’m not sure BUT STILL, also this might be ooc hazard too but I really don’t care cuz hazards a hottie 😋 also I’m probably a little mean to him but it’s just cuz I love him <3

Also @cogdat requested this!

⚠︎ Ok so everyone knows he’s like a scary looking guy but when he’s with you that just completely vanishes, like he’s trembling under your touch because 1 he hasn’t had a lot of chances with woman because he “didn’t have time to settle” and 2 you’re the first person that isn’t him to touch him

Like yeah he’s masterbaited loads of times but he’s never actually slept with someone so basically he was a virgin before he met you and he was extremely embarrassed that he was a 24 yr old virgin

⚠︎ You like overstimulating him or you overstimulate him on accident, Like he’s full on crying cuz he just feels so fucking good and he’s whimpering gibberish cuz his stupid brains a pile of mush

⚠︎ He’s like a goddamn dog in heat whenever he’s horny like if you’re doing something he like comes up from behind you and is practically fucking humping you and kissing your neck and whispering about how much he wants to touch you

⚠︎ He has a love/hate relationship with teasing, like he loves it when he does it to you but when you do it him he’s an extremely flustered man, like after him and the phreaks get back from a successful mission he has so much pent up energy and he needs you really bad but you’re not having any of it so you’ll just coo fun at him for being so whiny while you palm his hard on through his pants while he tries his hardest not to cum right then and there

⚠︎ If he makes you mad like for example missing a date you had planned for months, not listening to you whilst you’re trying to tell him something important You punish him hella hard, like if y’all are getting freaky you remember that he’d pissed you off a while ago so now you’re just rejecting him pleasure of cumming, like he’d have tears streaming down his face begging you for release but you’re just like “nah I’m good”

⚠︎ You own a strap just for him with<3

But that’s only for special occasions

Like if he had a successful mission, won a fight, won some stupid ass contest at the bar

Or if he’s to exhausted from his last mission he’ll let you pull out the strap 9000

He actually really likes the strap but he’ll never let you possess that info to him

⚠︎ I read a Drabble about him never shutting up and I wanted to include that in this fic

He’s so loud and talkative you HAVE to put his mouth to good use because you’re just tired of hearing him talk on and on and on you just need him to shut up

⚠︎ Please do praise him, he loves hearing you praise him for being such a good boy and taking it so well <3

⚠︎ Also aftercare is like heaven for the both of you like you’re getting up and getting some stuff for him cuz he’s too fucked out and is still in space so please help him with aftercare, his favorite part about aftercare with you is the nice warm lavender smelling bath you prepared just for the both of you while he comes down from his high <3

⚠︎ Also he’s a huge hand bucker, if he lets you jerk him off he’s trying so hard to not buck cuz if u do u gotta stop and he doesn’t like that 3:

⚠︎ His fucked out face looks like this: ( ˶꩜ ꕀ ꩜˶;)

A/n: I hope I did ok with this it’s really late and I’m tired asf and my brain isn’t working anymore 😭

[sister-lucifer]

Merry Fuckin’ Christmas

Jeff The Killer x Male Reader 

Genre: NSFW

Summary: Jeff comes in at the last minute to ruin your Christmas in the mansion 

Content/warnings: Bully Jeff, Noncon sexual acts and touching (but no actual penetrative sex), mentions of alcohol and drinking, Jeff drunkenly spits in Reader’s mouth, hair pulling, condescending pet names (sunshine), praise, degradation, this is a really mean spirited one

A/N: This fic was inspired by THIS lovely work by @ruinhood . Happy holidays, everyone! ⋆⁺₊❅⋆ ⁺₊❆⋆

This is not fully proofread, please let me know if you see any errors!

Feedback is appreciated and encouraged!

If you like, please reblog!

By some miracle, you’ve managed to have a lovely Christmas evening. 

For once, everyone sat together, exchanging gifts and talking civilly without violence or threats or even a raised voice. You could have sworn you even saw Tim smile—no one would believe you if you said that, but you know it happened. You picked up some small gifts for the others over the past few months, and actually got some in return. Nothing big, of course; a cool rock from Toby, a carved figurine from Tim, a macaroni picture from Sally, that sort of thing. None of you had any money to buy anything fancy.  None of you were bothered by that. 

