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bts-trash-blog · 3 years ago

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Time~OT7 Werewolf Au

Chapter Three: Finally

Summary: Time. It's always passing by, always changing things that you wish stayed the same. It brought the good and it brought the bad, hell it brought the down right best time in your life. The best thing in your life came with time. It came with some stumbled steps, tough spots...it came with time.

Pairing: Werewolf!BTS X Werewolf!reader

Warning: Angst, mentions of violence, sexual assault, blood, gore, sex, matting, bitting, knotting, insecurities, slow burn. Fluff, and just one of my stories tbh.

PREV._.NEXT

The sound of your claws scraping against the wood deck has you freezing. Eyes looking towards the sliding door, watching, waiting for movement. But when none came you let out a deep breath, your mind slightly racing as your ears twitch with any sound. Wondering. Waiting. To see if the hunters had somehow tracked you.

You wanted to leave after finding the discarded camp close to your den. To run from this part of the forest. To disappear, to follow the ever travling market of misfits and loners. Yet when you reached the border of the territory you were in, the dust of new scents, of new adventures, new dangers wrapped around you, you suddenly had felt a painful pull. Almost as if barbed wire was suddenly lasso around your heart, your joints felt as if they were on fire. The pain was making you sweat, pant, and your stomach was turning with every step. You had turned around so quickly you swear you almost sprained your muscle not only in your neck but your hind-legs. The way your claws had drugged into the ground blew you had sprayed mud on your tummy. Yet it didn't matter to you, no only the goal to stop the pain. When you had met the tree border you had learned all too well the pain that had surged through your bones started to dissipate. Vanishing from your veins.

So now, here you are at Joons pack home. The warm, comforting scent calms you more. The ache in your joints was almost completely gone and it no longer felt like you were swallowing glass with every breath you took. It wasn't completely comfortable but it was the best you had felt since you met the doe-eyes of Jungkook. The swing had a perfect distance from it and the ground for you to crawl under, curl into a ball and close your eyes.

You hadn't felt this safe since before you presented, and with that you fell asleep quicker then you have before.

The warmth of the sun is what causes you to slightly stir, the warm autumn morning breeze sweeping through your fur as your ears twitch at the sounds of the forest around you waking up. The way the branches around the open felix swayed in the wind, the chirping of birds and the sound of the river on the north side of the cabin flowing. It was peaceful. So much so you almost feel back asleep. Your large snot was pressed again the top of one of your legs, your hind feet curled up to your stomach as your tail curled right below them. The swing seat was swaying with the breeze, nearly brushing against your extended rib cage. A brush of it every few seconds with each breath you took.

Though the sound of movement in the home had slightly startled you, your mind wanted you to run. To launch yourself from this peacefulness that surrounds you, your body refuses. It finally almost a hundred percent relaxed for the first time in years. Your body's exhaustion has finally caught up with you. Your eyelids wouldn't even open to look and see your surroundings, too heavy.

You didn't even flinch at the sound of the sliding door across from you opening, eyes not opening when the soft morning laughter stopped and were met with gasping breath and hushed whispers. The voice filling your head as a very familiar sweet smell filled the air. Though now you were close enough to it to make out the elements of it. While Namjoon smelt of cyder his Omega, Jin, smelt of cinnamon sugar. The spice of the cinnamon warmed your naturals as you focused on him, your ear twitching as he spoke.

"Holy shit." His voice had a slight brace to it, you could almost imagine the way his lips formed in a concerned frown. It had your ears twitching on the top of your head as you let out a huff. The second scent that had mixed with Jins was unfamiliar. The best way you could explain the faint scent was warm. It makes your body relaxing even more, as the footsteps grow closer to your sleeping frame.

"So this is the Omega?" The voice had your snot wiggling as you slowly peel your eyes open. There was the tall broad Omega, next to a slightly shorter man. His brown hair straight, falling into his face as his sun kissed skin seems to glow slightly from the light. His eyes stare at you, eyes connecting as you watch his once tense shoulders drop.

Beta.

He's a beta.

His senses are slightly lessened then the ones of Alpha or Omegas. Though much more powerful than that of a human. It meant they find their mates differently than most, many of them have to make eye contact to feel the connection. His scent was faint to a normal wolf yet you, one of his mates, could smell the fresh citrus mixing with something sweet and thick. Honey. He smelt of honey and oranges. It had you tilting your head as you lifted it as much as you can, eyes staying locked on him. You move your paws closer to yourself as you watch him lower himself to the ground, his eyes keeping on you as he suddenly bows his head. His knees on the deck as his hands rest on his thighs. You felt safe from the gesture, your body slightly crawling out from under the swing. Yet you kept your distance from the two males.

“Hoseok, don-” Jin started when you lifted your lip when the Beta reached his hand out to you slowly, his wrist facing upward as you watched the Omega, Jin reach out to the Betas shoulder.

“Hyung I know.” Hoseok. His name is Hoseok. Your lip uncurled as you extended your head, yoru wet nose brushing against his wrist as your eyes stayed on his face. Eyes casted downward, as your head stays bowed, taking a breath in the citrus honey scent entered your body and it had you vibrating. Your toes slightly curl as you close your eyes, your tongue poking out lapping at the scent gland making the Hoseok let out a soft whine at the feeling. Though the taste of honey and oranges on your tongue had your move further out from below the swing. You were soon sitting up in front of Hoseok, the Beta in question still in a kneeling position, his eyes slightly glazed over as you tilt your head down at him. It had him blinking as you heard a soft coon from the side of you.

“Omega…” Jin's voice called out, making you look at him, his eyes wide as you watched him bow down in a similar position as Hoseok. It had you standing as you walked towards him, the pull to be close to both of the males was strong so strong you knew you couldn’t run. “Here.” Jin mumbled, reaching his arm out just like Hoseok had. He had you huffing as you sniffed the Cinnamon sugar smell and had you wiggling your nose slightly as you sneezed slightly making a soft laugh fall past Hoseok's lips. Your tongue pokes out and the taste of his glande has your tail sweeping back and forth as you pull away and move close to Jin. The strong scent of him clouded your head as your front paws landed on either side of his large thighs. You take a look over, his figure was exactly the same as it had been almost a month ago when you were crouched in the grass. His hair was slightly longer and was almost in his eyes with the way he was bowing at you. You snot pressed against the tip of his nose as your huff at him, falling down into his lap making his breath pass his lips.

The feeling of his hand landing at the fur at the base of your neck had your tail thumping against the porch making him smile down at you. Your eyes closed as you enjoyed the feeling of his fingers running through your mud matted coat, though you look up when you hear a sniffle. Jin's eyes were glossed over as his free hand rubbed under his eyes, though a few tear drops escaped and fell down his face. You paw moves, scratching slightly at the wood as he sniffles again and smiles down at you.

“Just..happy you're safe and here…I was so worried this last week.” Jin whines out, his lips shaking slightly as he speaks, the view of Hoseok's hand reaching to cup Jin's cheek making you smile internally at the image in front of you. Hoseok's eyes look down at you as he smiles and his hand falls from Jin's face to behind your ear as he looks at you and gives you a small frown.

“Let's get you cleaned up, yeah?” You lift your head slightly to look at him and huff, head falling back into Jin's lap as you close your eyes. Enjoying the way your body relaxed in the presentens of the two men, nails scraping against your skin as you feel your ear being rubbed as the sound of the door opening head your head being thrown up and look to see doe-eyes.Your body quickly moves, body hopping off of the porch as he moves, Jungkook's eyes staying on you as Jin and Hoseok look between the two of you. “Kookie..” Hoseok mumbles as the Alpha suddenly shifts, landing in front of you, his wolf much bigger than your own. His fur was jet black, eyes gold and he was towering over you as his ears twitched slightly at you.

He was massive compared to you.

His large paws were digging in the ground as you looked him over, letting your inner wolf know he was no threat to you. He suddenly bowed. His neck extends to the side as you growl slightly at him as his tongue moves to lick at your jaw. Your growling was met with his whines and whimpers as his body lands on his side, rolling on his back making you huff as he moves his nose against yours, your growling growing with his movements. Suddenly your teeth were wrapped around his snot, his whimper and whines still loud, and though your teeth were slightly pressing against his skin you never pressed down. He was submitting to you. It was odd and you responded with instinct not with knowledge. Your mouth opened, suddenly his head fell to the ground with a whine as you fell on top of him. His scent was mouth watering. More so than the two on the porch, but not as much as Joon. It was sticky and fresh, hints of pine and the scent of eucalyptus mixed in with it.

Your nose rubbed against his neck as his dur tickled you slightly, it had you jumping at the soft feeling of his fur a syou moved and looked at him. His eyes closed, having enjoyed the light scenting you had done, his legs up in the air bent at the paw as he wiggled slightly making you huff as you saw his white canine poking from his mouth. His golden eyes opened as he rolled back over and sat up, his body suddenly shifting back to his human form as you looked at him. His body standing as his hand reaches out as you press your chin into the palm of his hand.

“Finally.” He muttered softly under his breath as you pulled away, head tilting as you see his doe eyes staring at you with a gleam in them. The morning sun made his skin glow,and with his body bare you could see black tattoos all over his skin. Though you stopped at his v-line eyes snapping back up as he smirks at you. You stood up on all fours, your body cracking, a small painful hiss passing your lips as you shifted back into your own human form. Your bare feet pressed against the dirt below, the feeling of you muscle pulsing and your joints burning has your body stumbling slightly as you were caught by warm hands. You look to see tattooed letters, ones you believed to be initials of his, your, mates. Your eyes look up to see him giving you a lopsided smile as his nose is brushing against yours, his fingers rubbing small shapes into your skin as you see his canine peeking out from behind his smiles. “Not gonna run off on me again are you?” His words had your eyes slightly widening as you shake your head slowly, a soft chuckle passing his lips.

“Let me..let me hold your bag for you.” Jin's voice has your eyes snapping over to him as you blink, stumbling slightly at just how close he is to you.You nod slowly as you feel it slip from your arms, landing into his hands as he opens it making your lips part, though no voice passes your lips. “Oh shit, ow.” Jin mumbles, pulling his hand back, a small red mark on his hand, shaking it out as Jungkook's grip tightens around you as Hoseok is suddenly right behind Jin.

“Hunter's knife.” Hoseok mumbles as you give them a sheepish look, fear rushing through you as Jungkook whines at the shift in your scent. His nose pressing into your hair as he pulls you into his chest, skin to skin you feel your muscle relax.

“It's okay, not mad, you’re not in trouble.” His voice has your body relaxing as you pull away and take a deep breath in, Hoseok moving and pulling out a slip you had gotten from the market.

“You’re beautiful Omega, but I don't think Junkook or the others could handle just staring at you much longer.” Hoseok's words had you blushing as you nod as you grab the black fabric, pulling it over your head as you take a deep breath in. The soft familiar fabric hugging you as you look at the three men around you. Clearing your throat you take a deep breath in.

“H-h-ello.” Your voice cracks out, coughing slightly at the end as Jungkook wraps himself around your back, his nose nudging your scent gland making you jump.

“I’m Jin.”

“Hello to you too.” Jungkook's voice raps out making heat spread across your chest, your eyes staring at the Omega and Beta in front of you. “I’m Jungkook.”

“I'm Hoseok.”

“Y-Y/n.”

Taglist:

@doublebunv @effielumiere @mageprincess7 @hangsang-jh @lachimolala22019 @sinceritythatcouldntbedelivered @scuzmunkie @tinyoonsblog @jaiuneamesolitaiire @jiminie-08 @zae007live @jujutaku @seoul9711

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scyllas-revenge · 2 years ago

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The Floor Is Molasses

The War of the Ring is over. Frodo has sailed to the Undying Lands, Sam is comfortably settled into Bag End with Rosie and his children—and Boromir, Steward of Gondor and Captain of the White Tower, is taking a much-needed vacation in the Shire.

And while Boromir may have developed a surprising knack for gardening, looking after Sam’s children is proving to be much harder than he’d planned.

Rating: G

Words: 2644

Read on AO3!

“Look at those lovely rows! You’ve improved a great deal, Mister Boromir, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so.” Sam removed his fraying straw hat to fan his face in the late summer sun.

“Have I indeed?” Boromir got to his feet to observe their work, wiping the sweat from his brow.

Rows of freshly tilled soil marched down the sprawling garden of Bag End, labeled with Sam’s untidy but determined hand: Peas, Turnips, Leeks, Carrots, Beets, on and on—Boromir might have called it excessive, if he hadn’t known firsthand just how much hobbits were capable of eating.

“’Course you’ve improved,” Sam replied stoutly, now brushing the dirt from his trousers. “After your horrible start—though maybe that’s best forgotten, if you follow me.”

Boromir recalled his first day in Bag End with a wince. After being asked by Rosie to prune the rosebushes she and Sam couldn’t quite reach, he’d marched confidently into the garden and promptly trodden on their newly planted snapdragons, twisting Rosie’s face into a frightening scowl and nearly bringing little Elanor to tears. “Once again, Sam, I must apologize for that.”

“Oh, no harm done.” Sam waved his words away with a reassuring hand.

Boromir's eyes lowered. Always Sam was too quick to forgive him—quicker by far than Boromir deserved—no matter how trifling or serious the offense.

“You replaced the snapdragons right quick, at least," Sam went on, grinning, jogging Boromir from his memories. "Anyways, it’s not your fault. ‘Them Big Folk are clumsy through and through,’ I told my Rosie, you know, ‘and likely it’s on account of those big clunking boots they wear, they can’t help but step on everything in their way.’”

Boromir laughed, and the sound nearly startled him. He was happy, almost unbearably happy, here in this little garden in the Shire, dirt clumped under his fingernails and a sunburn blooming on the back of his neck. Who would have guessed that Boromir, Steward of Gondor and Captain of the White Tower, would develop such a love of gardening?

True, he wouldn't remain in the Shire long enough to see the seeds sprout or to taste the fruits of his hard work, but he minded little. He’d needed something to occupy himself here—he’d never taken a vacation in his life and wasn’t used to being idle—but he’d taken to gardening with greater joy than he could have imagined. It was the act of planting, the steadfast care the seeds needed to grow, the amount of water and depth of soil and a thousand other protections against the elements…

And perhaps most importantly, Boromir’s floppy gardening hat and the lumpy, man-sized shearing gloves Rosie had fashioned for him were a good deal more comfortable than his captain’s armor, and were far less likely to be drenched in blood.

“Now then,” Sam said, scratching his chin. “We’re near done for the day, I should think. If you wouldn't mind, go inside and fetch my pruning shears. We’ll see to the rose bushes and then meet Rosie at the Green Dragon for a mug of ale, if you like.”

With a nod, Boromir went back to the green hobbit-door, pausing to scrape the mud off his boots. He ducked low to avoid the door frame and made his way down the hall.

A chorus of laughter met his ears as he made his awkward, crouching way down the long hallway: Merry and Pippin were watching the two hobbit-children while Rosie was finishing her shift at the pub, Boromir knew, but from the sound of it, his friends weren’t trying very hard to keep their charges in line.

He scratched his chin thoughtfully. Now, did Sam keep his pruning shears in the kitchen? Or were they perhaps—

Something shoved at his calf. “Move!”

“Eh?” Boromir jolted upright and thwacked his head against the rafters. “Valar blast it all—” Eyes watering, he squinted down to see a chubby little figure tugging furiously at his leg.

“Move!” Elanor’s round cheeks were bright red, her wild blonde curls swinging as she punched at his calf. For a child who could be no more than five, her voice held as much authority as a king’s. “Move-move-move, get off the floor!”

“What? Why’s that, lass?”

“Because!” she cried, and it was only then that Boromir noticed that she was standing on a sofa cushion—that she’d, in fact, hopped her way to him on a long trail of cushions, several of which had split open in protest and were now bleeding goose feathers into the air. “Because the floor is molasses! Now move!”

“Ah.” A grin bloomed on his face. “Molasses, is it?”

“Yes, now hurry up, Boromir,” came Pippin’s cry from the living room. “It’s safer in here!”

“Very well,” he said gravely, distantly recalling similar games from Faramir’s childhood—though their antics had involved rather less homey threats than molasses, if memory served. In the Citadel, the marble tiles had most often turned to lava or quicksand, and out of doors the tall grasses had become thickets of enemy spears, which he and Faramir had avoided only by dangling from tree branches and leaping into ponds.

But that mattered little. He could work with molasses.

Scooping up a giggling Elanor in his arms, Boromir trudged toward the living room, groaning and dragging his boots against the floor so exaggeratedly that the hobbit-lass punched his shoulder. “Hurry up!”

“Nearly—there,” Boromir gasped, falling dramatically to his knees in the living room doorway, depositing Elanor safely onto another cushion as he did so.

“Get up, you great lump!” she bellowed, reaching forward to yank on his hair. “You’ll be stuck forever!”

“It’s true,” Pippin added mildly. “We’ve lost many a good hobbit that way, you know.”

Boromir looked up to reply, then snorted. Pippin was standing on the dining room table, his curly hair in the rafters.

“Oy!” Merry called cheerily. He lay flat on his stomach on top of the grandfather clock in the hall, his limbs hanging limply on all sides like a collapsed scarecrow. “How’s the gardening coming along?”

“’ullo, mister Bormeer,” came a call from little Frodo, who stood in a large plant pot, his chubby toddler hands clutching the rim to balance himself. Dirt and leaves were scattered about on the floor, the only visible remnants of the plant pot’s former inhabitant. “You gotta get off the floor, mister, or you’re gonna get stucked,” the hobbit-lad informed him seriously. “Right, Ellie?”

“That’s what I’ve been telling him!” his big sister cried, hand on her hips again. “Mister Pippin, throw him a rope or something. I can’t get him up on my own, he’s too big and fat.”

Boromir spluttered. “Too big and—”

“Don’t worry, Boromir, I’ll save you.” Deftly, Pippin flung a wooden bowl of fruit in the direction of the coat stand near the wall, which toppled toward him with a clatter loud enough to make Boromir wince. Catching hold of it, Pippin directed its wooden feet in Boromir’s direction. “Go on, use this—pull yourself up to safety!”

“And what will Sam say when he sees that you’ve all done your best to destroy Bag End and everything in it?”

“It’s already destroyed,” little Frodo crowed from the plant pot. “It’s covered in molasses!”

Boromir considered this. “A fair point,” he conceded, and with a great show of struggling and straining, he pulled himself to safety. He was too big to sit comfortably in most of the chairs in Bag End, so he settled on the dinner table with his feet resting on the nearest chair. “There,” he said, grinning at the hobbits. “Am I quite safe now, do you think?”

“No!” Elanor cried. “Now the table’s sinking into the molasses, right Mister Merry?”

"You know, I think you're right." Merry swung his legs idly from on top of the grandfather clock. “Excellent observation, Ellie my dear.”

“What am I to do then, Captain Elanor?” Boromir turned back to her. “I await your orders.”

“Get to the sofa—quick!”

Boromir nodded determinedly, but as he stepped back onto the floor, little Frodo gave a shriek. “Don’t touch the floor, Mister!”

He hesitated. “How am I to cross the room, then?”

Elanor rolled her eyes. “Jump across on the pillows, of course!” To demonstrate, she leap-frogged across the room on the strewn sofa cushions before reaching the safety of the rocking chair in the corner. The chair swayed precariously under her momentum, but stayed upright. With a shout of triumph, she turned back to Boromir and jabbed an imperious finger at him. “Now you!”

“Straightaway, Captain,” he replied with a salute, making Elanor giggle.

He hesitated for a moment, but there was nothing else for it. Boromir launched himself from the too-small chair and landed squarely on the nearest sofa cushion, which promptly exploded in a cloud of goose feathers.

“You great lump!” Elanor cried.

“Wooo!” little Frodo shrieked from the plant pot.

“Nicely done, Boromir,” Merry said dryly.

“Oh, nicely done, was it?”

Boromir winced as Sam’s voice cut through the cloud of feathers.

“What is going on here?” Sam’s stout hands were on his hips, and he glared from Boromir to Pippin to Merry, who in the ensuing moment of frightened silence toppled headlong off the grandfather clock and landed in a heap on the floor.

“Sorry, Sam,” Merry muttered.

Sam turned to pluck little Frodo out of the plant pot and rolled his eyes. “I’d expected such things from these two,” he said, turning his curly head to scowl at Merry and Pippin. “But you, Mister Boromir—now, I thought you were more serious than all this. And my Rosie’s cushions, and the dinner table, and all!”

“But Papa—” Elanor tugged on Sam’s sleeve anxiously. “It’s my fault, I made him do it!”

Sam crouched down low, setting Frodo down beside her and brushing dirt and leaves off his clothes. “And why’d you make him do it, Ellie?” he asked, more gently.

She looked around with a quivering lip, clearly mourning the loss of her game. “Because—” Her face screwed up, and then she was sobbing. “Because the floor was molasses!”

Patting her hair, Sam nodded thoughtfully.

“We really are sorry,” Pippin said earnestly, staring at the feather-spotted ground. “We’ll help you clean up, we promise.”

“Oh, you’ll help me, will you?” Sam folded his arms imperiously, and Pippin shrank back with an audible gulp. “You’ll clean this mess up yourselves, and right quick! But first—”

He bent down to Elanor, who was still weeping bitterly into her hands.

“The floor was molasses, was it?”

She nodded shakily.

“It was,” she bawled, wiping at her nose. “I’m sorry—”

“There, there, Ellie. It seems to me the only thing to do now is…” He leaned closer and whispered something in Elanor’s ear.

She stopped crying at once. “Really?”

“That’s right.”

“And Mister Boromir too?”

“Of course.” Sam rocked back on his heels, smiling sagely. “Go on, then. And take little Frodo with you.”

With a shrieking giggle, Elanor grabbed her brother’s pudgy hand and raced out the door into the yard.

“What's that you're planning, Sam?” Boromir asked. He didn’t like the gleam in the hobbit’s eyes.

“Planning?" Sam put his hands on his hips. "Now, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean—I’ve never been one for plans. So then, pick up the chairs and cushions, you lot, and sweep up these feathers.”

Heads bowed in contrition, they set about their tasks.

Boromir struggled to maneuver the broom properly, his tongue between his teeth, while Merry and Pippin began to straighten up the furniture. But only a few minutes had passed before Sam tugged the broom out of Boromir's hands. "What's that you're doing, Mister Boromir?"

"What do you mean? I'm sweeping."

"Scraping up the floor is what you're doing," he cried. "Haven't you never used a broom before?"

Boromir rubbed the back of his neck and coughed.

Sam sighed. "Well, enough of that for now, in any case. Why don't the three of you go outside and pick some flowers for Rosie, to make this place look a bit brighter?”

They weren't anywhere near done cleaning up the mess they'd made, but they looked at one another and shrugged. “It beats moving furniture!" Merry exclaimed, and the three of them made their way to the door.