Of course, the peace of the night was almost certainly helped by the fact that Jeff didn’t bother to show. He stomped out into the snow earlier this morning and no one cared enough to go after him. You all figured he’d come trudging back with soaking wet shoes and a bottle in his hand to ruin everyone’s fun. There’s been no sign of him. 

What a damn relief. 

Now, though you’re far too tired to put everything in its rightful place, you’re careful to stack the boxes without breaking anything. Until tomorrow—or whenever you have the energy to clean up—they’ll be nestled away in the corner. A quick glance at the clock tells you it’s ten until midnight. Christmas is almost over. 

As much fun as you had, it does feel nice to get off your feet and into bed. The wind whistles outside your window, but it’s perfectly warm under your covers. You can still hear the proxies clinking glasses in the living room, but even they’re quieting down now. It’s…nice.  The first ‘nice’ night you’ve had in a long time. 

And then your door creaks. 

Your eyes fly open and you sit up quickly. Your reaction is sharp, but you only expect to see Sally standing in the doorway, complaining of nightmares, or maybe Toby stopping by to see if you’ll drink with him since the masked twins went to bed. 

Instead, the silhouette you see in the hallway light is unmistakably Jeff. 

The smell of cheap whiskey wafts into the room instantly. You press yourself back against the headboard of your bed, instantly on the defensive. He’s wasted. 

His ratty old Converse are caked in mud and still have bits of snow clinging to them, tracking frozen filth everywhere he goes. His hoodie and jeans are equally dirty, and stained with blood. The smell is even worse than usual. He’s got a death grip on the sack he’s holding at his side, and it looks heavy. 

He’s breathing heavily, like he just ran up the stairs. He huffs, wipes his mouth with his sleeve, and runs his tongue over his teeth before he speaks. 

“You didn’t think I forgot about you, didja, sunshine?” 

You shudder. All his words are slurring together. 

“…W-We didn’t know where you were,” you stammer, struggling to gauge his mood. He’s smiling, more than he really should be right now, and for some reason that scares you more than the force of his anger. 

“I had to go out and do some Christmas shopping, that’s all,” he replies with a shrug. He stomps into your room, the sack dragging behind him. As he gets closer, you can see the deep red staining the bottom of the bag and leaking onto the floor. It stinks like a corpse. 

He drops the sack by your bed, and thankfully it doesn’t fall open. Just thinking about what’s in it is enough to make you sick without having to look at it. You don’t exactly run with the friendliest crowd, sure, but Jeff has a special brand of violence; even the other killers find his habit of extreme mutilation not only unnecessary, but immature and deplorable. No one else kills for pleasure like he does. 

He puts both hands on your bed and slowly leans in. His breath is rank, and there are spatters of blood stuck to his teeth and face. You try not to breathe. 

“So,” he finally drawls after a long moment of tense silence, “what’d ya get me?” 

…Oh, fuck. 

You swallow hard. 

You didn’t get him anything. 

You didn’t think he’d want anything from you. The few times you’ve seen anyone give him anything, he either gets mad or destroys it right then and there. He doesn’t need shit from anybody, he’d say. Jeff had no interest in any sort of civility. 

The issue is, if you look him in the eyes and say you didn’t get him anything…

…He might just kill you. 

You don’t have anything to say for yourself. You just stare back at him, and he doesn’t move an inch, except for his grin stretching just a bit further across his scarred cheeks. 

You flinch when he suddenly pulls back, his shoulders coming up into a shrug. 

“Ehh, don’t worry about it,” he says with a laugh, “No one else got me anything either. The thing is…” 

He pauses. He looks around, making sure the coast is clear before lowering his voice. 

“…I got you somethin’, sunshine.” 

He giggles like an excited child, and your blood goes cold. Your eyes flick briefly to the sack he brought in with him. He follows your gaze, and quickly brushes off your worry with a wave of his hand. 

“Oh, no, no, it’s not him, don’t worry.” 

‘Him.’ Eugh. You might gag. 

He laughs to himself for a few more moments, and your terror stacks higher and higher. He steps closer again as his laughter dies down. Then he leans in again, eyes boring into yours and gaze not wavering for even a second. 