But no sooner had Boromir stepped onto the front porch than he was struck with a cascade of water—accompanied by a shriek of laughter.

“What the—” Boromir spluttered, wiping at his face and his drenched tunic. Beside him, Merry and Pippin were coughing and spluttering too, though their attacker hadn’t managed to splash much more than their hairy feet.

“We got you!” Elanor cried, poking her head up from behind the door, where she and little Frodo had been lying in wait. They each held empty watering cans in their chubby fists, and little Frodo was giggling so hard that no sound was coming out.

Merry bent and ruffled the boy's hair, laughing. “I suppose we deserved that, didn’t we?”

"Yes!" Frodo giggled, punching the air in victory. "You derserved it!"

"That was a mighty strike, Captain Elanor," Boromir said, wiping at his face and shirt before picking up the laughing hobbit-lass and setting her on his shoulder. "You have a strong arm indeed."

"I know!" She beamed, swinging her feet back and forth proudly.

"Papa!" Little Frodo yelled. "Papa, we did it!"

Sam's laughing face appeared in the doorway. "Well done, Ellie, Frodo! Think that got the molasses off of them, or do they need another bath?"

"No, no," Pippin said hurriedly, hopping on one foot as he squeezed the water out of one of his trouser legs. "We've learned our lesson."

Merry sighed. "Well, we'd best keep cleaning up those feathers, I suppose."

"Oy, dry yourselves off first! I'll not have you tracking water and muck all over my floors," Sam called. Merry and Pippin froze guiltily, then scurried off to obey. "And as for you, Mister Boromir—” Sam ducked back inside and returned with his pruning shears. "Let's finish up our gardening, eh?"

"Can I help too?" Elanor cried from Boromir's shoulder. She tugged at his hair impatiently, making his eyes water.

"Me too, me too!" Little Frodo hopped up and down, tugging at the loose fabric of Boromir's trousers. At Sam's nod of approval, Boromir grinned, scooped up the hobbit-lad, and set him on his other shoulder, and together they made their way to the garden.

"Papa, look how tall I am!" Little Frodo crowed, punching the air by Boromir's head.

Elanor scowled over Boromir's head. "You're not as tall as me!"

"Am too!" Frodo bellowed, and soon they were bickering heatedly. Sighing, Boromir set them both down, where they took off like firecrackers, chasing each other around in the grass and shrieking.

"I really am sorry, Sam," Boromir muttered as he took up the pruning shears. "You and your family have been kind enough to host me here, and I made a mess of things."

"Everyone makes a mess of things sometimes, if you follow me," Sam said. "And anyway, the worst of the mess was made by Merry and Pippin."

"Even so, I should not have forgotten myself thus." Boromir frowned, reaching up to clip away the branches out of hobbit-reach. "It's been many years since I've felt so at ease, and I fear I've let it go to my head."

"You should let it go to your head more often," Sam said, collecting the fallen branches in his arms as Elanor and Frodo laughed and wrestled in the garden nearby. "Only next time leave our poor furniture out of it, no matter how much molasses is flooding Bag End."

Boromir shook Sam's hand, unable to stop himself from laughing. "It's a deal."

#lotr fanfic #boromir #sam gamgee #hobbits #fluff #hobbit dad boromir

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wearywinchester · 3 years ago

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Hold On

Dean Winchester x Reader

Summary: When you’re injured on a hunt with a shapeshifter, Dean’s there to make sure you’re okay.

Requested by Anonymous: “Come here, I’ll carry you”

Word Count: 1.8k

Warnings: injuries, mentions of blood, mild swearing, fluff, kissing

A groan.

That’s all you could manage as you tipped your head back and let it thud against the wall, eyes squeezing shut as another groan fell past your lips. You were nothing short of exhausted as you slumped against that wall, one that surely had the outline of your body indented in it from where you’d been thrown earlier. Just how early it’d been, you weren’t really sure about that part.

What you were sure of was the incessant burning across your knuckles and the pressure behind your cheekbone, knowing for certain there was a cut running along your skin there. You were increasingly aware of the way your knee had a dull throb to it, your ankle a million times worse. That familiar pressure radiated behind your eyes as the tears stung and burned, frustration having built up and nearly boiled over. Between the pain of your injuries and the embarrassment you felt for getting them, it was enough to have them rolling down your cheeks, hot on your skin.

It was a shifter. One that’d turned into your very own twin, adding to the strangeness of it all when it cornered you in a room by yourself, the room you currently sulked in with the inability to get very far.

The saying you are your own worst enemy had taken on a meaning you never quite thought of in that moment, one that had your brows furrowing and the anger simmering within you. You knew it’d used your looks to it’s advantage for the brothers you came with, for Dean. You were his sweet spot and it seemed as though every monster in the very world you lived in knew that very fact and took full advantage of the seemingly universal knowledge.

But that wasn’t important right now. What was important was the fact that you’d gotten separated from the pair and were reduced to a hobble should you want to get up and find your way to them. That would be simple if you knew where they were—you’d heard some yelling and a miscellaneous shot fired, but it wasn’t enough to pinpoint where your beau had been.

Your hands were trembling as you brought them up to your face, adrenaline still having its hold on you as you rub your hands down your face despite the jolt of pain making itself known when your hand ran over your cheek. You grit your teeth and curse under your breath at the sensation, fists balling in your momentary irritation before they relax once more.

All around you were heaps of broken glass from windows and cabinets, shards of snapped wood joining it on the floor and you were fairly certain you were sitting on more than a few of those pieces. The couch was overturned and it’s cushions splay around the room in places cushions shouldn’t be, the table split down the middle and sitting in a pile of rubble much like the rest of the room. The paintings and pictures on the walls were torn, the glass in some of the frames broken and from where you’d thrown them in self defense. Something that also took on a new meaning.

You were tired, fatigue weighing you down as your heart hammered in your chest and sweat coated your skin. You were tired and miserable and desperately wanted to call it a day. A bubble bath seemed like a dream to you in that moment, contrasting to the way you felt having currently been covered in dirt and blood and sweat and most freshly—tears.

Your jaw tenses as tightly as you could manage when you rolled to your side, palm pressed to the floor as you leaned on your good knee. It was no easy feat getting yourself up off that floor, the smallest bit of pressure upon your ankle nearly sending you over the edge as you stood to your feet with a tear rolling down your cheek. Balance was something you lacked in that moment, never something you had down to begin with but it paled in comparison to this as you caught yourself on the wall.

“I am never hunting again,” you grumble to yourself, huff leaving your lips though you knew it was a lie.

“Y/n?”

You gaze lifted to the owner of the voice, relief washing over you as he crossed the room in as little as three strides. “Dean? Please tell me it’s really you because I can’t do a round two with that thing.”

“I could ask you the same thing, sweetheart,” he says, brows furrowing as his hand comes up to your cheek, the pad of his thumb brushing over your skin as the tips of his fingers hover over the very curve of your ear.

You could see every emotion that expressed on his face, that filled his eyes as they bounced over every inch of your face at each and every scrape and scratch and bump and bruise. You could see the myriad of questions and arguments sitting on the tip of his tongue on how you should have been more careful, how he shouldn’t have let you leave his side this time. It wasn’t hard to see, even if he’d deny it till he was blue in the face if you’d said those very things you saw.

His eyes fall closed for a moment as the relief falls over him, his forehead pressing to yours as his jaw tenses. He feels the anger simmering in the pit of his stomach at the thought of what’d happened to you and at the very fact that he couldn’t do anything about it. Wasn’t there to help you. If he was, your hands wouldn’t be shaking so much and you wouldn’t have those tears in your eyes that pull at his heart every time he sees them. You wouldn’t be shifting on your feet as you try and stand on a messed up ankle and you wouldn’t have felt scared. You hadn’t said it but he knew you were.

You wouldn’t be hurt.

“You okay?” He asks instead, nose bumping yours softly in the close proximity.

“Take a wild guess, Winchester,” you said, lips quirking up in a soft smile.

He pulls back to look at you then, lips pursed as the crease between his brows deepens. “You’re somethin’ else, you know that?”

“Yeah, I do,” you say, getting yourself an eye roll.

You muster up the strength to push past him, all hobbles with just an ounce of balance as your face twists in immediate discomfort. The groan you try to muffle doesn’t get past green eyes behind you, especially not the gasp you’re quick to inhale when that ever familiar searing pain burns up the length of your leg. It was beyond you how you thought you could play it off, but even then you still didn’t give up your efforts.

“Y/n,” he started, a warning tone in his voice mixed with exasperation.

“I’m fine, Dean. I got it,” you insist, though the half cry leaving your lips right after is less than helping your case.

“Would you quit it with the macho tough guy act?” He says and you’re quick to flash him a glare. His brows raise and he throws his hands up. He was right and he knew it. “Come here, I’ll carry you.”

“Are you crazy?” Your glare remains as your head tilts, his hands dropping to his sides.

“Don’t be ridiculous, sweetheart, ‘m not letting you walk so deal with it.”

You sigh as a smile tugs at the corners of your mouth, one you try desperately to stave off as you roll your eyes. He turns on his heel and squats down, head turning and brow raising as he waits. A huff sounds and so does a stifle noise of discomfort as you move, your hands pressing to his shoulders as you climb on his back. His hands rest behind your thighs as he stands tall, your arms wrapping around his neck as your head rests against his.

A quiet apology is immediate at the sound of your muffled complaints when your ankle is jostled more than you’d prefer, soft and sweet. You tightened your grip around him then, your chin resting on his shoulder as he kicked the busted door open, careful not to let it hit you.

The rain was drizzling outside as he started along the trail back to the car, the droplets cold against your skin as they pelted down over you at a steady pace.

“You’re taller than I thought,” you mumble, a teasing smile on your lips. “Maybe I should stop calling you short stack.”

His chuckle rumbles against you and you can’t see the grin on his face but boy was he sporting the sweetest smile as he shook his head at your words. “Oh really?”

“Yeah really,” you say, laughing to yourself. “But you are shorter than Sam, so I’m gonna have to take it back, short stack.”

He squeezes your good leg in playful retaliation, head shaking some more as he hikes you up further on his back. Even when you’re hurting you never miss the chance to pick on him and he swears you’re the embodiment of sunshine, he knows you are but he doesn’t know how he got so lucky.

“I meant it when I said you were a pain,” he says, his grin in his words.

You laughed then, one that has him smiling like a fool. You sigh softly, another laugh falling from your lips.

“I can’t believe I kicked my own ass,” you say, brows furrowing as you thought about it and his own laughter was immediate. It wasn’t all too amusing half an hour ago but in the current moment, it was kinda comical you will admit.

“You kicked mine too.”

You sigh, quiet and gentle as you look ahead over his shoulder. His stubble is rough against your cheek as your skin brushes against it, your hand that dangled over in front of him patting his chest.

“De?” You say softly, eyes focused on his boots with every step in the mud and gravel. He hummed. “You really are sweet.”

Sweet. It was something you called him often, something he’d beg to differ on because he feels you deserve more, but that isn’t even something he’d argue with you on. He knows full well he’d lose. But it’s got him smiling, one that only widens when you kiss his cheek and your smile presses into his skin, paired with a soft press of your lips to the corner of his mouth when he turns his head. He stops in his tracks and tips his head back, kissing you once, twice, three times before he turns once more and continues by the path.

It’s his wordless I love you, his wordless acceptance of your words as he’s got that goofy smile on his lips he’s glad you can’t see. You know you’ll be just fine as long as you’ve got him, and he knows he’s not going anywhere.

—

Tags: @flamencodiva @stixnstripesworld @dean-is-sams-apple-pie @elegantbutedgy @humanmistakes @campingmonkey

#dean winchester #dean winchester oneshot #dean winchester fanfiction #dean winchester fluff #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester x you #dean winchester fic #dean winchester imagine

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gaiuswrites · 4 years ago

Text

King of Cups || Chapter 5

Chapter 5: The Moon

Archive: ao3 | masterlist | four

Pairing: Din Djarin x fem!Reader

Summary: All relationships are about give and take.

Word count: 7k~

Rating: Explicit (Mature until the last few paragraphs)

Warnings/tags: nightmares, trauma, drinking, fluff and pining, drugs/being drugged (medicinal), wound care, blood, shots/needles, mature themes/language, emo shit, masturbation (f)

Notes: Hi friends. This is broken up in two portions: the first, being in Nevarro, and the second taking place some time later (hopefully that becomes clear when you read it heh). I'm hoping I captured the varying, distinct tones in each of the sections. Please feel free to reach out to me. :) Enjoy x (gif credit: @skyshipper)

They come at night.

The visions.

Your legs are rock, crumbling - eroding - with each weighted step, trudging through the city you once knew, laid bare to waste all around you. The air is grey brown, chalked with dust—with ash. There are bodies lining the road like trimmed hedges, floating by their ankles—ugly, corporal zeppelins. They’re pale. Their eyes are burned to coal and their tongues hang dead and waxy from their mouths.

They begin the same, choreographed like this; you follow the paths your mind has carved out for you, time and time again.

You spot him, plated in silver at the end of the row. Your feet stop. You see him, and he sees you. You feel his eyes - hawkish, piercing - under the murk of his visor. A predator’s gaze. He’s got a man in his fist—you think you recognize him, you might not—held by the scruff of his neck.

Sometimes it’s X’elo, bending to break in his gloved grasp. Other times, a stranger—a half remembered photograph—a memory of a memory of another dream entirely.

And sometimes, it’s you.

You hear the howl of wind scream through your bones—through the bones of the ruins there—but you don’t feel it. There’s only heat—the kind that’s unavoidable and omnipresent, as heavy as guilt. The hunter brings his hands to frame the man’s temples—yours too, sometimes— pebbles and slate trembling off you as you move towards them. You’re running, you realize, immobile but running and you’re not sure how or why—you never get there in time to find out.

He snaps his neck. You hear the crunch in your own ear—inside your own head.

It becomes night—blood moons drip wet from the sky. They splash onto the dirt. It turns to mud, caking the underside of your boots, squelching as you walk. You round a corner and—

You don’t recognize this. This is new. This— no, this is wrong.

A door. Rutted, freestanding—a dark monolith.

You stutter in your sleep, a crease in your brow.

It’s just a door.

No, not here—

A door. Black wood, a brass handle. Just a door, and you’re sweating. Just a door, and you’re suffocating—you’re being smothered—like your outsides are clawing to get back in through your throat and it’s sucking you in—this door, it’s just a door, it’s just a—closer, nearer, looming taller overhead—

You gasp awake, clutching at the scratchy blanket drenched cold with your sweat. Your rasps echo against the hull, sharp pants scraping the hollow metal, and you bring a hand to your chest—steadying, steadying, the fear of your racing heart.

You sit up, throwing your legs over the edge of the cot, and rake a shaky hand through your hair—the damp of the strands sticking to the nape of your neck. Your breathing evens out, tampering, with your forearms braced on the plats of your thighs; the rise and fall of your breasts against your sleep shirt quiet until you’ve stilled.

You roll off the bed, the aluminum frame whining with the shift, and you knock a knee into one of the carbonite pods as you stumble out of the storage room—your bedroom, now.

You couldn’t handle much more of it. You bought a bedroll the first planet you stopped to refuel at after Bajic, hermitting yourself away into the bowels of his ship. It was the only smidgen of untapped real estate left in the Crest, and it was far be it from you to complain about location. You were just thankful to be out of that copilot’s chair—no amount of bacta could unwind the knots in your neck after sleeping there night after restless night.

So you bunked with the bounties Mando had brought in, like one big macabre slumber party—the chrome slabs slotted up - watchful - in their chambers.

You try not to spare it much thought.

Padding through the Crest, soft bare feet leaving crescents on the steel deck, you step into the fresher to splash water on your face, jolting you back into the present and out of the nightmare, out of—

Just a door.

No—

You towel off, patting yourself dry. Inhaling, your lungs expand with the massive rush of air, and you hold it there until it hurts, until it prickles the corners of your eyes, and finally - deliberately - you release.

You look into the mirror.

You blink. She blinks back.

///

You make breakfast now.

It’s not something you both agreed to, it’s just something you do. Funny, how quickly you adapt to new normals, to new routines. You have rituals now—you two. You make breakfast, and you leave a bowl for him out on the counter before you slip into the shower. When you get out, the bowl is empty and the dishes are washed clean, drying face down on a rag. You smile. You never speak of it. Like ivy crawling up cobbled walls towards the sun, it happens— without prompt or feed, it simply is.

///

Nevarro reminds you of Dallenor—the craggy blandness of it, the endless black sands—and you fight the urge to hate it solely based on this principal alone.

You stay on the ship with the little one while Mando goes into town, meeting with some Greef Karga character to sew up Guild business. You have no idea how he ever managed to get any hunting done with the kid always acting up, pulling hijinks and inciting anarchy. He’s nearly torn the whole place to shreds. How such a tiny body can produce such a massive wake of damage is a mystery you will never solve.

You make yourself watch.

You force your jaw, set and held, as Karga’s men haul the quarries out of the ship, hovering eerily down the ramp.

X’elo, the smuggler from Vohai, some two-bit thief, and a woman Mando caught before you met, all parading single file out of the Crest like a funeral procession. They’re criminals, each and every one—they’re violent and they’ve done terrible, irredeemable things—but they’re people, too.

And isn’t that what makes it all so cruel. So sad.

The least you can do is give them an ounce of dignity before they’re subjected to their fate— however harsh, however fair.

So, you watch.

Maybe they don’t deserve it—they’re here by their own hand, after all, a bed of their own making— and maybe they haven’t earned it back any. But perhaps it’s less about what you can offer them and more about what you refuse to let the galaxy take. Because don’t you deserve to stay unfragmented? Complete? Would you rather be robbed of this humanity, your sense of decency—have it stolen from you?

Doesn’t it cost you nothing to be kind?

You pray neither sound nor fury will strip you of this—this open-eyed tenderness. You beg that you remain, undistilled, despite despite despite.

///

You’re so much more relaxed now then when you first came on board. You were as quiet as a church mouse then, tip toeing around the ship like you were afraid you’d ruin her.

Din will never admit it, but you even managed to get the jump on him once or twice—appearing exactly when and where he least expected. And he didn’t - couldn’t have - he didn’t expect you.

This.

And he looks at you now: lit by lamplight—the kerosene filament flickering warm in the dark hull— slotted back and humming to yourself as you swipe a finger over a holopad, feet propped up on a crate by the table, and it all looks organic. Right.

The drink in your hand, sloshing against the amber jug, no doubt eases your mood. You’re drinking it right from the bottle. He thinks it’s fucking charming.

“Enjoying yourself?”

“Maker above,” you hiss, startling a foot out of your seat. You shoot him an accusatory glare, but there’s no malice in it—there’s laughter ringing around your eyes.

Honestly, that man needs a bell on him.

“Don’t let me interrupt you,” he comments dryly, stepping past.

You move your legs from their perch and sit a little straighter. “You- you could join me,” you chime, “if you want.”

His feet slow until he’s stopped completely and he pans over his shoulder to you. You can’t read his expression—it’s steel all the way through— but you think you feel the air around you both quiver - shudder - with something unspoken, something kinetic.

The scrape of the chair as he pulls it out from the table is deafening, the thunk of his metal body sinking into it even louder.

“What are you reading?” Mando asks.

You cast him a sheepish smile. “CoreWorld News.”

“Anything good?”

Your mouth twists, biting the inside of your cheek. “Never.”

He huffs a breathy chuckle.

There didn’t seem to be any good news anymore. You forage for it—scouring the net for just a whiff of it, of something pure. There is plenty of greatness left in the world, but you find that what it lacks most is goodness— humble and precious. More often than not, you come up empty and disappointed—but never so dissuaded that you do not search again the next day, and the day after that, and after that and after that again.

“How’d it go with Karga?” you ask, setting the holopad down and switching off the display.

“Fine. Good.”

“Good,” you smile. He’s terse—sparse. You think it’s endearing now—vexing too, without a doubt, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive anymore.

“Nothing close to Coruscant yet. More outer rim chaavla,” he grits out, swallowing. “I’m sorry.”

There’s a tickle of bemusement in your voice and a quirk to your chin. “What are you apologizing for?”

“I know you want to get back.”

You hope the glow from the lantern in the galley is dim enough to camouflage the tinge sprung on your cheeks. The truth is becoming more and more clear to you, whether you like it or not: with each passing day, you want to go back to Coruscant less and less. You have to—you know you have to. You have your career, your whole life, waiting for you. But—

But.

“You told me it would take a while—longer than I’d like.”

“I know.”

“I’m happy to be here— I-I’m grateful,” you catch yourself.

He clenches his fist under the table, beyond your line of sight, gnarled tight into a ball. It tethers him down, anchoring him in place—because if he weren’t, fuck, he’d fly out of his seat so fast—

“Alright,” he chokes out.

“Alright,” you smile, glassy.

There’s a kind of mist encircling you two, an incense of a sort, intoxicating and sinewy and lulling you into a hushed calm. It’s thick around you - lush - and you can feel it settle like lead behind your eyes.

“Can I pour you a drink—for later?”

It’s late into the evening, well beyond the hour where the lines of decorum blur. You’ve crossed into the Other—that tarred, limber undertow. Dangerously weightless and free. The liminality between here and there— that twilight place.

Shadows bounce along the walls. Your outline—his too.

“I’d like that.”

///

You’re not as tipsy as you could be, but you’re less sober than you’d like.

Subconsciously, buried somewhere deep, you’re aware that Mando is humoring you and that you should let him get on with his night—but you don’t.

You’ll be annoyed at yourself later for this.

“Okay okay, what are your hobbies?”

A deadpan tilt of his helmet. “I—I don’t understand the question.”

You gape at him, your bottom lip glossed as it parts, plush and wet, and you laugh. “Hobbies,” you reiterate. “You know, stuff you like to do? For fun?”

You see the gears under that helm wheel and spin. It shouldn’t take anyone this long. The question is basic and the answer should be relatively immediate—but Mando has to mull it over. In all of his cycles, as hardened as they’ve been, he hasn’t been gifted the luxury of leisure - fun - and he hasn’t been afforded the time to dwell on the lack of it.

Selfless, without a moment of ownership to himself. This is the way.

“I-,” he pauses, mouth clamping shut. “Skip.”

“Fine, fine,” you tut. “What is... your favorite planet?”

Din stretches back, his beskar groaning against the chair.

All the planets he’d visited were out of necessity—out of demand and credit, never because he wanted to be there and certainly never out of favor. They were tainted—made insipid and unremarkable by the quarries he chased to them.

But there is one in particular that stands out; he remembers a planet the kid seemed to like—how he babbled the whole time, slung in the satchel at his hip, entranced and enthralled. He was on his best behavior, too—the little womp rat didn’t even try to stuff his tiny, wrinkled face with anything. Not once.