You expect him to pull some sick joke from his pocket, or maybe drag you outside into the cold to show you some mutilated carcass. Then, he speaks. 

“Open your mouth.” 

The silence that drags on following the curt order makes you feel stupid. 

“…Wh…H-Huh?” You stammer, blinking up at him. His smile doesn’t move. 

“Open your mouth,” he repeats, like you’re the dumbest person on Earth, “so I can give you your present.” 

Your brain scrambles to find a good reason for his instructions. You come up with none. 

“Oh, it’s li-like a candy, or something?” You ask with a nervous laugh.  

He thinks, then shrugs. 

“Something like that.” 

Your heart is thumping in your chest, trying desperately to escape your ribs and run away from whatever fate is about to befall you. 

“You…Y-You can’t just put it in my hand—?” 

You barely get to finish before Jeff’s cheerful demeanor drops like a bag of bricks. In a blink, he’s on top of you, one hand grasping at your shirt and the other gripping your jaw. Struggling would only bring more pain, so you’re frozen staring up at him. 

“I said open your damn mouth, you whiny little bitch, and you’re gonna do what I say,” he growls, voice now devoid of all mirth. You nod as best you can in his hold. 

He spends a bit more time studying your face, eyes flicking back and forth across your expression as if he’s reading you, trying to discern how genuine you are. When he’s satisfied, he pulls back from your personal space and relaxes his grip, but doesn’t let go of your chin.  

“Go on then,” he says with a nod. He’s not willing to be patient, and you can tell. 

You have to force your lips to part, and it takes even more effort to open your mouth fully. You get about halfway before the feeling that you must look like a complete idiot sets in. Jeff’s mouth twitches, threatening a smile, then stills again. 

“Wider,” he demands, giving your jaw a threatening squeeze. You resist the urge to whimper as you comply. Satisfaction flashes in his eyes. 

“Tongue out,” he adds. Suddenly, he sounds much more focused, no longer looking at your eyes but instead focused on your mouth. Slowly, you push your tongue past your lips. Whatever he’s planning hasn’t even happened yet, and you’re already thoroughly humiliated, sitting here with your tongue hanging out of your open mouth like a begging dog. 

He runs his own tongue over his scarred lips before speaking. 

“Good, good…now just sit still.” 

Immediately, he pushes two thumbs into your mouth, making sure you have no chance of sealing your lips again. That makes you panic, and for the first time you really fight against him. You try to struggle, but you’re too shaky and scared to land a good kick on him, and his hands don’t move despite you clawing at his arms. He looms over you like a shadow of death, one knee coming down to press into the mattress and bump uncomfortably against your groin. He huffs in annoyance at your show of disobedience. 

“What part of sit still don’t you understand?” He hisses, “Do you want me to cut yer fuckin’ tongue out?”

You shake your head no as quickly as you can. Jeff is a lot of things, but he’s not a liar; he always keeps his word. You decide on self-preservation over your dignity. It’s not worth fighting. 

He takes his time getting into position for what’s about to happen. He takes extra care to make sure his knee presses into your crotch to an almost painful degree when he shifts. 

Finally, he stills, and he’s looking down at you like he wants to eat you. He runs his tongue over his teeth and laughs lowly. 

“You’re gonna love this,” he mumbles, sounding long he’s very far away. 

Without warning, he ducks his head, and the next thing you hear is the sound of saliva collecting in his mouth and his lips pulling back before he spits into the waiting hole you so kindly prepared for him. 

You tense, unable to even gag before he snaps your mouth shut and holds it there, looking awfully pleased with himself. 

“Go on,” he drawls, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, “swallow it. Be a good boy and swallow it. I gave you a gift.” 

The condescending praise makes you shiver. You swallow, just as he ordered. His eyes follow the lump in your throat closely. 

You’ve never seen him look so horribly enthused. 

Your head is yanked back when his hand moves from your jaw to tightly grip your hair. His free hand cups your groin, thumb rubbing over the shaft of your flaccid cock. The touch immediately excites you despite your efforts to will your dick to stay soft. You’d think your instinct would be to push him away, but you only grip the sheets instead.

“Again,” he commands, like an amused child, “again. Open your mouth.” 

You listen much faster than before, and you silently hope you don’t look eager. 

Again, he spits into your mouth, pushing your jaw closed with less force. This time you swallow without being told. When you open your mouth again, you’re panting, like you can’t catch your breath. His thumb strokes along your length with more purpose now, feeling it harden beneath the pad of his finger. 

You expect him to demand another, and even another after that, to keep going until he gets bored, but he doesn’t. He releases you and pulls back, wiping his mouth once more. You struggle to focus your vision as he steps away. 

He gathers the bloody bag he dragged in before trudging to the door. He stops in the doorway and looks back at you with a thoughtful expression on his face. 

You gulp. 

He snickers. 

“Hey, maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll give you a kiss on New Year’s,” he cracks. You can hear him laughing down the hallway, presumably headed to his own bedroom. 

You sit still, in silence, for a long while. Maybe it’s to process what just happened, but it doesn’t feel any less surreal when you finally move enough to look down at your lap. 

Your quivering cock straining against your pajama pants tells you everything you need to know. 

If you enjoyed this fic, please reblog! It’s free, takes two seconds, and it’s the best way to help creators here on Tumblr.

[snwusberry]

pairing: dad! seonghwa x mom! black reader

warning(s): food and eating

genre: fluff

wc: 1181

merry christmas to everyone who celebrates (it's almost 10pm here rn)

reader pov

the sound of overlapping voices fills the room. plates are being passed around, utensils clank against bowls and the smell of the variety of food invades my senses in the best way. the kids have been called back from whers they were playing to join us for the grand dinner we were all anticipating the whole year. christmas dinner with my husband's family and it's our 4th time attending, this time with yet another new born along with our four year old. now i know what people say about the father/husband's side of the family but i adore each and every one of these people.

however, i have learnt over the years seonghwa and i have been together that his family knows how to do chaos. they do it too well, if you ask me.

“pass the japchae, would you?” seonghwa's cousin calls out from the far end of the table, leaning forward and almost knocking over a glass of water in the process, making mr park let out an exasperated breath.

“relax ara, it’s coming. you act like you haven’t eaten all year.” he says, shaking his head.

“she eats every two hours like clockwork.” seonghwa jokes, dodging the chopsticks ara half-heartedly aims at him.

i can’t help but laugh as i scoop some onto my plate. his family is loud, hilarious, and utterly shameless when it comes to teasing each other,but its how they show love.

at the other end of the table is our 4 year old daughter who's sitting on a booster seat along with her cousins without a care in the world. she's having so much fun over there, i might just leave her here. she's busy chatting away with her uncle about lord knows what.

"uncle junho is eating so fast!" she exclaims almost too loud. she fits right in, i could tear up.

"i'm hungry. look at you, you're eating like a bird." he tries defending himself which offends her.

"no i'm not. daddy, uncle junho say i eat like a bird."

"she does not eat like a bird." seonghwa says, coming to the defense of the little girl which brings laughter to everyone around the table.

seonghwa's aunt—we call her aunt vera because she said to calm her that—clears her throat, drawing everyone's attention as she picks up the untouched dish from the table. everyone quiets down and eyes the dish. not a word being uttered in disbelief. good or bad, it's up to you to decide.

"what is it?" her son asks what i think were all wondering.

"its my famous brussels sprouts gratin." she declairs brightly as if she just stated the obvious amd the room falls awkward silent with a strained "oh" here and there.

"is that what it is?" i hear someone feintly ask and i'm almost certain its seonghwa's sister, seonghee.

9"famous where?" junho asks under his breath, earning him a nudge from seonghee.

i turn and glance at seonghwa who's biting his lip to keep from laughing, but the look we exchange says everything.

"well... thanks for bringing it." my mother in law says to her still enthusiastic older sister.

"oh of course. i thought i'd add a little something different to the table. a little western touch for our dearest daughter in law's sake." she enthuses, oblivious to the looks of everyone around the table. even the kids are quiet.

"wow... thank you aunt. that's very thoughtful of you." i respond politely and junho stifles a laugh which spreads to ara.

"you don't have to eat it." seonghwa whispers and i nudge him with my elbow.

"looks funny." seonghee's son says, breaking the silence and seonghee looks at him completely defeated.

"sweetheart." she breathes out and everyone laughs, including aunt vera.