“Adega.”

“Adega,” you repeat, testing the name. “I don’t think I’ve heard of it. What’s it like?”

He draws in a long breath, his ribs yawning against the corset of his armor.

He should’ve gotten up by now—fuck, he shouldn’t have ever sat down in the first place. It’s not like he didn’t have anything to do; he needs to downshift the Crest’s power converters, switch off the shield projectors, chart a course to his next job, get some damn sleep if he’s lucky…

But you’re here before him. You’re here and he can’t deny you—not when you’re looking at him like that, like the sun shines out from his fucking face—far softer, far kinder than he deserves. Not when you’re here now, and you won’t be for much longer.

He’s racing against the clock—the swinging inevitability of it. Each moment he shares with you, is a moment that brings him closer to taking you back.

Din is a fool. He knows he’ll lose. He races anyways.

“It’s a water planet—mostly ocean,” he begins.

You allow your eyes to dip close, savoring the description, and you tuck your legs up to fold over themselves.

“But there are islands. Some are small, private—with red trees that go all the way to the sand. Others have whole cities on them.”

You remain quiet - patient - like marble, chiseled and sanded as thin as chiffon, veiling over your face in fine, cascading sheets. Transparent - ethereal - you listen to him blind, letting his words guide your sight.

“The kid-"

Your tongue darts out over your lip and he stutters. Din has to shift his hips, relieving the growing heat that’s tightening below his waist.

“T-The uh, the kid loved it. I’d never seen him like that. The bogwing didn’t want to leave,” he chuckles. He conjures the details he thinks you want—the details he thinks you might like most. “The people are honest—generous. The days are long, and the nights are warm.”

He’s no poet, but it doesn’t bother you.

“I can see it,” you say, before blinking your eyes open. "I'll have to go some time." There’s pink on your cheeks, seeping past your jaw and below the neckline of your shirt to the swallow of your breasts.

You look at him— he looks at you.

A noise hums from somewhere inside the ship.

“Are you scared of anything?” you murmur.

Mando lets a beat pass.

“I don’t think so. Not yet.” You smile at that—small, wistful. You’re not even sure why. “You?” he asks.

Your chest rises with a deep inhale. “I used to be scared of dying. I thought I was gonna die young. I was convinced—I had dreams about it all the time as a kid.”

But maybe that’s not it entirely. Maybe it’s not the fear of dying itself, but the dread of living and dying alone. And isn’t that at the heart of it—at all of this?

I just don’t want to do this all on my own.

He’s never been privy to this version of you—this sloping tone, the liquor buzzing through your speech, churning your words to treacle. You sound nonchalant in way that’s jarring, as if you aren’t talking about death— the fear of your own tenuous mortality.

“But I bet everyone does,” you continue dismissively, “just one of those things.”

He’s almost cautious when he replies. “I’m not sure they do.”

Your expression contorts, knotting for an agonizing moment—until the tension all but disappears. “Huh,” you shrug flippantly, and take a swig. That heaviness, that fog, dissipates nearly as soon as it arrived. “Anyways, favorite color?”

He rolls his eyes; you can see it in the way he tilts his head to you. Really, he seems to say, how old are we?

“You’re right, you’re right— that’s low brow. I can do better…” You melodramatically tap your chin, eyeing him pensively.

“Okay. What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“That,” you nod to his pauldron, “that symbol on your shoulder.”

Tawny fingertips trace absentmindedly over the emblem. “It’s a Mudhorn. It’s-” Mando hesitates, before his hand returns to his lap. “It’s the sigil of my clan.”

You arch your brow. “I didn’t realize you had a clan— is it- is it like, big?” Stars, you sound dumb—and there’s no excuse. You’re not even that drunk. “How- what is a clan, exactly?”

“In Mandalorian culture, your clan is your family. Aliit. Mine, it’s—it’s a clan of two.”

Something in the pit of you stirs, a sickly warmth, pulling at your gut like a rope. You glance over to where the child sleeps, snuggled away in his pram and your lips curl into a smile, hidden behind the bottle you bring to them.

“You’re lucky to have each other,” you say gently, taking another sip.

“We almost didn’t—shouldn’t have.”

His hands tense into his legs—the creak of leather against his thigh plates is audible even from where you sit.

You narrow your eyes curiously. He heaves.

“He was a bounty and I did my job. I turned him in. I went back for him, but—the kid, he saved my life, and I could’ve left him there—I would’ve, before.”

It all comes out like tires grinding through gravel, bruised and roughened. It’s regret, you realize—this is the sound of guilt, frigid and rued, pushing through his modulator. It makes you want to reach out to him, put your hand on his, comfort him, reassure him—something. But you can’t. He’s too far away. He’s on his own sea—untouchable.

You decide it right then and there: you can’t bare that sound, the wracked timbre of it. You hate it. You think you’d do anything to rid the way in constricts his throat—makes him hoarse and clipped, even through the guise of his helmet. It pains you, a visceral stabbing, right to your core. You could go a lifetime without hearing it, and it still wouldn’t be long enough.

“But you didn’t,” you offer.

“No,” he utters. “No, I didn’t.”

Mando gives you these tortuous, beautiful previews of himself. Like light passing through stained glass, you sneak brief glimpses of the paintings there, the stories and fables and the lessons they teach, until some great cloud drifts past, blotting out the sun, and all goes dark again.

You know this is rare. You know you’ll be home soon. You know to cherish it—to relish what he gives, when he gives it, if he gives it at all.

But—you want more. You’re a simple woman, at the end of all things: all you want is to hold him.

“I think you’re a better man than you let on, Mando.” There’s a knowing twinkle in your eye, a coy lilt to your loosened tongue. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think you were flirting.

“You don’t know that,” he huffs, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I have my suspicions." You're smirking something awful - deadly - as it sears into him.

He grunts, flames licking up his chest. Din has to bite back his grin, making careful it doesn’t shape the sound of his vowels; grateful for the helmet that buffers him, the mask that seals him away into anonymity, into apathy.

If he can convince you, maybe he can convince himself too. Maybe.

“Next question, dala.”

If he didn’t know any better, he’d think you were flirting.

///

Your eyes are blown wide, gawking at him.

“I’m not a medic, Mando—I’m not a fucking surgeon!”

Mando crashes through the Razor Crest, red dollops trailing in pools behind him. He grunts, hand pressed to his side, blood pushing out of the gash that’s torn into him— a canyon down his unplated body, spewing angry and insistent with each spasm of his heart.

With a broad stroke, he sweeps the clutter off the table and onto the floor, spraying across the deck.

“Medkit,” he barks, hoisting himself up to lie, hulking and pained, out on the slab. You scamper to it, ripping it off the wall, and return to his lumbering body. His breathing is labored—he’s forcing it, seething it out.

Mando’s legs bend off the table at an uncomfortable angle and he rasps when you crane them up by his booted ankles – fuck, he’s heavy – to situate a small crate under his feet. They drop with a dulled thud— without muscle, without resistance. The languid weight of a dying man.

You’re stationed beside him, medkit spilled open. “W-What now, what do you need?”

“I need you,” you heard him say, deep and bassy, as he ascended the ramp. With a colossal drum of your heart, you spun around - I need you - a blush stippling your jaw. The pregnant expectation built behind weeks and weeks of stalemates and stolen glances - I need you - all rearing to a head here and now and finally, finally something—until you saw him, doubled over, bracing himself on the wall, a line of blood smearing behind his palm.

“Bacta-“ Mando wheezes, “bacta shot.”

You rifle through the supplies, littering them as you dig through the box.

Sure, you had gotten your first aid certification with the Movement—it was required, and you retook the courses every few cycles. But that was gauze wrappings and mouth-to-mouth and anti-inflammatory tablets—that was not this, and this is fucking surgery. You’re out of your depth—and Mando must be out of his damn mind.

“I nee-“ He inhales sharply, and his body spasms, gripping the ledge of the table like a vice. “My chest plate—take it off.”

He’s told you bits and parcels of the Mandalorian way—of his Creed— and you aren’t under the impression that this would be strictly sanctioned.

“M-Mando, I thought— are you sure?”

“Yes I’m kriffing sure—do it. Just do it,” he snaps. He hates this—he fucking hates this. Soft. Weak—weak weak weak, he’s so fucking weak. Laandur.

You fumble over the armor, uncoordinated as you unclasp it from his cuirass and Mando strangles out a sigh as soon as it leaves him. At last, you fish the shot from the medkit and hold it up to the light, the medicine like venom as it whirls in the tube. It’s uncomfortably large—simply holding it makes you squirm.

“W-What is that?”

Your eyes flit over the needle and then back to the bounty hunter. “What do you mean ‘what is that’? It’s a shot.”

“That’s a lance,” he growls.

“It’s ebacta-”

“It’s green!” he hisses out incredulously.

“It’s all they had!” you bite back, panic skipping through your veins.

You’re practically yelling at each other, the tension winding and coiling tighter and higher as the seconds tick by. You feel each one, tapping along your vertebra like a metronome, keeping time, keeping time, wasting time—all this back and forth is a waste of time and—

You’re nervous—you’re fucking terrified—and Mando doesn’t frequent this position either—this vulnerability. He doesn’t know what to do with it, where he belongs in it. I need you, he said. He hadn’t needed anyone before and now look at him, bare breasted before you, wounded and mewling like roadkill.

You rap the needle with a knuckle, banishing the air pocket, and test the plunger. Droplets of liquid spurt from the tip, and he begins to rile.

“Dala,” he warns.

“Mando,” you mimic.

“Nu draar-”

“Do you want my help or not?” you spit out, and he shrinks, visor trained on the jab, that unnatural chartreuse swirling inside the glass vial. “Okay. Okay, on three.”

“Wait, wait-"

“One..." You try to sound firm - competent - but you’re a fucking mess. Your breathing is erratic, tunic soiled with sweat, and you’re trembling.

“You don’t-“

“Two...”

Mando huffs exasperatedly, “Ah, fuck it-”

“Three.”

You drive the syringe down, stabbing into him. His body seizes—flexing rigid—as soon as the viscous gel is injected, oozing oozing oozing until it’s pumped empty and spent.

And then— nothing.

All that whirlwinded frenzy, that raging tempest, and now silence— dead silence. He lays there motionless, fidgeting ceased, that ungodly needle pitched like a flag pole from his chest.

… Shit.

“Hey,” you touch a hand to his shoulder.

The smug bastard could be having a laugh under that helmet and you’d have no idea. That’s what you tell yourself—that’s what you’d prefer to believe anyways; it’s better than the alternative, better than—than than than fuck—

“Hey, this isn’t funny...” A little rougher now, you jostle him. He doesn’t react.

“… Mando?”

His head lolls to the side.

With a whistle, the room goes mute. Sound and oxygen alike, it all gets vacuumed out, and your senses invert. You can hear every tick of your body: the bone of your jaw as your teeth mash together, the pulse at your wrist, your stammering heart beating beating beating in your inner ear, the bob of your trachea as it grates against your neck.

Kriff. You killed him—you killed the Mandalorian.

Oh Maker, oh shit-

You press down around the puncture site with a wide palm before yanking the syringe out, flinging it away. You’re shaking him now, wrestling with his limp body, and you’re shouting—croaked with worry, with fear.

“Fuck, Mando—Mando!"

The sound is like glass shattering.

He gasps wildly, gulping down air as if he’d been drowned, writhing like the undead from your operating table. You buckle over him, fatigued and slumped, and cry out in blessed relief.

Your instincts, those poor frail nerves, tell you to smack him—but given that he’s bleeding out, you refrain.

“Don’t do that to me!” you exclaim, breathy and strained.

“Don’t do that to you?” Mando retorts, panting. You let out a weak crackle of laughter and he moans. It’s like he’s been hit by a speeder - twice - forward and then reversed over again.

“Maker, what did you give to me?”

“I got it on Vohai. They uhm- they said it was good quality-“

“And you believed them?”

Your mouth twists shyly. “I-I wanted to believe them,” you correct him.

It’s his turn to laugh now, tired and raw. Oh, you sweet little thing.

You swallow, saliva coating your ragged windpipe. “I’m sorry—Maker, I’m so sorry, a-are you alright?”

“Yeah,” he scoffs, gargled, “but remind me never to have you save my life again.”

That earns him a light slap to his arm. If he’s well enough to dole cheap shots, you figure he’s fit enough to take yours too. He’s spliced open, whole chunks of him missing, and he still has the wherewithal to be an ass.

“Well, you’re not out of the woods just yet.”

///

Regrettably, Mando might have been spot on about the bacta—in fact, you’re starting to question whether it’s really bacta at all.

A delirious grunt ripples through the bounty hunter’s modulator as you cut open his ripped flight suit, careful not to slice him with the vibroblade. His black undershirt is matted to his gaping wound, the blood bubbled over and through the rough material, and you have to peel the fibers out of his coagulating flesh to get to it. You toss the fabric into the bucket next to you with a sloppy, wet plop.

It didn’t even occur to you. You were so swept away by the state of him—by the dizzying carnival of it all as soon as Mando breached the Crest—you didn’t consider the fact that you’d be seeing him. Touching him.

You have to mask your expression when you meet his skin for the first time. He’s golden—he’s golden everywhere—like desert sand dunes sizzling under ripe, afternoon suns—dappled with memories of violence, branded into him.

You’ve never heard him like this. He keeps noising these feverish little nothings— gasping, moaning in a language you don’t recognize—and you do your best to distract him. It’s one of the tenets you recall from your aid training: keep them talking, keep them sharp—engaged.

“Do each of these have a story?” you ask, eyeing the marks that riddle and pucker him.

“Some of them.”

“What about this one here?” You touch a faded ribbon of scarring. It’s older than the others—paler. Your fingertips are cool and he blazes beneath them.

He tries not to twitch. You try not to notice.

“Fell out of a tree when I was a kid—haven’t thought about that in a while,” Mando pants. “B-Broke my wrist, got scraped to shit— my buir, m-my mother, she chewed my ear off.”

“Mm, I bet she did,” you smirk—you can relate to the feeling.

“I-I remember the lines around her eyes. H-Her eyes— they were green, bright green— jade.”

He lets out a wince as you swipe a disinfectant soaked rag over him. You cringe and flash him an apologetic look.

“Sounds beautiful,” you muse, a quiet smile pulling at you as your deft fingers work. “Did you get her pretty eyes too, Mando?”

Something is caught in his throat— a chuckle, or a cough more likely. “No, they’re brown. Just brown.”

Your whole body locks.

Just brown.

Two words - just brown - and suddenly you’re rich— full to the brim with him.

And fuck, if it doesn't feels like a gift. Like he gathered something precious and laid it in your arms and said here, you can have this now. We can share. Sometimes you forget that there’s a man under all those layers; a man— a warm blooded, tanned skin, brown eyed man. You hadn’t often wondered what the Mandalorian was hiding under his armor—he was so finite, so unmovable, the mask he wore became him. He was beskar - indistinguishably - through and through.

But that was before. And now you’re blinded with him— with all the details you cannot unsee.

“S-She was the last person to take care of me—like this.”

It comes over you so suddenly, you’re taken aback by it: that knee-jerking gut wrench. And not because there’s heartbreak in his voice, but because there isn’t. Because he’s had to be so invulnerable—so unyielding and invincible for so long—that he doesn’t even realize what he’s without.

And you, if only for a silly, naïve moment, wish you could give it back to him. Every little ounce of goodness that he’s been deprived of—to dip into his time stream, and rewrite.

To plant but a seed of it there, even if you don’t stay long enough to see it’s harvest.

“Tell me more about her,” you say.

And beyond expectation, beyond reason, he does.

///|||///

This—this is wrong.

He feels pulpy - soggy - wrong. He’s more liquid than he should be—there’s nothing solid about him now. He’s swept away in the tide of it—this green current charging through him and he let’s go - what is there to hold onto anyways? - floating belly up on his back.

Din spills—like the aperture split into his side, he gushes. Whatever dam he’s forged around himself, the beskar and duracrete there, cracks.

The stream trickles until he floods and like any good story, he starts from the beginning.

He tells you of home—his first home. Aq Vetina.

You’re plucking spikes and nettle from his side, and he barely feels it—all he has is this sinking, unending wet—and they hit the tray with dull plunks, punctuated and staccatoed.

He tells you of the adobe dwellings and the domes and columns. Marketplace canopies and caravan bazaars.

plunk

The oak trees, the willow bark, the spires he’d climb until the sun set.

plunk

The tall mountains and the dry, rubbled earth. Of the nameless neighbor children he played with, kicking a ball through the dirt. Red robes trailing, fraying.

plunk

His mother. The shawl she wore. The copper of his father’s ring. The herbs she grew by the light from their kitchen window. How he held her hand while they sat by the fire.

plunk

His tongue doesn’t belong to him—it wags numb and supple. He’s lost his sense of direction, unbound by north or south, and these words are simply happening to him. They keep happening and happening and escaping and—

It’s not just the off-bacta speaking for him, making him pliant. He wants this. He wants to bend—he wants to bend for you.

And now there’s no stopping it—there’s no breaking this, no halting it's downhill momentum. Din describes the attack, the heat of the fire as his town - his world - burned down, of his parents concealing him—a child, abandoned and bunkered away in a cellar to live or die with or without them— being rescued by the Death Watch and raised as a Mandalorian himself.

Your bandaging has long since finished, but you remain, hovering over him as you listen—listen as the jigsawed shards of his life stitch themselves together. Like a moth to a flame, you are drawn in and in and in, until you’re butted against the wick of it. Inseparable.

When the well of his words runs dry, neither of you go to move. Pin-drop silence envelops you. Your hands still on his chest, palms like a weighted quilt—warming him, securing him. He feels-

He feels safe.

“Mando,” you murmur, and the epithet has never sounded so fucking sacred, whispered from you like a prayer. You cripple him; the web of concern along your brow, the sheen in your eyes, the breathy part of your lips.

His throat has gone dry and he shakes his head left right, beskar grating against the makeshift gurney. Mando. No. No, that’s not right—that’s not who he is, that’s not who he wants you to know.

He draws his hand up—it’s so fucking heavy, he can barely lift it—but he tries, he tries, he wants to. You’re right here, you’re touching his chest and you’re healing his body—his mind too, if he’d only let you—and if he could just get to you. If he could just lace his fingers with yours—would you let him? Should you?

“M-My name-"

A warbled wail from the kid’s alcove rips through the cradling hush, and you both react immediately, lurching up to tend to the child. Din forgets—he hears his foundling and his reason leaves him—and he flinches with a grimace. You urge him down, steadying him with a pointed look.

“Rest.”

It’s a command, there’s no question to it, and it’s teeming with all of these unrecognizable concepts— care and assurance, worry and compassion. So impossible to disobey in the way that gentle things are—too soft and too right to say no to. He relents - gives - helmet thudding when it connects back with the table.

Din, he pleads, desperate for you to read his mind. Like a mantra, his subconscious rambles it on a drug addled figure-eight, coming around only to repeat itself again, infinite and wanting. Din Din Din-

Only when the child’s cries muffle into hiccups and his hiccups slur into coos does he let his exhaustion get the better of him. There was too much—it was an assault from all fronts. The blood loss, the drugs, his life like a monsoon as it crushed him open. And all it took was a wound, a brush with his mortality, for him to surrender it to you.

He turns his head, searching for you through the blur of his vision. You’re there in the doorway, rocking his boy in your arms, haloed with light.

I need you, he said. I need you I need you I need you I need-

Din’s eyes shut.

He doesn’t dream. He sleeps like the dead, blissful and undisturbed.

///

You spend hours scrubbing the deck on all fours, spine hunched and aching, cleaning scarlet off silver steel. It got everywhere, the splatter of it—even on the surfaces Mando didn’t come in contact with. The smell of blood, that nickel musk, it lingers long after its welcome—long after the stain of it, the stain of him, has vanished from the Crest. From your skin.

At some point during the night you nod off next to him, curled over a crate, and when you wake Mando is gone—presumably back to his quarters but gone all the same. All traces of him gone - expunged - and the ship feels hollow and gaping— a sterile Mando shaped hole in his absence. You follow his lead, retreating to your bed for a few more hours of sleep.

The next morning doesn’t go as you’d like.

You weren’t sure if he would remember any of it—of what he confided, of what he almost confessed— but by the way the tension ferments between you, you can only assume he does.

They go through their routines, stilted as they are.

He’s up early— unnecessarily early. Mando goes to the cockpit to rouse the ship, plugging in the coordinates from his tracking fob to chase after the escaped bounty. Thrusters set. Repulorlifts and auxiliary engines engaged. Deflector shield generator on. Weapons check. Atmospheric pressure regulator switched.

He’s slower, you note— his movements are crawled—with only half the feline agility he typically possesses and you want to tell him to sit, to take a break—to get off his damn feet and to let you help him—that it’s okay if he rests. That he can take time for himself. That it doesn’t make him any less of a Mandalorian—any less of a man.

But, you can’t.

And so the day is pulled taut like this—a bowed string ready to snap, chalked full of false starts and tinny stoicism. A sharp, intentional air of avoidance with every action. They were out of step, out of sync, and it reminds you of the first days you’d spent on the Razor Crest, orbiting each other—planets apart.

Because he’s shared too much. You knocked, Din answered. He opened the door and he let you past and now he has nowhere left to go but inwards. He’s cornered with no exit strategy - no option - but to close back up again and furl in on himself like a fern in the dark. Curling - evaporating - until he’s nothing but armor—nothing but mirrored edges and metal plates.

But—

you still made his breakfast and he still washed your dishes—and maybe that is enough.

///

You pass each other in the corridor, as you have done before.

You smile gently—soft as sin— and it breaks him, like it always does.

You have a hand on the rung of the ladder when he calls your name, and you turn to him, bright eyed.

“Thank you,” he rasps, “I never thanked you.”

He’s so strikingly sincere— standing there, arms dangling stiff by his sides. He looks different now, somehow— different, but the same. Fuller, bigger—smaller, too.

Human, you realize.

Your heart flutters in your chest. “Of course, Mando-“

“Din.”

You forget to breath. Time forgets to move.

“My name is Din.”

///

Din. Din Djarin.

It takes you almost a week to say it—to even utter the syllable aloud—and you only ever risk it when he’s gone on a hunt and you know you’re alone.

“You like it when I touch you like this?” you hear him say, the fabricated echo of his voice in your skull. He’s got two fingers in you—you can envision them now, clear and potent, the golden hide of them—and he moves slow as he takes you right to the edge, dancing dastardly along that cliff side before retracting himself and backing off. You can’t see his face, but you know he’s smirking; you can feel it in his fingertips, how they mock you—how they scorch into you and leer.

Even in your fantasy, he’s a prick.