"eunbyeol, dear. eat your carrots." my mother in law says to our daughter but miss girl hates vegetables. no matter how i cook them, she hates them. only way to make her eat is if i make a full vegetarian meal. then she doesn't have a choice.

the little girl just shakes her head vigorously.

it was worth a shot. seonghwa and i just give his mother an apologetic look.

as the meal continues, the gratin remains mostly untouched, sitting forlornly in its dish as everyone conveniently “forgets” to pass it around. and by the time desert rolls around, we're all pretty much stuffed. i stepped out to breastfeed the littke monster who woke up screaming her little lungs out. seonghwa ran in panicking before he realized it was time to feed her.

"ready to go see everyone again my baby? wanna be held by big sister byeollie?" i coo at the baby who has a vice grip on my breast and is drinking for today and tomorrow.

"you two still good in here?" seonghwa asks, walking into the room and i nod at him.

"say we're fine papa." i prompt the little girl who is absolutely silent. the way we talk to babies needs to be investigated. "will you burp her?"

seonghwa nods and i hand him the baby who finally let go and he puts her on his shoulder and gently pats her back. once he's done with that we both walk out and eunbyeol is already in front of us.

"mommy, dadfu, is she awake?" she asks, her voice full of excitement. we already know she wants to play with her.

"wide awake." her eyes light up and seonghwa goes to sot down sk that eunbyeol can see her sister properly and her cousin joins in. seonghwa is smiling from ear to ear seeing how much eunbyeol adores her sister. nothing makes him happier than his daughters.

except me, of course.

a little while later, seonghwa joins me at the table where his mother, father, aunt vera, seonghee and ara are still sitting to have dessert.

as the night winds down, eunbyeol climbs into my lap, her energy finally starting to wane and seonghwa is in the other room with eunha and the guys. the room is still filled with the hum of conversation and laughter, and i feel a warm contentment settle over me.

“did you have fun tonight?” i ask her, brushing a strand of hair out of her face.

she nods sleepily, resting her head against my chest. “best christmas ever,” she murmurs.

yeah i know she's lying, she says this every year, but okay.

at the end of the night it's that bittersweet time to say goodbye to everyone.

i hug everyone, my mother in law giving me an especially long one, refusing to let go.

"mother, hugging her any longer, won't make them stay the night." junho jokes and seonghee flicks his head, causing him to whine. how this man has a whole kid is beyond me.

"drive safely, okay?" my mother in law says sadly and we nod.

"we will. bye everyone." seonghwa, who's carrying a sleeping eunbyeol says and we go to his car, settling the kids before getting in the car and driving away. another family christmas, successful.

[heylittleriotact]

🎄 Merry Almost Christmas Have A Festive WIP 🎄

(It's not looking like I'll be able to finish this before the holiday chaos ensues and I won't have a moment to myself until at least the weekend, so Christmas came sort of early, Emmrook friends)

❄️ Yet Untitled First-Day Holiday Fluff Piece ❄️

She stares at the gold ring and twitches her finger slightly, capturing a beam of groggy winter sunshine in the impressive red jewel that adorns it. She raises and lowers the finger, mesmerized by the comforting silence of the wood paneled entryway, and the way the light catches so prettily on the stone, making it look like bright arterial blood: rich with oxygen and scarlet in colour. 

It’s no ruby though… not even relatively inexpensive garnet. It’s coloured glass, and the band isn’t gold: judging on the way it leaves a dull green shadow of itself on her skin by the end of each day, it’s brass or maybe copper. 

If one was to look at it closely - which she has numerous times over the past few months - they would see where the cheap metal has been repetitively worn down, buckled, been repaired, and worn down some more over decades. There’s an almost imperceptible chip in the stone near the upper left edge of the setting, and in the right light you can see where small spiderweb cracks have been painstakingly filled in with a strong, clear substance, sanded and polished to match the shine of the rest of the stone. 

She dare not ask how much coin Emmrich has spent over the years to keep this ring in good repair. 