“You like it when I make you cum on this filthy fucking cot?”

You keen into your hand, whimpering into your bitten raw lips. The scene is playing on without you now, writing itself. All you can do is lay here and take it, succumb to it, starved and desperate and vile as you thrash on your bedroll.

You rove your palm over your chest—

He snakes up your shirt, twisting your nipple until it’s peaked and perked under him, until you yelp with that muddled jolt of pleasure and pain. He’s lazy and fitfully unhurried, each movement sauntered and proud. He’s coaxing it out of you, this orgasm, as he kneels over you, your vision flooded with the cold menace of his beskar. Finally, tortuously, he traces his thumb over your clit, toying with you in small circles until you’re shaking—vibrating, every molecule of you—like you’re going to burst, incinerate there in your bed. He’s urgent now, demanding, and thrusting into your swollen cunt and the pressure mounting in your heat swells until, until, oh my st-

You fuck your fingers until they prune, drenched with the thought of him teasing you, stuffing you full with anything he’ll give you; his hands, his cock—Maker, his tongue. You let it roll around your mouth when you touch yourself like this in the dark belly of the ship—heels digging into your thin mattress, knees steepled together—and you’re panting, wanton and velvet, before a fist shoots up to muffle the moaned name wafting from your lips like smoke.

“Din”

@girlimjusttryingtoreadfanfics @pedros-mustache @miranhas-art @djarrex @djarinsbeskar @bookloverfilmoholic @keeper0fthestars @misguidedandbeguiled

#din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #din djarin #mando x female oc #mando x you #mando x reader #mandalorian smut #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x female oc #din djarin x female oc #din djarin smut #King of Cups #pedro pascal #fanfic #mandalorian fanfic #slow burn #smut

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gingermintpepper · 3 years ago

Text

Gloxinia and Meliodas' First Meeting.

Time Period: Sometime during the Holy War

»»————-　♔　————-««

He remembers the Lord of the Faefolk.

Elizabeth lays limp in his arms.

The world explodes around him, typhoon’s cacophonous touch laying waste to the landscape but he does not feel the slice of the wind. Raindrops pierce through the clouds, bullets of water that seem to attack the thin veil of his cloak but he cares not for them. All he knows is the gellid flesh pressed against his chest, the drooping wings whose feathers seem to swell with water, bright white eyelashes slack from exhaustion, delicate eyebrows devoid of that determined furrow.

He’s running out of options, had gravely miscalculated during his battle with Calmadios and now was left without a place to return to, without a roof with which to weather this storm under. He had no place where Elizabeth could rest and recuperate from her wounds.

Even amongst the wanton destruction Meliodas had wrought in his time in the physical realm, the memory stands stark in the backdrop of his mind. A routine perimeter sweep after they had managed to gain new territory from beating back the Goddess Clan in the south. The normal agenda after such events - visiting the human nests, establishing the new order, weeding out dissenters and surviving pests, setting up scouts; it was all necessary yet monotonous activity so no one particularly fancied running such errands. It was only because Meliodas had drawn the short lot that he had to do the grunt work himself.

He hadn’t expected to find Fairies in the human nest, small creatures with their delicate wings healing humans and helping repair their odd little hutches. He’d not so much as heard about encounters with Fairies since coming into the realm - only knew of the whispers of the so-called Fairy King’s Forest and the great magic that was contained within. Meliodas thought it all nothing more than the mangled stories of drunk demons. He hadn’t felt any significant magic in the physical realm besides the heavy cloud that was the bestial Giant Clan and so he had dismissed even the notion of Fairies as such.

Yet there they were, smaller than even him in their diminutive stature, little faces scrunched in joy and determination even as the nest around them was razed and half ablaze.

And so Meliodas thought, ‘If the Fae are real, then surely their King is no illusion either.’

Zeldris must have heard by now he thinks. Would know that he made good on his word to abandon their people for the sake of Elizabeth and, ultimately, for ending this useless conflict.

Was he laughing at him? Was he gleefully watching his heinous older brother suffer for choosing a lover over the future of their clan only to immediately lose her to his pride? Meliodas alone had made the decision to defect while surrounded by his troops and three Commandments. His confidence in his strength had cost him dearly, but with Elizabeth at his back, he had felt invincible.

The rain continues to pour around them, but Meliodas cannot feel its freezing touch. Elizabeth’s warm blood is beginning to seep through her clothes. He doesn’t want to hold her tighter, fears that squeezing her will only make her bleed out faster. What good is his strength if he cannot help those most important to him in their times of need?

Lightning tears the sky asunder, thunder racing so close to its heel that the world around him seems to quake. He’ll have to land - he can’t risk attracting the bolts with Elizabeth in his grip. He is a demon but he can’t help but pray.

Prays that the chill descending on Elizabeth’s skin is only the rain. Prays that Zeldris finds some way to end the conflict too. Prays that he hasn’t ruined the only thing that could save Elizabeth’s life.

It surprises him even now. The ease with which the Fairies revealed the location of their home to him. Meliodas was quite aware that they knew him to be a demon. Even without knowledge of the rank or class that he occupied, his magic alone was nothing but purest, deepest black - yet, even as they trembled with their breaths caught in their throats and their little fingers halted in their actions, they dutifully told him what it was he wanted to know.

He remembers thinking then that the Fairies were a weak bunch - that they were a naive people who surely teetered on the brink of extinction for the easily exploitable trust they so readily gave.

Then came the fog.

He’s not surprised that even during this tempest, the fog is thick.

The last time he entered, the mist showed him illusions that confounded him for hours. The road disappeared beneath him, he’d ended up on a mountain and then at a lake and throughout it all quiet laughter echoed in his ear, disorienting him. Angering him.

Today there is only the quiet of deep, deep fog and the dampened splashing of rain as it struggles to cut through haze.

Meliodas lands on the muddy ground and takes off sprinting. He slips in an errant puddle, the ground slick and treacherous but even then he does not let go of Elizabeth. The air’s knocked from his lungs as he lands on his back. His shoulder burns but he cannot heal himself. He does not know what effect his miasma would have on Elizabeth in this weakened state. He does not want to find out. With trembling fingers, he adjusts her, frowns as the muscles beneath her fair skin refuse to twitch even when he lets his touch linger on the plush flesh of her lips, her cheek, the puncture in her stomach which gushes, gushes, and was he always able to glimpse the pink of her stomach? Was it wrong that he found that healthy colour as beautiful as the rest of her? But her skin is cold, cold too cold and her blood runs hot and Meliodas curses even the rains, roars his frustration so the lord of the lands knows that he is in no mood for games.

“Gloxinia!”

A part of him wondered if the Fairies had conned him; if they had only pretended to be shy things and had taken the opportunity to lead him to his death instead of guiding him to the Forest like they claimed they would. He’d think much higher of them if that was the case.

As it stands, Meliodas only wishes to tear the heads from their breakable bodies for the tasteless jest. Already, he’d found himself at the bottom of a lake, in which swimming in any direction only dragged him further down, a mountain trail which had led to him being apparently attacked by some manner of beast and a desert which stretched for so many hours that Meliodas had begun to sweat through the leathers of his gear. Terrible caterwauling the likes he had only heard in the deepest annals of the Underworld dogged his steps, and when the screeching stopped, the laughing began.

In each direction he was met with nothing but a wall of fog so thick that he could not even see the colour of his shoes and with each step without a discernible goal in sight, his resentment only grew.

And then, oddly, he caught the strong smell of flowers.

An unmistakable flash of red like spider lilies blooms in the corner of his periphery.

The tumultuous rain quiets to a mere whisper and the fog dissipates leaving only a dew laden field of bright, bright flowers.

The Fairy King is no less spectacular the second time around, celestial wings aglow with multicoloured magic which seems to glitter even in the midst of this gloomy, terrible squall. He stands with his hands at his side, thin lips pressed into a fine line. He is unarmed, alone. Unimpressed.

“You have returned,” he says dully and Meliodas does not have time to be offended at the lack of respect.

He tightens his grip on Elizabeth’s thigh, does his best to keep from snarling. “Heal her!”

A perfect eyebrow threatens to scrape scarlet hairline. “I beg your pardon?”

Meliodas growls, refuses to rest Elizabeth against the forest floor yet cannot risk jostling her for the sake of emphasis, “She hurt herself protecting me. I want you to heal her.”

Gloxinia’s neutral expression becomes a faintly bemused smile. “Is that a request or a threat, Demon Lord?”

Meliodas glares (and Elizabeth is growing cold in his grip, cold, cold, he is running out of time-) “Both, Fairy.”

The fog begins to creep in not unlike storm clouds on the placid horizon. The sound of thunder begins to descend upon them, red and purple flower buds disappearing beneath the cloak of the Fairy King’s enchanted mist. The fae smiles and it is a cold, cruel thing which sits comfortably on cherubic features, “Then I bid you farewell.”

Meliodas feels the wrath overflow, feels it in the way his vision goes black at the edges, in the way he can hear Elizabeth’s failing heartbeat. Anger at Gloxinia for refusing him, for dooming Elizabeth to death. Anger at himself for being unable to protect her, for failing her, “I will raze this forest to the ground, Gloxinia! Help her or I will slaughter every one of your kind!”

And that despicable Fairy only looks down at him, golden eyes more damning than any bolt of heavenly lightning, “It matters not, Demon Lord, she will already be dead.”

Then he is alone.

Elizabeth’s heartbeat grows so frail that Meliodas cannot hear it over the rain that has rushed in. Fog blinds his eyes, anger stifles his mind and the breaks and creaks in his bones finally overwhelm him. He crumples, mud splattering all over Elizabeth’s once white battle silks. She will die. She will die and it will have been his fault. Is this how Zeldris felt he wonders? This despair - this deep, gaping emptiness as the warmth of his lover cools to ice beneath his numb fingers.

Meliodas has never cried. It is a foreign concept to one as high born as he but his heart sinks to his stomach and threatens to slip free from his chest altogether. He bends his head, furrows his brows, squeezes Elizabeth’s flesh as he listens to her slowing heart.

‘Please,’ he wants to whisper. ‘Please, please have mercy on a sinner. Just this once.’

A pungent scent like foreign herbs fills his nose -

“[Droplet of Life]”

There is a glow, some bright unfathomable light and Meliodas sits up like he’s been burnt. Elizabeth’s heart suddenly beats in her chest, loud and melodic and it is the sweetest sound Meliodas has heard in years. He looks up to find cold eyes looking down on him, the Fairy King’s red hair spilling over his shoulders like reeds against some sheer cliffside.

He frowns, squints at Meliodas then appraises Elizabeth. Without so much as another word, he straightens himself and makes a gesture with two of his fingers. The fog lifts entirely, revealing a twisted up pathway between massive, primordial boughs. Flowers of every specie litter the ground preceding the entryway and Gloxinia turns his back on them. “Spend the night here,” he says and though Meliodas twitches at the unmistakable authority in that light voice, his gratitude and surprise renders him mute. “This storm will rage for four days and five nights. Regain your strength then leave.”

And then he disappears into the forest, leaving Meliodas and Elizabeth in the stillness of his eden.

#This has so much headcanon in it it's not even funny #But it's also completely up for debate how Glox Meli Eli and Drole met soooo #Yeah I'm exploiting that #gloxinia #gloxinia of repose #gloxinia nnt #meliodas #elizabeth liones #melizabeth #nnt #seven deadly sins #nanatsu no taizai #ginger writes #long post #Meliodas was a complete tool as a Commandment and you can take that hc from my cold dead hands #zeldris #he's mentioned too so that's fun #I love writing for the holy war y'all it's not funny

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writingsbychlo · 5 years ago

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anti-valentine | mitch rapp

word count; 8919

summary; you and mitch are roommates, with a lot in common. one of these things is that you don’t do romance or valentine’s day. or, at least, you didn’t use to..

notes; I meant to get this out for y’all last week, but here it is. It’s been so long since I wrote anything, Mitch, well over a year, probably more than two, actually.

warnings; choking, marking, scratching, spit play, cum play, overstimulation, squirting, dry-humping, riding, unprotected sex, dirty talk and it’s pretty rough too.

You heard the door slam behind you, the sound muffled from across your shared apartment. Only moments later, you heard the distinct footsteps of your CIA roommate padding through the apartment. You didn’t even bother to turn, his panting meeting your ears as he mumbled a greeting, the stench of sweat filling your nose as he leaned over your shoulder, pressing a wet kiss to your cheek as he looked at the food you were frying in the pan before you.

“You make enough for me?”

“Don’t I always?” You teased, flicking off the hob and scraping the food up onto the two plates beside you as the breakfast fry-ups came together. The sound of the chairs scraping across the floor filled your ears, the man tucking himself under the table as you scooped up the plates and finally turned to face him.

He gave you a dazzling grin, head tipping to the side as you pushed a plate of food across to him, his stomach rumbling on queue as he picked up his cutlery. Your gaze closed on the items sitting on the table, your eyes narrowing on the objects sitting between you both as you took your own seat, brows raised as you pointed at them with your fork.

“Bit late, don’t you think? Valentine’s Day was last week.” He rolled his eyes, scoffing at the comment and stabbing at a piece of bacon, not bothering to cut it as he instead tried to shove the entire item into his mouth, chewing noisily.

“I don’t do that romantic crap. Just saw them in a shop window and thought you’d like ‘em is all.” His words were muffled, and you diverted your gaze from his to cut at the food on your plate, a teasing smile tugging at your lips.

“Mitch, seeing roses and chocolates and buying them for someone just because you think they’d like them is definitely a romantic thing to do.”

“Huh.” He paused eating for a second, swallowing his mouthful as he thought it over, before shrugging his shoulders and continuing with his meal. “Does it make it less romantic if I tell you that I got them on sale for like 80% off?”

“Technically, yes it does. However, you know I love a good bargain, and that I firmly believe Valentine's Day crap is always massively overpriced. I love them, so thank you.” He sent you yet another wide beam as he finished his food, cramming the food into his mouth as he stood up.

“You’re welcome, angel. Happy anti-Valentine’s day.” He rounded the table, and you tilted your head toward him as you ate, his lips pressing a kiss to your temple as he wandered past toward the sink.

A chuckle left you as you registered is words, your eyes crinkling at the sides as entertainment flooded your system. “Anti-Valentine’s, huh? I like the sound of that.”

“Well, you know, neither of us do that sappy romance shit, so why not? We are both anti Valentine’s, therefore, anti-valentine’s day.” He flicked the tap on at the sink, rinsing his plate under it before placing it into the dishwasher, leaning back against the counter to look at you.

“Finally, an event I can get behind.” You nodded at the cupboard, his gaze following yours as he dug through it, producing a dusty glass vase that he had never actually seen being used.

In fact, the last time he saw it, was the day the CIA had shown you both the apartment you’d be sharing, your stacks of boxes mixed together with his in the living room. He wiped it down on his shirt, filling it halfway with water as he placed it on the table in front of you, taking the finished plate from you as you moved to arrange your roses in the vase before you, a comfortable silence falling over the two of you.

The only sounds filling the room were the gentle clanking of pots and plates as Mitch set the dishwasher off, and that of plastic crinkling each time you plucked another rose from the wrapping, until the arrangement was done to your liking and you smiled at the sweet gesture before you.

“How about, tonight I won’t cook you dinner. In fact, you can cook your own and I’ll cook my own, and we can watch some non-romantic comedies or something like a thriller? No romance, at all.”

Your eyes lit up as you looked at him, nodding enthusiastically as you hopped to your feet. “We can drink vodka instead of wine, and we can wear our pyjamas, instead of getting all dressed up?”

“Sounds perfect. It’s definitely anti-romance.”

“It’s not a date.” You threw a wink in there, the sounds of your mixed laughter filling the flat as he walked away for his shower, taking the stench of sweat and mud with him now that he had eaten, leaving you to make a shopping list of the things you’d need to go out and buy.

A deep sigh left you as you navigated the aisles, checking the ink wording you had written on the back of your hand in order to remember what you needed to buy. You had settled on spaghetti bolognese for your dinner, it was tasty and easy to make, but there was absolutely nothing attractive about slurping noodles up and splattering sauce all over your own face. It was perfect.

Then again, Mitch had never judged you for eating messily before. He’d probably seen you in your most unattractive states ever. He’d held your hair as you threw up, half in your own lap and half into the drain the time you’d been poisoned on an assignment and had barely made it back to the hotel room. He’d cared for you for a week when you had the flu, your nose dripping and your hair greasy and ratty, skin breaking out and oily. He’d never judged you, and so the whole no-romance thing really wasn’t any different to your regular evenings.

Plucking a bottle of vodka from the shelf, the one you had both decided was your favourite, and you set off toward the pasta aisle, grabbing the noodles and dropping them into the bottom of the cart as you let your mind wander. If you really thought about it, tonight was just the same as usual nights. The two of you would relax on the couch together and eat your dinner while watching a movie, the only difference was the drinks, and the fact that you’d be eating different meals.

Your mind got lost as you drifted around the store, a smirk growing on your face as you passed by the discount section from the celebratory day of the week prior, and it was clear that the roses you had received were the best of the bunch, the others slightly wilted and dying. Your heart warmed at the idea that Mitch had taken his time to look through them to find the best for you, knowing that you’d like them, even if you weren’t one for romance.

The items were progressively being removed from your list, each time you smudged your thumb over the words to remove them once they were gathered and placed into the cart. You were browsing the dessert section, your eyes scanning idly over every item as you tried to choose which one you wanted, but all the ones in portion sizes you’d be able to eat alone just weren’t appealing to you. You couldn’t stop the way your focus drifted, eyes locking onto the usual large dessert that you and Mitch shared, and you acted before thinking about it.

Just the sight of the delicious treat being placed in the cart was making you think about later that night when you’d be sharing it. You’d end up in the same way as always, wrapped up in Mitch’s arms as your spoons battled for the last bites, laughs falling from both of you as streams of melted vanilla ice-cream and chocolate sauce mixed together in the bowl.

You could practically feel the warmth of his arms around you, the way his body would curl around yours or the way his smell would surround you, the rumble of his laughter mixing with yours as the two of you joked and messed around.

It was with a startle that you snapped yourself out of the thoughts, the mental image of his smile and sparkling eyes left your mind as heat rushed to your cheeks from the jolt that spread along your body as your trolley crashed into that of someone else. Apologies flew from your mouth as you backed up and adjusted yourself, trying to push the feeling in your heart away as you used the embarrassment of your current situation to chase away your feelings toward your roommate.

It was short-lived, however, because the second you were alone again and unpacking your shopping onto the checkout as you waited in the queue, your mind was soon going back to the only man in your life.

Well, unless Stan counted.

You couldn't help it, you were now thinking about all the actions that made your heart flutter so subtly that you hadn't noticed it until you were really thinking about it. How easy it was to relax into his touch when he placed his hands on your waist when he stood behind you, or when he gave you kisses on your cheeks or forehead. Once you were day-dreaming about the way he treated you, it was a quick movement on a slippery slope until you were thinking about the way he could treat you.

His stubble always scraped at the skin on your cheek when he kissed you and the idea about how it might feel scraping your skin when he kissed you properly, or dragged his tongue along your body, left your lips tingling and your face flushed. You were sure the cashier was giving you odd looks, but then again, you supposed you deserved it. You were so caught up in your head that you could barely focus as you packed your groceries, instead choosing to imagine how it might feel to hold his hand in public, not just as part of a cover for a job, or the way it might feel to fall asleep in bed next to him, instead of accidentally drifting off on the couch with him.

Perhaps you were a romantic, and you hadn't quite realised it until now, but there was no real way to know exactly how you were feeling now that all these realisations had come rushing to the surface, until you actually got home. Of course, you delayed as much as possible, taking the long route home, and actually climbing the flights of stairs instead of the elevator, until your legs were aching and you were opening your front door.

The smell of food hitting your nose was first, followed by the sounds of hurried footsteps as you kicked the door shut and balanced the bags in your arms and tried to kick off your shoes. “Here, pass me the bags.”

Despite his statement, you hadn't even a chance to move before he was plucking them from your grasp and brushing his lips across your forehead, your gaze focused on the floor as you tried to quell the heat wanting to flood your features. Luckily for you, he’d already turned on his heel and was making his way back to the kitchen, leaving you to shrug off your coat and sigh out of relief before following him.

When you found him again, your groceries were sitting on the island in the middle of the room, and his back was to you as he worked at the stove, the muscles in his back moving as he stirred at the food, the familiar smell making you furrow your eyebrows.

“You always cook without a shirt on. That seems like a health and safety risk.” Your words were mumbled as you unpacked the first bag, tucking the dessert into the fridge and the ice-cream in the freezer as you let the bottle of vodka sit out on the counter, his grin widened as he glanced at it when you turned the label to face him.

“Our jobs are health and safety risks, angel. I think I can handle making spag bol without a shirt on.” He scoffed, and you let out a groan at his words, his head turning to look back at you over his shoulder when you made the sound of dissatisfaction.

“You’re making spaghetti bolognese?” He nodded unsurely, brows raised in question as you reached into the remaining paper bag before you, before plucking out an ingredient in each hand as you showed them to him. “I wanted spaghetti bolognese, too.”

His jaw dropped as he laughed, turning the heat down on the hob to come over and peer at your purchases as if to confirm that you had both chosen the same meal, before he simply wrapped an arm around your shoulders and pulled you into him, his chest rumbling in a chuckle at the action. “You bought garlic bread, too. You really are an angel.” He teased, and you poked at his stomach, his body jumping from the ticklish assault as he protested your touch.

“I can’t believe we’re making the same meal.”

“I only just started, throw all yours in with mine, and we can save the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.” He snatched the noodles from your hands, tearing the bag open and dropping more into the pot of boiling water he had going as you moved to begin chopping the veg. The two of you worked around one another with ease, the actions familiar, the tradition of cooking together every night being yet another stark and seemingly romantic movement that the two of you did so naturally, now being questioned as it haunted your thoughts at the forefront of your mind.

While he mixed the sauce, you drained the pasta, dishing it up into two bowls and putting the rest in a tupperware to go in the fridge. The second you were done, he repeated the action but with his half of the meal, the dishes of delicious looking and smelling food sitting out before you both. He was quick to scoop them up, the bottle of alcohol tucked under his arm as he made his way through to the sitting room, letting you follow behind with glasses, mixers and cutlery before trailing after him.

“No!” You jumped, halfway between sitting on the couch beside him before he yelled at you, and your eyes widened as you watched him carefully. “You aren’t in your pyjamas! You won’t be comfy! Go get changed, I’ll pick a film and we can relax.”

Despite the scoff that you let loose, you smiled at the sweet thought, heaving yourself back to your feet and dashing away toward your bedroom. When you reemerged, bare feet padding against the plush carpet, he’d already loaded up a movie for you both, the gruesome sight of a torn apart zombie showing up as the tag-photo before he pressed play.

“You’re going to be cold. You always wear those pyjamas on movie night, and despite how much I love the sight of you in my clothes, you’re going to freeze, and I can’t have that.” He set off in a ramble as you looked down at your attire, agreeing with him mentally as the large shirt of his swamped over shorts you wore beneath, barely visible, and he lifted the edge of the knitted blanket he had draped over himself.

Taking a seat, your side pressed to his happily as he handed you a steaming bowl of food, and you were moaning lowly under your breath as you looked at the meal in excitement. The plate of garlic bread sat out on the table before you, the buttery smell drifting into the air as you took in the scenes on the movie screen and tucked into your food.

The meal was full of laughs and jokes, your stupid commentaries about what was happening in the film drowning out the actual dialogue, and you were shaking so much with peels of laughter that you could barely keep the food on your fork, often dropping it back into the bowl as you tried to hold yourself together.

You shared the garlic bread between you, crumbs getting on both of you as you let him push the last bites of the current piece into your mouth, your giggles muffled around the food as you tried not to spray crumbs everywhere as you chewed. Even through the distraction of food and television, the little actions and gestures between the two of you weighing heavily on your mind.

By the time you had polished off your meal, you were sitting with your feet up on the coffee table before you, your hands sitting on your stomach as you grinned, feeling full and content from the meal, Mitch in much the same position as you. His head turned from where it was resting on the back of the couch to face you, and you twisted your own head to his, his eyes piercing into yours as he flashed his teeth in a grin.

“I’m craving pudding. Preferably something chocolate. Hot. With fudge. In a cake style.”

“So, hot chocolate and fudge cake?”

“With ice-cream.” He sighed wistfully, his gaze moving to the ceiling as he grumbled under his breath, the film having merely become background noise at this point, and you weren’t sure if there was even any point in it being on. “You think the shop is still open?”

“Wait here.”

Before he could even reply, he was watching you disappear into the kitchen. Following this, the sounds of the fridge opening and closing, dishes clattering about and the cutlery drawer rattling as it opened, and lastly, the beeping of the microwave. He chuckled as you mumbled a low curse about something being hot, before you were making your way back to him, one more large dish to join the growing pile beside your feet on the coffee table as you sat with him again, and he tucked the blanket back over your lap for heat as you curled into him.

The treat was finally revealed to him, and he cheered loudly as he looked at the tasty food in a bowl clutched between your hands, two spoons sitting in the bowl as ice-cream melted slowly on the side. “You got my favourite?”

“Of course! I wouldn't leave you hanging like th-” He grabbed your face in both of his hands, pressing a series of short kisses to your face, covering every inch of your skin as your eyes squeezed shut and you giggled, his breath fanning over your face in his excitement. “Alright, alright, let me at my cake!”

“Fine, fine.” He snatched a spoon, digging in himself as he took a chunk of the ice-cream and cake, your own actions matching his. The cake didn’t last long, the sounds of the metal scraping against the edges of the pottery soon sounding and the last bite sat in the middle of the dish, and you dropped your spoon, happily allowing Mitch to scoop it up as you relinquished the final bite of his favourite after-dinner treat to him.

Instead of eating it, he lifted his spoon up to your mouth, pressing the edge against your lips and you parted them on impact, letting him feed you the final bite as he sent you a soft smile, pulling the spoon away from your mouth as you chewed the cake and ice-cream. His thumb raised up to the side of your mouth, wiping away some excess icing carefully and his bright gaze stayed locked with yours as he sucked his thumb clean, sending you a tiny grin in response as his head tipped to the side, and you had to choke down the mouthful of food as you struggled to breathe.

He was leaving your sight a few moments later, gathering up the plates and dishes as he left you sitting on the couch, eyes wide and heart racing as you thought about the intimacy of the moment. It wasn't the first time he’d done it either, or done things like it, but now that you were really thinking about just how much you loved when he did these things, you couldn't think about anything else, and you couldn't control the way your mind spiralled or the way your heart raced, the way your skin flushed or your stomach fluttered.

You barely processed the moment he collapsed back down beside you, his arms held out as his fingers ran along your arm gently as he tried to coax you into cuddling with him, and it wasn’t until he was clicking his fingers in front of you face and nudging your shoulder violently that you surfaced from your spinning mind.

His eyebrows were raised, a frown on his face as he silently asked you just what had you all caught up in your head, prompting you to talk to him about it and your jaw dropped, no words coming out in speech as you tried to form a coherent sentence in your mind.

“Do you think we’re.. being romantic?”

The raised brows dipped down into a furrowed position, his body stiffening slightly as he turned to face you full, his hand dropping down from touching you to instead sit in his lap. “It’s anti-Valentine’s Day. The whole point was not being romantic, I m-”

“No. I mean, yeah, it was. But, I meant.. well, think about us, and the way we act. Don’t you think we act romantic, like, all the time? Not that I don’t love the way we are, because I do. I love our dynamic, but I was just thinking about it, I guess..”

He seemed to have a blank look on his face, licking over dry lips as his gaze seemed to fade in and out of focus for a moment. His shoulders eventually rose and fell in a shrug, his attention returning to you as he remained casual, as though your suggestion hadn't phased him in the slightest. “I guess so.”

“You guess so?”

“Yeah. It just comes, so naturally with you.” He reached over, taking one of your hands in both of his as he ran his thumbs over your knuckles and the back of your hands. “When I was with Katrina, I struggled because I was overthinking everything all the time, and putting so much thought into my actions. After the beach, I shut down entirely. Touch, affection, it all just seemed so inappropriate and superfluous. Then you walked into my life, and everything just.. happened. I didn’t intend to start wanting to be affectionate, or clingy or touchy with you, but it just feels so right, and natural. I don’t have to think about it, I don’t worry about it, I just do it. It feels right when it’s with you.”

You were shocked at his speech. Mitch was a man of few words, he didn’t often give big speeches, only to make his point, or when he was particularly emotionally worked up, and he was never worked up around you. “You mean.. you’re aware we act like a couple and don’t care?”

“Well, no. I like being this way with you. Relax, angel.” He sat up a little more, until he was no longer slouching, tugging you closer as he pressed his lips to your forehead. “Besides, we don’t do all the things couples do. We don’t share a bed, we don’t have a joint bank account, we don’t- I’ve never- kissed.”

A laugh fell from you as he stumbled over his final point, and you scoffed nodding as you relaxed in his hold a little, his chin resting on the top of your head. “Oh, God. That would be weird.”

“Thinking about kissing me is that bad, huh?” He was joking, his body shaking slightly with a chuckle but there was something under the surface of the tone, a slight twinge of something else laying in it and you pulled back, shaking your head fondly as his eyes searched yours carefully.

“No, but, you’re my best friend. Don’t you think it’d feel weird?”

He licked over his lips, swallowing thickly as his gaze flickered between your mouth and your eyes, his nose bumping against yours as he dipped his head down and your breathing held in your lungs as your body froze. “Only one way to find out.”

You did want to know. You had been thinking about it, and you wanted it, you needed to know what it felt like to kiss him and so you were quick to close the gap between the two of you. Your lips pressed to his delicately, testing the waters before his lips enveloped yours entirely, his fingers weaving into your hair as he sighed against your mouth happily. The second he returned to contact, you sunk into his embrace, twisting your head to the side to give him better and clearer access to your mouth as he left desperate and passionate kisses to your lips.

Your own hands clutched at the shirt on his chest, trying to pull him closer as he held you tightly, his fingertips digging into your scalp and palms burning against your cheeks as he held you tightly. Your lungs were burning, your lips tingling and your heart exploding as you connected with the man before you, and finally, you dragged yourself away from him, your eyes closed, his the same as his lashes tickled your cheeks, foreheads pressed together. You both sucked in gasps of the air shared between you, panting into the warm space shared between your barely parted lips. “So? What’s your verdict?”

“I.. um.. wow. I have never been kissed like that before.” He chuckled at your statement, pulling away slightly and tucking loose strands away behind your ear as he detangled his fingers from your hair, his darkened gaze finding yours.

“Can I be totally honest with you right now?” His gaze was piercing into yours, and you nodded, a tiny smile pulling at his lips as he leaned forward, placing a short peck to your lips and leaving you flustered once again.

“You can always talk to me, you know that.”

“I hate it. It kills me. Every single time we have to go undercover and you kiss another guy, because I wish I knew how it felt to be them and be lucky enough to kiss you. It hurts, any time you accept the number of another guy when we go out together, because I secretly wish we were out on a date, and not just friends going for dinner or drinks. I want to hold your hand, I want to share a bed with you each night, I want t-”

Your hands found his cheeks, pulling his lips back to yours and he let out a groan at the contact, his body relaxing happily from where he had gotten himself all worked up as you held him. His fingers dropped to your waist, dipping under the edge of your shirt to sit on the bare skin of your waist and your skin lit on fire as he touched you, squeezing at your hips as his tongue trailed along your lower lip.

Parting them in glee, his tongue rolled over yours, soft moans leaving you both as heat flooded your body, and you slipped your hands into his hair, tugging on handfuls as you grabbed at him for support, the feeling of his mouth working passionately and quickly against yours making you feel like the earth had fallen away beneath you. He moaned, deep and low and rumbling at the feelings of your nails scraping against his skin, his back meeting the cushions of the couch again as he pulled you with him.

Your body twisted to follow him, rocking up onto your knees as he held onto you, and arm wrapping around your waist to support you and instead, you simply swung a leg over his lap, settling into his waist and dropping your weight down onto him. A gruff growl sounded from him at your actions as his mouth tore from yours, trails of saliva connecting your lips from the wet and heated kiss as he nipped along your jaw.

Your hips ground down into his when he issued one particularly hard suck to the skin under your ear, a cry falling from your lips and his hold on you only tightened, assisting you in your rolling down into his lap, whines and pleas leaving both of you at the stimulation. His hands slipped down from your back to palm roughly at your ass, your movement stilling as you pulled back to look at him. His eyes were blown with lust, lips swollen and face flushed, hair a mess with your hands tangled in and you swore the man had never looked more beautiful than he did in this moment.

“I know another thing couples do, that we haven’t done, yet..”

He smirked wickedly at your words, his expression lopsided as he nuzzled his nose at your jaw, tipping your head back to press a kiss to the skin of your neck as his scratchy and raspy voice vibrated along your skin; “Oh, yeah? Wanna’ try that out, angel?”

You had barely nodded before his hands were sliding to your bare thighs, roughened and calloused skin scraping against your silky smooth skin, his strong and trained body having no struggle as he lifted himself from the couch with you in his arms. Your legs wrapped around his waist as you giggled, snatching the remote in your hands on the way up and fumbling to turn off the TV before dropping the device to focus on the man holding you.

His footsteps were hurried and stumbling, the usually calm and collected man frantically making his way to his bedroom as your head dipped down to allow your mouth to suck and lick at his neck as you left your mark along the column of his throat. The stinging patches would no doubt be a deep purple in the morning, much the same as yours were beginning to appear from his similar treatment earlier.

Your back met the covers, your legs holding him flush and tight to you as you jerked your hips up into his, a jagged moan sounding from him as one of his hands supported him, the other coming up to cup your cheek and drag your mouth back to his in a sloppy meeting of lips and tongues, the sounds of the exchange bouncing from the walls of the room.

When he pulled away, trying to catch his breath and to check if this was really real, you were beaming at him cheekily, a hint of mischief in your eyes as your hands smoothed up his chest, looping around his neck as you played with his hair gently.

“It’s still anti-Valentine’s, so you can’t make love to me.” His brows furrowed, confusion covering his features, and you giggled as he made to move away, your body wrapped around his only holding him prisoner as you kept him close, biting your lip and shooting him a wink as he squirmed under your intense stare. Pulling him down, you brushed your lips against his teasingly, his short pants washing hot air over your face as you smirked. “You can’t go soft and slow with me, Mitch, you need to fuck me like your life depends on it. Nothing romantic, remember? Fuck me until I’m screaming and shaking.”

A loud moan left him, his eyes fluttering shut as he released the strangled sound and he dropped his body weight down onto yours as he kissed you fiercely, grinding his pulsing and solid erection into the thin shorts you were wearing. “Holy shit, angel. You’re perfect, I can’t wait. I’m going to bury my cock so deep inside you that you’ll never forget the feeling of me filling you up. The only name you’re going to know is mine.”

With frantic hands, he tugged the shirt of his that adorned you up and over your head, dragging your body up to remove the garment before dropping you back down into his sheets. Your hair fanned out around your head, and he sat back on his knees and your legs around his waist fell loose, his hands dragging along your stomach to grope at your tits, fingers twisting and tugging at your nipples, watching in awe as you cried out, your back arching into his touch. “Shit, Mitch, keep talking.”

His eyes flicked up to yours, your face scrunched in pleasure as you bit down on your bottom lip tightly, and he hummed at your request, dipping his head and sucking a taut nipple between his lips, swirling his tongue around the bud as you moaned his name out loudly for him. He lapped at the peak, making sure it was firm and wet, tingling as you ached for more before he switched to the other and repeated his actions. “You’re gonna’ be panting. Breathless and soaking wet and then, once you’re begging me for my cock, I’m going to make you mine. Just like you always have been, and always will be.”

The tips of his fingers danced along your skin, hooking into the band of your shorts and panties, before dragging both sets of sodden and unwanted material down your legs, chucking them over his shoulders and lost from sight as you faintly heard them hit the carpet across the room. Two of his fingers slipped through your folds, parting them teasingly as he swirled his fingers around the swollen bead of your clit, your hips jumping in response to the stimulation and he chuckled at the way your body reacted to him before pulling his touch away from you.

Seconds later, he was pushing a single, spindly and long digit into you, your walls clenching around him, drawing him in until he was buried as far as he could go, stroking at your walls and dripping with your arousal as you whimpered at the unsatisfactory feeling. He was soon slipping a second finger into you, picking up the pace considerably as you adjusted to the feeling of him stretching your walls and scissoring his fingers, preparing you for what was to come as he jerked his hand in a bruising rhythm.

Your back was arching, wet sounds filling the room as his free hand pressed your hips back down into the bed, your body twitching and jumping as you clenched around his fingers, gripping onto them tightly as your cries and moans filled his ears. The feeling of you squeezing at him, the sounds you made when mumbling his name and the feeling of you clenching around his digits had him hardening and twitching in his pants, his cock aching to be buried deep within your dripping core, but he wanted to make this last, and he wanted to please you, show you just how much he cared in actions, where words might fail him.

Twisting his wrist, he picked up the pace, your core fluttering and squeezing as your body jerked under his touch, loud cried falling from you, a scream of his name leaving you as he stretched you open by adding a third finger, never letting up on his pace. Your juices were flowing from you in rivers as you came, slick and cum pouring from you as he continued his assault until you couldn’t take it anymore.

You were backing up the bed, his touch slipping from you as whimpers caught in your throat, your eyes still squeezed shut and eyes rolled back as a dopey smile covered your face, the sound of him slurping and sucking dirtily on his fingers filling your ears. That same hand wrapped around your ankle, pulling you down the bed to the edge until your ass was hanging over it, your skin burning from the friction of your skin gliding against the cotton covers.

Before you had time to even sit up, cool air was being blown over your sodden and heated folds, a yelp leaving you and fingers dug into your thighs as he held you in position in a bruising grip, his mouth working along the supple flesh on the inside of your legs as he left wet trails up to your core. His lips wrapped around your swollen clit, the bead pulsating as he nibbled on it and you whined under his touch.

His tongue was soon lapping through your folds, gathering up everything you had to give as the tip of the muscle teased around your core, dipping in ever so slightly just to tease you as he groaned at the taste of you smothering his senses. The vibrations shot along your body, his name falling from your lips in a series of desperate pleads and erratic squeaks as pleasure continued to ignite your body, your skin on fire but goosebumps arose anyway, the unique feeling of the gentle soothing of his tongue at your core a contrast to the rough scratching of his stubble between your legs.

The skin would be red and raw, sensitive just like the rest of you, and you revelled in the feeling, the idea of everything he was doing to you. Your hips were rolling up into his face, his grunts and groans only spurring you on further as the sensitivity of it all continued to build and build, having been so close from your last orgasm already. Your body was shaking, your lungs heaving to try and suck in breaths as your heart raced and the cord that had been winding so tightly inside of you finally snapped, giving way as it crumbled to dust and your arousal leaked from you in waves for the man.

His name bounced around the room so loudly you were certain neighbours from other floors would be coming up to complain but you couldn’t find it within yourself to care, your throat raw from shouting and begging him, your body buzzing at the stimulation. Finally, when you couldn’t take any more, he pulled away, his chin glistening and he wiped at his face with the back of his hand, licking your taste from his lips as he grinned cheekily, eyes dark and glistening with lust as he looked down at your already spent form.

The front of his sweatpants were wet, a patch of precum leaking through and onto the prominent bulge, his hand coming down to cover it and his head tipping back as he palmed at his crotch, deep and gruff sounds spilling from him. Just the beautiful sight of him, dishevelled and needy had you falling apart, excitement filling your body once again as lust and want poured from you, a low whine leaving you.

As the sound reached him, he let his eyes crack open as his head tilted to look at you, his grip only tightening and increasing as he bit down on his bottom lip. Pulling your legs up until your feet were planted flat on the bedsheets, knees bent in the air, you parted your legs, running your fingers through your folds to show him your glistening entrance, and his jaw dropped at the sight. “Oh fuck, angel. You have no idea what you do to me.”

You laughed breathlessly, your eyes dropping to his hand as he continued to work himself. “I’m pretty sure you have the exact same effect on me as I have on you, hot stuff.” You shot him a wink, your body collapsing back into the covers as you slug your arms over your eyes, hearing him chuckle, the sounds of fabric rustling and hitting the carpet filling your ears. It was followed by the bed dipping on either side of your body as he crawled his way over you, a hand lifting your arms away from your face as you looked up to meet golden-brown eyes, peering down at you carefully with a gentle smile.

Dipping his head down, his lips met yours in a gentle kiss, your hands weaving into his hair to hold him to you, your own taste spreading to you as he licked his way into your mouth. The kiss was slow and sloppy, your hips bucking up each time he shifted and his tip prodded at your entrance.

One of your hands slipped down between you both, a groan falling from his mouth and into yours as your fingers wrapped around his solid member, pumping him slowly and lining him up with your entrance. With a single, smooth snap of his hips, the man was buried deep within you, your hands tugging harshly on his hair as you cried out, his teeth biting down on your bottom lips as he growled lowly.

“Holy shit, you’re so fucking tight.” His voice was choked, words harsh and voice scratchy as he panted out, groaning under his breath and steadying himself as he rocked his hips in and out of you slowly, both of you adjusting to the feeling of him stretching you out. One of his hands smoothed along your arm, pinning it above your head as his fingers laced with yours, the other bent as he rested on his forearm, hips snapping into yours as your foreheads pressed together.

A thin layer of sweat covered your bodies, your erratically beating hearts practically pressed together as he picked up the pace and your hands slipped down, gripping onto his biceps, his back, his shoulders for any kind of support you could find as cries began to pour from you. With each thrust he seemed to hit deeper, brushing against your g-spot every time as he seemed to fill you up to places you had never been touched before, and the bed seemed to slip away beneath you as he carried you to heights of pleasure you had never felt before.

Your nails were ripping red welts into his skin, your body jerking up into his in an attempt to meet his god-like thrusts, hard and fast, the sound of his skin colliding with yours filling the room on repeat as you spiralled into depths of bliss. Your mind was blank and empty your mouth hanging open as your eyes fluttered shut, silent screams leaving you as his own mouth worked along your neck. Licking and sucking at any spot of skin he could find, his stubble scraped where his tongue and lips soothed, leaving your skin red and raw, soon to blossom with deep purple bruises to show exactly who had been fucking you, pleasing you, loving you.

“M-Mitch, fuck!”

He laughed at the feeling, nodding in agreement as he dragged his tongue over your skin, leaving a trail all the way back up to your lips, his tongue dipping into your mouth as he kissed you deeply, sighing out happily at the feeling of your mouth on his as he fucked you into oblivion.

You were hugging his shaft tightly, broken moans pouring from him as you begged him, needing your release, pleading with him and praising him. Your body was twitching and shaking, your fingers tearing tracks into his skin as his own grip left bruises all over you, and with every bit of self-restraint he had, he slipped from you, a frustrated shout leaving you as you suddenly felt empty.

Flipping you over, the man knelt behind you, slipping himself back inside of you easily, your thighs trembling at the sudden intrusion and you bunched up the covers in your hands, your forehead hitting the covers, sounds muffled by the fabric. “Nuh-uh, angel. Let me hear the pretty noises. I want to hear you screaming my name, I’ve been dreaming about it too long to not hear it now.”

His fingers wrapped in your hair, an arm slipping around your body as he pulled you upwards, your scalp burning but a scream tore from you as your back met his chest, his cock hitting at all new angles as you spasmed in his hold. The hand from your hair slipped down to seal around your throat, your eyes widening as he squeezed lightly, his mouth descending onto yours as the other hand slid lower and lower until the pads of his fingers were brushing across your swollen and overly sensitive bud.

“You ready to cum for me, sweetheart? I need you to come, give me everything you’ve got, like a good girl for me, okay?” You nodded frantically, his lips brushing your earlobe as he chuckled, pushing down roughly on your clit and rubbing harsh and fast circles. Your eyes squeezed shut, tears leaking down your cheeks as everything within you became numb, the sheer joy and bliss surging from your core becoming too much. Your throat stung and you screamed and begged, his name being the only thing in your mind as your body convulsed, shaking and twitching in his grasp as he continued to pound into you. “Oh, fucking hell, did you just squirt?”

His voice was light and broken, the word being spoken allowed seeming to catapult him over the edge as he shouted and growled into your ear, his thrusts faltering as he spilled his load inside of you, painting your walls and filling you up until you could feel the mixture of your arousal spilling down your legs and dripping down your thighs.

You tapped at his arm, his movements letting up as he pulled himself from within you, matching cries leaving you both and you gripped at his arm, pulling him around your side and pushing him down onto the messy and wet sheets before you. His eyes were wide as your still twitching body crawled over him, your hand wrapping around his sensitive cock as you pumped him, still hard and throbbing with want as his body stiffened and moans spilled form him.

He propped himself up on his elbows tiredly, watching in awe as you sunk yourself down onto him, easy and wet from your need as well as the mix of both of your orgasms from minutes prior.

“Oh, my God, how are you still going? Fuck, you’re perfect.”