He rather insistently offered to buy her a ‘proper’ ring to mark their betrothal the morning after they returned to Nevarra: his Father’s ring was only meant to be temporary given the timing of his proposal, and what she really needed was a ring befitting the enormity and depth of his love for her; a ring that would at least compare to her beauty, though no bauble existed that could ever equal it. There were a number of other poetic and deeply romantic sentiments that she patiently waited for him to list off, nodding politely as he worked himself into a veritable tizzy, snuggled up alongside her in the warmth of the plush feather bed in the master suite of his house in the city.

“If you wish to spoil me with a second engagement ring, I daresay I’ll be the talk of Nevarra, and I won’t utter a single complaint,” she grinned, rotating the priceless ring on her finger. “But I hope you realize I’m going to keep wearing this one. This is the real one: this one is you. And you could drop a small kingdom worth of gold on the finest ring from King Caspar’s personal collection for all I care, but it would still look like cheap junk next to this, so if this is all just a clever ruse to get me to give it back, you’re out of luck, love: it’s mine– just like your heart… but don’t fret: I’ll take good care of them both.” And she planted a kiss on the top of his head, burying her nose in tousled hair that smelled of ripe cherries.

He made her come three times in a row that morning. 

She smiles at the memory and tugs on a pair of lined leather gloves, looking around the inviting entryway of the house as she does this. It’s a level of status and comfort that she’s still very much getting used to. It’s not a palatial manor by any means, but rather a high-end rowhouse in a quadrant of the city where nobles, high-ranking Mortalitasi, and retired political advisors live. Rowhouse or no, it’s still got four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and the nicest kitchen Amina has ever seen. Emmrich worked hard for the comfort he enjoys, and Amina was no pauper before her break from the Watch, but getting used to having staff has proven… challenging. Blessedly with the holiday coming up, Emmrich has sent the housekeeper, footman, and butler home - with full pay of course, and some extra - to be with their families. The house is empty and quiet but for the two of them, and it’s been a boon to just feel able to fully relax without the ever-present awareness of someone perceiving her, even if it was done benevolently by the curious staff of Professor Volkarin.

She couldn’t blame them for their interest: their employer went on sabbatical months earlier and returned home, a lauded hero of Thedas, with a relatively young woman on his arm and rumours of an imminent marriage trailing the pair. 

She runs a gloved finger down the dark chestnut door frame (not a speck of dust) and shifts, feeling a bit warm standing inside wearing her thick, gray wool coat. It always takes Emmrich forever to get ready to go anywhere— they’re going skating, not attending high tea with the Empress of Orlais…

“Rook!”

She glances over her shoulder to see Manfred shuffling down the hallway towards her, a pair of ice skates held aloft in front of him as he races towards her. 

“Knives!” He declares, eyes flaring gleefully. “Knives!”

“Sort of,” she remarks wryly, her lip curling in an amused smile that she can’t help whenever the enthusiastic construct is around. “Best not let your Father see you running with those: you remember the incident with the scalpel, hm?”

“Pressure!” Manfred recites proudly, “Put! Pressure!” He grips Amina’s forearm with surprising strength to demonstrate.

“Very good.”

“Hurray!” He relinquishes his grip and hops from foot to foot, unable to contain his excitement.

It had been difficult to convince Emmrich to bring Manfred skating, what with her beloved citing the obvious incompatibility of brittle bone, hard ice, and gravity. 

“What if he falls?” Emmrich had queried, his brow knitting in consternation, his lips pouting, fingers laced over his heart - hell, his moustache might have drooped a little. 

Emmrich still turns brick red when Manfred calls him ‘Father’ and tries to correct him, but when he’s not within earshot, Amina tells Manfred not to listen: just this time - because he is Manfred’s father, and he’ll get used to it eventually, but denying it isn’t going to do either of them favours.

“He won’t fall,” she had promised Emmrich, tracing the shape of his shadowed jaw. “Not when he’s got both of us by his side.”

He made love to her twice that night: long, passionate encounters that left her muscles a bit achy and her brain a bit foggy come the morning.

She’s still been taking her weekly tincture to prevent pregnancy, but sooner or later she knows they’re going to have to talk about the future of that… and all that might come of stopping it. She could have broached the topic by now - could have said something, but he hasn’t said anything either, and even if she did float the idea of a child by him and he said no, that would be fine, but she hasn’t felt ready for the permanence of that conversation yet… the fact that once its had, it can’t really be taken back: she’s thirty-seven, and running short on time to act on such things…

“Emmrich is Father. Rook is Mother!” 