“Need it, need you. Fuck it feels so good.” Your words were slurred, your body exhausted but your hips were rocking against his, the two of you already close as he sat up, arms wrapping around your waist to pull you closer, chest to chest. His forehead was pressed to yours, his matted hair sticking to your skin as he thrust up into you weakly, your hips rising and falling as you bounced on his shaft, bringing both of you spiralling toward another climax. Your eyes were closed, your mind spinning as he mumbled praises to you, telling you how good you felt, how much he loved the feeling of your tight pussy taking his cock so well, and how much he loved you.

You were babbling the same nonsense back to him, the two of you exchanging tired and messy kisses as he held onto you tightly, your hands on his shoulders and his hands on your hips as you worked together to jump over the edge one last time. Your mouths were pressed together, barely a kiss, as your eyes rolled back, lined with unshed tears of joy as shouts and screams of joy were exchanged between the two of you.

With a single movement of his fingers over your clit, the other hand sliding up to tease your nipples, you shot down into your climax once again, taking him with you as he spilt into you for a second time. Riding your way through the feeling, your head tipped back, soft kisses being pressed to your cheeks and neck, all the way down to your shoulders, until your body was still, his cock still nestled within your walls as the two of you sat there.

The heated haze of the room was still sitting over you, your hair mussed and bodied aching as you came up from the depths of pleasure, you sat up on shaky knees, with his help, collapsing beside him on the bed, your chests heaved as you tried to catch your breath. You had never felt more at home or relaxed, the feeling of his body beside yours, his nose nuzzling at your temple as he hummed happily, your legs tangled together as you regained your composure after having the best sex of your life.

Tilting your head toward him, his lips trailed across your cheek, pressing a sweet kiss to your lips before he was groaning out in displeasure and sitting up, shaking his exhausted body down as he got to his feet, stumbling on unstable legs a little and shooting you a mock glare when you giggled at him. He disappeared into the bathroom, returning moments later with a wet cloth, and he wiped over your skin carefully.

“How much of a mess do I look right now?” You joked, grinning as the cool material wiped your clean as he worked over your skin, pressing light kisses to certain patches as he went.

“You look beautiful, you always do.”

“I look beautiful? Covered in sweat, spit and your cum?” You joked, and he bit down on his lip, a flash of darkness moving through his golden eyes at your vulgar words.

“You have never looked better than when you’re thoroughly fucked out, covered in my handprints and hickies, my cum dripping from your pretty pussy. It’s an image I’m never going to forget.” He winked, wiping up between your legs and you hissed at the feeling, both soothing and sore at the same time, an apology falling from him as he chucked away the cloth in the vague direction of his laundry hamper.

The second he was done, you pushed yourself up, his brows furrowing as he watched you get up, passing by him and holding onto the furniture around his room as you waddled to his drawers, pulling out a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, before wandering from the room with them in your hands. Making your way through the apartment slowly, you tugged the clothing over your head and up your legs, your arms squeezing around yourself as the soft material engulfed you in warmth and comfort.

Swiping the red box you had been gifted by the man this morning from the counter, you were quick to make your way back to the room. When you arrived, you found he’s pulled on a pair of sweatpants and was just finishing changing the sheets, the sex-soaked ones from before now sitting in a heap in the corner of the room as he changed them out for a crisp new set of dark blue ones.

You held the box up with a wide grin as you made your way towards him, his arms opening to close around your body as he took them from you tackling you onto the bed softly as his body fell atop yours. “A post-sex snack?”

“Exactly.”

“Are you sure you’re real?” He mumbled, lips trying to meet yours in a kiss as you laughed and rolled out from under him, choosing instead to cuddle into his side once he sat back against the headboard and tore open the box. Plucking a round treat from the box, dusted with gold powder and nuts, you popped it into your mouth, chewing happily as the taste of dark chocolate and caramel met your tastebuds.

“Tomorrow night. I’m going to wear that blue dress, the one you always tell me I look beautiful in. I’ll be ready at seven.” Your words were muffled as you chewed the food in your mouth, before swallowing it thickly and licking over your lips as you chose the next one. “You can take me out on our first official date.”

You heard the man scoff a laugh beside you, his cheek sitting atop his head as his own fingers scanned over the box and plucked one from the foil. “I can’t wait, angel. I’ll make reservations, and I’ll bring you your favourite flowers.”

“Not romantic, my ass.” Your elbow nudged into his ribcage as the pair of you laughed loudly, a kiss being pressed to the top of your head as he grumbled about your words in entertainment. “I’d like that though. My favourites ar-”

“I know what your favourites are, angel. I know everything about you.”

You rolled your eyes, tilting your head to accept his affections when he looked at you with puckered lips, the taste of chocolate lingering in his mouth as his fingers wove into your hair. With an idle hand, Mitch scooped up the box from where it was resting across your lap and haphazardly discarded it to the bedside table, instead choosing to roll over you, his body laying against yours and crushing you slightly, but neither of you cared, your mind far too preoccupied with the warmth his body spread to yours, and the pure love his touch gave you.

Okay, maybe you were a little bit romantic, but only when you were together.

#Mitch Rapp #Mitch Rapp smut #mitch rapp/reader #mitch rapp x reader #mitch rapp/reader smut #mitch rapp x reader smut #mitch rapp american assassin #dylan obrien #dylan obrien fic #dylan o'brien #dylan obrien american assassin #dylan obrien smut

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nvarchive · 3 years ago

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SHAKESPEARE AESTHETICS

𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐎 & 𝐉𝐔𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐓 suburban july. scraped knees. bruised knuckles. blood in your teeth. bare feet on hot concrete. restlessness. your high school’s empty parking lot. love poems in your diary. a window open to coax in the breeze. burning inside. an ill - fitting party dress. a t - shirt you cut up yourself. the time you tried to give yourself bangs. biking to your friends house. bubble gum. gas station ice. the feeling that you’ve met before. rebellion. a car radio playing down the street. cheap fireworks. a heart drawn on the inside of your wrist with a sharpie. switchblades. red solo cups. dancing in your bedroom. screaming yourself hoarse. running out of options. the forlorn looking basketball hoop at the end of a cul - de - sac. climbing onto your roof at night while your parents are asleep. flip - flops. a eulogy written of loose - leaf. the merciless noontime sun.

𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐋𝐄𝐓 speaking in a whisper. holding your breath. a browning garden. a half remembered story. furniture covered with sheets. fog at dawn, mist at twilight. losing touch. the ethereal space between winter and spring. the soft skin at your temple. the crack in the hallway mirror. things you’d say if you knew the words. uncombed hair. books with writing in the margins. books with cracked spines. books with lines scratched out. prayers on all souls’ day. a chipped ceramic bathtub. a cold stone floor. the uncomfortable awareness of your own heartbeat. the sparrow that got in your house. shadows. the creek you played in as a child. a dirty night gown. an oversized t - shirt. a collection of your favorite words. soil beneath your nails. ghost stories. the strangeness of your own name in your mouth. deep silence. exhaustion. a cliff with a long, long drop down.

𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐅𝐓𝐇 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 wicker deck furniture. new england summer. large sunglasses and a blonde bob. a storm over the ocean. patio umbrellas flapping in the wind. the smell of chlorine. muffled laughter. sarcasm. starched cuffs. day drinking. bay windows. the idea of love. love for the idea of love. love for love’s sake. hangovers. wandering over the sand dunes. a vagabond with a guitar. fishermen with tattoos. a pretty boy with a slacked tie. a lighthouse. growing too close. boat shoes. feeling yourself change. big, floppy sunhats. double - speak. a song you keep listening to. turning red under their gaze. margaritas drank on an inflatable pool lounger. string lights on a balmy night. . sleepy june days. fights you’re unprepared for. hope you weren’t expecting. pranks that go too far. bad poetry. pining. becoming less of a stranger.

𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐁𝐄𝐓𝐇 the space where your grief used to be. a bird that’s lost an eye. old blood stains. heavy blinds. the smell of sweat. the stillness after a battle. a fake smile. a curse. the taste of metal at the back of your tongue. your house, unfamiliar in the dark. a dusty crib. the smell of sulfur. an orange pill bottle. streaks in the sink. a black cocktail dress. your hand on the doorknob, shaking. a chilly breeze.crunching from the gravel driveway on a moonless night. clenched hands. a rusty swing set. a flashing digital clock stuck on 12 : 00. a snake that crosses your path. an owl that watches you. a dog that runs when you approach. red smoke, dark clouds. cool steel. tile floors. footsteps in the hallway late at night. a baggy suit that used to fit before. visions. insomnia headaches. nursery rhymes. being too far in to go back now.

𝐌𝐔𝐂𝐇 𝐀𝐃𝐎 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 the high drama of small towns. a pickup truck. military supply duffel bags in the hall. hugs all around. tulip bulbs. a wraparound porch. a pitcher of iced tea. a rubber halloween mask. someone on your level. ill - timed proclamations. stomach clenching laughter. rushing in. not minding your business. crepe paper. white lies. secrets written down and thrown away. southern hospitality. homemade curtains in the kitchen. a sink full of roses. hiding in the bushes. old friends. the wedding dress your grandma wore, and her mama before her. a dog - eared rhyming dictionary. chamomile with honey. the intimacy of big parties. lawn flamingos. gossip. a crowded church. friendly rivalries. unfriendly rivalries. shit getting real. love at five hundredth sight. not realizing you’re home until you’re there.

𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐑 cement block buildings. power lines that birds never perch on. the end of the world. useless words. rainless thunder, heat lighting, a too big sky. arthritic knuckles. broken glass. chalk cliffs. the pulsing red - black behind closed eyes. something you learned too late. wet mud that sucks up your shoes while you walk. a cold stare. empty picture frames. empty prayers. the obscenity of seeing your parents cry. a treeless landscape. bloody rags. grappling in the dark with reaching hands. the sharpness at the the tips of your teeth. the blown out windows of a skeletal house. decay. jokes that aren’t jokes. biting your tongue. prophecies. aching muscles, tired feet. stinging rain. invoking the gods. wondering if the gods are listening. worrying that the gods are dead. white noise. shivers. numbness. the unequivocal feeling of ending.

𝐀 𝐌𝐈𝐃𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐑 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓'𝐒 𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌 the smell of wet soil and dead leaves. listening to music on headphones with your eyes closed. wildflowers. the distant sparkle of lightning bugs. a pill someone slipped you. fear that turns into excitement. excitement that turns to frenzy. mossy tree trunks. a pair of yellow eyes in the darkness. night swimming. moonlight through the leaves. a bass beat in your chest. a butterfly landing on your nose. a kiss from a stranger. a dark hallow in an old tree. glow in the dark paint. drinking on an empty stomach. a twig breaking behind you. spinning until you’re dizzy. finding glitter on your body and not remembering where it came from. an overgrown path through the woods. cool dew on your skin. a dream that fades with waking. moths drawn to the light. giving yourself over, completely. afterglow. the long, loving, velvety night.

TAGGING: you!

#𝒊. aes — she wears a smile like a loaded ��gun.#𝒊. about — fact sheet.

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onlyhenrys · 4 years ago

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She-Wolf - Chapter 11

She-Wolf

Summary: She’s the only female witcher. He’s the most powerful witcher in the continent. What happens when the two cross paths?

Series Masterlist: here

Warning: Violence and mention of possession

Thank you @iloveyouyen for being my amazing bestie/wife and for beta’ing this chapter <3

Chapter 11 Geralt swallowed as he looked at the raven-haired woman in front of him. Time seemed to freeze and her pale skin glowed as she stalked closer towards them, her black and white dress flowing freely around her feet. The presence of the woman was both familiar and intimidating to the white-haired witcher. Memories from another life flashed in front of his eyes and he had to clear his throat before being able to face the fearless woman. The two of them had shared a lifetime worth of intimate moments and Geralt knew that he was one of the only people that had ever seen her vulnerable side. Being with Avyanna almost felt like he was betraying her, even when he knew that Yennefer didn’t see it that way.

The featherlight touch of her fingers brushed over his skin and he closed his eyes at the sensation of her touch.

‘’Hello, Geralt,’’ her voice was smooth and so familiar that his body leaned closer on instinct. She withdrew from him, leaving him cold and focused on Avyanna, who was shielded behind him.

‘’I heard you needed my help?’’ Her voice remained the same and yet her features darkened as she came face to face with the she-wolf.

Avyanna straightened and lifted her head, amber eyes locking with violet ones. “Not if you’re being so smug about it.”

Yennefer’s features softened and a smirk pulled at her lips as she shook her head, sharing her lilac and gooseberry scent with everyone that was close enough. “Always the feisty one,” she muttered, before pulling the female Witcher in her embrace.

The redhead relaxed into the other female’s arms and placed her hands against her shoulders, holding her close. She was never close to the older mage, mainly because she couldn’t stand the sight of Geralt and Yennefer together, but also because the raven-haired woman secretly intimidated her.

Yennefer released her grip and took a step back, looking over her shoulder to the rest of the company, her eyes lingering on the element bender.

“Mmmh, interesting,” she mumbled, stepping closer to the silver-haired woman, “I can feel the power running through your veins.”

“And I can feel yours,” Nesrin raised her chin, not afraid to face the woman in front of her, “the elements told me about you. Yennefer of Vengerberg, the most powerful sorceress of the continent, you have so much potential,” she sighed, “and yet you waste it pining over someone that doesn’t belong with you.”

Faolàn jumped in between the two of them as Yennefer stepped forward to lash out, her hands already lit up with unused magic. “Woah, calm down,” he pulled Nesrin behind him, shielding her with his large body. The earth started to shake as Nesrin braced herself, ready to face off with the mage in front of her.

‘’What’s going on here?’’ thundered a heavy voice, successfully breaking the two women apart. The earth settled down and Faolán sighed in relief before pulling the petite woman against his side, secretly hiding her from the woman with the burning violet eyes.

Avyanna broke free from the group and jumped into the older man’s arms, her face pressed in the crook of his neck. ‘’Vesemir, I missed you.’’

A chuckle vibrated through his body as he pressed her close against his body before settling her back on her feet, taking in the rest of the company. ‘’I see we’re all getting along?’’

The mage pressed her lips together and stared away in the distance, while the element bender giggled, not at all fazed by the incident. ‘’I can’t promise that.’’

The old witcher shook his head and turned away, mumbling something about the attitude of the young ones, before leading the way up to the old castle. Avyanna looked up as he felt a presence next to her. ‘’I see the two of you finally decided to stop pretending to not like each other?’’

She grinned as Eskel pointed to Geralt, who was keeping his eye on them, an unreadable expression on his face. ‘’Yeah, I guess we did.’’

A soft hand touched her shoulder as the witcher smiled, his eyes softened when they met hers. ‘’I’m happy for you,’’ he faced Geralt, who had crept closer, ‘’for both of you.’’

She squeezed his hand and watched as he joined Faolàn and Nesrin, who immediately jumped into a conversation with the quiet witcher. An arm around her waist pulled her attention back to the White Wolf and a smile took over.

“Are you okay?” He softly mumbled, his concern for her clear in his amber eyes.

She leaned up and pressed a soft kiss on his rough cheek, trying to take some of the concern away. “I’m good,” she sighed, “I just really hope Yen is able to find out what’s wrong with me. I hate being a danger to all of you.”

He looked like he wanted to reassure her, but she captured his lips with hers, preventing him from speaking words that she knew held no truth into them. “Don’t,” she warned him, as she pulled back, “I know what kind of risk I am, no need to pretend I’m not.”

He kept quiet for the rest of the walk, his features sharp as he took in his surroundings, overwhelmed with memories. This was the place where he taught Ciri how to fight, where he fell in love for the first time, where he learned what it was like to truly be in pain, where his heart got broken…

Dark clouds covered the sky and the wind started to pick up, pulling Geralt from his train of thoughts. The horses became restless as they picked up the trace of magic that was lingering in the air, their hooves scraping the cold ground in nerves. Geralt shuddered at the sudden cold that crept up his skin and gazed down at Avyanna. ‘’Are you alright?’’

The She-Wolf had her eyes closed, a thin layer of sweat covering her face as she seemed to strain herself, almost like she was trying to fight something.

When she opened her eyes, Geralt bit back a curse. A leaf green had replaced the smouldering amber, but the look in her eyes was different. She seemed terrified as her body started to tremble, her fists clenching and unclenching. ‘’Geralt - ‘’

He reached out with his hands, slowly approaching the terrified witcher, aware of the others who had stopped to watch. ‘’It’s alright, Avy. Grab my hand, I will help you through it.’’

She took a step forward, one of her hands raised when a deep shudder ran through her body and a tear escaped. ‘’I’m sorry,’’ she whispered and Geralt knew the instant she was gone. Her body stopped shaking as she straightened and her cold eyes locked with his amber ones.

Dread filled his stomach as a smirk crept up her bloodless lips, cocking her head to the side. ‘’Hello, Geralt.’’

Thunder sounded from a distance and a flash of lightning cleaved through the sky, hitting the ground near Faolán, making him jump back, dragging Nesrin with him. A chuckle rang through the air and Geralt watched in horror as Avyanna summoned a ball of lightning between her hands, holding it like a toy.

‘’So,’’ she smiled, ‘’who’s next?’’

Red strands of hair plastered against her head as it started pouring, making it almost impossible for Geralt to see her. Even more magic filled the air as both Yennefer and Nesrin readied themselves, both a faint light in the heavy storm.

Chaos broke loose as Avyanna released more lightning, hitting both Eskel and Faolán. The wolves flew backwards and an angry cry broke the heavy silence as Nesrin flew through the air, her silver hair like a halo around her head. Geralt dashed forward and threw his body in front of Avyanna, protecting her from the furious element bender.

‘’Nesrin, please,’’ he begged her, his hands stretched in front of him, ‘’ don’t hurt her. Avyanna is still inside.’’

The redhead chuckled from behind him. ‘’Are you sure of that, White Wolf?’’

His boots slipped in the mud as he turned to face her, his movements, so quick that he had her pinned against the wall before she could blink. A look of surprise crossed her face before she relaxed against his grip as a lazy smile started to spread. ‘’Hello, there.’’

His hand wrapped itself around her throat, holding her tightly against the cold wall. ‘’Let her go,’’ he growled between clenched teeth, ‘’you’ve had your fun, now back off.’’

She managed to free her hand and reached up, brushing the wet strands of hair away from his face. ‘’The fun has just begun, why would I leave the festivities early?’’

Her gaze shifted to Nesrin, who dragged Faolán on her lap, her pleads for him to wake up desperate, painful. ‘’She really loves him, doesn’t she?’’ Nesrin cradled his face in her hands and pressed her forehead against his, whispering softly. ‘’A love like that almost warms my heart.’’

Her gaze fell back on the witcher in front of her, who was studying her, his tight grip still around her throat. ‘’Would you sacrifice yourself for her?’’

‘’Yes,’’ he said, without hesitation, ‘’I would sacrifice everything for her.’’ He leaned closer, his amber eyes burning with desperation. ‘’I know you’re in there, Avy.’’ One hand released her throat and stroke her cheek, ‘’Fight, Avyanna, fight. I can’t even imagine how hard it must be, but we’re going to help you. Just come back to us,’’ his voice dropped to a whisper, ‘’come back to me, please.’’ A tremor ran through her body as he pleaded.

‘’I love you,’’ he pressed his forehead against hers, slowly releasing her throat. ‘’I love you so, so much, Avy, you have no idea.’’

He waited for her to burst out in laughter, to mock him. But when she stayed quiet he lifted his head and amber eyes stared back at him, the edges silver with tears. Her arms wrapped themselves around his neck before her body collapsed and Geralt rushed forward to scoop her up in his arms.

He felt her eyes burn a hole through his back and turned around, facing the raven-haired witch. She had her arms crossed in front of her chest, her eyebrow raised in question. ‘’I guess this is why you need my help?’’ She pointed at the chaos around her. Eskel had managed to recover and was standing close to Vesemir, while Nesrin was still on the ground with Faolán, his unconscious body limp as she held onto his hand, silent tears on her cheeks.

‘’Can you help her?’’ he whispered, the words heavy in his mouth.

Yennefer released a deep breath before answering truthfully, ‘’ do you want the good or the bad news?’’

‘’Honestly?’’ he shrugged, sudden tiredness threatening to drag him down, ‘’I just want the truth.’’

A muscle clenched in her jaw before she averted her violet eyes. ‘’You may want to sit down then.’’

#she wolf #she-wolf #tw: possession #tw: violence #henry cavill #geralt of rivia #female witcher #netflix #the witcher #geralt of rivia x oc #geralt of rivia x ofc #henry cavill characters #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill fanfiction #henry cavill imagine #geralt of rivia angst

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the-twi-light-zone · 4 years ago

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The Sun and The Moon Chapter 4

Anger flares through Anna, chest exploding with pain and anguish at the sound of Bella’s voice. Though Bella is not the reason for her anger, their mother has now called Bella every night to gossip, exchange I miss you’s, and worst of all I love you. Not once has her mother even tried to reach out to her. Thoughts sprint through her head about why, why was she not good enough? Why was she always the odd one out? Why didn’t the people who created her love her as much as her twin?

Sadness seeps into her, a darkness spreading across her features and causing her to feel helpless. Annabelle looks out of her window, seeing her reflection in the glass the stream of tears that rain down on her shirt. Cheeks red with heat, her body begins to feel numb, numb with an underlying bitter tone. Riffling through her closet she throws on warmer clothes sweats, sweatshirt, scarf, gloves, hat, carhartt, and her boots.

Throwing her wallet in her pocket, she collects her keys and begins her trek out of the house. Charlie sitting on the sofa watching the television, and as she stomps her way downstairs he doesn’t even bother to look. A fresh wave of tears seep out of her eyes, she slams the front door closed and runs her way to the woods surrounding the back of her house. Anna stumbles through the dark out farther and farther from any and all light.

The moon barely lighting the way through the thick foliage, her feet slip slightly in the fresh mud. Her fast breathing turn to hiccupping sobs, ugly wails leave her lips and turn to fast fading fog around her. Anna cries her heart out not understanding why she’s alone, why her sister receives all of the love from everyone around them. Her sadness again turns to anger a scalding rage burns in her, tingles run through her arms and into her palms.

She eventually makes her way across a river shoes slipping and causing her fall forward. Her hands catch her, scrapes across her hands start to ooze blood pooling in her palms. She quiets her cries, opting to use her now ruined gloves to help put pressure on her palms. Anna stands slowly shins and knees damp from hitting the wet and muddy edge of the river. Continuing on Anna’s emotions have heightened, causing her to let out a howl of rage. Her anger searing in her body, blood boiling and finally she screams so loud and as she drops to her knees it stops.

Her energy drained, she slumps into her knees, sobs building up again her cries forming a red haze that she doesn’t see with her eyes squeezed shut. She suddenly opens them when she hears a cracking, trees around her scorched alongside the grass. forming a circle on the ground around her. A few trees around her collapse with a shaking thud scaring her back onto her feet. Hands shaking she looks down at them only to find light scars in place of the gashed up skin.

Anna turns slowly and stumbles into the ground, trying to stand again black spots dance in her vision. A haze forms over her, head tilting as she falls onto her side, the energy that she expelled when it surged out of her drained her. Leaving little to no way for her to make her way home this evening. Eye’s fluttering she see’s yellow eyes watch her carefully. Slowly blinking she sees a man next, again her eyes close and open to see him kneeling down next to her. Swaying, her body is finally set on a soft surface warm air seeps into her cold bones as her vision again goes black.

____________________________________

Eyes opening and adjusting to the bright light that fills her room, Anna sits up slowly her head pounding like she had a hangover like never before. Groaning she can’t remember much of last night after the man had knelt next to her. Somehow she had made it home safe and sound, although she was still wearing her clothes from the night. Shaking her head she got ready for school prepared to go through her first five periods and be able to go home to complete her online AP classes.

Nothing exiting happened at school, she wasn’t noticed like always. Which made it easier for her to disappear after lunch to go home to complete the rest of her schooling. Pulling her laptop off of her desk she grabs her charger and school supplies, heading back out of the door and to her truck. Pulling off only to drive in a haze towards the Black’s residence. Hoping out she shuts the door and makes her way into the home enjoying the warmth that flows into her chilled bones on the rainy day.

“Ahh I thought you would show up earlier than the other heathens.” Billy’s voice rings out from the kitchen where he wheels over to Anna extending a small bowl in her direction. “Yeah I get off after lunch for my AP classes, so I figured it would be best to miss the heavy traffic from the schools getting out.” Anna replies taking the offered bowl to find half an apple sliced with some cubes of cheese and what looks to be some turkey jerky. Smiling she thanks Billy and gives him a hug. He reciprocates and tells her that she is welcome to go set up in Jacob’s room. Nodding Anna makes her way in and sets up, grabbing her bowl she lays against Jacob’s pillows.

Munching on the nice after school snack she sighs and opens her laptop and begins to solve problems for all of the college courses she has. A couple hours go by with her finishing up homework for two of the three, the third being nearly done to where she can then work ahead and complete assignments for the next few days. Laughter breaks her train of thought as three rambunctious boys enter the bedroom joking and snaking on the same she had earlier.

“Hey Anna! How’d your first day go?” Quil asks throwing himself on the bed next to Anna. Tilting her head back she groans, “I’m ready for it to be over already!” Anna says looking back at the boys, seeing them nodding in agreement. “Well we don’t have much longer if you think about it, prom is what six weeks away?” Jacob says pulling out textbooks and folders at the end of his bed.

Nodding her head she mutters an agreement, “are you going to prom Anna?” Emery asks his eyebrows raised as he looks at Quil for a fleeting moment. Anna’s face is blank as she looks at Embry, “why, did you get rejected by Quil’s cousin again.” Embry’s smirk disappears while the other three burst out laughing at his expense. Embry eventually joining in giving Anna a fist bump.

As the afternoon passes into the evening the four teens eat dinner together after completing the grueling task of homework. “Alright kids it is a school night, so let’s finish up soon and start headed home.” Billy breaks in wheeling his chair into the living room to do who knows what. Sighing the teens getting out of their seats after seeing the time is 9p.m.

The teens all exit the house with the promise of seeing them tomorrow at Quil’s house. Hugging them goodbye, Anna is slow to make her way home. Not welcoming the feeling a dread that sits in her chest and sieges her stomach down. “My god is an iron.” Escapes past her lips as her truck slowly disappears into the crisp night.

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3,

#twilight imagine #twilight imagines #bella swan #charlie swan #embry call #quil ateara #jacob black #billy black

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duskandstarlight · 4 years ago

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Embers & Light (Nessian, multichapter fic)

Embers & Light

A Nesta and Cassian fic - a tale of how Nesta slowly starts to heal and how she and Cassian grow back together.

Now, in that study at the river estate, Cassian looked down at the female who would be staying with him for the near future. At the eyes that had drained of fire at the sound of her sisters words and were now nothing but hollow, unseeing.

“You’re coming with me to the Illyrian Mountains,” he told her.

Those steel blue eyes bore into his, unblinking. He waited for the retort, for the snide remark that would send him reeling but it didn’t come.

Somehow, that was worse. It meant that the situation was far graver than any of them had realised.

Ao3

Or read Chapter One below...

Chapter One

Cassian

Feyre had found him at the House of Wind. Cassian’s chest was heaving after some early morning hand-to-hand combat with Azriel, his hands braced on his knees as he gulped crisp, fresh air into his lungs. Summer was giving way to fall, the chill hanging in the air a promise of what was to come — of the fiery riot of autumn colours as the trees shed their leaves and bracing wintery days.

It had been a long time since Cassian had fought with his brother. His business had kept him in the Illyrian mountains more often than not, but his daily sparring with Windhaven’s most promising warriors had paid off, and although he was sporting a split lip and swollen nose, Azriel was definitely the worse for wear.

Wiping away the blood and sweat from his face onto his tunic, Cassian looked up to see Feyre materialise out of thin air a few feet away from them. He grinned at her in greeting. From the way Feyre grimaced at him, he gathered his teeth were covered in blood.

“I thought we weren’t training this morning?” he asked as he spit red over the edge of the sparring plateau. Waving Azriel goodbye he shucked off his tunic, tossing it to the ground so his skin could air dry. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Feyre rolled her eyes at him and rested a hand on her hip. “Must you find any excuse to undress?”

Scraping his hair back into a messy bun, Cassian barked a laugh, “If it’s making you all hot and bothered, I can’t say I blame you. Should I speak to Rhys about properly satisfying his mate in the bedroom?”

“Such a large ego,” Feyre mused, “it makes me wonder if you’re over compensating, Cassian.”

He snorted at that. “I have the largest wingspan.”

“So you say,” Feyre huffed, which turned into outright laughter as his eyes gleamed. “Oh stop, i’m just teasing you.”

Nodding, Cassian poured himself a glass of water. He gestured to Feyre with the glass but she shook her head. When he’d finished downing it, he found her watching him apprehensively.

He surveyed her stiff posture, the way she had begun to worry her bottom lip between her teeth before he commanded, “Out with it.”

A moments pause. Then, “I want to talk to you about Nesta.”

Cassian stilled. He did not like to speak about the eldest Archeron sister if he could help it. He did not like to think about what had happened between them or about what was happening to her.

His voice was too light, too conversational when he asked, “And why would you want to do that?”

Sighing, Feyre shifted her gaze to focus somewhere over his shoulder. The sound was tormented and defeated. “I’ve been thinking long and hard about what to do about Nesta,” Feyre started to explain. “She’s tearing herself apart and I — I don’t know what to do. I’ve stood on the sidelines — we all have — but you saw her in the summer. She’s wasting away. From what I can tell from Azriel’s updates, she spends most of her time drunk or bedding other males and it’s… it’s gone on too long. We need to intervene.”

Cassian didn’t know what to do with his body so he crossed his arms firmly against his chest instead. He and Feyre had never spoken about the males Nesta took home — the males she made it her mission to find — as she sought out sleazy establishments and took her pick at the end of the night. They were always tripping over themselves to have a go. She was, after all, the female who had killed the King of Hybern.

At the beginning, when Nesta first moved out of the town house, Cassian had staked out on the rooftops of whatever tavern she was frequenting, waiting to following her home to make sure she got back safe. He never dropped down on the pavement beside her, never made a point of scaring the shit out of the male who was planning on putting his cock where it didn’t belong. No, he kept a healthy distance from Nesta whenever he could. He had razed enemies to the ground knee—deep in mud and gore and not batted an eyelid, but Nesta had a way of making him feel as if he were balancing on a tightrope between two cliffs with his wings bound.

So Cassian would perch himself on the rooftop opposite her worn apartment until a dim light cast itself out of the dirty windows. Once, he had remained beyond that — there was something about the male she had chosen that set him on edge — but in the end he had felt so sick with rage that he’d taken to the skies until the dark had bled into the pastel hues of dawn.

He hadn’t gone back, after that.

Levelling his gaze with his High Lady, Cassian tried to appear unaffected, but his voice too low, as he asked, “What are you suggesting?”

“I was thinking that you could take her with you to Illyria. I know you’re leaving tomorrow.”

Everything in him went taut and loose all at once. Refraining from sending Feyre a sharp look, Cassian took a moment to calm the thrum of blood that pounded through his veins. “Is that wise?”

“I think the fresh air could do her good,” Feyre admitted. “It would get her out of Velaris. Nesta always wanted to travel and see the world. Rhys said you’re going to be stationed out there for a while and it would force her to get clean. She’s a functioning alcoholic, Cassian. She’s draining Night Court funds left, right and centre to feed her habit.”

She peered up at him. Those grey-blue eyes of hers were identical to her sisters in colour but they lacked the ice cold fire that burned so ferociously in Nesta’s. It was a fire that never failed to kindle a heat within him.

“Would you… would you do it?” she asked uncertainly.

“Feyre —” he started gently, but she cut him off.

“I know -” she interrupted. “I know that things ended badly between you but she’s my sister, Cassian and I’ve failed her. This has all got so out of control. Nesta guards herself so carefully and pushes everyone away that I just… I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what was right. But I have two options: I watch her wither away and die — because she will die, Cass if she continues this lifestyle — or I become the evil sister and intervene.”

Feyre’s face crumpled then and Cassian allowed her to step away, to look out at the view of Velaris whilst she composed herself. The city unfolded before them like a rolling canvas of colour and light and the Sidra sparkled as it weaved itself like a serpent through the centre of the city until it met the sea.

Taking a deep breath that Cassian could tell gave her courage, Feyre said with a quiet fervour, “I’d rather be evil in this narrative than to not have tried to make things better. Nesta says she doesn’t need saving but she does need guidance — she needs somebody who will bring her out of this shell she’s become — and I can’t think of anybody else that might pull a reaction out of her. I know you travel a lot so she’ll still have her space but she’ll be in an environment that won’t feed her habit.”

Feyre turned to face him. Her braid caught in the wind and Cassian watched it fly behind her. “I know it’s a lot to ask. And I’m not asking as your High Lady, I’m asking as a friend. I know she’s been horrible to you but if we trialled this until Solstice…” Feyre trailed off at his hardened expression. “Would you do it? Take her with you, I mean.”

A muscle feathered in his jaw as he clenched his teeth. “She’d have to live with me. It’s not safe for her to stay by herself.”

“Yes,” Feyre agreed.

“I have a housekeeper who can keep an eye on her when i’m away.”

Feyre had blown out a breath — it was an exhalation of nerves, of the relief that came with him not saying no. She grabbed for his hand and squeezed, a silent thanks and he had sent her a small smile, even though he felt as if someone had punched him in the gut.

“You’re coming with me to the Illyrian Mountains,” he told her.

Those steel blue eyes bore into his, unblinking. He waited for the retort, for the snide remark that would send him reeling but it didn’t come.

Somehow, that was worse. It meant that the situation was far graver than any of them had realised.

There was no reaction in Nesta’s expression. Her impenetrable mask was either too honed after years of practice or any emotion she should have felt had been suppressed under the claws of those demons that haunted her every move. The only indication that she had heard was in her posture, that preternatural stillness and something wholly other of hers froze, as if she were on pause.

The air around them snapped taut as everyone waited to see what she would do… how she would react.

But after a few beats, all Nesta clipped was, “When.”

“Now,” Cassian said firmly, folding his arms across his wide chest in a stance that conveyed he was taking no shit, especially from her.

“Fine,” she snapped, but her voice was flat, devoid of the anger that should be consuming her. “Am I allowed to pack my things or am I no longer allowed my possessions?”

“I told you to wrap up warm,” he gritted out, pressing the scarf he had grabbed from her apartment into her hands.

“The only thing I’ll need, I’m sure.”

Strike, parry, strike. Their insults were as sharp and brutal as their usual wordplay but something felt off. Wrong.

His gut twisted and roiled, like a serpent uncoiling ready to strike.

In his peripheral vision, Rhys stepped forward but Cassian snarled in warning, flinging out his hand behind him. Long suppressed anger bubbled to the surface so fast red slid across his vision. Fisting his hands at his side, Cassian wrestled down his rage as he tried to block out the image of her beaten up apartment, the dirty sheets and the scent of multiple males. He wouldn’t go back there. He wouldn’t allow another male near her, not if it killed him.

He’d have to have Feyre or Elain pack her a bag and Azriel could winnow it over later.

“We’ll fly, not winnow,” he said to Rhys shortly, not bothering to turn to his friend as his wings rustled agitatedly, the promise of the open skies the only thing keeping him from losing it in front of his friends.

He wasn’t even sure what he was angry about. Everything, probably. This situation, the vacant cold that laced Nesta’s every word, every movement… Her capacity for pushing away those that cared for her. For his promise that they would have time, only to see it wasting away before his eyes as she bedded male after male and drank herself into a stupor.

Cassian knew Rhys well enough to sense that he had opened his mouth to protest but had then closed it. But Cassian’s gaze didn’t break from Nesta’s as he mustered all of his strength into drawling the four words that he yearned would provoke outrage and indignation… some fiery emotion from her that would tell him that the Nesta he had known was still there under all of the layers of ice and trauma. “Time to go, sweetheart.”

Stalking out of the study into the small courtyard, Cassian stopped by the stone fountain at its centre. The water spilling down into the pool basin was the only sound — even the birds had stopped chirping, as if they too had sensed his wrath and had turned mute.

Nesta had floated out last, her chin raised, her shoulders back, as if she were a queen ready to greet her loyal subjects, despite the unkept drabness to her hair and the creases in her stained clothing.

Amren hadn’t even bothered to leave the study. She was picking her nails, a look of complete boredom adorning her feline features. Cassian hadn’t been privy to the barbed words between Rhys's second and Nesta on that summer boat, but it must have been bad if Amren hadn’t even unleashed the power that bubbled so close to the surface of her skin.

The threat of it looming over Nesta was worse, somehow.

As if sensing his thoughts, Amren’s upper lip curled slowly. Those stormy eyes flashed and those actions alone had his blood crawling… He needed to get them out of here.

Feyre looked anxious and small amongst them all, her worry coming off of her in waves. Rhys had his hands in his pockets — a telling sign that he was refraining from comforting his mate — most likely because he had spoken out of turn earlier.

“Nesta,” Feyre tried softly, clasping her sister’s limp hands in her own. “I think it will be good for you in Illyria. To get away from everything and get some space. Elain and I love you very much. It hurts us to see you like this.”

There was no response. No barbed words or venom. Nesta just held Feyre’s gaze, expressionless.

Cassian couldn’t bear it… those dead eyes, so he closed the distance between himself and the sisters, severing the moment.

Feyre glanced quickly at Cassian and then back to Nesta, as she promised, “I’ll write to you. Elain and I will both write.”

She nodded at Cassian, giving him the permission that he hadn’t even thought to seek, his mind too preoccupied with taking to the skies as soon as possible.

“Have Az bring her belongings,” he told Rhys and Feyre, securing his hair with a leather tie.

He didn’t falter as he wrapped his arms around an unusually compliant Nesta, and shot into the sky.

Air rushed into his lungs in a steady torrent, the bracing air anchoring him. He ignored Nesta’s sharp hiss at the sudden speed, at the half—moons of her nails as they dug through his leathers.

When he reached the perfect altitude, he gave a few powerful flaps before spreading his wings wide, giving himself a moment to soar and drink in Velaris for the last time before following the northern curve of the Sidra.

Neither of them spoke during the long journey. With each beat of his wings, Cassian’s anger gradually dissipated to a low hum… and then to total exhaustion. He had barely slept the night before — a constant these days — especially having known what was in store for him the following day. Somehow, the lack of verbal sparring had left him even more spent, the knowledge that things were far worse than they had thought roiling uneasily in his gut…

They should have interfered sooner. Much sooner.

Focussing on the slow burn in his wings to take his mind off things, Cassian expended some of his power to block out the climbing chill. It was a drain on his already tired body, but he hadn’t had the energy to fight Nesta into Illyrian leathers before they left. She’d have only given him hell for it anyway.

Not daring to glance down at her, Cassian kept his eyes firmly on the path ahead as he tracked his way through the sky. Despite the thick material of her dress, he could feel Nesta’s sharp bones digging into his arms and she felt too light — so light that he had to swallow down his worry. The first thing he was going to do when they got to Windhaven was make her eat something, even if he forced it down her. Perhaps he could bribe her by threatening to burn one of her beloved books — it was sacrilege, he knew, but when needs must...

Banking to the right at the first sight of snow capped mountains, Cassian flew straight into the thick snow clouds surrounding a wide mountain pass. Pure, white snow fell thick and heavy around them, so fast that if Cassian hadn’t grown up flying these skies then it would have been too easy to become disorientated. The wind was its own force now and even the best of Illyrian’s would have been tossed around like a moth on paper—thin wings. But Cassian wasn’t any Illyrian warrior and his seven siphons weren’t for nothing. As a howling gust threatened to toss them aside he dove, tucking in his wings tight as he shot towards the ground as straight as an arrow. He felt Nesta’s sudden death grip and the sharp tang of her fear as they raced towards the war camp, but he just watched the pitched tents take shape and the sparring plateau full of moving figures come to life beneath him as he waited… waited...

The wind dropped as quickly as it had come and Cassian flung out his wings, launching them backwards. Grinding his teeth, he back—flapped hard, his tendons straining and burning at the sudden drag of air.

He did not acknowledge the fear that slammed into him, nor did he express his relief that Nesta was capable of feeling something. He merely steadied himself before touching down on the powdery ground, his voice gruff from the hours it had remained unused, “We’re here.”

#nessian #cassian #acosf #sarah j maas #a court of silver flames #nesta x cassian #acotar #nesta archeron

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salvatoraes-arc · 4 years ago

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· ¨ ┅ ✦ . dash games ; SHAKESPEARE AESTHETICS : STEFAN SALVATORE

ROMEO & JULIET:

suburban july. scraped knees. bruised knuckles. blood in your teeth. bare feet on hot concrete. restlessness. your high school’s empty parking lot. love poems in your diary. a window open to coax in the breeze. burning inside. an ill - fitting party dress. a t - shirt you cut up yourself. the time you tried to give yourself bangs. biking to your friends house. bubble gum. gas station ice. the feeling that you’ve met before. rebellion. a car radio playing down the street. cheap fireworks. a heart drawn on the inside of your wrist with a sharpie. switchblades. red solo cups. dancing in your bedroom. screaming yourself hoarse. running out of options. the forlorn looking basketball hoop at the end of a cul - de - sac. climbing onto your roof at night while your parents are asleep. flip - flops. a eulogy written on loose - leaf. the merciless noontime sun.

HAMLET:

speaking in a whisper. holding your breath. a browning garden. a half remembered story. furniture covered with sheets. fog at dawn, mist at twilight. losing touch. the ethereal space between winter and spring. the soft skin at your temple. the crack in the hallway mirror. things you’d say if you knew the words. uncombed hair. books with writing in the margins. books with cracked spines. books with lines scratched out. prayers on all souls’ day. a chipped ceramic bathtub. a cold stone floor. the uncomfortable awareness of your own heartbeat. the sparrow that got in your house. shadows. the creek you played in as a child. a dirty night gown. an oversized t - shirt. a collection of your favorite words. soil beneath your nails. ghost stories. the strangeness of your own name in your mouth. deep silence. exhaustion. a cliff with a long, long drop down.

TWELFTH NIGHT:

wicker deck furniture. new england summer. large sunglasses and a blonde bob. a storm over the ocean. patio umbrellas. flapping in the wind. the smell of chlorine. muffled laughter. sarcasm. starched cuffs. day drinking. bay windows. the idea of love. love for the idea of love. love for love’s sake. hangovers. wandering over the sand dunes. a vagabond with a guitar. fishermen with tattoos. a pretty boy with a slacked tie. a lighthouse. growing too close. boat shoes. feeling yourself change. big, floppy sunhats. double - speak. a song you keep listening to. turning red under their gaze. margaritas drank on an inflatable pool lounger. string lights on a balmy night. sleepy june days. fights you’re unprepared for. hope you weren’t expecting. pranks that go too far. bad poetry. pining. becoming less of a stranger.

MACBETH:

the space where your grief used to be. a bird that’s lost an eye. old blood stains. heavy blinds. the smell of sweat. the stillness after a battle. a fake smile. a curse. the taste of metal at the back of your tongue. your house, unfamiliar in the dark. a dusty crib. the smell of sulfur. an orange pill bottle. streaks in the sink. a black cocktail dress. your hand on the doorknob, shaking. a chilly breeze. crunching from the gravel driveway on a moonless night. clenched hands. a rusty swing set. a flashing digital clock stuck on 12 : 00. a snake that crosses your path. an owl that watches you. a dog that runs when you approach. red smoke, dark clouds. cool steel. tile floors. footsteps in the hallway late at night. a baggy suit that used to fit before. visions. insomnia headaches. nursery rhymes. being too far in to go back now.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING:

the high drama of small towns. a pickup truck. military supply duffel bags in the hall, hugs all around. tulip bulbs. a wraparound porch. a pitcher of iced tea. a rubber halloween mask. someone on your level. ill - timed proclamations. stomach clenching laughter. rushing in. not minding your business. crepe paper. white lies. secrets written down and thrown away. southern hospitality. homemade curtains in the kitchen. a sink full of roses. hiding in the bushes. old friends. the wedding dress your grandma wore, and her mama before her. a dog - eared rhyming dictionary. chamomile with honey. the intimacy of big parties. lawn flamingos. gossip. a crowded church. friendly rivalries. unfriendly rivalries. shit getting real. love at five hundredth sight. not realizing you’re home until you’re there.

KING LEAR:

cement block buildings. power lines that birds never perch on. the end of the world. useless words. rainless thunder, heat lighting, a too big sky. arthritic knuckles. broken glass. chalk cliffs. the pulsing red - black behind closed eyes. something you learned too late. wet mud that sucks up your shoes while you walk. a cold stare. empty picture frames. empty prayers. the obscenity of seeing your parents cry. a treeless landscape. bloody rags. grappling in the dark with reaching hands. the sharpness at the the tips of your teeth. the blown out windows of a skeletal house. decay. jokes that aren’t jokes. biting your tongue. prophecies. aching muscles, tired feet. stinging rain. invoking the gods. wondering if the gods are listening. worrying that the gods are dead. white noise. shivers. numbness. the unequivocal feeling of ending.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM:

the smell of wet soil and dead leaves. listening to music on headphones with your eyes closed. wildflowers. the distant sparkle of lightning bugs. a pill someone slipped you. fear that turns into excitement. excitement that turns to frenzy. mossy tree trunks. a pair of yellow eyes in the darkness. night swimming. moonlight through the leaves. a bass beat in your chest. a butterfly landing on your nose. a kiss from a stranger. a dark hallow in an old tree. glow in the dark paint. drinking on an empty stomach. a twig breaking behind you. spinning until you’re dizzy. finding glitter on your body and not remembering where it came from. an overgrown path through the woods. cool dew on your skin. a dream that fades with waking. moths drawn to the light. giving yourself over, completely. afterglow. the long, loving, velvety night.