“Oh. Um… not… not just yet, Manfred… wait— who told you that?” She feels her face redden, feels even warmer in her coat and scarf than she already does: where the hell is Emmrich? “Your ability to speak is certainly coming along, isn’t it?” She pretends to take a nose he doesn’t have, sticking the tip of her gloved thumb out from between her index and middle finger. She shakes it tauntingly and bites back the laugh threatening to break loose at the sound of Manfred’s scandalized hiss. “Give you a few years and I bet you’ll be running entire lectures by yourself.” She ducks Manfred’s grab for the ‘nose’ in her hand, bobs under his skeletal arm and straightens: they’ve played this game before - it rapidly became one of his favourites once Amina made sure he was crystal clear in his understanding that it was a game and he was not to actually remove anyone’s nose. 

“Oh good, you’re both ready!” 

Emmrich traipses down the stairs, hauling his own dark green wool coat up over his shoulders, a man in his element with his hair impeccably coiffed, his charcoal trousers perfectly pressed even in the absence of his butler. His earthy, herbal aftershave follows in his wake as he squeezes past Amina, his hand trailing over her waist to tug a soft woolen scarf from one of the hooks lining the wall.

“The ice on the river might have started melting had we waited any longer.” She snags Manfred’s wrist and gently deposits the ‘nose’ in his hand. After he jams it back on his face, clacking madly the entire time, she turns to Emmrich and beams at him, watching him weave the brown scarf into a complex but distinguished knot, tucking the ends down the front of his coat before buttoning it and lifting the collar to frame his angular face.

He’s flustered - at odds. Is it because he hasn’t skated in years, or is he still preoccupied with worry over Manfred?

“I loathe feeling rushed,” he half mumbles into the scarf, verging on a proper strop. 

“No one’s rushing you.”

He’s taking this very seriously. Too seriously: the tension in his frame gives it away. So she catches his eyes with hers along with his hands, and rises on her tiptoes to press a long, soft kiss to his lips. He tastes like life and embalming fluid and strong black tea.

“You’re the one that wanted to take me skating anyway,” she purrs against his lips, half tempted to tell Manfred that skating has been cancelled so she can take Emmrich upstairs and put a properly fucked out smile on his face instead of the dour pout he’s currently wearing. “We’ll have a lovely time, and if it helps put your mind at ease, why don’t we bundle Manfred in your thickest down-filled coat?” 

His mouth turns up slightly at the corners after a moment of consideration. “What an excellent idea, darling.” He kisses her again, holding her chin with his thumb and forefinger, his fingers so wonderfully warm and real. For a moment she wonders if he’s having thoughts about calling off their excursion as well, but he turns from her to rifle through the closet. He leans further and further in, going further and further back through decades of fashions - some timeless, others dated and eccentric - she’s well familiar by now with the state of his sprawling closet upstairs: it’s little wonder he has this many coats too. 

Eventually she hears a muffled ‘a-ha!’ and Emmrich resurfaces gripping a massive down-filled jacket that’s a virulent shade of yellow plaidweave. It’s got about forty pockets, twenty-odd buckles, and a dozen black toggle style closures running down the front all shaped like skulls. The hood and cuffs are trimmed with…with some sort of fur? …Why is it bright green?

It’s hideous.

Actually, ‘hideous’ is a polite assessment: in fact, it’s so, so far beyond hideous that Amina is unsure if there actually exists a word to accurately describe the severe affront to all things fashionable that this jacket is. 

Unable to help herself, Amina bursts out laughing at the sight of the thing, mostly due to the immediate mental image of the man holding it, wearing it. 

“What?” He frowns.

“It’s so…” she gasps between giggles. “It’s just so… hah! Did you actually wear that?” She collapses in a fit of amused titters again as the love of her life holds the jacket at arms length and studies it. 

“Well… yes.” He states, sounding nonplussed. “Granted, I was in my very early twenties when this style was popular with the more… avant garde circles I ran with in those days…” 

“It looks cozy, I’ll give it that.” She gently tugs it out of his hands even though he’s still frowning at it, nostalgia evident on his face. “And we certainly won’t lose Manfred in a crowd with this colour combination.”