TAGGED BY: @plexiglassed bestie !!!! TAGGING: @forbaes , @brilliantcrafty , @neverafters , @cracksjokes , @elaynas , @shesdaylight , @rexbred, @glmrocks , @constylations , @adorablecas , @mieczlw , @zerocents , @coyoted & YOU !

#[ 𝙵𝙸𝙻𝙴𝙳﹕] my lungs are clouded with self hatred. ›› aesthetics.#[ 𝙵𝙸𝙻𝙴𝙳﹕] these are always fun. ›› dash games.#[ 𝙵𝙸𝙻𝙴𝙳﹕] it’s perfectly fine to watch tv all day. ›› queued.

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cromwellharvests · 3 years ago

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✧･ﾟ: * 𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒 .

: * ROMEO & JULIET. suburban july. scraped knees. bruised knuckles. blood in your teeth. bare feet on hot concrete. restlessness. your high school’s empty parking lot. love poems in your diary. a window open to coax in the breeze. burning inside. an ill - fitting party dress. a t - shirt you cut up yourself. the time you tried to give yourself bangs. biking to your friends house. bubble gum. gas station ice. the feeling that you’ve met before. rebellion. a car radio playing down the street. cheap fireworks. a heart drawn on the inside of your wrist with a sharpie. switchblades. red solo cups. dancing in your bedroom. screaming yourself hoarse. running out of options. the forlorn looking basketball hoop at the end of a cul - de - sac. climbing onto your roof at night while your parents are asleep. flip - flops. a eulogy written on loose - leaf. the merciless noontime sun.

: * HAMLET. speaking in a whisper. holding your breath. a browning garden. a half remembered story. furniture covered with sheets. fog at dawn, mist at twilight. losing touch. the ethereal space between winter and spring. the soft skin at your temple. the crack in the hallway mirror. things you’d say if you knew the words. uncombed hair. books with writing in the margins. books with cracked spines. books with lines scratched out. prayers on all souls’ day. a chipped ceramic bathtub. a cold stone floor. the uncomfortable awareness of your own heartbeat. the sparrow that got in your house. shadows. the creek you played in as a child. a dirty night gown. an oversized t - shirt. a collection of your favorite words. soil beneath your nails. ghost stories. the strangeness of your own name in your mouth. deep silence. exhaustion. a cliff with a long, long drop down.

: * THE TWELFTH NIGHT. wicker deck furniture. new england summer. large sunglasses and a blonde bob. a storm over the ocean. patio umbrellas flapping in the wind. the smell of chlorine. muffled laughter. sarcasm. starched cuffs. day drinking. bay windows. the idea of love. love for the idea of love. love for love’s sake. hangovers. wandering over the sand dunes. a vagabond with a guitar. fishermen with tattoos. a pretty boy with a slacked tie. a lighthouse. growing too close. boat shoes. feeling yourself change. big, floppy sunhats. double - speak. a song you keep listening to. turning red under their gaze. margaritas drank on an inflatable pool lounger. string lights on a balmy night. sleepy june days. fights you’re unprepared for. hope you weren’t expecting. pranks that go too far. bad poetry. pining. becoming less of a stranger.

: * MACBETH. the space where your grief used to be. a bird that’s lost an eye. old blood stains. heavy blinds. the smell of sweat. the stillness after a battle. a fake smile. a curse. the taste of metal at the back of your tongue. your house, unfamiliar in the dark. a dusty crib. the smell of sulfur. an orange pill bottle. streaks in the sink. a black cocktail dress. your hand on the doorknob, shaking. a chilly breeze. crunching from the gravel driveway on a moonless night. clenched hands. a rusty swing set. a flashing digital clock stuck on 12 : 00. a snake that crosses your path. an owl that watches you. a dog that runs when you approach. red smoke, dark clouds. cool steel. tile floors. footsteps in the hallway late at night. a baggy suit that used to fit before. visions. insomnia headaches. nursery rhymes. being too far in to go back now.

: * MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. the high drama of small towns. a pickup truck. military supply duffel bags in the hall, hugs all around. tulip bulbs. a wraparound porch. a pitcher of iced tea. a rubber halloween mask. someone on your level. ill - timed proclamations. stomach clenching laughter. rushing in. not minding your business. crepe paper. white lies. secrets written down and thrown away. southern hospitality. homemade curtains in the kitchen. a sink full of roses. hiding in the bushes. old friends. the wedding dress your grandma wore, and her mama before her. a dog - eared rhyming dictionary. chamomile with honey. the intimacy of big parties. lawn flamingos. gossip. a crowded church. friendly rivalries. unfriendly rivalries. love at five hundredth sight. not realizing you’re home until you’re there.

: * KING LEAR. cement block buildings. power lines that birds never perch on. the end of the world. useless words. rainless thunder, heat lightning. a too big sky. arthritic knuckles. broken glass. chalk cliffs. the pulsing red - black behind closed eyes. something you learned too late. wet mud that sucks up your shoes while you walk. a cold stare. empty picture frames. empty prayers. the obscenity of seeing your parents cry. a treeless landscape. bloody rags. grappling in the dark with reaching hands. the sharpness at the the tips of your teeth. the blown out windows of a skeletal house. decay. jokes that aren’t jokes. biting your tongue. prophesies. aching muscles. tired feet. stinging rain. invoking the gods. wondering if the gods are listening. worrying that the gods are dead. white noise. shivers. numbness. the unequivocal feeling of ending.

: * A MIDSUMMER’S NIGHT DREAM. the smell of wet soil and dead leaves. listening to music on headphones with your eyes closed. wildflowers. the distant sparkle of lightning bugs. a pill someone slipped you. fear that turns into excitement. excitement that turns to frenzy. mossy tree trunks. a pair of yellow eyes in the darkness. night swimming. moonlight through the leaves. a bass beat in your chest. a butterfly landing on your nose. a kiss from a stranger. a dark hallow in an old tree. glow in the dark paint. drinking on an empty stomach. a twig breaking behind you. spinning until you’re dizzy. finding glitter on your body and not remembering where it came from. an overgrown path through the woods. cool dew on your skin. a dream that fades with waking. moths drawn to the light. giving yourself over, completely. afterglow. the long, loving, velvety night.

✧ tagged by: @iinfortunii ♥♥♥

#☼’( ʜᴏᴍᴇɢʀᴏᴡɴ & ʜᴀɴᴅᴍᴀᴅᴇ [aesthetic] )#long post.#mmmm.... this pleases me....

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mamabearcatfanfics · 4 years ago

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Instinct - Part Two

You can read Part One here - I’ll post the whole thing on AO3 and FF.net when it’s complete. Still another part to come...

She awoke with a start, her breathing heavy and laboured. A nightmare of cruel eyes and a voice in the darkness that mocked as she was being burned alive still lingered, but when she opened her eyes she was alone, and the laughter was gone. There was still a crackling snap of flames, but it was accompanied by rolling thunder and the sound of trickling water nearby.

She blinked in the firelight, the dancing shadows making her vision spin even though her body was still, her cheek resting on something soft. Water spilled down the dark rock wall in tiny rivulets, its downward course highlighted by the crackling fire. There was a yellow backpack nearby, and something was still restricting her movements, just like in her nightmare.

She fought one arm free from the soft fabric of the sleeping bag, swiping clumsily at her sweaty face. She had too much hair, it felt heavy on her neck, damp with perspiration. Why was she in a cave? She tried to remember, but any coherent thoughts besides heat and thirst refused to come, like she was dragging to them to the surface through endless treacle, and she abandoned the struggle as too much effort. Looking out into the dark night, there was nothing to see but rain. A lightning flash illuminated the surrounding forest, the glistening leaves bending under the weight of heavy rain drops. Her throat burned with thirst.

Pulling her other arm free with an effort, she sat up, trying to ignore the worsening dizziness and thumping headache that accompanied her change of position. The sleeping bag felt restrictive and hot and vague memories of being trapped in her dreams seized her, making her panic. She had to get out. She struggled out of the sleeping bag, hands pushing clumsily at the shiny polyester, each movement costing precious energy, but felt relief once her legs were free. So tired.

Her hair was still sticking to her face, and she felt clammy and sweaty, so she shrugged off the weight of the thick red jacket wrapped snugly around her, her fingers fumbling with the knotted belt. Too hot. Too heavy. Even her shirt felt like too much. She tugged at the light cotton fabric, trying to pull it away from her body. And she was so thirsty. There was a water bottle near by, but when finally managed to twist it open and tip it towards her mouth only a few meager drops spilled out onto her tongue. She looked longingly at the rain outside the cave, wondering if it was cooler out there.

Staggering to her feet, she took a tottering step forwards, then lurched towards the cave wall to stop herself falling face first into the flames. Flinging her hands out to stop her fall, she landed against a large boulder, her knees scraping against the sharp edge. The horizon tilted, and she rested her forehead against the cool dark stone for a moment, heart beating fast after the shock of her almost fall. A sudden urge to cough overtook her body, and she lay against the boulder, her shoulders shaking with the effort, the dragging ache between her shoulder blades almost unbearable.

Turning her head when the coughing fit finally eased, she watched the rain falling, listening to the calming noise as she took deep rasping breaths. The world was going topsyturvy, the cave entrance seemed to be moving away from her, but she was determined. Staggering upwards, she leaned her shoulder against the cave wall, using it like a crutch to stop her downward descent. So hot and thirsty. The rain would make it better.

Finally she made it through the opening, her bare feet slipping on the damp moss covered rocks. Taking a few tottering steps out into the storm, she stood shakily, an inner voice warning her not to move too far away from the light of the fire, and raised her face up into the rain falling from the sky. Cooling water soaked into her clothes and her hair, and she opened her mouth to catch the raindrops, drinking them in eagerly. Shaking legs refused to carry her weight any longer, so she sat down with a sudden thump, uncaring of the sharp sticks and rocks underneath her bare legs. She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the rain again. It felt so much better out here than in that hot sticky cave.

She was so focused on the sensation of the rain running down her heated cheeks, she didn’t even hear the low growling noise as it approached, not until the growl suddenly turned into words.

“What the fuck do ya think ya doin’ Kagome?!”

Inuyasha stared down at the girl, who he’d left sleeping, safe and dry in a cave he’d found to protect her from the storm while he went out to hunt for something for her to eat. Now she was sitting in a mud puddle, her hair and clothing soaked, the faint scent of her blood being washed away by torrential rain. Kagome opened her eyes, which rounded in surprise as if she hadn’t heard his approach at all.

Inuyasha tossed the dead rabbit into the mouth of the cave to be dealt with later, then picked Kagome up, carrying her limp unresisting form carefully down the slippery rock surface. He plonked her down at a safe distance away from the heat of the fire, then moved back towards the front of the cave so that he could pull off his own soaked undershirt and shake himself mostly dry. His hakama, made of the same fire rat fur as his suikan, would dry quickly on their own, the water beading on the tanned surface and dripping off onto the cave floor. He turned to survey his wench again, a grumbling growl slipping past his teeth. What on earth did she think she’d been doing?

She was sitting exactly where he’d left her, her head nodding like she was almost asleep where she sat. The once untamed waves of her dark hair were lank, water dripping down from her head to continue saturating her thin cotton shirt, which was already sticking to her pale skin. The usually leaf green skirt was dark and heavy with mud and rain water, and there were bloody scrapes on her legs where she’d grazed them on rocks and twigs.

Dammit. He took deep breaths, trying to calm the sudden surge of fear that had risen up to choke him when he’d returned to see her sitting in the rain with the scent of her blood in the air. He shouldn’t have left her, even for the short amount of time it had taken him to catch the rabbit to roast over the fire.

Keeping one eye on Kagome, in case she had any more crazy ideas about going back out into the rain, he rummaged through her backpack to find the towel she used to dry herself when she bathed. Finding both it and her hairbrush, he dropped the cloth over her head unceremoniously, ignoring the unhappy noise she made.

“Yeah, well, shoulda thought a that before you decided to go sit in a puddle while you’re sick”, he muttered, rubbing the towel over her head, squeezing to try and get most of the moisture out of her thick hair. She was worrying him, even more than she usually did. On a normal day if he did something like this she would be fighting back, threatening him with sit commands galore, but she was just slumped there in the same position that he’d placed her, her eyes looking slightly unfocused. He pulled the towel off her head and examined her glazed expression anxiously. “Why on earth were you sitting in the rain wench?!”

“Hot”, she managed to croak out. “Too hot.” Then she coughed, the fit seeming to last forever before she could take a wheezing breath inwards.

Inuyasha’s hand moved from where it had been rubbing her back then moved to her forehead.

“Tch. You’re burnin’ up.” He brought over the medical kit and placed it in front of her. “What medicine were you takin’ for the fever Kagome? You need to take some more.” Kagome blinked at him blearily, as if she didn’t understand the question. He opened the pack to find the little packages of pills. There were two, both of them opened. “Kagome which one?”

Kagome coughed again, the attack wracking her small frame. He supported her as she coughed, then cupped her face in his hands. “Listen Kagome, this is important. What medicine were you taking?” Kagome’s head pulled backwards, trying to escape his grip.

“No, don’t”, she moaned. “Too hot.” A thin sheen of sweat coated her face now that he’d dried away the rainwater, and she tugged listlessly at her shirt, as if looking for a way to pull it off her body.

Sighing in frustration at the situation, Inuyasha picked up both boxes. They were still at least another days journey away from the village, as he’d had to stop and find shelter when the storm began, even though he’d planned to keep going until late into the night. He needed to get her back to Kaede’s – she would have the right herbs to help with her fever, but until then he would have to do the best he could.

He glared at the little boxes, as if staring at them would make them submit to him and give up their information. He only recognised some of the kanji on the shiny paper boxes, the rest were totally illegible to him. Cautiously, he held each paper box under his nose and sniffed - one smelt extremely bitter, with a slight trace of vinegar, and the other smelt vaguely plant like. But on the bitter one, the overlaying scent of Kagome was a little stronger, meaning she had handled it more recently. He opened up the package, noting that there were only four of the little white pills left. Damn.

He racked his brain, trying to remember if Kagome took one or two of the pills. He was pretty sure it was two. But was he sure enough?

Kagome tried to lurch to her feet again, and he dropped the box to catch her gently by the shoulders.

“Oi, where do ya think you’re goin?”

“I’m thirsty”, she whispered. He leaned over to her backpack to grab her water bottle, keeping one hand on her in case she decided to get up again, and then realised it was empty. He took the water bottle and held it out under a rivulet of water running down the cave wall close by – the rock was sandstone, so the water should be filtered and clean.

“Kagome, here’s some water. But I need you to swallow these as well. They’re medicine.”

She raised an arm as if to make an eager grab for the water bottle, but then dropped it listlessly. “So tired.”

“You can sleep again as soon as you’ve taken your medicine. Open up Kagome.” He popped one of the little pills out of the shiny package as he’d seen Kagome do, and pushed it into her open mouth, then tipped the water bottle until she swallowed. “That’s it. Good girl. Just need to take one more.” When she’d swallowed another tablet and the last of the water, he stroked her damp hair, trying to get most of it away from her face.

“Kagome, ya can’t go wandering off when I’m not here, okay? You’re too sick. Somethin’ bad coulda happened when I wasn’t here to protect you. ”

“Huh?” She blinked slowly.

He sighed. “What am I gonna do with you wench? C’mon, I’m gonna put you back in bed while I cook us somethin’ to eat.”

He picked Kagome up, and carried her back over to her sleeping bag. Her clothes were still dripping wet. Damn, he’d have to take them off her. Shit.

“Kagome. We need to get you out of these wet things alright? I know you’re not feelin’ well, so I’m gonna have to help. I’ll do my best not to look at… well, you know…” He went back over to grab the damp towel, trying to work out the best way to do this while preserving Kagome’s modesty, then grabbed a soft shirt from her backpack, one he’d seen her wear for sleeping. “Alright Kagome, arms up.” She blinked at him, then coughed, doubling over while he tapped on her back.

“Fuck it, let’s just do this fast.” He tugged the shirt up off over her head, keeping his eyes averted and then shuffled around behind her. This was not what he’d invisaged the few times he’d longingly daydreamed about taking off her underclothes, but there was no room in his brain for lustful thoughts right now. He was too worried. Her skin was pale and clammy, hot to touch. The fever seemed to have escalated quickly, and she didn’t seem to be too aware of what was going on around her. It took a few fumbles before he could get the fasteners undone on the underclothes that covered her top half, but he managed, only bending the little metal clasps slightly. He pushed the t-shirt over her head, trying to be gentle, then managed to feed her unresponsive arms through the holes. Now for the bottom half.

Taking a deep breath, he unzipped the back fastening on her skirt, and was relieved to discover that the skimpy underclothes that covered her lower half weren’t as wet. He decided they could stay on. Lifting her up, he let the damp skirt fall to the cave floor, then dried her legs with the damp towel, scowling at the scrapes and scratches marring the pale flesh on the backs of her thighs and her knees. They weren’t too bad, and had already stopped bleeding. He would deal with them in the morning, before they set off to the village.

“C’mon Kagome, back into bed.”

“Nooo.” She pushed at him listlessly. “I’m hot.” She blinked up at him, her eyes focusing on his face for the first time. “Inuyasha?”

He sighed in relief that she’d finally shown some sort of recognition as to what was going on around her. Worrying about this small slip of a girl was going to be the end of him. Gently tucking a wayward lock of damp hair behind her ear, he smiled softly at her.

“Keh, yeah, it’s me. Who else would be looking after your clumsy ass Kagome? Look at you - I can’t leave you alone for ten mintues without you scraping yourself up.”

“I’m sorry”, she sighed, her head nodding forward, as if it were too heavy for her to keep it upright. She rested her forehead against his bare chest as he pulled the weight of her damp hair off her neck, twisting it up into a sloppy bun and securing it with a stretchy band he’d found wrapped around the handle of her hairbrush. It didn’t quite look the way it did when she did it herself, but it would do.

“N’yasha, I don’t feel… so good” she coughed.

He stroked her back. “You’ve got a pretty high fever, so I’m not surprised. You took some medicine, so now you need to lay down and get some sleep and let it work.” Her hands wrapped around his back and she shook her head, the damp hair on her forehead rubbing against his chest.

“Wanna stay with you.”

His own arms wrapped around her, his heart thumping at her request to stay close to him. Every time she said she needed him by her side made a longing rise up in his chest, one that he couldn’t explain in words. He’d almost forgotten his initial reasons for pushing her away. Maybe it would be okay to let her sit up for a while until the medicine took effect and her fever cooled.

He stroked his hand up and down her back soothingly, ears focusing on her rattling intakes of breath now that she was mostly dry. He didn’t think it was much worse, but it definitely wasn’t better. They needed to get back to the village.

“You wanna sit by the fire then? I need to put the rabbit I caught on to roast.” He looked up towards the mouth of the cave, just in time to see a small fox wrap his jaws delicately around one of the dead rabbit’s back legs and begin dragging it slowly backwards. “Hey asshole, that’s mine! Go get your own!” Grabbing a small rock, he threw it to land right near the fox, smirking in satisfaction when it backed off with a small yelp. “Damn foxes. Even with Shippou left behind I gotta deal with their sneaky shit.”

Gently unwrapping her arms from around his torso and making sure she was sitting safely upright, Inuyasha moved over to the mouth of the cave, using his claws to skin and gut the carcass quickly then threw the skin, head and entrails out into the darkness, figuring that would keep the fox satisfied and away from any other food in the cave. He pushed the meat onto a stick and set it above the flames to cook, then stretched out both his damp kosode and Kagome’s wet clothes on some dry rocks near the fire. Hopefully they would be dry by morning. He sat back down next to Kagome.

“You feelin’ any better?”

She managed a small smile for him, no where near her usual cheesy grin, but a smile, nonetheless. He’d take it.

“I don’t feel so feverish now. But I don’t know if I really want to eat anything.”

“Just try a small bite, you haven’t eaten anythin’ all day. It’s a shame we left the tea kettle behind with the others, or I’d make you some tea too.” She rested her head against his arm, and he reached out to grab his suikan, draping it around her shoulders again.

“Inuyasha? Why aren’t I wearing a skirt?”

“Because you went outside and sat in a puddle wench, when I was off catching dinner.”

She blinked at him blearily. “I did?”

“You don’t remember that?” He waited for her anger, her revulsion at his removal of her clothing without her consent when she was ill and vulnerable, but she merely shrugged, shaking her head, then slumped against him, yawning.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I can stay awake for the food.”

Inyasha touched his hand to the back of her neck. She was still warm to the touch, but her fever seemed to have receded a little. Sleep was probably what she needed more right now.

“Then go to sleep Kagome. I can always find you somethin’ else later.”

He reached out to snag her sleeping bag, then stretched his legs out, so she could lay down with her head in his lap, a sudden memory pulling at him of when she had done the same for him. She gazed up at him, a thoughtful look on her pale face.

“Why do you take such good care of me?”

“Can’t help it.”

“Am I that pathetic?”

He snorted. “No. I just… I feel good when I take care of you.” His eyes flicked away from her steady gaze, and she settled down with her head in his lap. After a few moments, he stopped trying to resist the urge to run his clawed fingers through her damp fringe, doing his best to ease out the tangles that he’d created when he’d dried her hair with the towel. Maybe he had been a little rough.

“Tha’s nice”, she murmured sleepily, and he felt that strange tugging sensation in his heart again. “G’night N’yasha.”

“Goodnight Kagome.” He eased them both back a little so he could lean against a convenient boulder, then looked down at the girl fast asleep in his lap, the darkness of her hair and her pale face such a contrast to the deep red of his hakama. So trusting. Had anyone else ever trusted him with their life the way that Kagome did? He didn’t think so. No one else saw him like Kagome did. She was special. A precious light in a world that all too often held darkness and pain.

His previous fears somewhat allayed now that her fever had settled and she was warm and dry, he couldn’t help the contented grumble that emanated from his chest. It was a sound that he didn’t make very often, it only came unbidden when he was calm and content around her. He wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, but that wasn’t important. It felt good to make it, in the same way that feeding her, protecting her, keeping he safe felt.

He was so focused on the precious girl in his lap, listening to her breaths and the way her heartbeat slowed and steadied as he continued the rumbling vibration through his chest, that he didn’t notice the fox creeping into the cave, not until it had successfully grabbed the stick and absconded with his half cooked dinner.

PART THREE

#Instinct #mamabearcat fanfics #inukag fanfic

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